Crimson Incident Highlights Double Standard

This is a response to the events of Commencement Day at The Harvard Crimson. A hypothetical situation:

Several first-year males decide to play a prank on the female president of a college newspaper by taking her chair and putting it in the men's bathroom. In the middle of executing their joke, the president encounters them and asks them to return the chair. They refuse. She becomes angry, perhaps irrationally angry, and tries physically to retrieve the chair. As a compromise, the men agree to return the chair if she removes her shirt. She refuses, and frustrated and angry, storms off, muttering "fucking dicks." The men maintain it was simply a joke and that her reaction was uncalled for.

Who would be found guilty of sexual harassment in this case? The men, of course! Regardless of whether it was a prank, the men should have stopped when they saw how upset she was. That is merely showing respect for another human being's feelings, which is essential in the workplace. The request for the president to remove her shirt was completely inappropriate and clearly sexual harassment; no woman should be subject to such humiliation by male co-workers.

Reverse the genders of the players in this scenario, and you have the incident at The Crimson. Yet now the president is apologizing, and the pranksters are the victims, demanding his resignation after accusations of sexual harassment and sexism.

In either scenario, it is the man who is in the wrong, and the woman who is the victim. Talk about a sexual double-standard!

I'm not writing this letter to tell the members of The Crimson who was wrong or who should resign. It is clear that there is a problem in the organization which stems from a lack of respect among the staff, not sexism. I also have no interest in discussing the special offensiveness of the word "cunt" as opposed to "dick"; that is a pure value judgment, and would be ridiculous debate.

I am writing because this highlights a larger problem which worries me greatly as a woman striving for equal rights in the classroom and in the work place. Women should not be harassed at work because of their sex, or for any other reasons; they should not be humiliated by sexual innuendo or inappropriate behavior. But neither should men. In this incident both the man and women were guilty of this insensitivity, yet only the man was faulted.

Women, how will we ever achieve equality when we accept this double standard and use it to out advantage? I sincerely hope the women involved will reexamine both their accusations and actions, and judge themselves as harshly as they have Stoll.

It is not just men, but women also, who must change their attitudes for us to have equality. Hilary Hanson '95