The male gaze at IU

In the past week, I’ve been a witness to two incidents that I found deeply troubling. Both took place in dining halls.

First, while waiting in line for food, I heard two male IU employees discussing the merits of two competing games.

In one game, one of them would spot a woman walking around, state one of her physical attributes and the other would have to find her in the crowd. It was a little like “I spy” but with rampant misogyny instead of childish glee.

The second game was far less subtle, though I know that’s hard to believe. The players would simply pick a woman and decide how many drinks would be required before they would have sex with her (though one wonders what self-respecting woman would sleep with either of these man-children). In the second incident, I was sitting down to a meal with friends and overheard a separate group of guys discussing the qualities of several women’s “booties.”

They stared with rapt attention as their leader traced a curvaceous outline in the air. Worse, I got the distinct impression that they knew these women personally but had decided that their bodies were more deserving of attention than their personalities.

I think the connection between these two incidents is obvious. We live in a society where it is considered perfectly normal for a group of men to sit around and ogle every woman who passes by, taking intense mental notes and comparing her to a roster of other objectified women.

It is a miracle that the average man on this campus has learned not to point and grunt when he approves of a woman’s figure. What these men fail to realize is that women do not exist simply to please men. The women on this campus are here for the same reason as the men: to learn and grow as individuals.

They are certainly not here to be treated like pieces of decorative meat. Now, I know the classic rebuttal to my argument. Men will claim that just looking doesn’t hurt anyone, and they have every right to look wherever and say whatever they please. But looking does hurt.

The constant threatening male gaze helps make our society an unsafe place for women. They can’t go anywhere without being ogled and reduced to sexual objects. They aren’t treated like real people, but like potential conquests. It is an astounding failure of empathy that more men don’t realize how they are making the women around them feel.

Whenever a group of men plays a stupid ranking game or spends their dinner discussing women’s body parts, they are contributing to a culture in which women exist only as those body parts, a culture in which women’s minds are erased and ignored.

This is what we call male privilege. The privilege to look and judge without guilt. The privilege to be treated like a human while treating others like objects. We must break the cycle. Women are our equals, and it’s time men started acting like it.

­— atcrane@indiana.edu