Last Friday, I observed a sign on the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house that read "ATΩ + ∆∆∆ YOU’RE THE TEN-I-SEE." My first reaction was to scoff and write off the sign as a misplaced joke. But it merits consideration so that we might better understand how Greek life prescribes the interaction between men and women and how our culture inadvertently permits abuse.
Admittedly, as unoriginal as the slogan is, one can assume that at the very least it was not well thought out, and as such, the potential implications were equally less considered.
Nonetheless, the sign does provide a good point of reference for an examination of the mentality and culture from which it emanates.
First, to consider its discursive function, it speaks volumes that a fraternity would choose a corny pickup line as an advertisement on its façade. Speaking of discourse, where is the voice of the woman?
Returning to the utterance itself, we hear a man’s voice and see that the woman is voiceless and really only a body. Forget what she sees, thinks or feels. She’s but an instrument for his pleasure. Her existence is what the patriarchy envisions for her.
To analyze the aesthetic implied, how absurd is a world in which the extent of possible beauty is what the privileged, white males aged 19 to 23 could conceive on a 10-point scale?
Interestingly, a sorority also posted a sign that read something along the lines of, "we’re the only ten-I-see." This "counterprotest" allowed for the objectification of women that places a series of numbers and price tags on beauty and relevance. For as trivial as the two signs discussed are, they give insight into a whole degenerative, warped culture.
Beneath the feigned politeness of any pickup line or lame attempt at humor whose crux is the reduction of a person to an object, we glimpse the scourge that is the patriarchy.
Consider Total Frat Move and its "go make me a sandwich" view toward women’s empowerment, or the national structure whereby women are never paid equal to their male counterparts for the same amount of effort. None of this is random or incidental, and it represents a structure we can understand and work to dismantle.
Any system that supplants women’s agency with their instrumentality embodies an unnecessary evil we cannot continue to excuse or tolerate. One should not sit around waiting for the historical perpetrators of abuse to rein themselves in, either.
Yes, a sign is just a sign, but it also represents a structure of thought and behavior, the same one responsible for the abuse and rape of women.
While it’s undoubtedly controversial to make this assertion, a recent scandal that also involved a very similar medium, signs on a frat house, served to reinforce that the abuse of women is often thought of as a natural function of man’s social role and easily reduced to a joke. You know, "boys will be boys…"
At the beginning of the current term, the Old Dominion University chapter of the Sigma Nu fraternity was suspended after hanging, also on their house’s façade, three bedsheets with messages that read, respectively: "Rowdy and fun hope your baby girl is ready for a good time…," "Freshman daughter drop off [down arrow pointing at front door]" and "Go ahead and drop off mom too…"
I have no doubt the creators of these signs were just as bemused and sure of themselves as the Alpha Tau Omega brothers who produced the "TEN-I-SEE" sign last week. Instead of equivocating, can we simply accept that the gesture itself embodies an oppressive and misogynistic culture?
The "TEN-I-SEE" sign is the happy-face mask worn by a monster. The patriarchy markets itself well, but its products and lifeblood amount to exclusion and inequality that entail the antithesis of the mission of a center of higher learning.
Jordan MacKenzie is a second-year UF linguistics master’s student. His column appears on Wednesdays.
