14.

The Boy and Girl Problem: My response to "Solving the girl problem"

While Benjy Mercer-Golden, in his recent opinions article, makes an earnest attempt to examine an issue facing girls at ASL, he overgeneralizes his own observations, fails to fully comprehend the foundations of the problem, and, consequentially, reaches no legitimate solution. Though the piece is formally an opinions article, with content skewed by whatever personal experiences the writer may have,  I believe his generalization and misdiagnosis of the entire school community is extremely dangerous. While his research may have told him that women feel this way in theory, it appears he has made no contact with actual ASL women. I can only hope that by formally (and incorrectly) defining this "girl problem"  much like a disease, he has taken no part in creating or sustaining it at our school.

Before unpacking my criticisms, I would like to say I fully appreciate the writer's attempts, in his recent article and in his earlier "Standing up for feminism" piece, to explore the status of women and girls. Though I disagree with the idea that being "wanted" or attractive to boys and being academically competitive are mutually exclusive facts (as demonstrated by numerous, obvious counterexamples in our community), some of the social phenomena that Mercer-Golden has addressed, like the "MRS degree," are completely worthy of our investigation. The pressures for females to return to childbearing and domesticity after education can still exist, whether they are subconscious or not. Perhaps as a result, gender discrepancy is still a huge problem in the job market. In her book, The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf cites a glaring statistic from the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs: "While women represent 50 percent of the world population, they perform nearly two-thirds of all working hours, receive only one-tenth of the world income and own less than 1 percent of world property"(23).  If this is true in the real world beyond the bubble of ASL, we definitely do need to start addressing it.

I also love Mercer-Golden's proposal to make Gender Studies a requirement at ASL. As a Women's Literature student, I can say that our study of gender issues though textual analysis has been one of the most applicable and enlightening academic experiences I've had in formal education. This said, I think that perhaps if the writer had actually taken a course like Women's Literature himself, his observations about the causation as well as solution to female issues would have been a bit more evolved.

The phrase, "...I think girls need to stop thinking of themselves as objects of desire for their male classmates and start taking themselves seriously" signals, for me, an incredible misunderstanding of what feminism is. I've learned this semester that feminism is not an issue of girls making a "choice" to stop thinking of themselves as objects. It is, in fact, an issue of creating an environment where it is easy, or even possible, to make that choice. Sexism is not a girl problem, but a girl and boy problem. In his call for the support of the community, Mercer-Golden summons "counselors, teachers and parents" while only calling boys "to be a little less predictable," a statement that shelters male teenagers from any direct blame with its incredible ambiguity. The objectification will stop when we (girls and boys included) begin to re-imagine gender relations inside and outside of ASL.

The same concept applies to "real world" scenarios, where, even today, women frequently need to see themselves as objects in order to support themselves. As cited in Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth, in cases like  Miller vs. Bank of America, Barnes vs. Costle, Hopkins vs. Price Waterhouse, Tamini vs. Howard Johnson Company Inc., Andre vs. Bendix Corporation, Diaz vs. Coleman, and M. Schmidt vs. Austicks Bookshops, Ltd, employers have, within our legal system, manipulated contrived "standards" of personal appearance (concerning dress, make-up, hair, and age), to hire or fire female employees(32-40).

Not only has self-objectification become a qualification for many women in the job market, jobs that depend on it pay better. Naomi Wolf cites legal scholar Catherine A. MacKinnon, after conducting a study, found that "while one woman in four earns less than $10,000 a year while working full-time, in 1989, Miss America earned $150,000, a $42,000 scholarship and a $30,000 car"(50). Similarly, fashion, prostitution and modeling are the only industries in which females consistently earn more than men (50).

In this context, with many women struggling to support themselves as well as their families, is self-objectification a gesture of free will, or a measure necessary for survival? With modern societal constructs so engrained and dependent on this objectification, is appearance a private aesthetic or, in the words of Naomi Wolf, "a social concession exacted by our community"(187)?  With power and survival so culturally associated with beauty, can women and girls at ASL simply "stop" objectifying themselves as Mercer-Golden suggests?

At the ASL level, I can tell you that as girls, we are trying. Many of us will be attending elite universities next fall, with intentions to fervently pursue academics. I do feel rewarded everyday at ASL for academic achievements. We do dedicate ourselves to intellectual excellence while retaining social lives. These positive experiences will prepare us for what's to come: a world outside of ASL where gender issues will be more prominent. As for now, the hysteria of response following Mercer-Golden's article is proof in itself of the respect that ASL women currently have for each other and for themselves.

We are trying our best to feel comfortable in a world that systematically objectifies us and, in reality, it doesn't help at all that an article entitled "Tyler interviews hot girls" ran in this year's edition of The Slandered. Isn't this kind of decided, reductive labeling (even if for comedic value) everything that a "feminist" should be against? Can Mercer-Golden really expect girls to transcend labels if he takes part in their bestowal?  This concrete reiteration of social norms can and will propagate the horrifying issue at hand.

Inside as well as outside of ASL, males continually prove to be, quite simply, the critical force in ameliorating female struggles. Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, said in a 2009 interview with Riz Kahn, "90% of the violence done towards women is done by men. We're actually not raping ourselves...It's going to be very hard to stop violence without men participating in the process." Though it seems painstakingly obvious, we must remember that men are elemental in female conflict. While many men will not commit violence, or directly commit objectification, they will remain complacent - a crime as much at the root of gender conflict as female inaction.

Female self-objectification is not a static occurrence (turned "on" or "off" by women) - but an organic, engrained reaction to unquestioned societal norms sustained by both men and women. Until we begin to see females differently, objectification will continue amongst girls and whatever distinction between "popular" and "intelligent" girls that Mercer-Golden observes will continue to be seen by boys. Within the limits of ASL and beyond its walls, one thing is certain: both groups are responsible for continually questioning the power dynamics between sexes.