The Bowdoin Orient

­­­I noticed the article “Why we need a Men’s Resource Center” while indulging in some Bowdoin nostalgia from abroad this past weekend. The title made me wary and I found it rather upsetting.

While I do not quibble with the call for more resources for men who feel oppressed by the expectations and dangers of hegemonic masculinity, I do take great issue with the request for a Men’s Resource Center. It may seem an issue of semantics. After all, as you note in your theoretically humorous aside about wanting a “comfy house somewhere on or near College Street,” it doesn’t really matter whether or not there’s a physical representation of this proposed Men’s Resource Center. 

Yet, the issue of space is actually quite vital; the spatial presence of 24 College Street, which, as an anonymous commenter pointed out, actually houses both the Women’s Resource Center and the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, is extraordinarily significant. Far from being merely another building intended only to house the resources aimed at “half the student population,” it acts as a sanctuary.

Those who seem to benefit most from the services of 24 College, that is, non-male and/or non-straight students, are those who benefit least from structures that make up what we might call the patriarchy; those who are, at best, often uncomfortable in and, at worst, explicitly excluded from public spaces. 

Punishment for trespassing on the masculine domain of “public” might include catcalls, invasive questioning, unkind words and far worse. While men who appear to conform to hegemonic masculinity do experience occasional harassment, it is not the norm. 24 College acts as a spatial destination for those who find that harassment is common, even expected.

Furthermore, I believe that the resources you are calling for already exist, or at least exist in as much capacity as they do for the rest of the campus population. The desire to compartmentalize “men’s issues” and “women’s issues” ignores the fact that many of these issues you address, among them media endorsement of wild nights and other “pressures our parents’ generation did not [face],” affect women and other students as well. A quick look through the Women’s Resource Center website reveals that its on-campus resources are available to all students. Even its history uses the language of “students” rather than “women.”

Transparency of resources would better resolve this issue than a Men’s Resource Center. The “extremely intelligent women who…counsel their peers on issues of gender at a moment’s notice” have many male counterparts. They are everywhere: in your classes, your dorms and in more official positions in organizations like the Residential Life staff, SafeSpace and BMASV. Bowdoin is an extraordinarily communicative and aware campus and does not lack for people eager to address the problematic nature of hegemonic masculinity in both personal and academic settings.

The problems you bring up are pressing, but they are part of a larger issue that influences everyone on campus and requires an open dialogue, rather than isolation into a “Men’s Resource Center.” In an online comment, James Jelin ’16 cites Elliot Rodger as an example of the violence that can result from a sense of failing at masculinity, an extremist reminder of why, according to Jelin, we need a Men’s Resource Center. To this I suggest that if you are afraid you will symbolically become Elliot Rodger, we are afraid we will become his victims. 

We do need this conversation, but requesting a Men’s Resource Center misunderstands the purpose of the Women’s Resource Center and further excludes many people from a conversation in which they have a vitally vested interest.

Hallie Schaeffer is a member of the Class of 2016. 

Last week’s article “The pretty game: objectification, humiliation and the liberal arts” attempted to expose a facet of the Bowdoin social scene that goes unrecognized and unnoticed by many students, and I applaud the author for that attempt. I, however, struggled with the article’s claims because it seemed to me that the author had simply disregarded many other damaging consequences of the culture she discusses.

Despite the author’s intention, the column seemed to me an incredibly shallow reading of the problems women encounter both on and off campus. The implementation of “the pretty test” is a huge issue. But I don’t think it is the most pressing problem in our social system. It is, rather, a symptom of a far more damaging ideology, and I wish she had acknowledged that fact.

At Bowdoin, guys rule the weekend social scene. No matter how acerbic your wit may be with friends, no matter how brilliantly biting your comments are in class, too often you are a nice girl on the weekends. You let boys judge the way you dress, decide where they might put their hands on you at a dark party, ask if you want to go home. If you say no, you do it politely, because you’re supposed to feel guilty for having let him down.

It can feel like all you are good for is sex. And if you refuse that, you are somehow in the wrong.This reduction is the core of objectification: the act of turning a person into a thing, devoid of thought or feeling. It is mostly done to women. It is mostly done by men or some representation of the male gaze. And once you are an object, that male gaze seems to be entitled to enact its desires upon you regardless of your own feelings.

Objectification is different from the shallow judgment that marks “the pretty test,” though the two are linked. The latter concerns appearance and body image, and is spurred on by the ways our society is constantly bombarded with images of an unattainable female form. Objectification takes this and goes one step beyond it. It is the difference between being deemed worthy of a sexual gaze and actually being sexualized without your consent. Judgment is often passive or reactionary, while objectification is actively harmful, whether physically or emotionally.

At Bowdoin we underestimate the presence of a violent sexuality on campus, which expresses itself through both microaggressions and assault of all levels of intensity. This is not unique to Bowdoin, but we believe ourselves so removed from the real world that we deny its existence entirely. We therefore ignore the ways that a social scene built on sexual conquest creates power dynamics that undo all of our progressive weekday sentiments.

Every day, society coerces women into thinking that our primary goal should be to become sexual objects. We are taught to crave that attention, because it makes us feel worthwhile. Being preyed upon is bearable, desirable even, because at least it means someone thinks you’re sexually viable enough to pursue. But being pursued is, so often in our culture, not gratifying but terrifying. Not just on the steps of off-campus houses, but everywhere.

Am I passing “the pretty test” when I walk home after a party and three guys catcall me from a doorway? Is it still passing if I am so scared I feel the need to call a male friend in case they start following me? Am I passing when a group of boys starts to yell at me on my walk from Helmreich  House to Hubbard Hall and asks why I think I’m “too good” to respond to their obscene shouts?

If this is passing, I don’t want it. I hate it. I hate being afraid every time I walk alone at night that something will happen to me. I hate that so many men won’t take no for an answer to their come-ons unless I tell them I have a boyfriend, because they refuse to respect the wishes of their sexual object. I hate that when I was fifteen a boy cornered me in a stairwell and thought it was okay to put his hands on me, even after I asked him not to.

I hate that my body is not my own. I used to deal with this sense of dispossession by attempting to give up any part of myself that even hinted at traditional femininity. The more I distanced myself from the image of a potentially sexual woman, the more control I felt I had over myself. This is a not a sustainable way of relating to yourself, but I didn’t know what else to do. Even now, I still find myself wishing sometimes to become icily detached and terrifying. If you are feared at least you are respected.

I learned how to take ownership of my body and its movements and the space it takes up. How to appreciate rather than resent the ways it connects me to the world. I learned that saying yes doesn’t mean relinquishing the ability to say no. I do not have to choose between my body and the rest of me.

Bowdoin has helped me with this. Though it is problematic to think of Bowdoin as a bubble of freedom and safety, I feel freer and safer here than anywhere else. Which is another reason it was hard to read that week’s article: despite my critiques, Bowdoin will always be the place where the repressively patriarchal nature of my high school became visible to me, because we collectively work so hard to make it a safe space here. However, we need to be able to move past our accomplishments and examine those damagingly gendered elements that are nonetheless still present here. On the weekends, sometimes, “fuckable” still feels like the ultimate goal.

To the author of last week’s column: I appreciate your sentiments, but I will not believe them until you start doing those things you say you want to. It is difficult. It seems impossible. But if you can call out something like “the pretty test” and then you don’t do something about it, you are complicit in a culture that goes way beyond that doorway judgment and hurts far more than feelings. I do not want to just have a conversation about this. We at Bowdoin are so good at talking that we never actually do anything.

I want you to tell your roommate she looks beautiful all the time. I want you to leave the off-campus house and follow Katie; if she’s really as cool as you think she is, you’ll probably have way more fun with her. It’s hard. You won’t always succeed. But you are at least strong enough to try.

Hallie Schaeffer is a member of the Class of 2016.