By KATRINA HENNING
Columnist
Walk around campus any given day, and you will overhear some disturbing conversations.
“That girl will sleep with anyone.”
“She is such a slut.”
“What a shame that girl has no standards.”
Turn to social media, like Yik-Yak, and some of the same harsh, judging, words appear.
“Where the sluts at” (Probably not ending their sentences with prepositions, anonymous poster).
“Looking for a girl with daddy issues.”
What is wrong with this picture?
It is 2016. There is a woman running for president that has a strong chance of winning, yet we still feel the insatiable urge to cut down independent women and treat them as inferior to their male counterparts. Worse – other women (myself included) allow this to carry on. Why is this? Why, in an era that boasts progress and forward thinking, do we still allow this type of talk to carry on?
I think it all comes down to a simple grammar lesson. Forgive the English major in me and allow me to explain.
“Man sleeps with woman.”
These four simple words have all the parts of a complete sentence, with ‘Man’ being the subject, ‘sleep’ being the verb, and ‘woman’ being the object. No one bats an eye at this sentence, and we shrug it off as accurate. When we switch the subject and the object, however, eyebrows are raised.
“Woman sleeps with man.”
When ‘man’ is placed in the object spot of the sentence, we begin to feel uncomfortable. Men do not sit so well as women in the object slot of a sentence. I mean, there are still parts of the world where women aren’t even considered human. Women are used to being in the object slot of a sentence, not the subject.
So I hope in the future you become mindful of how and where you place the ladies in your lives and sentences. This message is not just for males, but women too. To quote my goddess and yours, Tina Fey, “You have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores; it just makes it ok for guys to call you sluts and whores.”
Four for you Glen Coco. You go, Glen Coco.