On May 25, 2016, a sign was hung from the University of California Santa Barbara’s entrance that read, “Feminism is Cancer.” The sign was promoting a lecture on this topic on the UCSB campus. A week before this sign was displayed, a sorority was promoting the screening of "The Hunting Ground." "The Hunting Ground" is a documentary exposing the sexual assault statistics on college campus’s across America and how colleges were showing no help to the students who were victims of sexual assault on their campus. The UCSB sorority was receiving backlash from organizations on campus saying the documentary promotes a rape-culture in a negative way and the film had to move locations from a large lecture hall on campus to a sorority house which only allowed for a much smaller screening of the documentary.
The amount of disrespect the documentary was receiving compared to the awareness for the “Feminism is Cancer” lecture upset many students on UCSB campus. I found out about the situation from a UCSB freshman named Jordan, a political science major. She publicly conveyed her opinion on the matter on her Facebook page, following a post that the UCSB Feminist Studies Department published. The department publicly wrote:
"We denounce the message that 'Feminism is Cancer' as hate speech deployed to exploit the traditions of inquiry and discussion that make the university such a special place…The event is being promoted on social media as showing how feminism has 'turned into something that is bad for both women and men.' In fact, as the provocative title of the lecture makes clear, this is an attack on the intellectual and activist commitment of scholars across the university whose research and teaching focus on the ways that relations of gender, intersecting with race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, nation, ability and other differences, affect every aspect of society."
Jordan backed up the Feminist Studies Department by saying:
"How is it that the 'Feminism is Cancer' lecture is still being held tomorrow, while 'The Hunting Ground Film' was cancelled? This is a clear illustration of who carries power and who is continually silenced… Feminism is not about gaining power for women while simultaneously disadvantaging men. I dare to say these uninformed individuals have no idea the ways feminism operates to benefit our society as a whole.”
Like Jordan, many students at UCSB were appalled by this lecture and the ideals it was promoting. Jordan could not personally attend the lecture, but a friend of hers did, reporting back that there was nothing important to ponder about and the lecture was split up between those who supported the lecture topic and those who wanted to see who was behind the program and what they had to say.
The irony between the pushback for the screening of the "The Hunting Ground" and the promotion of a patronizing lecture that is entitled “Feminism is Cancer” is a giant leap backwards for the progression of feminism, which is only trying help create gender equality. I am baffled that there could possibly be any support for a lecture as crude and misogynistic as this one. Comparing feminism to something as frightening as Cancer is a horrible display of emotions that is extremely inappropriate by any means necessary. I understand that everyone sees the world differently and everyone has a right to believe, or not to believe, in something. But this lecture title, let alone the content, does not deserve any amount of tolerance no matter what points were being made.
I am a feminist as well as a Women’s and Gender Studies minor. I completely agree with both points that the Feminist Studies Department and Jordan made on the situation. "The Hunting Ground" is an informative and important documentary for any person to see for themselves, especially college students. If impactful films like "The Hunting Ground" keep receiving protests against its showings, then the message gets lost and leaves a lot of vital information unseen, that is only beneficially for the audience and the impact it can create on defeating rape culture. If anything promotes a negative message to women, it is not a film that exposes rape culture on college campuses, it is lectures like the “Feminism is Cancer" one promoted on UCSB’s campus.
