Yale Daily News

It is no use denying it. Our thought police know you are thinking evil things about women. You are dangerous and must be cast out to preserve the purity of our utopian community.

While we're on the subject, Sex Week at Yale IS sexual harassment and an assault on every student who received the unsolicited e-mails and will have to endure the promotion leading up to the week and the week. It's especially disturbing to those who value purity and monogamy.

Yes, we exist so consider us a minority group subject to minority protections.

Didn't Chase Olivarius-McCallister, one of the leaders of the YWC, write an article disparaging virginity and monogamy? Now she is rallying the troops against men who loudly appreciate such loose morals in women (the same ones she herself championed.)

Didn't she also lead a crass skit against the same fraternity who's pledges offended her sensibilities?

I'm confused. It almost sounds as if YWC has some problem with men in general and fraternities in particular not goosestepping to the Feminist national anthem.

I'm not a feminist and agree that the YWC are hypocrites. I DO think that Sex Week at Yale is sexual harassment far worse than what the YWC are claiming but who represents us?

I don't know Really Harassed, the YWC doesn't represent me as a woman. I guess it is like Orwell said "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal." Sleeping around garners women the respect and legal support of the YWC.

What if the sign had instead said "We love Yale's chaste virgins"?

Rallying for censorship has made the modern feminist movement is a sick parody of the early suffragettes.

"At the meeting with administrators, the Center requested that the University adopt a host of structural changes..."

Read as: $$$

Remember, similar tactics squeezed Harvard's Larry Summers for $50 mil; why wouldn't the same tactics work at old Yale?

Mo' money!

Dear Women's Center,

We were cool before, but now we thing you are nuts.

-Yale

Life liberty and morality wrote:
"It almost sounds as if YWC has some problem with men in general and fraternities in particular not goosestepping to the Feminist national anthem."
D'ya think?
LOL!

Dear Women's Center,

You were cool before, you are cooler now, and Yale's women and men are proud of your work.

Keep giving them something to talk about.

BK '08

TO #2:

Ah, so true! But those of your bent are fit to be ridiculed? Chastity? Morality? How QUAINT! Ironically YOUR views will be absolutely discounted, as of no worth, no worth whatsoever. Your views are, I am sure you know, products of the patriarchal oppression--you do not understand your own suffering.

BTW: Compare the current situation (philosophically) with that of the regular trashing of "conservative" publications on campus. One can place outright smut in Woolsey, but G-d forbid the conservatives get access to free speech! Does Yale prosecute (or even investigate) the property crimes (potentially felonious, given the dollar cost of replacement)? Heck no!

Does the Women's Center stand up for all rights...or just THEIR rights, their pet rights? YOU be the judge.

Lastly: yes, a weird dichotomous viewpoint (Orwellian in its double-think) of girl-as-naif, in need of protection (e.g., "affirmative response for each move leading up to a sexual encounter" policies) versus I-am-full-on-adult-womyn, here me roar!

No logic, no rationality, insufficient perspective: guilty of the very "crimes" of which they accuse others.

Ah, well.

Dear #9,

#7 called. It wants its joke back.

Wow. Reading this thread it looks almost like a group of fraternity brothers sat down and had a childish mass commenting rampage.

They're nuts! They want money! Thought police! Hypocrites!

Seriously people? Is that the best you can come up with?

A group of twenty or so fraternity members intimidated a woman trying to enter the women's center and undermined/ laughed at their cause. They tried to demoralize women, many who have been harassed and raped, and who are desperately working to achieve equality. Why don't you think it's a big deal? Why? Because you call girls sluts all the time behind close doors, because you think women should expect to be treated as sexual objects and you love doing it, and you think the idea of women trying to achieve respect for themselves as human beings is hillllarrrrious and should of course be mocked. Those money-grubbing slut/virgins!!!

You are an embarrassment to Yale and to yourselves.

Dear satan, #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #10 and #11 need their souls back.

“Not only are we not sponsoring or enabling, we’re actively preventing and actively condemning these kind of actions,” Price said. “We do not stand for this, we don’t support this and the fraternity system here does not condone sexual harassment and never has.”

Then the policy shouldn't be a problem to the frat.

My friends and I call each other sluts sometimes.... We love each other and it's a lot of fun. It's actually rather empowering to call yourself a slut. Almost every strong, confident woman has been called a slut. Perhaps it's time to embrace slut like we embrace bitch.

Also, if I was walking past that group of frat boys, I would have not even been disturbed. I know they wouldn't harm me. I'm more afraid of other people at night besides a group of drunken college boys. I've done that before, and they really don't do anything! They're usually harmless. If I am really afraid, I walk with other people or call walk. Why doesn't this girl do the same? Also, why doesn't she take self defense? It's really empowering too.

I think the YWC board is weaker than it wants to admit. It would show more strength by actually acting with some dignity rather than legal action when African Americans and gay men have faced worse on campus.

@#14: How wonderful that you have such a rosy view of the term slut and drunken college boys, but how completely ridiculous to assume that your perception somehow implies a universal truth. The fact that there exist walk services or self defense does not change the fact that this was harassment.

Did you even begin to read the article? I ask because you completely neglect the WC's argument that fraternity culture, misogyny and sexual harassment are somewhat connected to sexual assault and rape. It is obvious to everyone but you that this incident is being used as an example of other wrongs, rather than standing on its own.

Danny boy, she did exactly that in an editorial http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/19666

She would like to frame the word choice in the debate however so that the word 'slut' can't be used to describe behavior that is... well, slutty. She wants to censor the other viewpoint which is: sleeping around isn't really respectable behavior.

The consequence of following her views in that editorial would be that women are viewed as sluts. We either honestly admit that men and women are different and that women who sleep around are viewed this way or we can silence dissenting opinions, or truthful observations (such as, men in fraternities truly appreciate yale sluts.)

That article doesn't say that being a virgin is necessarily wrong. It certainly does not call upon anyone to be promiscuous. It merely criticizes the culture and history of virginity, and displays the disparities between the virginities of men and women. A married couple comprised of two people who BOTH wait until marriage, for example, would not be objectionable in the same manner.

About the article: Olivarius-McAllister tried to unionize prostitutes in New Haven last semester, and knows more about the law than most students in their third year of YLS because of it. (The one time that she came to the seminar she and I took last semester she quoted - in full and perfectly - four paragraphs of the CT statutes that pertained to brothels.) The reporter should take whatever it was that she "hinted at" pretty seriously.

About Comments #3 and #16: I read the column that Chase Olivarius-McAllister wrote on virginity last year, and it was so well-crafted and well-written that I remembered her (unbelievably long) name. I have just re-read it. In it, she simply says that our culture's conversation about sex is stupid, mundane, and misogynist. She absolutely did not advocate promiscuity, nor the loss of virginity. (Several people who know her well, by the way, have reported to me that she is opposed to intercourse, for feminist reasons that I never quite grasped.)

"Life, Liberty, and Morality" is desperate to portray her as something she is not. Though his depseration leads him to misrepresnt her, it understandable. Chase Olivarius-McAllister is an icon on this campus. Many people hate her, and many more have adored her.

There are other beauties, troublemakers, intellectuals, and feminists on this campus. But everyone focuses on Chase Olivarius-McAllister - especially those opposed to feminism - and as result people lose perspective, and talk about her like she is some sort of mythic character, and make her in to some sort of mythic character.

I did too. I thought, from being in class with her, that she was incapable of feeling fear. My roomates told me they thought so too. Last week, when I read the headlines about the WC and Zeta and the lawsuit, I knew that it could only be the work of THE Chase Olivarius-McAllister.

Last night she came to the YPU as a guest speaker in its debate on hate speech. When she stood behind the podium, and addressed the YPU - the unrepentent warrior for women - THE mythic Chase Olivarius-McAllister - was completely surprising. She was nervous; she was termbling; she could barely look up as she read from her speech. Towards the end of it, I wondered whether she was crying, or trying not to. The audience was absolutely hushed throughout - which is UNHEARD OF AT THE YPU.
The speech was beautiful, so serious - the best that night, and in recent memory. But it moved the YPU because she meant every word that she said - it made her human to us.

I just re-read my comment, and I may have to take the same advice I am giving to Life, Liberty and Happiness: stop focusing on Chase Olivarius-McAllister.

The fraternity should be far more straightforward that what was not was not a big deal and that they should not apologize for it. At most, they could have taken out the picture in response to the outcry but really shouldn't have gone farther than this. As much as Yale is very far left politically, I still can't imagine that the average Yalie (male or female) would think that this is an issue, and I am not sure why we should let a small minority dictate all of the discourse.

Many conservative students are likewise offended by, say, mandatory sex education for freshmen, but hardly anyone cares that they be offended or not. If even mainstream conservatives are not taken seriously, I don't see why the most extreme leftists should be taken seriously.

Oh, and no, I was not in a fraternity.