What if it was you?

The female experience for the modern woman may have gotten more equal and/or bearable throughout the years, but by no means is it equal to that of a man's. Objectification is a huge factor of why women are not seen as equals; women are seen as objects, in the eyes of most men. As of very recently, I have identified myself as a feminist, although I never really understood the extent to which women truly suffer because of this objectification. I recently came upon a gem, a short film which asks a simple question to men: what if it was you?

Oppressed Majority is a video that very expertly flip-flops society, putting women into the position of social and economic power, and follows around a man during a day of his life. The events of the video are slightly NSFW: to portray the common man running without his shirt on, the women joggers are not wearing shirts, and there are slight levels of violence. As the man's day progresses, the events become more and more morally troubling, starting at slightly disturbing and eventually ending at a level of the complete violation of rights.

The video begins with the man walking down the street with his son, getting a few comments from women passing by, ranging from "keep smiling, cutie," to "lookin' good." This may seem harmless looking from the outside, but in the perspective of the man, it's weird to have strangers compliment you nonstop, which is what women today have to deal with constantly. It gets even more frustrating when the man goes to pick up his mail, and an acquaintance woman begins to talk to him about business, and stops in the middle of a sentence and says, "you know, I should probably be talking to your wife about this, huh?" This degrades the intelligence and usefulness of the man (therefore the woman in today's society), ultimately making him feel like crap.



The man eventually gets sexually and physically assaulted by a group of girls in an alley (after dropping off his son at daycare, run by a man submissive to his wife), where he afterwards goes to a police station. The policewoman interviewing him was very skeptical and/or unimpressed with his claim, even saying (with a condescending tone), "assaulted in broad daylight, with no witnesses. Who would have thought?" To which the man breaks down crying, and goes out to wait for his wife to pick him up.

After he and his sympathetic wife are leaving the station, the man seems to be severely traumatized, and then breaks down over the overly oppressing "feminist society," to which his wife scolds him for, saying "I can't stand your masculinist nonsense," and then commenting on the clothes he wears, how he may as well have been asking for it.

This video was a unique way of portraying to me, and possibly all males, what women have to deal with constantly in today's society: from sexual objectification, to physical/sexual harassment, to not being taken seriously, and everything in-between. This video has made me realize the true horrors of objectification, and make me even more obligated to fight for the end of it.