Lani Guinier’s MLK address sparked a contentious campus debate this week over gender issues. Since then, in class discussions, lunch table debates, males and females alike have both praised and demeaned feminism. Some male students came away from Monday’s ASM accusing Guinier of denigrating men in her speech. Indeed, the jabs she made at the men in the audience have since distracted the student body from any substance to be gleaned from Guinier’s presentation. This distraction has dominated our increasingly vindictive discourse over the past week. Let us step back. This community is not split between male supremacists and female supremacists, or mysogonists and misandrists. We should not manufacture an artificial and extreme divide that turns women who speak up into “feminazis” and men into sexists. It’s easy to vilify these stereotypes, yet, on the Andover campus, there are few if any who genuinely believe one gender to be more able or more intelligent than the other. We are not asserting that feminism is no longer relevant in our society, but feminism should be about equality. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, first and second wave feminism were focused on attaining equal legal and social rights. Today, women are still paid less and face subtle discrimination. Gender stereotypes still abound. Guinier described how she heard the term “feminazi dykes” thrown around at the University of Pennsylvania Law School while she taught there from 1988 to 1998. The slur described women who regularly engaged in class discussion. Yet if feminism at Andover today has a goal, it should be for respect. But respect is a two-way street. Andover is an egalitarian place. A majority of men on campus are comfortable with women being smart; few, in any, women think men are inferior. In this general atmosphere of equality, dialogues should focus on the need for mutual respect. If one hopes to advance equality on this campus, then speaking out against male or female supremacism is an unconstructive first step. Viewpoints that put down the other gender do not make this campus more egalitarian. Attaining equal rights has been and remains an ongoing battle in the wider world. Yet on this campus, each person needs to confront a more subtle problem. If entrenched and inflexible preconceptions about how men or women should or should not behave have no place in this community, then one must confront inner prejudices before they manifest themselves on campus. The immediate goal is to stop twisting each other’s words. Women berating men, humorously or otherwise, only exacerbates the problem. It’s no surprise that individual men feel victimized and that some complain about “feminazis.” If each person resolves to treat both genders with equal respect, then perhaps the remaining vestiges of sexism can begin to fade away. This editorial represents the views of The Phillipian Editorial Board CXXXIII.
