moe09
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
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Post by moe09 on Apr 6, 2008 17:06:59 GMT -5
First, one must note that the t-shirt and the promotional week are actually in no way related (to each other) by GUGS. The shirt's slogan is not the slogan for the week, rather another GUGS t-shirt that they decided to produce. Here's the link: www.thehoya.com/node/15779
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Post by strummer8526 on Apr 6, 2008 18:38:00 GMT -5
Wow...people need something real to complain about. They should have a hunger strike in front of the GUGS grills. What a bunch of idiots these people complaining must be.
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PhillyHoya
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Post by PhillyHoya on Apr 6, 2008 19:17:25 GMT -5
I find the whole thing ridiculous. Sooooo overblown and pointless. (Can you tell how I really feel?)
I mean, no one protested the SAVE SECOND BASE shirts (provided they were for Breast Cancer Alliance) or the old Hoya Blue's takes on beer/liquor logos. But making a lame joke about meat and breasts? Seriously people, get over yourselves.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Apr 7, 2008 0:07:08 GMT -5
The backlash against the protest has been pretty severe from what I can tell. The people protesting this made a major error in judgment by going after one of the most popular and least controversial groups on campus over such a trivial issue.
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moe09
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
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Post by moe09 on Apr 7, 2008 5:15:01 GMT -5
Yeah, I thought this was pretty ridiculous myself. No one ever said anything about the fact that their name is "GUGS" - which I'm pretty sure is a play on breasts in and of itself.
They say that the t-shirts are offensive to women? But how? If someone would at least say, "here's how it's offensive..." then I would be more than glad to entertain the idea, but where is the offensiveness? The way that I could see this being "offensive" would be that if they construed it as comparing large hamburgers to large breasts, and thus women as pieces of meat for our enjoyment (which is what I assume is being said). Are they comparing women to pieces of meat? It doesn't seem to be. D - it means their burgers are big. That's about it. "Grade A, Size D" doesn't scream to me, "Big breasts make women pieces of meat because burgers are meat and they're comparing burgers to breasts." That doesn't seem to be the relationship that GUGS is going for here, and I think if you make that inference you're not getting the meaning of the shirt. Nowhere on the shirt does it have the word "breasts." Instead, it seems to me that they couldn't find another "letter" comparison to Grade "A", and therefore went with Size D, which is universally known by all to be big. The comparison is to largeness, not to breasts, nor women.
Had they said, "we've got big, grade A meat," would anyone have said that this was representing the male body as meat? No. It's a joke. Get over it. There are better battles to be fought on the front of sexism.
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hoyatables
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Post by hoyatables on Apr 7, 2008 9:41:03 GMT -5
If you read the articles, the opponents state exactly what is offensive about the shirt -- that it equates women with being a piece of meat. Which is what you assumed the objection to be and dismissed as inoffensive. The term "D" is only used as a proxy for size in one context -- a woman's cup size. Therefore, the inference is real and direct.
I think reasonable people can disagree on whether the t-shirt slogan is offensive, humorous, or something in between. But I think you stretch logic when you try to argue that the direct analogy between big burgers and big breasts is not being drawn.
I could care less about the shirt or the reaction to it though I am happy to see the resolution seems to have been relatively quick and reasonable (facebook wars notwithstanding). I just felt it was necessary to point out that the point of view of the opponents was fairly grounded in a logical point of view. Whether you agree that the offense taken was reasonable or not is another issue entirely.
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Post by strummer8526 on Apr 7, 2008 9:49:26 GMT -5
Maybe when originally created this wasn't the case, but tell me that now, every allusion to "foot long" hotdogs is not the EXACT same thing.
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PhillyHoya
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Post by PhillyHoya on Apr 7, 2008 11:10:29 GMT -5
No one ever mentions that they have Guys Gone Wild now too.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Apr 7, 2008 11:23:44 GMT -5
We need Jeremy Piven to come to campus and sling some good ole ground beef on some of these groups. Mask and Bauble(?), GU Pride, the Women’s Center, United Feminists, AND Take Back the Night? Seriously? Where's the Center for Women, Feminists United, and the Non-Male's Center?
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Apr 7, 2008 11:30:25 GMT -5
Column on the issue: GUGS T-Shirts Cross the Line"We are sensitive people here at Georgetown, but for good reason. More often than not, the people who don’t understand what can be considered offensive are straight, white men — a group that largely hasn’t had to deal with a lot of oppression, historically. I guess if you are not often the target of crude jokes, you don’t realize the effect that they can have on other people." Poor poor girl. I bet she has some horrible stories about being repressed when she goes back to her prep school reunion, or at her summer house on the jersey shore.
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hoyatables
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Post by hoyatables on Apr 7, 2008 11:31:33 GMT -5
Maybe when originally created this wasn't the case, but tell me that now, every allusion to "foot long" hotdogs is not the EXACT same thing. It's not, and it is intellectually dishonest to suggest that it is the exact same thing. 1) The term foot-long is descriptive. At best it is a double-entendre. 2) Men have not, broadly speaking, been sexually objectified and discriminated against because of their physical features.
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moe09
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Post by moe09 on Apr 7, 2008 11:42:00 GMT -5
Hoyatables, I never said you couldn't make that inference, it's just that the logic is actually irrational. The fact of the matter is that when you say Grade A, Size D in reference to meat, you're saying that the meat is good meat, and it's large, like large breasts in a size D bra. It would be logically inaccurate to reverse this statement and say that therefore, D-sized breasts are large pieces of meat, and women are also pieces meat. It simply does not follow. So, if you want to make that "inference," by all means your allowed, it's just not actually there...
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hoyatables
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by hoyatables on Apr 7, 2008 11:56:52 GMT -5
Hoyatables, I never said you couldn't make that inference, it's just that the logic is actually irrational. The fact of the matter is that when you say Grade A, Size D in reference to meat, you're saying that the meat is good meat, and it's large, like large breasts in a size D bra. It would be logically inaccurate to reverse this statement and say that therefore, D-sized breasts are large pieces of meat, and women are also pieces meat. It simply does not follow. So, if you want to make that "inference," by all means your allowed, it's just not actually there... Moe, that's a good point. If A then B does not necessarily mean if B then A. But I don't think that's the objection here -- rather, it is simply the use of cup size. And of course there's always that problem with claims of of objectification/harrassment -- it is inherently subjective and can't always be disproved with logic. I confess that I don't really care all that much about this -- I'm just trying to provide the counterarguments on what has been a relatively one-sided thread. Ultimately, I think GUGS took the right approach with its response -- rather than debate the issue on the merits, it just abandoned the t-shirt idea.
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Post by AustinHoya03 on Apr 7, 2008 12:07:14 GMT -5
"I think they are comfortable with it and don’t see it as degrading, but see it as humor." "People in general just don’t seem to know what constitutes crossing the line when they make jokes about women." Just wondering, have these students ever heard a joke before? Most jokes are crude, cruel and degrading. They often "cross the line." That is why we sickos laugh at them. I think Steve Earle said it best: Dirty Lenny died so we could all be free. So I would like to direct those whose sensibilities are offended by the mention of a bra size here.
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moe09
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Post by moe09 on Apr 7, 2008 12:28:02 GMT -5
I'm glad you did, hoyatables, I did go a bit far with my first post. I guess the main reason I was upset about it was that it seems that there are many other things that could better serve the time of those fighting for women's rights. I've taken a few classes on Women's Studies (I know this doesn't make me any sort of expert), and to me this was just such a small, subjective issue that it really should have been passed up.
References to body parts are going to be made in jokes. I don't really think this reference really had any negative intentions, especially coming from GUGS, which I always find to be one of my favorite groups on campus (as they're always there to support whatever cause, and donate to causes). I'll admit that I can see why people would be upset, I just hope that they can realize no harm was meant, and perhaps laugh a little bit at the shirts, and then move on to more important issues.
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SaxaCD
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Post by SaxaCD on Apr 8, 2008 8:48:35 GMT -5
I don't even think they necessarily need to move on to bigger issues. Just have a laugh, sip a beer and eat a darn burger -- that, to me, sounds a lot more satisfying than engaging in the usual "i'm offended, let's protest" thing recent high school grads often like to think of as "college life".
Damn, now i'm hungry.
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afirth
Bulldog (over 250 posts)
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Post by afirth on Apr 8, 2008 9:57:09 GMT -5
I find the t-shirts hilarious, and I'm sad that I won't be able to buy one at Grills Gone Wild week.
Anyone who's on Facebook should check out the "For Every GUGS Burger They Don't Eat, I'll Have Two!" group, and the "Grilling Gone Wrong" anti-GUGS group. Shows the maturity of some of our students...in one of the threads people eventually got to a comparison between GUGS and Hitler/genocide. I'm not even kidding.
I also agree how ironic/hypocritical it is that no one ever protested the "Save Second Base" shirts. Sure, no one is ever going to protest a cancer organization, that just wouldn't really go over well. But if you're going to make the argument that breast joke t-shirts are offensive, the SSB ones actually seem MORE offensive because they're basically promising men the right to feel women up in return for saving her life. Ergo, a woman's life is worth getting to touch her breasts.
But, no one ever complained about those (as they rightly should not have). And no one should really be complaining about "Grade A, Size D" t-shirts. Don't we have more important women's issues to be concerned/worried about? And for these women who claim to want absolute equality between the sexes and to eliminate the double standards that exist in our society, I'm sure that none of them would have protested GUGS releasing a "We've Got Huge Wieners" or a "Size Matters" t-shirt. I know that my girl friends and I laugh about Edited jokes all the time (particularly in regard to how 'size matters')...why can't we have some humor about a breast joke?
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Post by lightbulbbandit on Apr 8, 2008 11:12:49 GMT -5
I just looked at the facebook page and I wonder how serious everyone even claiming to support the group is. The wall post for the event on the 5th at 6:14 finishes:
"I don't actually find it offensive (well, I'm a guy, so I wouldn't) as much as it is EMBARASSING. I just think it's a really classless; it just makes me think of redneck middle America."
For a person educated enough to get into Georgetown to seriously complain about denigrating women, and in the same breath denigrate half the country as embarrassing, classless rednecks would take some special class of stupidity. That or he just thinks its okay to denigrate certain groups and not others...
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Post by williambraskyiii on Apr 8, 2008 12:05:45 GMT -5
so glad i attended georgetown before its students jumped the shark and turned into PCU-level d-bags.
Actually I am sure that these tools who would protest a funny and unoffensive slogan were there when I attended, I just chose to avoid them since I went to college to have FUN.
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Post by strummer8526 on Apr 8, 2008 12:47:29 GMT -5
Can someone tell me why GUGS is being forced to meet to discuss this with Mask and Bauble and MEChA?
One group puts on plays. The other (to best of my knowledge) is one of the self-segregating, anti-"white Georgetown" ethnically-driven groups*. I'm just at a loss for what in God's name people are thinking.
*This isn't meant to sound like some kind of attack bordering on racism--Georgetown's racial situation is an actual mess, though, and it's caused, IN PART, by this same sort of antagonistic mentality that accompanies EVERYTHING.
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