Gender Politics

"What is the point of teaching these kids about sexual violence when they can only rabbit back the party line and then go off to use their creative energies to further a rape culture?
"By the time they get here, they're deeply enmeshed in sexual politics that is incredibly binary and conservative."
Andrew Bretz, University of Guelph researcher

Frosh-week festivities in various Canadian universities evidently include the happy chanting of controversial verses, relating to having forced sex with underage girls despite their denials of interest. This is the good clean fun of decent young people considered adult, prepared to socialize with one another at the post-secondary level to become socially-engaged professionals as reasoning and reasonable adults.

"I know there are naysayers who love lobbing rocks at the ivory tower ... But I'm in the thick of it", said a professor specializing in gender and politics at the University of Victoria. Those chants, she charges, mustn't be dismissed as light-hearted fun-poetry of young adults seeking adventure and pleasure. "What we have here is a teachable moment. I don't think we can get to a place where we're talking about this 'too much'."

University administrators have been reacting with shock and chagrin at the recent chanting episodes. Administrative officials at Saint Mary's in Halifax and University of British Columbia have unequivocally condemned those prankishly stupid chants. The lyrics: "We like 'em young" ... "Y is for your sister" ... "U is for under age", do not present as particularly innocent in nature, nor intelligent in expression.

"We're trying to send a message that consent is like breathing -- you can't do without", a sexual harassment prevention educator, Noa Ashkenazi said of the program to address students about gender roles and issues at York University through their Centre for Human Rights.

The Canadian Federation of Students national chairwoman Jessica McCormick feels upset about first-year students dismissing all the fuss about the chants. "We aren't speaking up about them and calling them out for what they are. These aren't sex chants, these are rape chants", she said. "No Means NO" reads the buttons and posters the federation has been distributing as awareness materials.

The attitudes about easy sex among certain groups of youth who consider themselves adult but whose behaviour is anything but, is deeply-rooted and offensive to decency. Young girls feel pressured to be relaxed about having sex, to be seen as cool, to have a wide circle of friends, all believing that this is normal and acceptable behaviour. And then they're stricken with remorse when they've assented when they had no wish to.

There is a trial currently ongoing about 15 and 16-year old girls in Ottawa, trying to run a prostitution ring, bullying other young girls to agree to having sex with Johns to make spending money. The young girls who threatened the other girls with violence if they failed to agree to give adult males their money's worth evidently saw nothing wrong in what they did. The frightened girls who were manipulated and threatened saw a great deal wrong with what they did, but felt helpless to escape the situation.

And then there are the instances where young girls like Rehtaeh Parsons in desperation and depression committed suicide to escape the plague of derision she suffered over videos posted online when she was involved with young boys at a house party, having sex which she later regretted, desperate not to be seen as a slut, and unable to fend off the ridicule she was exposed to.

It is all part and parcel of a dreadful, pervasive culture of male entitlement on the part of some young men, and female availability.