How is the SMU bake sale any different than this one, which was not only allowed to happen, but encouraged:
Sex cookies" ice the case on unequal pay
BY CYNTHIA BILLHARTZ
Post-Dispatch updated: 04/29/2003 11:42 PM
"Have a sex cookie," Sarah McCabe, 21, urges a fellow Webster University student who has stopped to browse the Behavioral and Social Sciences club's bake sale inside Webster Hall.
No, the "sex cookies" aren't racy delicacies for prurient consumption. And this isn't a bake sale just for the sake of raising money - although that is an added bonus.
Instead, the cookies are artfully iced with either the Mars or Venus astrological signs, commonly used to represent male and female gender. And the primary purpose of the bake sale - which also includes doughnuts, brownies, muffins and sundry other non-sex delicacies - is to raise awareness of wage disparity between men and women. The BASS club is charging different prices for its baked goods, depending on the purchaser's sex and race.
All proceeds will go to Rape And Violence End Now, a local nonprofit organization that offers classes and groups to men who are seeking to change their violent behavior against women.
A list tacked to the wall behind the table - as well as one on the red T-shirt that McCabe wears - specifies the prices.
McCabe, a junior majoring in social sciences and minoring in women's studies, pitched the idea for the sale to the club, after finding it on the Web site for the National Organization for Women.
Those who buy baked goods are also handed literature from that Web site, which states that women today are paid, on average, 76 cents for every dollar that men are paid. On the men-women scale, wages for women have increased less than 1 cent a year since the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, when they were paid 59 cents for every dollar made by men. At that rate, NOW points out, women won't achieve parity until 2042.
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Most of the students who pass by the table think the concept is a good one. By mid-morning, no one has really complained. And by 10:30 a.m., the cash box is already stuffed with nearly $60. Several students have made donations without buying anything.
"If we were over in the business department, things would probably be much different," says senior Dajuan Raab, 22, also a member of BASS.
"The business department is male-dominated and more conservative," McCabe explains. "In this building, we are the more progressive, left-leaning liberals."
Adds Raab: "This department is also more politically correct. So even if someone doesn't agree with what we're doing, they're less likely to say it."
McCabe begins another sentence, then stops and worries that she's stereotyping. She wants to clarify that there are a lot of really good people in the business department.
A few minutes later, class ends and the hallway fills with students.
Sophomore Gabriel Dalay, 24, peruses the table.
"Everything's a dollar for white men," Raab tells him.
"What about the poor white boy?" Dalay asks.
"Even as a poor white man, you will make more than a poor white woman," McCabe says.
For the most part, Dalay is cool with the idea of the sliding-scale bake sale.
"But just because someone is white doesn't necessarily mean they have more money or can get a higher-paying job," he says. "Me for one, I have a lot of tattoos, so I'll probably have trouble finding a high-paying job. But most of the time, that's the case, I guess."
He buys a doughnut and leaves.
At precisely 11:02 a.m., a white male student expresses his disbelief that he's being charged more than women and minority males. He mocks the BASS club by giving them an exaggerated thumbs up.
"He was late for class, which could have something to do with it, but he didn't need to be so rude. Gosh! These shoes are hurting my feet." says Raab, removing a high-heel shoe and rubbing her foot.
"There's a lot of research on that, you know," McCabe says. "On the bondage of shoes."
A few minutes later, the young women are debating whether it's OK to use their feminine wiles - tight clothing, high heels and the like - to get ahead in the work world.
"Don't you feel like using your physical attributes is undermining your intelligence?" asks sophomore Heather Arnold, 20, who has just arrived to help with the sale.
Senior Markes Anderson, 23, shells out 78 cents for a doughy treat, but says he plans to make 100 percent of what the average white male makes.
Nevertheless, he loves the idea of the bake sale because he says "it brings the issue to our front door."
A middle-age white man stops by the table and reads the sign.
"You are going to charge me more because I'm a white male? You just lost my business," he says.
"It's so sad," McCabe says, shaking her head. "Such aggression. I didn't make the system - I can't help it."
And yet, she and the other young women throw out an interesting and surprising theory - that if females were to somehow gain the upper hand in society, they would probably dominate and discriminate, too.
"When you are the person who has all the power," says McCabe "it's hard to see how it affects all the others."
Reporter Cynthia Billhartz: E-mail:
cbillhartz@post-dispatch.com Phone: 314-340-8114
Oh...that's right, because the SMU bake sale was held by white men, and not a "repressed minority".
That was different. It's OK to do that stuff when you're a member of an elite, protected group, and those were feminazis. Let's just keep claiming repression people. Eventually, it'll sink in.