The "Price" of Equality

                As a hardcore feminist, the article “She’s Got to Be A Macho Girl” brought up some points that were a little painful to accept for me. It talked about how the equality between the sexes brought on by the feminist movement has led to some negative things, like girls being more aggressive and promiscuous in relationships. Overall it seemed like an article ready to point a finger at feminism for “ruining” our girls.

 One of the quotes that struck me was “As girls come to equal boys in student government, honor societies and athletic teams, they are also behaving much more like boys, Dr. Kearney-Cooke said, and several studies show that girls are smoking and drinking as much as boys are.” I’m not exactly sure this is “behaving much more like boys” as it is just equalizing the aspects of adolescent culture between girls and boys. I’m not sure I would qualify smoking and drinking as male behavior either.

The article also quoted Marty Beckerman, a 19-year-old college student who has written the book Generation SLUT, a “plea for a return to more chaste behavior.” Beckerman believes “that girls may be trying to transform sex into something as meaningless as they believe it is for boys.” I don’t believe that a return to more “chaste” behavior is possible, honestly, and I don’t think it’s the right way to go about fixing the issue of adolescent s having multiple partners and having unsafe sex. Clearly sex is a part of adolescent behavior and culture, the best thing that we can do is to give teenagers the right information at an early enough age. Yes, abstinence works – but not for everyone. We can’t demand that teenagers practice abstinence and then act shocked and shame them when they don’t.

More than that though, the author seemed to be pushing the issue that girls have become more aggressive in relationships and the negative impact this has on adolescents. I think this is a case of being afraid of change – are we supposed to expect women to continue to be submissive and wait for men to come after them? The article’s gist is that “equality comes with a price.” Personally, as a feminist, I’m willing to pay that “price” for the greater good of humanity and the cultural improvement it brings.