“Will you label yourself a feminist?” asked the activist holding the sign as students walked past him on their way to class. Intrigued, I stepped into the patch of grass the students had staked out as the feminist armband zone.
It is interesting that the activists would choose to pass out armbands as a symbol of feminist solidarity. While armbands are good at marking certain people as members of a group and denote the team captain in soccer, the armband is certainly loaded with… less than savory historical connotations. I’m not sure if armbands are the best way to rally support for feminism, considering how the term “feminazi” has made the move from sneer to acceptable English.
Despite the negative historical implications of wearing armbands, I still saw many students throughout the rest of the day proudly flying their colors on their sleeves. Of course, I don’t have a problem if people want to wear them. Students here should be allowed to wear what they want and banning types of clothing is a slippery slope.
I’m just saying that seeing people passing out and wearing armbands on campus left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Were they supposed to establish unity within a group? Bring in an “us vs. them” mentality between the banded and non-banded students? Or was this some kind of psychology experiment made to show that feminists will support anything, however futile, that is even remotely related to feminism?
“All these people have done it,” said the activist as he turned around the sign around to reveal name tags that had been stuck onto the sign by people who had taken an armband to support feminism. Ah, my favorite: peer pressure.
“Would you like to sign your name?”
Well, all the cool kids did it and I don’t want to be on their blacklist when the armbanded ones are kicking in doors looking for dissenters, so your humble author signed his name and took an armband.
Thank you for another data point that indicates feminism is indeed a cancer.
Who let these 2 homeless men get on the campus and hand out their dirty toilet rags to people to support a feminism when it’s obvious that women oppression is clearly not a problem, and even it was, not a problem that these people should be caring about. Clearly not a well thought out way to publicize their interest. Armbands? Really? Feminazi, come on, I would think that students at Cornell could have made that connection seconds after coming up with that idea.
I agree with Ryan DeSantis, surely there would have been some other way to carry out their little protest. Im sure that these bright Cornell students put a lot of thought into this little stunt, but failed to notice how blatantly offensive the armbands are… Not cool
One would think that a paper which considers itself a bastion of free speech would be familiar enough with Tinker v. Des Moines to understand the historic association of armbands with protest. Instead, you rely on the lame and arbitrary Nazi comparison to vilify feminism any way you can.
Very well familiar with Tinker. Not the point of the article, which is clearly tongue-in-cheek in nature.
Lol whatever virgin.
Yeah, I saw them too. I took an armband; used it to blow my nose later that day.
I took one of those armbands because I ran of toilet paper.