Activism Log Week 3

This week was our Feminist Coming Out Day. We had a pretty good turnout since it was on market day (Wednesday) at UCF’s main campus. We had a lot of people go through our table either making shirts or taking our surveys and most importantly exchanging in conversation with us. I feel that our ultimate success was bringing in people to take a moment to think about issues that they may not have put much thought into. One of our fallbacks however was being unclear with one of our survey questions. A lot of people, especially men were taken aback and unsure of how to answer: “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order to not be sexually assaulted, do you agree with this?” I think people felt that maybe if they circled yes they were supporting valuable advice. While, we were trying to advocate that women’s clothing is irrelevant in sexual attacks, it didn’t come out in the right way through our survey.

Although this question raised confusion it was a good reason to start conversation with men about their thoughts on this. Some thought not dressing like a “slut” might help avoid attacks but they agreed attacks should never happen regardless of what a woman is wearing. All of these students will eventually encounter someone in their lifetime who’s been a victim and since “ninety percent of college women who are victims of rape or attempted rape know their assailant” it’s important that they recognize the scenario is not always the “creepy man in the alley after the club” kind (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 262). It felt good to engage in these sorts of conversations with men because as we’ve discussed this week, many don’t like the fact that they’re always seen as a potential attacker, they’re supportive of the feminist cause without even realizing it. And as Stoltenberg points out, “such a disclosure would never have occurred among college-age males even a decade [ago]. The vocabulary and sense of social safety would simply not have existed” (285).  I feel that nowadays more men are open and respectful of feminist ideals even when they are coming from a woman’s mouth.

I have a lot of guy friends, more than girl friends and I feel that these situations have personally influenced me to avoid the path of least resistance when it comes to jokes that indirectly add on the rape culture. By being “one of the guys” I feel that I have to become more aware of the environment I’m establishing in parties by making jokes or not saying anything when something’s off (like a really drunk girl being handled by guys you think are her friends) (290).

After our event, while walking around in my FEMINIST shirt a UCF student in the courtyard yelled out “Do you cook and clean in that shirt?” and as much as I wanted to just smile and brush it off we somehow got to talking about his thoughts on feminism. According to him we should call ourselves humanists if we really want equal rights for everyone. The thing is we haven’t reached that point yet where we’re all on the same playing field. I’m sure no one looks at him and expect his life to only consist of tasks like cooking and cleaning.

Work Cited:

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007.