And I Thought I'd Never Use The Word "Frosh" Again

Usually I don't notice Frosh week now that I'm out of university.  But this week, it was hard to miss in Canada, thanks to the frosh event at St. Mary's University featuring an offensive chant.

It used to be that frosh week was unregulated and anarchic.  But by the time I went through froshdom in 1992, it was starting to be tamed, and there was more oversight and regulation added in the next few years.  You might think the student body would find that intrusive, but most people I knew welcomed the changes, as there seemed to be a general perception that frosh week really wasn't all that fun.

What I'm getting at is that I'm not at all surprised that this chant existed, or that it had been used for years.  What was surprising was the fact that it was still in use.

This is the sort of story that encourages news outlets to get the public's opinion. Normally I hate it when the news talks to the person on the street, or reads out tweets and e-mails on the topic.  But in this case, I think it is called for, as the disparity of public attitudes is the real issue here.  One tweet the CBC read on the air was from a person defending the students, saying, "You can’t sneeze without offending someone."

First of all, while I understand the basic point that it can be hard to avoid hurting anyone when some are quick to take offence, why is it that people with that viewpoint always seem to complain at the worst possible time?  Really, you feel inconvenienced by the idea of not making fun of raping the underaged?  That's really limiting your topics of conversation?

But that quote stuck out for me because it's a problem society is encountering in a lot of places.  If you're a geek, you're likely aware of controversies arising from behaviour at conventions dedicated to sci-fi, gaming, and technology.  There's an increasing number of women at these places, and suddenly behaviours that were once accepted are now frowned on, and the people asked to change feel hard done by.

We're going to have to accept that a more complex society will have more rules.  The more groups that are interacting with each other, the more likely we're going to offend one another.  Certainly there is a flip side, where groups will have to relax their impulse to be offended (hello, Muslim cartoon readers!)  But asking not to make light of rape is definitely in the category of legitimate offence, and if women are going to be equal partners in society, it's not asking too much to stay away from it.  If that's your equivalent of sneezing, then you're just going to have to find a good antihistamine.