One more thing I learned in my archive adventure in the Santa Clara Library is that Santa Clara used to be a single gendered school. It used to be only men.
Now this is fairly common for universities to start off this way as it took a while for schools to accept women, but it took until 1961 for Santa Clara to allow women to roam “claradise”.
This surprised me, but as I looked through advertisement’s during this time and articles on women I became frustrated at the blatant sexism that was present.
Sexism was clearly rampant at this time and I found one article in particular that caught my attention for all the wrong reasons. The article was focused men’s reaction to the integration of women.
The part of it that made me really frustrated was one photo where a young man and young woman were studying together and the caption read something along the lines of:
“How have male students dealt with the added distraction of women”
The Daily Dot
Excuse me?
Female students at this time were considered to just be a distraction to males. Instead of judging the integration of women on how they bring a level of perspective and fresh thought to the school, it’s more important to judge how distracted men are by women.
Because instead of women having any value on their own we always must sexualize them and knock them down a step by inferring that they are here as a companion for men.
This makes me sick.
The thing is, this type of thinking isn’t a thing of the past.
There still is a wage gap between men and women, women still face constant sexual harassment in the workplace and beyond and women are still shamed and blamed for being victims of rape.
Feminism itself is a trigger word! Smh.
If you type feminism into google the definition given is, and I quote, “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.”
WOW PRETTY RADICAL STUFF!!
No it’s the most basic of human rights. The idea that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men should be a given, but its not and even today way too men are afraid to call themselves feminists.
How is it that calling yourself a feminist is such a revolutionary idea??
We all need to be feminists because America is a place where we are supposed to have equal rights for all.
Calling yourself a feminist doesn’t make you an enemy to men, but instead, a supporter of women, who by the way don’t need our support.
We have to put an end to hurtful stigma such as saying guys “throw like a girl” or assuming women have their period whenever they are not overly pleasant. Throwing like a girl should be a compliment and women shouldn’t be pleasant with men all the time because I know we don’t deserve it.
As G.D. Anderson said: “Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives their strength.”
We must stop shaming, discriminating and sexualizing women because women are just as important to this world as men, if not more so.
So maybe next time someone asks you to describe yourself, use the term feminist.