Don't Look Now, It's 1860

Today in "let's all remember the good old days when only white dudes were people," we have Catholic University reminding all of us that while women have the right to vote, they certainly don't have the right to make decisions for themselves! Not when there's a man around to do it for them!

I believe this is the perfect moment for the Sad Trombone.

So very concerned for the virtue of the young ladies under his surveillance is President John Garvey, Patriarch, that he is converting his campus back to single-sex dorms over the course of the next several years.

Here's the thing: President John Garvey, Patriarch, is an idiot.

He says that he thought that by having women and men in the same dorms, women would have had "a civilizing influence on young men." Alas! Women started to drink alcohol too! To keep up with young men! Who were plying them with the demon rum so they could get laid!

Now, this is not President John Garvey's original idea. President John Garvey, Patriarch, is only part of a long line of ridiculous patriarchs who believe that women would never drink or have sex or do drugs or climb water towers or whatever if men weren't around to trick them into it. Because those things are fun, and women don't like to have fun. Women like to do dishes and nag their doofy husbands. However, I will do him the favor he will not do me and assume he is a sentient being able to make his own decisions and judgments. As such, I believe that he is able to question the "logic" of this kind of thought and realize that women are people with impulses and hormones. Just like, you know, men.

I don't need to tell you, gentle reader, that women are just as likely to sincerely want to get drunk or laid as men are. Furthermore, men are just as likely to do things they don't really want to do because they feel peer-pressure as women are. You are an evolved human, so you know this.

President John Garvey, Patriarch, does not make the case here that he is only worried about the virtue of his female students, but he contributes to the myth that women are the gatekeepers of morality in society. It reifies gender essentialism by claiming that there are inherent differences between men and women, and I object to that premise. It also puts the blame on women if they can't fulfill the role that has been foisted upon them, so now women can't win for losing. Because, yes, many men are going to do things that President John Garvey, Patriarch, would consider uncivilized. That's their business, not the business of their female hallmates, partners, friends, parents, or siblings.

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