Going home for any break from college is inevitably an emotional rollercoaster. Of course, the nostalgia comes flooding in — driving past the park where you had your first kiss, spending what little time you have left with your childhood dog, or remembering the carefree life you once had when all your friends lived within a few miles of each other, instead of flights across the country. It’s hard to change environments so drastically, let alone so tainted with memories of your past life in your hometown.
That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of pros to going home for break, too: no roommates congregating every shared space and a refrigerator that isn’t split between 5 different girls. Going shopping with your mom (on her dollar), maybe even taking off work for a week or two, and sleeping in your own bed. And most importantly, seeing your hometown friends.
But this break especially left me questioning a lot. What year is it? Do men actually still view women in such a misogynistic way? After spending almost two years at UCSB, I forgot what it was like trying to be chill at the function while noticing how misogyny bleeds through the cracks of normal interactions.
And I know this isn’t just me — a TikTok with this exact same caption amassed over 1.2 million likes and 5.8 million views, even accumulating 13 of my friends to repost it, showing its sheer (and unfortunate) relatability.
I’m not even kidding — after this experience, I had to open TikTok and re-repost the video to get it to the top of my feed.
Now, I’m not going to get into the specifics of some of the conversations I had to force myself to sit through, but let’s just say that some of these outlandish comments I hadn’t heard since middle school, when boys “didn’t know any better.” I was appalled at the way these people think, and how different it was from anything I’d heard in Santa Barbara.
Throwing a football in the front yard, but it’s “guys only.” Discussing not voting for Kamala Harris inherently because she was a woman. Genuinely believing, and expressing their unwanted opinion, that a woman being good at her sport is “unattractive.”
I felt like I’d teleported back in time. They were loud and wrong and worst of all, casual. Like they expected us not to bat an eye.
I’m not saying misogyny doesn’t exist at UCSB: I’ve had my fair share of encounters — the confidence of a Sig Chi man to cut in front of you in a two hour line (the Roger’s tacos line at Soltopia, to be specific…you know who you are), or having your ideas ignored in the group project until a man says the same exact thing. But there’s something to be said about the environment here at UCSB that actively guards against it.
Going home reminded me what happens when that environment isn’t there.
Against the stigma that everyone here at UCSB are “degenerates” (yes, someone actually said that to me), we’re relatively like-minded, intelligent people working towards our degrees at a predominantly liberal institution. We’re in mandated history and sociology classes, and, at least with the community of people I surround myself with, we’re people who wouldn’t let comments like these slide. Sure, there are men who are inherently misogynistic, but the atmosphere here at UCSB at least tries to work against it.
And it made me think. These men staying in their hometowns form an echo chamber of misogyny, insecurity, and ignorance. It made me so grateful to be able to attend a university where this type of rhetoric isn’t so normalized, and embarrassed to be even engaging in conversations with men who truly believed the things they were saying.
Honestly, I don’t have the answer for you. I don’t know what exactly to do in these situations, because, realistically, there are social conventions in place. When you get angry and speak up for yourself, you’re “easily rage-baited” and “need to chill.” But if you sit back silently, you’ll be called a “pushover” or a “pick-me.”
However, I do know that the answer is not to say nothing. You’re not going to alter a man’s feelings towards women in one conversation, especially if he is surrounded by his friends who feel the same way. But it’s the normalization of this type of rhetoric that is the real problem. Men are going to be misogynistic — that’s the backwards world we live in, and honestly, going home for break made me realize that.
But it’s important to express that this isn’t normal. Even though some of their comments deserved a heated, enraged debate, I realized that giving them that reaction wouldn’t help anything.
Just saying, “that was a weird thing to say,” and moving on. Not giving it the time of day or even another breath, and changing the topic. Doing anything but laughing and anything but staying silent.
Trying to be chill at the function while witnessing blatant misogyny is an unfortunate and normalized truth in our society. But it’s our job not to let it slide.