With campus feminists, you simply can’t win.
Last week, Harvard announced that they were cracking down on “privilege” within their student community by banning members of single-gender organizations from holding school leadership positions.
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But when Harvard announced its new policy, it stressed that the sanctions applied to both male and female single-gender organizations equally, since both male and female single-gender organizations thrived on their “privilege.”
Harvard’s resident feminists claim that all-female organizations, while just as gender-biased, are beneficial to the school’s community, whereas all-male organizations are merely breeding grounds for the present and future perpetrators of sexual crime.
On Monday, they demonstrated, accusing Harvard of, among other things, perpetuating the marginalization of female voices. “My women’s organization has been more than a social organization,” one student told the Boston Globe. “It has been a mental health respite, a place to discuss sexual assaults . . . where I became a feminist, and where I refound my voice.”
The students claimed that female-only clubs were more important than male-only clubs because women experience systematic oppression, and they repeated claims that such clubs were necessary because women “earn less” than male counterparts and because women are “targeted and shamed” for their sexuality. Harvard’s policy, apparently, unintentionally cracked down on what Harvard feminists considered their safe spaces from a patriarchal world: “What do we want? Female spaces!” they chanted. “When do we want them? Now!”
Harvard’s administration remained steadfast in their decision to apply sanctions to all single-gender clubs equally but said implementation of the policy is under review. They may want to consider that, according to recent studies, sorority hazing violence has been on the uptick, sorority members are found to be more likely to have body image issues than their peers, and women who belong to sororities are more likely to be victims of sexual assault.
If they’re looking to curb these ills on campus, they may just have to risk feminist ire.
