About a month ago, I was sitting in the Detroit Airport, waiting on my flight to Raleigh-Durham, when the middle- aged woman, no more than 40, next to me mutter under her breath, “that stupid bitch asked for it.” I followed her gaze to a TV that was broadcasting a news report regarding a girl who was raped. I tap the woman on the shoulder and ask what makes her say that. She responds with “she dresses like a skank and expects horny men not to be all over her.” I look at the photo of the girl now plastered on the screen. She’s no more than 16, the same age as myself. She has on a band tee and jeans. The collar of the shirt is at her throat, and it reaches nearly halfway down her legs. Her jeans have no holes or tears. I ask the woman if she knows the girl and she says no. I then ask why she believes the girl is dressed like a skank. She doesn’t answer and instead asked how I feel about the bullshit being sprouted all over the media about how women are seen as sex objects and how they’re mistreated and how they are still being oppressed and how feminism is just a rouse for women to take over and become more powerful, to become what they claim men are. I am stunned. I begin to wonder for a moment if this woman has been following the same media as I have. She continues into how this whole ‘feminist movement’ is total bull and it will amount to nothing and how feminist are attention seeking whores who can’t find anything valid to fight for so the fight for something that was settled years ago. I simply looked at the woman and replied as kindly as I could, “I will try to not take offense to that.” She then looks at me with a twisted expression, asking where I stood in respect to the issue of feminism. I reply, “I am a very strong feminist. I believe in equal rights and I do feel that women are still discriminated for what their gender is. I would like to ask you though, I am dressed exactly as that girl that was just on the news was and I am about her age as well. Would you like to call me a no-good slut to my face?” She gives me the most awful glare and you would have thought that I just spat in her child’s face and told them to kill themselves. Unfortunately for everyone around us, she recovers and continues speaking. “You aren’t like that girl. You can still get some sense into your system. She’s long gone and her virtue is dead, no man will ever want her and she should be killed for having allowed someone to take her the way they did.” Now I ask you all. Since when is it the victim’s fault? Since when is it such a god-awful thing to be a feminist? When are we going to take back what should be a title to be worn with pride and restore it in the eyes of others to something decent? Since when is being a feminist an appalling crime that is equivalent to attacking another? Why haven’t we stood up yet? When will we?
