Sex On College Campuses – Are Women More Than A Function?
By Maame Akua Marfo
“There are two types of relationships on campus– there’s the hook up kind which, maybe the boy has a lot of friends and then he starts to sleep with some of them. and then there’s another kind which is like a long one night stand.” – M
Relationships seem to find themselves on a sliding scale, from those preparing themselves for marriage to those that revolve around having multiple partners at one time but very rarely do these relationships turn out well for the women involved. The attitude to sex is casual, ranging from relationships that are considered “marriage like” but still involve other partners, to those that solely involve random hook ups.
For many of the women in the room it has always been clear that on campus women do not get to enjoy the same sort of sexual freedom without being reprimanded. For them there is a strange mixture of being encouraged to play the role of the “bad girl” on social media and everyone pretending to be okay with something with one breath but in the next taking a different position. For young men on campus however, sex is a game of divide and conquer. The students in the room describe a “the more the merrier” attitude and though sex itself is encouraged, women are often looked down upon for having more than one partner and the damage that open knowledge of a woman’s sexual partners can do is irreparable. It seems nearly impossible for a woman to be able to please both her boyfriend, herself, and the society around them.
“Some boys– only contact you when the semester is about to start because that’s when you’re conveniently accessible to them… Sometimes I feel like people look at girls on campus as commodities. It’s not just a singular problem. It’s about the way you view women in general. Because if you actually had respect for them as people you wouldn’t look at them as…disposable. People aren’t interchangeable like that.” -A
The relationships between students is far more complex than most would presume them to be. At a glance– relationships seem simple. Women are expected to play the role of the whore, the mother and the friend and in an age that boasts open mindedness about sex, it seems the open mindedness only applies to one gender. This puts women in precarious positions and contributes greatly to a culture that is unaccepting of womanhood in its totality. Women’s reputations are both armour and weapon depending on who is using them and their consistent subjugation and understanding of who they are always relates back to the men they are dating, sleeping with, or seen talking to.
How often do they understand themselves–for themselves? How often do men see them as more than a function? Are they more than just laundromats, cooks, wives and “whores”? This inability to see women as people in their entirety makes them easier to dismiss, easier to shrink and ultimately– easier to abuse. And on a college campus where students are learning how to relate to each other, and how to manage power in relationships, this places them in a dangerous position. It becomes easy to turn people– with their layers and unique individuality into little more than functions.
To Be Contd