Ed. note: This column uses strong language. Offensive words have been left uncensored to preserve the columnist’s intent.
Dear fellow male UF students:
The Facebook post created two weeks ago by one UF student advertising a sublet amid some misogynistic tangents quickly garnered more than a thousand likes and was quickly picked up by BuzzFeed. The poster began by expressing frustration on the displacement of “facey hoes” from the third floor of Library West and ended by plugging the room he’s subleasing with, “You can practically smell the punany when you walk outside.”
In our present environment, it’s tempting to dismiss the absurd post as either satire or a subleasing ad gone horribly wrong. And although I agree an isolated idiot is best left isolated, it’s also clear that such sexist language is simply a more explicit manifestation of our gender’s collective mindset. As males, although we might’ve never heard of “facey hoes” before, let’s not kid ourselves: We’re all familiar with the other not-so-politically correct terms used daily to describe women.
Let me share something rather interesting. Out of the estimated 17,600 female undergraduate students at UF, 4,400 of them have been or will be sexually assaulted before they graduate, according to one estimate. Our campus has been the subject of past media scrutiny as we have fallen prey to the well-known relationship between Greek life and rape culture.
As a male, I know how instinctively defensive we get when hearing about rape, as if it’s somehow our fault that rapists are on the loose. But, my fellow men, this is the problem. Sexual assaults don’t come from some “stranger jumping out of the bushes,” as our assistant dean of students aptly noted. Men, including you and I, are primarily responsible for the systematic degradation of women.
When you ponder the fact that another female student will probably be sexually assaulted before my next column is published, remember that such violence didn’t appear overnight.
For years, we’ve ridiculed “stingy hoes” for being so reluctant to our sexual advances. And what about those “bitches” who’ve rendered the process of “getting laid” so complicated? After all, what’s the worth of a “pussy” if not to serve our masculine tastes?
Today’s situation comes after years of male privilege, whereby we, males, cleverly elude all our blame. It began when female students were told to take Rape Aggression Defense classes at Preview, as if rape is just another fact of life and women need to protect themselves from this inevitable annoyance. We fueled the flames of degradation by becoming desensitized — after all, what can be expected from a group that routinely refers to women as “chicks”? And it culminates with women, including many sorority members, being ashamed to speak up after being abused at the risk of being called a male-basher. Oh! How effective our oppression has been.
I’m aware that epithets aren’t the actual disease. Rather, they serve as symptoms. Just like the wide and casual usage of racist slurs reflected the white supremacy of the era, so too, is our daily usage of “bitch” and “hoe” reflective of our male supremacy.
In today’s America, we expect that if a racist comment was jokingly thrown around in a room full of only white folks, more than one white person would immediately step up to the moral plate and bat away such ignorance. But the same can’t be said about women. As men, when’s the last time one of us repudiated a sexist remark when it was just “us” guys chilling?
[Zulkar Khan is a UF microbiology senior. His columns appear on Tuesdays. A version of this column ran on page 6 on 3/11/2014 under the headline "Open letter to UF men: Sexism isn’t OK"]
