I’m walking across campus to my first class of the year, looking forward to the new term and to meeting my new students. I’m a little nervous, mostly excited. But my focus is interrupted by a group of four students, all guys, walking behind me. They’re using deeply misogynist, toxic, sexually objectifying language to describe a female acquaintance of theirs and laughing about it.
My stomach flips, my heart starts racing, I shrink into myself. They are speaking at a volume that makes it impossible not to hear them, and I couldn’t have been the only one who did. Do I turn around and confront them? Do I say nothing, keep going, and hope none of them turn out to be in my class? (They weren’t, luckily.)
My first concern is for the woman they were verbally abusing. I hope she’s okay, whoever she is.
My second concern is for the kind of campus we create together through our words and actions. Aggressive language like this is a component of campus rape culture, which affects all who study, live, and work here.
Third, this is my workplace. Even when I am just walking across campus, I am at work. Misogynist language is a workplace issue for faculty and staff. If one of my colleagues used this kind of language about another colleague, it would be grounds for a harassment complaint. It’s just as unacceptable when students use it, but because they are not our colleagues, there are few ways of addressing its effect on Carleton workers.
Fourth—that pack of dudes. Do they think and talk this way about women all the time? Patriarchal privilege means you think you have the right to say anything you want about women with no thought for how it hurts others. I sincerely hope that their language did not have a triggering effect for other women who were walking within their toxic atmosphere.
Their language in that moment suggested they see their female peers as sexual objects who exist for men’s pleasure. I really hope that in their time at Carleton these men will learn that women are human beings who deserve respect. I hope they learn that misogynist language towards a woman is a form of abuse, even when she’s out of earshot.
I wasn’t out of earshot, and every time I think about their language, I feel sick. One of the saddest things about this is the reaction of my female students when I mention this incident to them. They are totally unsurprised. I hope that in their time at Carleton they learn that they don’t have to accept such language as inevitable.
