Yale Watch misunderstood

By Letter to the Editor

My rhetorical faculties were so stimulated by Benjamin Carp's column ("When sex gets dirty: Yale, watch out" [2/27/98, YH]) that I may have to scrap what I was planning to write for my senior project in order to give this column the pages and pages of reaction it deserves.

First, my journalistic commentary. Overall, it was disappointing that Carp chose to superficially relegate substantial issues to soundbites like "we're all sexist" and "[it's part of the] men's club attitude." Even sadder were the sensationalistic headline and a revised version of the cartoon that bought into tired, backlash characterizations of social questioners as sexual prudes and intellectual hypocrites. In fact, as I'm sure Carp recalls, my objection to the cartoon was to its objectification and degradation of a human being--and I stated that I would have had the same difficulty with the picture had it been drawn with the sexes reversed. What a disgraceful way to trivialize issues that require more thoughtful commentary.

Carp apparently wasn't listening, however, when I told him that the intent of the National Organization for Women's Yale Watch was not to single out Mena "for what's wrong with all of us, male and female." In fact, its purpose is to highlight the degrading characterizations that pervade our everyday life and question the ways in which we allow them to structure our notions of masculinity and femininity. Mena added one more demeaning picture to the pile.

But Yale Watch did not "single out an individual for public reproach"; rather it sought to question a particular characterization of women and more broadly, the climate that sustains this type of imagery. To argue the point that something is right just because it is widespread is to be morally naïve. Those who, like Carp, seek "a more interactive means" of consciousness-raising, are invited to attend any NOW meeting, 9 p.m. Wednesdays in the Women's Center. Debate is the first step in identifying the nature of the foundations that underpin our world; from there we can take action to make it a just one for all.

--Margret Bell, MC '98

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