To the men (and women, and others) of Wesleyan:
Boys, will you please stop making your “co-eds” cry? I know that you need the freedom to get fucked up on the weekends and grind up against and go home with who ever is wearing the shortest skirt. I know that you just can’t be more than friends right now. I read He’s Just Not That Into You. I am trying not to seem too interested. I will never call you first again. I will relinquish all my power and wait for you to decide you think I’m cute. But if follow this formula, will I still end up feeling like crap?
We have been here for a month, and already I have had to hold each one of my close friends while she cries. A love that ended months or years ago still hurts her, but “it is so easy for him”. A fuck buddy leaves the buddy label behind in favor of other thinner, less needy fucks. I have heard scantily clad young women, with tears in their eyes, in the bathrooms of frats and on the streets of Fountain and High talk about the friend with benefits who kicked her out of her room to sell coke to three freshmen girls, or the boyfriend who becomes an ex-boyfriend every other weekend when he stops talking to her. I have promised to kick numerous people’s asses because I just don’t know what else to say or what else to do.
I know it’s really hard to receive love and sexual pleasure. I feel you. However, I strongly suggest you respond to this challenge with honesty. Honesty tempered with compassion. Especially if you wouldn’t consider yourself a sexist asshole. “Enlightened” men do not make their sexual and/or romantic partners feel less valuable than spilled beer. Maybe Wesleyan can be the place where you not only learn about macroeconomics, but also where you learn to leave your ego, your fear and your macho bullshit behind.
Let me cry because I will never, ever look like America’s Next Top Model and because I get farther away from that body at every meal. Let me cry because my grandma Basha and her mother Zelda before her died without ever being loved. Let me cry because our president and countless other leaders around the world are killing and starving hundreds of people. Let me cry because there are students on this campus that feel invisible, and because I don’t know how to talk to them or be an ally. Let me cry because I know that when I die this world will still be as fucked up as it is today. But don’t make me cry because you can’t treat with respect the person who thinks you’re incredible.
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