A Feminist in a Football House | The College Dialogue Surrounding Feminism

Last night, I went to a small party at the “football house” of a college football team near my hometown. One of my guy friends from high school plays the sport, and invited a girlfriend of mine and I over to have a few beers and celebrate the end of Summer.

Our welcoming into the party was not as warm as I would have liked, but really they were just “guys being guys”, and my friend and I laughingly wrote it off as so. Between the disgustingly smelly burps, a guy asking me to get up from his supposed seat where I made attempts at comfort, and the passing around of a nude photo wherein the female’s body parts were laughed at/poked fun at, my blood was already beginning to boil, and the “f” word hadn’t even been uttered yet.

After hearing a few disturbing comments about women and their body parts from our not-so-gracious hosts, I pulled my friend into the kitchen and, rather casually, made the comment that I “literally couldn’t” because I’m a feminist, (a woman who believes in equality between man and woman). I asserted myself as a feminist in such a nonchalant way that I don’t necessarily remember how it got brought up to the guys, or how the heated “debate” about feminism began. Next thing I knew though, I was surrounded by football players who wanted to throw their anti-feminist opinions in my face just as they’d throw their pigskin to the line backer, (that’s not right, is it?).

My guy friend who was trying to pick my brain on all matters feminism, rather than harshly shut down my insane ideal, was also trying to keep the peace, bless his soul. But, after just a few minutes, the entire party turned into everyone else vs. 1. OFFSIDES! My attempts at explaining feminism were met with such hilariously uninformed comments that only by recounting them now can I do their argument justice.

When party goers caught wind I was a GASP feminist, this was the first comment I was thrown.

“You’re a feminist so, do you not eat meat?”

The above is so off that I laughed at its ignorance, and it was so harmless that I actually thought this conversation could be a bit of fun for me.

But then came the commentary that put me in a place of stunned disturbance:

“What do women NOT have in America?”

“Obviously men should be paid more because we do things better.”

“Women will never be equal to men, that’s just biological.”

My frustration stemmed from the complacent easygoingness that they were demonstrating when they talked about women being less than men. Girls and guys alike would shrug their shoulders and say “it’s just how it is”, or that it is the way it will always, or should be. Their tone and diction was the same as if they were stating a universally obvious truth like the sky being blue, or Britney Spears being the best pop-star to ever grace planet Earth.

Clearly, yes, women are unequal to men. We see differences in pay between women and men, with women routinely receiving less money for the same job. We see a huge difference in the representation of women and med in the media, with women being framed as often less-credible, or the age old depiction of women as “hysterical”. Women are faced with such scrutiny for appearance, whether sexual or not, that that alone could be cause enough for this third wave feminist movement (“well she was wearing yoga pants grocery shopping so of COURSE I can whistle at her”). But the way these partygoers spoke of feminism as a useless concept that they really had no purpose for, frustrated me to no end.

My personal favorite question, which I was asked more than once: “What are you guys fighting for?” as if we are a bunch of feminist soldiers marching across barren land each day to claim a new region or something archaic like that. I could tell he was asking with genuine curiosity and with the purpose of actually considering its answer, but my reply didn’t seem to register.

I answered “[We’re fighting for] the political, social and overall equality of women. Yaknow? Better treatment by society, equal pay, better representation in the media, an end to rape, etc”. My answer was, in their minds, “too general”.

Clearly the above answer was just too vast to really boil down to one concept: equality. So, I went into more detail, only to find that even my more specific examples were being met with the same level of non understanding, I realized no amount of shouting, example spewing, or reiterating would drive my seemingly CRAZY point home.

That is one of many reasons that I think a dialogue about feminism really needs to be increased among college students.

Though I didn’t love the amount of misogyny and overall rudeness sent my way last night, I was very intrigued by the shock and awe factor that my standpoint as a feminist aroused.

When partygoers, both guys and gals, heard the conversation and found out I was a feminist, they stared at me like I had three heads and approached me with the same level of tentativeness that you would a wild animal. RAWR.

My friend from high school kept shaking his head and laughing “Haley, I can’t believe you’re a feminist!”

“Ha-ha I know right! As a college educated woman I can’t believe I am either! Like, me wanting women to be equal to men is totally insane. I’m as shocked as you are that I’d prefer social equality between genders! LOL”

He didn’t seem to appreciate my thick sarcasm, but sometimes, it’s all you can do to not totally lose it.

So I went home last night with my voice unheard and my viewpoints wildly misunderstood, but I appreciated the happening so much because it helps shed light on the real misinterpretations of feminists and feminism, especially in a college setting. Many college students, no matter how “educated” they are, have no clue about the real social, political, and economic inequality that women still face in America today. They see feminism as “pointless”, as my football playing friends repeated time and time again.

They think because women work many of the same jobs as men, that now we have reached equality. But just because we have come far, doesn’t mean we don’t have a long ways to go. We need to increase conversation about feminism, even if it does take place in a dirty kitchen in downtown Rochester.

If we can increase the amount of talk surrounding feminism, and the “what’s being said” during that talk, then I think we will find people on both sides better off overall. At this party, I was the absolute minority, (hello I was the only damn feminist in there), so I was met with a lot of harsh skepticism, and was even, for some partygoers, the first feminist they’ve ever met. My position would have been better if other twenty-somethings there had heard of feminism before, or had even been exposed to the notion that some people believe in the overall equality of men and women. Had the guys who were arguing with me heard these concepts before, they would have had a more informed viewpoint, and thus a better argument formulated, than just the physical nature of men being bigger/stronger than women – even if they still believed in inequality.

If we increase conversation, then we increase knowledge. And after all, knowledge is power, right?

*All images via Buzzfeed.