Equitable Freedom and Dancing Shoes

• Author: Colleen Sheppard
• Pages: 83-100

83

–5–

Euitable Freedom and

Dancing Shoes

I love getting all dressed up. I do. I love my pretty dresses. I love the way my

heels sound as I walk (or rut) around my apartment. I love the Beyoncé

pump-up music my friends and I lien to as we get ready to head out. I

feel carefree and unburdened by my thoughts and worries. I don’t see

anything wrong with me sincerely enjoying these simple, gendered clichés

of womanhood, as long as they don’t limit my self-expression. I underand

where these norms originate.

Every so often, when I’ve decided to put on one of my sexy dresses and

go out on the town, my critical femini perspeive slithers in unannounced

and bites the head of‌f my “carefree” night.

— ayLa Lefkowitz, “Dresses, Drinks anD misogyny:

a night at the annuaL rugBy Banquet,” 20121

Yeohee Im was 23 when she left her hometown of Busan, South Korea, to

travel halfway across the world to work with Verdu, a renowned elerical

engineering professor.

. . .

When they arrived at Verdu’s home, Im says they poured some drinks

and turned on the movie. Im says she sat at the edge of one of the two

couches in Verdu’s living room. Verdu chose to sit on the same couch and

sat “right next to [her]” with their “arms touching at lea some of the time,”

according to Im.

While the movie was playing, Im says Verdu asked if she had a boyfriend

and put his arm around her shoulder for “a short time.” Im says she was very

confused and arted to panic.

Discrimination stories

84

“It was happening in his home,” she said. “And right in front of me there

was a photo of him and his daughter. I was panicking, can this be sexual

harassment? I know that his daughter is a similar age to me. I was wondering,

is he doing this because I am a similar age to his daughter? In that moment,

I was ju panicking.”

— aLanna vagianos, “graD stuDent says princeton prof who sexuaLLy

harasseD her was given sLap on the wrist,” 20172

“Going into it, I felt like I trued the police,” says Ava . . . “I had no reason not

to tru the process.”

Looking back, she describes an abrupt loss of faith.

“I arted to put it together that I wasn’t necessarily being believed,” she

says. “It was like the f‌loor opened up underneath me. I felt like I was sinking.”

— ava wiLLiams, university of western ontario stuDent whose sexuaL

assauLt fiLe was cLoseD anD LaBeLLeD “unfounDeD,” 20173

The capacity to think independently, to take risks, to assert ourselves

mentally is inseparable from our physical way of being in the world, our

feelings of personal integrity. If it is dangerous for me to walk home late of

an evening from the library, because I am a woman and can be raped, how

self- possessed, how exuberant can I feel as I sit working in that library?

— aDrienne rich, “taking women stuDents seriousLy,” 19794

   selective quotes (there are thousands of others)

raise concerns about sexual assault and harassment in the post-

secondary educational context. In the f‌irst quote, Ayla Leowitz speaks

out about her experience of sexual harassment during a university

sports banquet to which she had worn high-heeled shoes and a “sexy”

dress. Her words remind us of how women may blame themselves or

be treated as partly responsible for sexual harassment or abuse. The

second quote raises the troubling question of why a brilliant young

graduate student like Yeohee Im, studying far away from her home

country, has to worry about sexual advances from her professor. In