I am writing in response to Steph Doan’s piece under “Confidence, curiosity key for good sex.”
What first put me off was Doan’s statement, “We (women) have no idea what we want — literally, no idea” and joking that it would take a woman 45 minutes to choose what salad dressing she wanted.
Personally, it would take me, a woman, about five seconds. It is really disappointing to read a piece by a woman (a journalism major at that!) that so proliferates a ridiculous stereotype about women.
Women in this society, and in countless societies in the past, have been told time and time again and have been brainwashed into thinking that they don’t know how to make decisions because they don’t know what they want.
Thus, women should leave all the decision-making up to “confident” men, who do know what they want.
Doan then states (and proliferates another cliché) that a man needs to be confident, and in order to do so, they need to give women “a firm grasp…”
Other alarming statements, directed at the boys, included “Stop questioning if you are doing the deed right,” “We (women) like it, we promise,” and “…we (women) haven’t been around the block yet,” implying we’re all innocent and naïve.
Well, I have “been around the block” quite a few times, actually. Last year my friend and I were sexually assaulted while walking on campus. Three very confident boys walking behind us decided to, with all that sexy confidence, “firmly grasp” our breasts.
We did not like it (we promise) and when we made this clear to them and told them to leave us alone, they confidently followed us back to our dorms all the while confidently shouting, “Dykes!” and confidently harassing us with slurs.
Maybe if these boys had questioned whether they were doing something wrong or not, my friend and I wouldn’t have had such a demeaning, uncomfortable and alarming walk home.
While this is one incident, I have heard numerous others involving boys being very confident and not respecting the women they encounter.
Writing also that “college girls are not desperate housewives yet” implies that college girls are going to someday become “desperate housewives,” once again giving power to men.
I thought the ’50s-era stereotype was out the window by now.
This piece is so demeaning, ridiculous and disheartening to me as a woman. Every day I try to show the world that women are strong, intelligent and wonderful.
But when a young, impressionable college freshman (regardless of gender) reads this piece by an “experienced” upperclassman, all my work is proven fruitless.
To say that women don’t know what we want and we are naïve, that men need to not question what they’re doing and just make the decisions for us, and that women “like it, we promise” is garbage, and is a horrible example to set for new students.
I would be embarrassed as a newspaper to have allowed this into print.
Harley Gifford is a junior studying plant biology.
