Dialogue on gender issues still needed

When asked to return for a second semester of column writing for The Daily Tar Heel, I considered whether the campus still needed a voice on women and gender issues.

Had everything already been said? Was it time for different voices and different issues?

Over the break, stories showed that issues surrounding gender in our society are still at the top of news stories, legislations and people’s minds.

From environmental summits in Copenhagen discussing our expanding populations and need for resources, to New Jersey senators debating same-sex marriage, to Tiger Woods’ affairs and subsequent hiatus from the PGA tour, the world grapples with these issues daily.

But what about here on campus? I simply turned to reader responses in my e-mail to know that there are still discrepancies on this issue.

“I’m sorry if you have bad encounters with the male sex and have been made fun of,” wrote one student in response to “Slurs only reinforce gender labels” (Sept. 9).

“But there are plenty of dumb bitches who make fun of guys like it’s there (sic) job. Next issue, how bout you go to a sorority house and write down all the negative things they say. Don’t be one sided when writing, keep an open mind, and I’m sure you will be a whole lot more successful.”

“I wanted to write you and let you know that your article, ‘Slurs only reinforce gender labels’ opened my eyes even wider to the inappropriateness and potential hurtfulness of gender labeled slurs … I suppose my success in changing will be seen in my daughter and her learning and understanding her strength and worth as a woman.”

Halloween costume suggestions, “Costume should be about you, not crowd,” (Oct. 16) grew cheers from some and jeers from others:

“One of the grave violations committed by many writers in our society is the denial of women’s sexuality. I don’t appreciate your perpetrating the idea, in today’s DTH column, that women only dress in a sexual manner in order to please others. When I let my ‘inner kitty-cat’ run free, it is a legitimate expression of my own sexual freedom. It’s not acceptable to society that I let the sex-kitten within me show herself in the everyday world, where I am expected to be aloof and professional.”

My column, “‘Mad Women’ and the pay gap,” (Sept. 22) brought in other examples of discrimination in the not too distant past:

“In 1964, my mom wasn’t allowed to attend her senior year of high school — or graduate — because the school board saw her wedding announcement in the paper and threw her out; she wasn’t even pregnant. The boys who got married, of course, were allowed to stay. F-ed up!”

And abortion funding created a lengthy discussion on the DTH Web site as well as mostly positive e-mails: “Thank you so much for writing that column in today’s paper … I find it sadly amusing that for a group of people hell bent on blocking any kind of ‘government interference’ in health care, they seem to be pretty okay with interfering in health care.”

My goal in writing this column is not to transform the campus to my line of thinking; that is both impossible and unhelpful. But I choose to highlight the issues and causes I do in hopes that people start talking: for or against, confused or with clarity, with surprise or with indifference.