It's time for Americans to Stop Saying "Coed"

francisco_osorio / Foter / CC BY

Upon moving to America I started noticing that both formally and informally women were being referred to as "coeds".  I did not have a faintest idea why. 

I looked it up and it is defined as "A female student at a coeducational institution" and dates from before 1878.  Which makes some kind of sense because in the Victorian era this would have been a new-fangled thing worthy of (probably derogatory) comment.

But do you know what we now call females that go to tertiary institutions that do not discriminate against their gender?  Students.  We call them students. 

Their presence at an institution of higher learning that men also attend does not require explanation, justification, or comment. It is quite literally unremarkable.  Or at least it should be.

Vintage WTF

It is one of those teacher cliches to say there are no stupid questions. Bur as evidence to the contrary allow me to present this reader-submitted question from the February 1965 issue of Sexology magazine.

"Dear Doctor: during sexual relations with my wife I always have to manipulate her clitoris until she reaches orgasm. My wife says that during relations my penis never touched her clitoris. As far as I can see, what we are doing amounts to masturbation, only I am doing it to her instead of she doing it to herself. Will this endanger her health and make her sterile?"

Not that there's not anything wrong with that--veinglory

Interesting times we live in. Take for example this student newspaper editorial from historically African American all male More house college. Putting aside for a moment the WTFage of wanting to go to an all male college (unless one is gay), the gist of it is 'be as gay as you like, so long as you aren't feminine'.

And I quote: "It's not so much that "straight" men of Morehouse are uncomfortable with the gay lifestyle, but more so because it is constantly and quite robustly thrown in their face. Does being a gay man include adopting the traits of a woman? Because if that's the case, there's a more fitting school, and it's called Spelman College.

I'm all for being who you are. If you like women, go on and date women. If you like men, be my guest and date men. But if you are born a man, you should be just that--a man. If I have to look twice to tell if I'm looking at a man or woman on an all-male campus, then something is tragically wrong.

At this rate, Morehouse College may find itself in a difficult situation. What happens if and when one of our gay Morehouse brothers decides to go the next step and undergo a sex-change operation, and is then physically considered to be a woman? Does Morehouse have the right to ask that student to leave?

A massive population of feminine males and possible transgender students could critically damage the reputation of Morehouse and perhaps decline the amount of admissions, "

Just when I think I have seen it all, a writer like (I shit you not) Gerren Gaynor comes along to show how far people will go to hold the line. You want to screw men, fine, all men together... groovy. You want to be feminine, that's hideous.

Obviously. When it comes to women it seems that messing with 'separate but equal' is a slippery slow towards... honestly I am not sure. Something very very bad, apparently.

see also:
Morehouse College under fire again for alleged homophobia,
A Morehouse Student Publication Editor Apparently Fostering Homo- and Transbigotry,
I Too Sing Morehouse: Openly Gay Senior Michael Brewer Responds To Homophobic Article.