Objectify This

Another reason (here‘s the first) that I quit the biology major came from a lovely misogynist Professor of Biology. This man is not misguided; he is mistaken. He believes that women were born to be objectified. I’m not kidding.

When I was a sophomore, I made some bank by TAing the introduction to evolutionary biology class. It was mostly a boring job, involving explanations of the kidney, killing clams, and injecting crickets with dye, but this one moment stands out.

Genetics are usually explained in terms of flies, because they are easy to mate and they reproduce really fast, so it’s easy for students to see for themselves that the rules of heredity are true. This time, the professor who taught the class was sick, and the professor I loathe for having called me ‘little girl’ was substituting.

We watched a video of fly sex, in which the female ran away and kicked out at the male several times before she allowed the male to mount her. The professor said, “You can tell that she wanted it all along. I bet you guys have seen this a lot at parties.”

I turned to the class, and said “That is not okay. If you do see this at parties, you can call me. I am a peer counselor who specializes in rape crisis counseling (my school has a silly name and acronym for this job).  I also left the biology department because I could not stand to have to bow to the authority of men who enjoy the illusion that women are inferior.