I read an article about a giant snow penis being erected and the controversy it created. The article discussed the way the entire joke was taken by some of the women on campus. Some of the female groups felt that “such a display is demeaning to women”, and that “women do not need to be reminded of the power of the symbol of the male genitalia.”

Although I agree that such a public display is inappropriate, I completely disagree with the reasons these women put forth. I’m willing to bet that the males who erected the sculpture were not thinking, “Hey, let’s create a huge display of male genitalia so that women know that their place in the world is below men”, but rather, “I’m bored. What can we do?” As one of the builders said, “We built it for fun”. I don’t believe that the motives behind such an act are sexist. Sometimes people just do stupid things.

I find that this has been a great trend in certain groups of thinking, such as part of the feminist movement. Sometimes members take things the wrong way. For example, I know of people who complain about commercials for household cleaning products, and state that it’s sexist to have a woman being the token spokesperson. They believe that the creators of the ad have the mindset that the main duty of a woman are the household chores. When I see the commercial, I ask why a male isn’t the spokesperson, why they show a male as being inferior to a female in doing the household chores. And since both sides see things in an opposite manner, I decided to ignore it completely.

After all, we take offence to how we see things, not to how they are.

The idea of women being reminded of the power of the male genitalia is an example of this. In the world, there are many, many phallic symbols. Take almost every type gun as an example. This can even be broadened to just about every projectile weapon. Sure, these things are reminders of the penis; they look the same, they serve a similar purpose, even the actions are the same. But not every single fucking object that holds a point is a phallic symbol. I don’t look at the Washington Monument and say, “Oh yeah, I have a penis. Aren’t penises great and superior in every way to vaginas?”

There seems to be a great oversensitivity still lurking from the PC movement that swept Canada in the 90’s. Things are taken the wrong way many times, when there was no intention of insulting anyone offending any group. I wish people wouldn’t place so much meaning in what others do, especially when the world is so full of sequacious people. Then again, the blind do lead the blind.

The only way I would be able to place some blame on the erectors ::ahem:: of the statue would be if there was some sort of subconscious sexist mindset that they had. This means that the creation of the snow statue was not a conscious decision to menace the women on campus, but rather a subconscious extension of their sexist ideas.

But somehow I doubt that.