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Saturday, July 21, 2012

Ranty rant: objectifying women

This rant has been brewing for days now, I must unload it on someone. It's no secret that men objectify women all the time. Not necessarily in a damaging way, but at some point or another, every guy has commented on a girls looks-a girl he has never met or talked to before. It could be a celebrity, a hot waitress, a supermodel... Anyone like that. Every guy, at some point or another, has thought to himself "she's hot". (Unless, of course, they're not into girls, in which case they've thought "he's hot" about someone they've never really spoken to). Same for girls-at some point, you've looked at a guy and said "he's super foxy" (or something along those lines). Technically speaking, this counts as objectification-seeing someone whom you do not know personally only for their looks. So we're all guilty of objectifying a person in some way at some point. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with appreciating beauty where you see it. But you have to remember that there is more to people than you see on the surface. With that in mind, its also no secret that some men see and/or treat women literally like objects to be used for sex rather than people-not all men, mind you, but they're definetly out there. This is a problem for many reasons. But that's not what my ranty rant is about. My ranty rant is about women who not only allow themselves to be objectified, but seem to encourage it. I'm sure most of you have seen that Facebook picture with the girl saying "ummm girls, did you know that your boobs go in your shirt?" and a few parody versions of it. Well, today I saw one that had three girls who looked to be about fourteen or fifteen that said "hey guys, did you know that your dicks go in our mouths?" The last picture had all three of them pointing into their open mouths. I find this both disgusting and infuriating. It's one thing for guys to treat us like sex objects. We can't control their behavior, all we can do is avoid guys like that. It is a whole other issue altogether when WOMEN ARE OBJECTIFYING THEMSELVES! Especially when they start as young as fourteen yeas old! This sort of mindset is incredibly damaging. But that's not all. A person whom I am quite close with was recently told to "get in the kitchen like all the other girls" by her own father. Coming from a guy (even a father) that's one thing, but all the women in her family were actually in the kitchen, cleaning and cooking, while the men watched football. I swear to god I am not making this up. This is how it is at their house all the time. Women have come a long way in the past century or so. Yet in 7th grade when I wanted to do my history day project on the women's rights movement, I couldn't find ONE book on the topic anywhere in my school's gigantic library. The only nformation I could find on the topic came from the encyclopedia, in the tiny paragraph-long entries on Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Because of this, my teacher made me change my topic. Looking back, I'm surprised that my (female) teacher was less concerned with this turn of events than I was. Every February, we celebrate black history month-which is important, don't get me wrong, but how many people remember celebrating women's history month in March? I guess these are the points I'm trying to make: -sexism is still an issue -women are just as responsible for eliminating sexism as men are, if not more so, and -we shouldn't be brushing off women's history as a minor detail. Think about how damaging it is to a girls self-esteem to be treated as an object to be used for cooking, cleaning and sex. Think about how pissed everyone would be if schools weren't teaching the civil rights movement as a part of history class. Think about where you see sexism in your life. Maybe we can all brainstorm a way to eliminate sexism once and for all if we all take the time to notice these things.

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