Opinion: URGENT: Respect female DJs

As many of you may know, I am a famous DJ on campus. And for those who don’t, just know that my DJ experience ranges from international events (Biz all-campus party) to more intimate VIP gatherings (my friends’ birthday parties). Whether I’m playing for hundreds of you or just a dozen friends and acquaintances, my sets often have one thing in common: men piss me off.

Let me be clear: I love DJing. Actually, I’m obsessed with it. Only rarely will I ever say “no” to a gig, and I prioritize late-night “DJ Club” meetings over pending homework assignments on a weekly basis. Only one thing can taint a set for me, and it’s when my male peers tell the boy standing next to or behind me that he’s killing the set. I really would not be writing this if it’d only been once or twice that men approached my board and craned their necks to find the nearest man to congratulate. To be clear, this is after my name is bolded in a party email, I’ve stood in the front of a room for hours, and am hunched over my large, light-up, pretty-obvious-if-you-ask-me DJ board. Once the miscredited male DJ has pointed the perpetrator in my direction and they magically become aware of my existence, their standard response is usually a thoughtless chuckle followed by a classic “can you teach me how to DJ???” Because, of course it is.

What’s disappointing is that as much as we pride ourselves on our progressive student body, this kind of misogyny is pervasive at Grinnell. From repeating what women have just said in class to reliably stealing stories and jokes, it seems some men on campus have a hard time listening to women. It’s hard not to internalize this constant undermining, and as a result, I, along with a lot of my female friends, feel defensive, on-edge and like our confidence has been eroded. These kinds of micro-aggressions are only compounded by the stories we hear from our mothers and sisters and the seemingly endless flow of bad US news. Our rights are subject to however old white men in Congress feel that day, misogyny only gets worse as we get older, and don’t get me started on gender and sex-based health disparities.

Obviously I don’t blame Grinnell men for these larger issues. Or at least not entirely. I’m just saying that the small stuff matters. DJing is something I love, something I do for fun, and ultimately something that I put a lot of time and effort into. Therefore, it feels particularly degrading when groups of people make me feel invisible. DJing is also something I do for free … so if I don’t get attention, what do I get?

At the end of the day, I know we’re not at the point as a society where everybody is going to respect all women. Obviously that’s way too hard. Instead, I’m suggesting that as a first step, I think we’re ready to start with respecting at least some women, and I have the perfect group in mind: female DJs. I know it’s ambitious, but think about it: female DJs are just like regular DJs but women. We don’t even have to call them DJs (surely that would be disrespectful to the DJ community), we can stick with “female DJs.” If we can achieve this momentous step toward gender equality, then maybe … just maybe … people will realize that we female DJs are actually women when we’re not performing, and that same respect can be granted away from the DJ board as well.