Sexism alive and well

While there is not room here to address all of my concerns with Wednesday’s op-ed piece on gender, there are a few issues I feel compelled to address. First, Chad Quandt wrote that there is “no real oppression of women by a governing body.”

To take just one example, the government is constantly limiting women’s rights to autonomy over their bodies and reproductive rights. For instance, although it is unconstitutional, in Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina, women must obtain spousal consent to secure abortion services (if abortion services are even provided in their communities).

Quandt continues to say, “We do not need to pass any laws or ordinances to achieve perfect equality,” although due to the repeated failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, women’s rights are not explicitly protected in the constitution. It is easy for a man to dismiss this, but I want to see the word “woman” in the constitution.

Finally, I must address the comments of Jordan Zaslow, which broke my heart. Zaslow writes, “After four years of answering booty calls, it will be easy to transition to continue answering to men, professionally and otherwise.” Not only does this unfairly and falsely generalize the way in which all of the women on this campus choose to live their lives, it also proves that sexism need not be institutionalized to be alive and well. 

Girl, stand up, find your power, rock it and get some respect!

Women will never have equality as long as we allow ourselves to be victimized. I refuse to be one of the “brilliantly quiet, well-mannered” women that Tyler Chernesky discusses and hope that the other educated women on campus also make themselves heard!

And finally, although it will surely be dismissed as a political correctness rant, I would like to remind all IDS journalists that we are out of high school, so you can start calling us “women.” Take a stand, ladies, we are all able to at least read the paper, so obviously we’re too smart for this garbage!