Cure Breast Cancer -- So Horny Frat Boys Can Grope Them!

I probably should have written this long ago. I was just far too angry.

About a month ago, for about two weeks, I had to pass a fraternity on my way to class every day. Every day, I was left irritated on good days, furious on bad, because of the banner across the front of it. "Save Second Base," it proclaimed in large black letters, while below two hands groped a pair of disembodied breasts in a pink bikini top. It was meant to draw attention to a fundraiser that the fraternity was doing in partnership with a campus sorority, the same one that sold pink "Save Second Base" t-shirts in the spring -- pink with white, six-inch-high letters that at least ten people were wearing in every lecture I attended. The shirts bothered me then, and still do, but the banner was worse. It simply personifies all the things that bothered me about this campaign.

The first and biggest problem with this angle is that apparently the entire point of wiping out breast cancer is to give boys something to fondle. Simply put, it reinforces the notion that women's breasts exist for men's entertainment. It's bad enough that any woman with a bra bigger than a B-cup is apparently a free target for ogling. It's bad enough that that's considered acceptable behavior in some circles. But for women to reinforce that, especially women fundraising for a disease that is at best stressful, painful, and depressing and at worst deadly, makes me queasy.

The floating breasts on the banner bothered me, too. It's dehumanizing. Again, it serves to reinforce the idea that breasts exist for men's entertainment and pleasure, but it also effectively removes the woman from the picture, or identify her solely by, again, something that in their minuds exists for men's pleasure. As a human being, I find it personally offensive. It makes me want to refuse to show mine to anyone, ever again, just on the off chance that they're as big a jackass as the makers of that banner.

My great aunt fought and beat breast cancer. I've participated in Relay For Life. I care about fighting breast cancer, but not at the cost of giving up my right to be seen as a person. And it upsets me that others feel like it's necessary to give up those basic rights in order to find a cure, because it isn't. It really isn't. There are thousands, millions of talented, dedicated, caring people who want to find a cure for cancer and who don't need the titillation of squeezing a boob to be motivated to do that. I refuse to believe that that group doesn't include the majority of men, even adolescents. Give them some fucking credit and stop pretending it's about feeling someone up, because it isn't. It's about helping people that are in pain and can't do anything about it for themselves, not taking away their dignity and humanity too.