Happy Friday, Bowdoin students. What are your plans for the weekend? If you answered “to be the drunkest girl at the party and crash in someone else’s room at 11 p.m.,” then your Saturday night might just live up to my most recent weekend adventures.
At 3 a.m., back in my room, I woke up to my friend just getting in. She grabbed us matching glasses of water and we went to sleep. Seemed like a normal (if somewhat embarrassing, on my part) night.
At brunch the next day, however, she recounted a fairly unusual series of events: she had gone to a College House, danced under a blacklight in a too-revealing dress, and eventually went home with a first year. That’s not the unusual part—it happens to the best of us.
But when she got back to said first year’s room, she did something I think most girls wouldn’t do. She ditched him.
Before you go slapping any labels on her, let me explain further. They made out for a bit on his bed before she had a brief moment of clarity (likely prompted by a glimpse of the ubiquitous John Belushi “Animal House” poster on his wall) and realized she was too drunk to be anywhere but her own room.
She apologized and walked out. No hesitations, no explanations. Simply, “Sorry. I’m not comfortable with this. I’m going home.”
At Bowdoin, we’re all about consent. Consent is awesome. Consent is sexy. Consent is everything. Consent is also super gendered.
It’s not anyone’s fault. I honestly can’t think of anything the College could do to make students’ sex lives safer. Socially, we’re all about acceptance and empowerment. But Bowdoin isn’t isolated from cultural norms and expectations, and sometimes those concepts make their way into our consciousness in potentially damaging ways.
I’m going to apologize in advance for being super heteronormative in this next part. I’m a girl who (mostly) likes dudes and this is something I’ve noticed affecting a lot of girls I know in their relationships with guys—whatever your definition of girls and guys might be. I’m not really positioned to make a comment on queer sexual politics on campus.
That being said: as much as we consciously try to break down gender stereotypes, they often still exist in our subconscious and we do sometimes—again, subconsciously—try to live up to them. Femininity can feel like it means being passive, acquiescent, quiet.
Bowdoin women are empowered in so many ways, but that empowerment can break down in dealings with guys. The College’s focus on consent means that hardly ever will a person have sex if they don’t want to. Even “less serious”—I’m using this phrase in a pop culture sense; you all know how I feel about hierarchizing sexual acts—sex stuff is subject to our strong belief in and clear definitions of consent.
It is a power we know we can exercise, but there’s often internal pressure not to do so except in excessively uncomfortable situations.
So we cope with it in other ways: we make excuses, we compromise. We do things we don’t necessarily want to do because our feelings against it aren’t strong enough to justify making the effort to say no.
And it can be an effort. I’m not trying to place blame on anyone; it’s a cultural thing. In every movie, if a boy tries hard enough he eventually gets the girl. If a boy is nice enough he gets what he wants. There is a pervasive sense that girls need convincing; that an excuse is masking coy desires. “I know you want it” and all that.
Okay, we’re not that bad. There’s little “Blurred Lines”-style normalization of coercion at Bowdoin, at least in my opinion. Like I said earlier, consent is respected here, which, as a girl, makes me feel so much safer than a lot of other places.
There are still things we can do though. I’m going to address the dudes because, like I said, I only have experience in the heterosexual relations arena, but it really applies to everyone.
If the person you brought home makes an excuse or looks uncomfortable, pay attention. Don’t erase what she—or he—is feeling.
I know some of this sounds basic, but I think we get very wrapped up in bigger instances where consent is necessary and we forget the little things.
This is almost more important, though, for those giving consent, boy or girl. Or not giving consent, as it were.
Because knowing when you really want to do something and when you don’t and saying so regardless of the situation is a major accomplishment, even if it doesn’t seem like it.