Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

One Student’s View of Feminism

Posted on 04/05/2016

Recently, the WGS program was contacted by an undergraduate student with a list of questions for a class assignment on “why women need feminism in college.” One of our students, Taylor Chapman, responded with her own answers about this very salient issue.

Why do women need feminism?

Truthfully, I think everyone needs feminism. Equity isn’t equity if it only applies to one group, which is a tenant of most feminist movements. In other words, many feminists believe that the liberation of one marginalized group is tied up in the liberation of all marginalized groups. Many people think of feminism as only benefitting or belonging to women, but in a “perfect world,” it would be an seen as a set of constantly shifting ideas that help people of all genders (races, classes, abilities, etc.) come to understand each other as valuable and worthy of respect.

How would the implementation of feminism alter the circumstances around campuses today? (how would rules and over all campus regulations change if Feminism was widely recognized and promoted on campus.)

It’s important to know that there are more than one kind of feminism. Many feminists have different wants and needs, and their feminist politics tend to reflect that. However, if campuses today tended more towards a feminist framework when it comes to creating rules and regulations, I think we’d see a more concerted effort by administrators to think about students who are often forgotten about or erased completely within academia. People of color, poor people, women, and disabled people (and more!) all face different problems within academia that are often overlooked or swept under the rug. A feminist model would suggest that supporting the more vulnerable members of our community, instead of focusing our energy on a small few who have the most resources, would better enable us to grow and become the best version of ourselves.

How would sexual assault and rapes be different in numbers or prosecutions if the ideal and concept of feminism was applied on College Campuses?

The ideal, of course, would be that rape and sexual assault would no longer exist. Frameworks that aren’t explicitly feminist often suggest behavior modification as a means of stopping rape. Many feminists would tell you that we want rape and sexual assault to be a truly unthinkable act. That instead of giving people reasons why they shouldn’t want to rape people, or giving people suggestions on how not to get raped, that we could use ideas brought forth through feminism to wholly denounce that form of violence to the point where it never even seems like an option. (I can’t remember who, but someone once said they want rape to be as unthinkable as cannibalism, which I think gets the point across in a very graphic way.) It is also likely that if feminist frameworks were more often applied on college campuses, that rape victims would be taken more seriously and rapists would be dealt with in much harsher manners. Ultimately, there is a problem when plagiarism will get you expelled from a university but rape will not.

Taylor’s views are her own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of the WGS program.