It’s cliché to say that people’s worst qualities emerge in anonymous online forums. Recently, The GUIDON alerted me to the overtly sexist posts on the Facebook page Ateneo de Manila Secret Files. The posts—too grotesque for me to repeat here (interested parties can view these themselves)—revolved around rape jokes and condemnations of women who wear skimpy outfits. You know the rhetoric: If women wear skimpy clothing, it’s their fault if they get sexually harassed; they were asking for it.
The response to this view is simple Feminism, nay, Ethics 101: If you’re a sexual harasser, you’re an asshole and a misogynist, and you shouldn’t blame the tank top or the miniskirt. Don’t try to justify your depravity by blaming the victim.
That such ideas are held and, in fact, supported (the posts received dozens of likes) in this university is disturbing. If many people think it is justified to harass women who are “slutty,” then the women in our university are at risk of harassment.
If male students don’t understand that sexual harassment is overwhelmingly perpetrated by males who seek to assert dominance over women, too many of our students are fans of Jersey Shore, Entourage and electro house music. Meaning we have an abundance of douchebags in this university.
I was initially too naïve to see the problem. When I read the posts on the Secret Files, I was shocked not only because people said these things, but because I mistakenly thought of current Ateneo males as enlightened. Our students are millennials, who, according to various global surveys, are supposed to be more attuned to lessons from the women’s liberation movement. Moreover, these are not just any millennials. Ateneo males are some of the country’s best, brightest and most idealistic.
On paper, the university espouses humanism and the study of the liberal arts. The philosophy coruses, for instance, explore our pagpapakatao. In other words, an Ateneo education is meant to emphasize the dignity of human beings. Alas, for many of our students, girls in pekpek shorts have lesser dignity than men who fold their khaki shorts, slip on boat shoes and wear sunglasses in JSEC.
Whenever there is a crisis or a genuine threat, the best response is collective action. We have the Ateneo Secret Files to thank for revealing to us the moral shortcomings of some of us. And we have it to thank for prompting ground-up student action.
I have a Top Five list of proudest moments as a teacher, and topping that list was the time I heard about a plan to form a feminist organization. The move is heartening, because it means the people affected are taking things into their own hands. I am a man and a teacher, so there is only so much I can do. I can cheer from the sidelines, but it is ultimately the potential victims of sexism who must take up the cudgels.
My source from The GUIDON tells me there were previous attempts to form a feminist organization, but that these were foiled by big brother OSA. This is not the space to rehearse my critiques of excessive administration supervision of student orgs and neither is it the space to second-guess the intentions of the Office of Student Activities, but the absence of a feminist organization in the Ateneo is shameful.
This university has party orgs with primary mandates to get people inebriated. Surely there is space for an organization that wishes to tell people that there are better ways to treat one half of the population?
In most world-class universities, student councils and student unions are required to have a women’s desk and a women’s officer (and no, there are no men’s desks or men’s officers, because, seriously, how many sexually harassed men have you met?). They are there to ensure that women students have someone understanding to run to. The women’s desk is a refuge. But it is also a means to mainstream feminism—a way to promote something that should be basic ton anyone.
Feminism is not dirty word, especially for men, who can, like me, identify as male feminists. At its core, feminism is simply the acknowledgement of gender difference and privilege. God knows we need people to understand this in our university. Men who know how to treat women with dignity should not be afraid of a feminist organization.
And men who fear such an organization have something to hide.
