Shenoy is a fourth-year political science student.
By Chaitra Shenoy
My fellow UCLA students and faculty, I am appalled by the
advertisement placed in the Daily Bruin on April 18, sponsored by
the Independent Women’s Forum. My disgust is twofold: (1)
that a distinguished paper can print a full page ad with misguided
information and that attacks a majority of the campus population,
and (2) that an organization would want to put these
“facts” in an ad and send it to college campuses across
the nation.
It is amazing to me to hear the Daily Bruin accepted this ad and
money. Yet, when David Horowitz wanted to place an ad attacking
African Americans, the Bruin refused to place the ad or accept
money.
The IWF ad was hurtful to a huge chunk of our student and
faculty population. How does the IWF’s ad pass and not the
Horowitz ad on African Americans? This advertisement looks down
upon a distinguished department on campus, women’s
studies.
Also, it looks down on all female professors, survivors of rape
and domestic violence and women in general as having low
intelligence and being “scientifically illiterate.” The
ad programs people into believing what feminists believe. How did
this ad pass the criteria set by our student-run newspaper?
Now more specifically to the ad itself: the language of the ad
belittles women and problems in our society. Despite the first
supposed myth, rape does happen quite often and is not talked
about. The ad is right; some women continue to date their attacker.
Why? There are many reasons but the two most profound are low
self-esteem and not knowing the definition of rape. We are not
taught enough about the reality of rape in schools; we think the
only “real” rapes happen at night, which is not
true.
Many women feel guilty after they are raped by acquaintances and
feel it is their fault. The definition of rape is hard to actually
accept for most women who get raped by someone they know. To see
this “myth” in reality, the Clothesline Project, a
student organization, displays large numbers of shirts that are
made by survivors every year.
Women do get paid lower than males with the same position and
seniority, which disproves that the second point is a myth. The
research can speak for itself. Ask people, male and female, and
compare the salaries; read the Department of Labor reports about
the gender gap in the workplace. Women are excluded from the
highest paying positions in employment. While white males make up a
little over 33 percent of the U.S. population, they make up over 80
percent of all tenured professors, partners in major law firms,
Fortune 500 CEOs and the list goes on. Thus, women are not given
the same employment opportunities as men.
The third “myth” deals with domestic violence
statistics, claiming that they are overrated. This is false. Women
who do go to emergency rooms rarely report that it was due to their
partner hitting them. The reasons for this are very complicated and
deal with the woman’s fear of further punishment from her
partner in addition to guilt.
Hence, the statistic that “30 percent of emergency room
visits by women each year are the results of injuries from domestic
violence” is underrated. Domestic violence is an issue that
should not be made into a number game. Everyone should do their
part in breaking the silence of these oppressive attitudes and not
attack each other on them.
Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer for women in the
United States with more than 192,000 new cases projected this year.
Every woman is at risk; however, many breast cancer deaths can be
prevented. Yet, in myth 5, the IWF felt that women do receive a
large amount of money in the health care area.
Still, the fact that so many women are affected by this point to
the fact that more still needs to be done in terms of research and
finding cures.
Points 6,7 and 8 refer to myths about girls in junior high
school and high school. All kids go through bouts of despair and
low self-esteem due to harassment by peers. But, girls during this
age are most impressionable in the sense that it lasts throughout
their entire lifetime.
The problem society faces is how to stop the harassment and make
sure both boys and girls can communicate with one another, leading
to the incredible ninth myth that “gender is a social
construction.” The IWF claims that due to biological
differences men and women have different career goals.
How is that? I concede that women and men are born with
different reproductive organs, but there is no correlation to
anatomy and a person’s career goals.
Society places people with certain characters particular to
certain sexes, making gender a socially constructed idea. It is
very easy to make a claim that upholds the status quo. However, if
the IWF actually researched this topic fully, it would find that
past misconceptions of what men and women are
“biologically” programmed to do has changed greatly
over the course of history. This is largely due because we become
more educated as science constantly evolves. Yet, the IWF claims
that “we should not expect or demand parity in all
fields.”
And the final myth is that women’s studies focuses on
“like-minded individuals.” Women are actually vastly
diverse and therefore the women’s studies department should
strive to reflect this diversity. From my understanding, higher
education is about getting various sides of the issues and not just
about hearing from “like-minded individuals.”
If a professor doesn’t touch upon all sides of a debate,
it is your duty to challenge the institution and to educate
yourself on it. That is why we have 11 libraries.
Feminism has received a bad rap lately. But contrary to popular
belief, feminists and feminist organizations do not brainwash
people into membership.
“A feminist, male or female, (yes there are male
feminists!) is simply one who advocates for women the same rights,
economic and political, that are granted to men” (Feminists
For Life).
I believe what I do and what other students, faculty and
administration do is not because we have been
“programmed” into thinking of equality for women as the
IWF claims. Historically women have been denied from many positions
formally and informally.
Why should that continue? Next week, May 14-18 is dedicated to
educating the community about these issues of sexual violence,
women’s leadership and unity as a human race. Remember on
Mother’s Day to think of the hardships your mom has gone
through. Think about the IWF “myths” she has had to
deal with and how they may actually be realities.