Remember those awesome signs that fraternities used to/still hang up on college move-in day? The ones designed to rile up freshmen and strike fear in the heart of parents?
As a refresher, they went a little something like this:
"Thank you fathers, for your freshmen daughters."
"21 to drink, 18ish to sleep over."
"Rowdy and fun! Hope your baby girl is ready for a good time!"
My friend took this picture of a frat house near our college
The objectifying signs got at least one fraternity suspended, after community members reported feeling disturbed by their display. And frankly, it’s hard to blame them. In an environment in which one out of every four women will be raped, it’s easy to take these signs as more of a threat than a joke.
This year, instead of waiting for their universities to respond, some enterprising sorority women took matters into their own hands. The women of West Virginia University grabbed their paint pens and bed sheets, and created their own provocative posters.
"Freshman son drop-off," one sign reads. And right next to it, "You can drop off daddy too."
"Our milkshakes bring all the DILFs to the yard," reads another.
Some houses joked about pulling out...
...But this house took it all the way home.
The signs seems like a tongue-in-cheek response to the frat-endorsed sexism that gets thrown at women each year, and so far, no one has been suspended.
And if anyone is concerned about the "reverse sexism" at play here, they're missing the point: The very fact that men making sexually aggressive signs is tradition, and women making them is news, tells you all you need to know.
