Guest Column: Women Should Not Be Judged Only by Their Attractiveness, Personality, Intelligence, Past Accomplishments, and Overall Moral Character

By Ella di Mancuso (Medill ’16)

Alright, Northwestern; we need to have a serious talk.

There’s a problem on this campus, and it’s not just the polar vortexes or the fact that Dunkin’ Donuts still doesn’t exist yet.  It’s not a problem everyone has – only about half of the students at Northwestern have experienced it.  I’ve had friends that have experienced it.  I’ve seen people on Sheridan and in Norris that have experienced it.  I’ve experienced it.  And unless we address this issue now, unless we change the culture of this campus, people are going to keep experiencing it.

Guys, seriously: Stop judging a female student only by her good looks and personal skills and grades and student group involvement and overall common sense and list of accomplishments and whether she is actually a good person or not.

It’s a problem that’s quickly spiraling out of control, and all you have to do is

White Privilege Under Attack, Panic Sets In

A disillusioned Carmichael-Livingston, coming to grips with his crumbling hegemony.

UNITED STATES- As fewer white men hold positions of power and more statistics point to the increased role of minorities in the future of America, the long-standing foundation of white privilege appears to be in jeopardy.

These sudden realizations are terrifying white people across the country. Preston Carmichael-Livingston from Bethesda, Maryland is one of the many struggling to come to grips with the rapid descent of the entitlement of white people. “I just didn’t see this coming,” said Carmichael-Livingston. “I thought that we would get to decide when it all came to an end. We used to decide on everything: when racism was over, what women got to do with their bodies. Now? We’re left with nothing.”

15 Reasons Why You Don’t Need No Man

1. You are a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man to validate her self-worth.
   

   All hail the queen.

2. Your best friends will never think anyone is good enough for you (and they’re probably right).
   

   Your girls: Always there when you need ’em.

3. This is a thing.

An Open Letter to the Period

Dear Period,

In case this letter got sent to the wrong Period, I would just like to make it clear that this letter is addressed to the womanly type of period, not the punctuation type.

Now that that’s over with, I’ll begin. Period, I understand that nothing I can say or do can really change the fact that I have to deal with you…deal with you, or a fetus growing inside me.

Beyoncé “Super-Jealous” of Chet Haze’s Talent

Beyoncé, shortly after throwing her hands up in the air because she knows that she’s the hottest, baby.

In an exclusive interview with Sherman Avenue, seventeen-time Grammy award winner Beyoncé Knowles praised Chet Haze’s latest video, “Finest Girl,” as “the most promising display of raw talent I have ever seen.”

The star of Dreamgirls shared her high opinions of Chester Marlon Hanks, better known as “Chet Haze” in the rap community, whose introspective video about not remembering whether he got the digits of a girl at a club debuted yesterday.

“I thought it was an incredibly insightful commentary on today’s suffering economy. The subtle reference to Nietzsche really demonstrated his lyrical skill, concern with really deep topics, and how much he’s really learned from his classes at Northwestern. And the way that girl clearly took her makeup cues from Jenna Marbles, I just – it says so much about women’s role in culture these days.”

An Open Letter to the Female Body

Dear Female Body,

First of all, I’d like to start things off by saying that I think you’re great. I know it’s been an awful long time since you last encountered me fumbling about you, but just so you know, I’m plumb crazy about you.

Thirteen-year-old me would totally hit that.

Now, ever since the 5th grade I’ve thought that a woman’s body was a marvelous thing to behold. A veritable chalice of perfection, the female form captured my imagination with its gentle slopes and lush form. Also: boobies.

Needless to say, I have been enraptured by your feminine mystique and sexual reproductive system for quite some time now. Yet I never understood until recently how fucking awesome you really are.

You see, a bunch of experts unearthed some real sciencey facts about the uterus that just totally blew my fucking mind. No, I’m not talking about menstruation, although I’m still a bit iffy about how you line that shit up with the lunar phases.

Apparently, after much scientific inquiry and consultation with the world’s leading medical experts, Rep. Todd Akin discovered something amazing about you:

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Holy shit! And this guy’s on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, so this nerd must know his science facts. I mean, I kind of figured that House Republicans were the world’s foremost experts on the cooch, considering how frequently they enter ones that don’t belong to their wives. Why else would the GOP try to legislate the female body so heavily if they didn’t already know what was best for you?

But please be square with me, female body. When were you going to tell me about this awesome power of yours? And anyways, if you’ve had this ability to pick and choose with your cervix or whatever the hell is down there what counts as, like, legitski’s rape and what’s just a fuzzy jungle-juice induced night, why in God’s name would you lie about those roughly 32,000 annual pregnancies that you just claimed were the result of rape? Did you really think we were that stupid?

Like, how does this power of yours even work? Rep. Akin was a little unclear on the details. Is it like Teeth, were you can suddenly spring a pair of pearly whites on any unwanted penis that comes within a yard of your lady parts? Because a skill like that would certainly shut any motherfucker down.

Forcible rape? No no no bro, this was just a panty raid gone horribly awry.

Or maybe it’s like Star Wars, where fallopian tubes are really like Admiral Ackbar in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, sending out X-Wing Fighters to target the rape-induced pregnancy’s one weakness and blow the whole thing to hell.

What’s this, female body? You’ve never seen Star Wars? You’ve got to be kidding me.

Alright then, since when did you even become so judicious, female body? What about that one dude in college who’s still dating his high school-aged girlfriend, regardless of things like “geographical distance” and “statutory rape laws?” How do you know whether he’s, like, rape-raping her, or just, you know legal-age-of-consent-raping her. Since when were you able to act with precise biochemical certainty on legal vagaries like Romeo and Juliet laws?

And what if you’ve been roofied by some dude during Spring Break, like one in four of the unlucky college women who are victims of rape or attempted rape? Are your labia able to identify, and then shut down, the impending rape as “legitimate” even while skeletal muscle relaxant courses through your blood?

Just wondering.

Okay, I’ll stop pestering you about this. Like a magician, you don’t have to detail exactly how your wonderful feminine form defends its turf from legit rape as if the cervix is the DMZ or the Baltimore Ravens’ secondary or something.

Until we meet again, female body. Which, let’s be honest, probably won’t be anytime soon now that any prurient inclination of mine has been scared shitless of your awe-inspiring security system.

Sincerely,
Evander Jones

p.s. Sorry, just one last question for you, oh beautiful female form. Where, exactly, is this clitoris you speak so highly of?

ForMITTable Opponents: Rejected Romney Running Mates

Sexxi can I?

After months of vetting potential running mates, presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has finally selected Paul Ryanas his partner on the G.O.P. ticket. Here are some of the potential nominees who couldn’t quite make it through the Vice Presidential vetting process.

Tony Horton
Like Paul Ryan, Tony Horton is committed to the P90X home fitness program. Unlike Paul Ryan, Tony Horton probably doesn’t want to eliminate all social programs in America that have been enacted since the Hoover administration. Also, between instructing both Usher and Pam the Blam, Tony Horton has worked with more black people than Paul Ryan has ever met in Janesville, Wisconsin.

A Cardboard Cutout of Ronald Reagan
Although deemed to have more personality and charisma than Vice Presidential contender Tim Pawlenty, the cardboard cutout never made it out of the vetting process due to rumors circulating that the 40th President had once been a Democrat. Instead, the Romney campaign intends to use the cutout as a portable beer pong table to be installed in the back of the bus for the “The Romney Plan for How We’ll Gut the Shit out of the Capital Gains Tax a Stronger Middle Class” tour.

Vet this, bitch.

Jesse Pinkman
Originally vetted as a pugnacious businessman who is willing to take on the establishment and appeal to youths nationwide, Pinkman, like Marco Rubio, was brought down by allegations of his connection to organized crime. Also, Mitt’s waiting to watch Season 5 of Breaking Baduntil it comes out on Netflix, and doesn’t want to accidentally overhear any spoilers.

Benjamin Netanyahu
It would be much easier for Romney to Likud Benjamin Netanyahu’s Knesset (if you know what I mean…)* if the Israeli Prime Minister was just a short walk away from the Oval Office. Seeing as Romney and Netanyahu worked together at the Boston Consulting Group in the 1970s, and the leader evokes more respect from Congress than the President of the United States, Netanyahu’s rejection — Article II of the Constitution notwithstanding — was one of the worst defeats in Israeli politics since the breakup of the Tribes of Israel with the death of King Solomon.

Morty Schapiro
Nobody’s quite sure why the Romney campaign passed Morty up, but rumors persist that it had something to do with Morty, a $10,000 bet, and Ann Romney’s horse.

Mitt Romney circa 2004
A moderate Republican willing to compromise with his political opponents in the name of good governance, the Governor of Massachusetts was hampered by his commitment to reform health care and cover virtually all of the uninsured, as well as his willingness to provide basic civil rights to women and homosexuals. The raging gay feminista-socialist Romney, who had the audacity to sign legislation requiring individuals to obtain health insurance, was deemed too radical for a Romney 2012 campaign trying to shore up its conservative image.

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*Bill Clinton sex.

The 5 Least Smangable First Ladies in American History

With no official duties, salary, or elected position, the First Lady of the United States is first and foremost the hostess, or ho-stess, of the White House. Nevertheless, the First Lady of the United States plays an important role in the Executive Branch, handling everything from official ceremonies of state to the Senate Majority Whip, if you know what I mean (looking at you, Lady Bird Johnson). Sometimes, Presidents’ wives will even be entrusted to handle such politically divisive issues as child obesity and literacy, at least when the Vice President is too busy.

Yet for all of America’s Mrs. Presidentress’ accomplishments as powerful women, celebrities, activists, and interlopers, some of the First Ladies in the annals of history were just downright dogs. What follows is the list of the top five First Ladies that not even JFK would bang.*

Florence “The Machine” Harding

5. Florence Harding
Popularly referred to as The Duchess, Florence “Flo Rida” Harding was quoted as saying, “I know what’s best for the President. I put him in the White house. He does well when he listens to me and poorly when he does not.” Although the circumstances of President Harding’s sudden and untimely 1923 death remain unclear, rumor has it that Warren’s balls had been irreparably busted by his wife. That’s what you get, after all, when you ask your wife for some Teapot Dome after a long day of corruption work in the Oval Office.

4. Ida McKinley
What else can you expect from a woman who’s main devotion in life was crocheting slippers? After losing two daughters in childbirth and a devoted husband to an assassination, Ida most certainly was not DTF. The epilepsy didn’t help either.

Not terribly interested in her husband’s “Old Rough and Ready”

3. Margaret Taylor
Described by others as “a fat, motherly looking woman,” Margaret Taylor’s physical appearance wasn’t nearly as bad as her demeanor. After praying for her husband Zachary to lose the Presidential election of 1848, and still smarting from Free Soil candidate Martin Van Buren’s political smear campaign that Zachary Taylor’s wife “Haveth a Total Butterface,” the First Lady spent much of her time cloistered in the second floor of the Presidential mansion, composing erotic fan fiction about the exploits of Whig Senator Daniel Webster. She did, however, once accidentally walk in on Millard Fillmore’s “personal time” in the mural room, an event that subsequently ruined all men for the First Lady.

2. Pat Nixon
Surprisingly, Pat Nixon never really caught on to the whole “deepthroat” thing.

Surprisingly, “Mary Todd Lincoln” is only the third least appropriate name of a First Lady to shout out during coitus.

1. Mary Todd Lincoln
Mary Todd was crazy. Not the good kind of crazy — the kind of crazy that results in Abe trying to explain away how he was found blindfolded and handcuffed to William Seward in the base of the Washington Monument — but rather the “I had to endure a marriage through the most stressful period in American history and witness my husband’s assassination and I buried my son Tad and I’m addicted to chloral hydrate and I think there’s a wandering Jew trying to steal my purse and now I’m pretty sure my son Robert is trying to kill me” kind of crazy. Abe Lincoln may have been the Rail Splitter, but he certainly wasn’t going to tap that any more than necessary.

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*LOL JFK

The Latest In Rape Prevention: Vagina Dentata

The Latest In Rape Prevention: Vagina Dentata

 

It has come to my attention, with the opening of CARE and tonight’s Take Back the Night event, that there are some men in this world who still do not realize that their pee-pees are not always welcome in our jay-jays[1].

Thankfully, most people will never understand the logic behind this phenomenon. Evolutionary and biological psychology holds that men generally have a higher sex drive because men take quantity of genes spread over quality of genes spread. In other words, they argue that the more “naval troops” a man sends to occupy Vagistan, the more likely it is that his genes will be passed on, whereas women are more careful with what they fuck because we don’t want to waste nine months lugging moron genes around in our uteruses (uteri?). There’s also the “rape myth” (women actually want it and will enjoy it, they’re just playing hard-to-get), and the idea that sexual violence is more about a drive for power than a drive to bump uglies. Don’t ask me why rape happens; I’m not touching that can of worms. Whatever the reason is, men continue to force sex upon women despite years of repeated nagging, which goes to show us that nagging does not work, and it’s time to change evolutionary biology.

Women should evolve vagina teeth.

Ladies, doesn’t it suck to feel powerless against potential rapists after dark in the quad, dressed in a short skirt and fishnets? Do you glare at the strapping young lads passing you by to let them know you’re not only aware of your surroundings but really, really scary? Have you ever actually tried using that mace? Cause I haven’t needed to (the glare must have worked), but in the case of an actual emergency I want to have a weapon that doesn’t require skill, and aiming is hard. Solution? Canines in the vagines.

This is not a new idea. It has appeared in many a lunchtime conversation during my high school days. And according to Wikipedia, “folk stories are frequently told as cautionary tales warning of the dangers of sex with strange women, to discourage rape, and around campfires at Boy Scout outings in an attempt to incentivize good Christian abstinence,” so apparently someone has thought of this before me.  Let me clarify: I’m not advocating an end to hookups. God no. They’re all we have left at Northwestern to convince us that we’ll be sexually acceptable in the real world. I’m advocating a built-in trump card. Think about it: the ability to castrate men if they insert themselves into unwanted places will make assholes less free with their willies.

And you know what else?  It will be very difficult in most cases for a man to argue that she was “asking for it,” or for a woman to argue that she was raped when she wasn’t. If that lady doesn’t want the cucumber in her baby kitchen, there’s gonna be a very finely sliced cucumber to show for it. This will eliminate a large amount of ambiguity in the legal system. In fact, I’d like us all to close our eyes and imagine the judicial trials of potential rapists. “Is the defendant’s quiverbone still attached?” “Only some of it, your honor.” “Then she probably didn’t want it in her coochie-snorcher. Case closed.”

I’m not really sure how we’re going to evolve this. Maybe we can invest in some vagina dentures for high-risk women or something, and the rest of our vaginas will catch on that this is a good idea. Our copycat reproductive systems seem to collectively believe that aligning our periods with our roommates and best friends is a fucking brilliant idea, so it shouldn’t take too long to catch on. “Oh, there’s blood coming out of your vagina? I want some too!” Fuck you and your weird habits, genitalia.

I’m also not sure what medical care our nether pearly whites will need…toothbrushes? We’ll see. Til then, the mace, prayer, and angry glare are going to have to suffice.

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[1] Disclaimer: A friend of mine has noted that the majority of Northwestern frat boys she has hooked up with will immediately freak the fuck out and back away at least three feet in terror if a chick tells them “no” in the bedroom. To those: thank you. Your mommas taught you well.

Sexist Poker

Dear Friends,

He at least could have shaved his armpits

On April 21st, I saw something I was not supposed to see. As I was walking through the frat quad to purchase some hummus at Lisa’s, a high-pitched noise befell upon my ears. As I furtively peeped in the windows of the offending house to find out what it was, I saw inside some dress-up games being played by a group of male Northwestern students. I later learned that this was a strip poker tournament, which typically involves groups of men using their poker skills and the game’s rules to induce the clothing removal of somewhat intoxicated women.

But what I saw Saturday afternoon was really just the “Sexist Poker Tournament.” In this house were at least 50 students, all representing some demographic of women. There were sexy housemaids, sexy flappers, sexy hippies, sexy pirate lasses, sexy nurses, sexy Disney princesses, sexy pioneers, and one feeble attempt to emulate Mila Kunis in Black Swan. There were so many sexually appealing women in that room that I considered dropping my skirt to make a “sexy nudist” costume, crashing in, and being a lesbian for the night. Then I remembered that this was a fraternity and there was a small floppy penis underneath Mila’s tutu.

This idea sounds.... intriguing.

The sickening noise I had heard came from several Katy Perry impersonators who were attempting a rendition of “The One That Got Away,” which unintentionally borrowed elements from a 12-tone piece by Schoenberg that I think I once heard in a foreign horror film. All of the students were dressed up in short skirts, high heels, makeup, excessively padded bras, sequins, glitter, and other stereotypical female garb (the overwhelming majority of women do not wear any of these on a regular basis, but rather legging-pants and a DM t-shirt). The annoying squeals of delight, the sexualizing of sluts at the expense of normal women everywhere, and the sheer number of applications of the word “adorbz” was sickening and traumatizing. This is a brutal incident that has imposed upon the various female communities on campus. This was an act of violence.

The fraternity cannot be identified at the moment due to privacy issues, but they have issued this statement:

“Religion and race have been an issue this quarter, but nobody’s done anything controversial involving gender. We wanted to give everyone an equal opportunity to be offended.”

In other news, Sigma Phi has announced that their next fundraiser will support the Women’s Center.