Op Ed: I Am a Woman, and I’m Not Writing on the Board for a Group
While the struggles of working with male classmates are obvious, based on all previous interactions with men, the most pressing issue facing Women of Group Projects is their forced position as group writer. Activists on campus have faced an unmeasurable struggle trying to convince around 40% of the student body to not just bring their own pens to class, but use them. Ginny Slate, president of FSU’s WOW (Women Opposed to Whiteboards) chapter spoke out yesterday in the weird hybrid space that was formerly the Free Speech Zone but is now also somehow where Market Wednesday happens.
“In classrooms all across the nation, from middle school to higher education, women are constantly forced to work alongside loud, sweaty men in group activities. Enough is enough! Our hands are sore, our minds tired from coming up with how to rephrase those weird little half-sentences you all love to scream at us. It’s time we take a stand,” said Slate, as she snapped every single one of her colored pens over her knee, just letting ink drip down her pant leg into a puddle of solidarity. “Just because I spent most of my middle school experience learning how to perfect my bubble letters doesn’t mean it should be the only thing people think I bring to the table. It’s not that I prefer writing to coming up with ideas; it’s just that I’m only like 47% sure that most men know how to write.”
Connor from your Public Administration class insisted that he did, in fact, know how to write. “Look,” he said, gesturing to his average-sized hands that can definitely hold at least a pencil, “I wouldn’t be the co-co-co-captain of my championship-winning IM volleyball team if I didn’t have a killer mind-palm-eye connection. Plus if I get a chick to do it, I have more time to look at pictures of me and the boys shot-gunning Natties during one of our world-famous pre-games,” he said. “Point being, you can forget about me touching any sort of pretty-colored Expo marker to write the group’s suggestions on how to fix poverty that we came up within five minutes. Leave the writing to the girls,” commented Connor as he grabbed his longboard to head to Starbs and meet his inexplicably female friends.
The feelings of students of today can really be summarized, unbelievably, in the words of Connor. This means that it’s time to put an end to the false narrative that men don’t know how to write on a comically large sheet of notebook paper with a grape-scented Mr. Sketch marker. However, it will be an uphill battle against toxic masculinity, which has somehow branded the centuries-old practice of writing, a skill denied to women for most of human history, as feminine.