A Cornell student delivered a thesis lecture in her underwear in order to combat systemic oppression.
Sorting out the tangled jumble of ideas that together define feminism can be a head-scratching experience. “We aren’t just sexual commodities,” some of them say, as they strip down to their lingerie.
An “I’m Spartacus” moment took place at Cornell University the other day, but because it was led by a young woman who grew up in a sex-drenched culture, it was more like an “I’m Victoria’s Secret” moment.
“Strip, everybody,” said senior Letitia Chai after removing her clothes down to her bra and panties to deliver her thesis. The Cornell Daily Sun reports that 28 of 44 students present doffed their clothing in solidarity.
Chai was reacting to the systematic oppression of being asked whether it was a great idea to deliver a lecture on the refugee crisis while wearing skimpy cut-offs. The professor of the class, “Acting in Public: Performance in Everyday Life,” was trying to do Chai a favor; college boys, like boys in general, are easily distracted by the sight of female flesh and are less likely to process what a woman is saying when they’re leering at her body parts.
Moreover, to the extent a college professor’s job is to prepare young people for the real world by gently nudging them away from teen habits and toward the way adults who take their careers seriously behave, the pedagogue was providing Chai with useful counseling. A year at Cornell costs a bit more than $70,000, and it is axiomatic that a degree from such an Ivy League university is mainly seen, these days, as a method for enhancing students’ value on the job market. College students need to be taught extremely basic skills like how to write an email, so it isn’t obvious that they understand that they shouldn’t show up for a job dressed like their last gig was prowling Eighth Avenue asking men, “Want a date?”