When I first came to Hamilton, the Little Pub felt like a distant concept. I heard about it only in passing — called a “man cave” by a girl in my class or laughed about in a club meeting for its majority white male patrons. From all of these scattered references and jokes, I could sense an underlying message: the Little Pub was not meant for me.
The one time I stopped by for lunch with a friend, we left after discovering we were the only two women in the room. It is impossible to describe the discomfort, vulnerability, and isolation of being the only women in a male-dominated space.
This experience is not an unfamiliar one. I can pull up countless examples in my own life: stepping into a math class where I was the only girl, dropping the basketball team because my all male teammates would not pass to me, or having a class discussion on LGBTQ rights as the only queer person in the room.
For all of American history, white men have been both the dominant and default group. It has been mostly white men in charge and it has been the white male experience against which all others have been defined.
Even though women’s rights have come a long way in the recent years, it is still a work in progress. Women are in the workforce in record numbers, but often struggle to achieve high leadership roles. Sexual assault and harassment is more visible than ever, and yet it is still happening at astounding rates.
Women are more involved in public life and create more of the media that society consumes, and yet we make up just nineteen percent of Congress and 33 percent of speaking roles in the top-grossing films.
As a woman, I have always been hyper-aware of the space I take up. I was raised like that — to sit with closed legs, not talk or laugh too loudly, to take up as little room in the world as possible.
As a white person, I have never had to be conscious about race in social spaces. I have never walked into a room and felt out of place, and I have rarely encountered a situation that made me feel like a minority.
Whether we are aware of it or not, these power dynamics trickle down into every aspect of our lives: from how we sit and where we choose to sit, to what we say and how we decide to say it, to what we wear and how we are treated when we walk down the street.
The PUB POWER movement is about reclaiming public spaces and asserting that they belong to this whole community.
At its core, it is about acknowledging that a space exists where certain minorities may not feel welcome, providing a platform for those individuals to assemble, and then taking concrete action to fix it. It is a simple act, but one that is steeped in power and resistance.
PUB POWER has faced backlash because it exposes the the fact that power, identity and social spaces are all closely intertwined. It disrupts the comfortable fantasy that places like the Little Pub are inherently apolitical and neutral spaces.
To many women on this campus, the Little Pub has felt like a shelter for white masculinity. I personally never felt comfortable there because I saw it as a“boy’s club” — a place where men got together to be men, and not a place where I saw myself encouraged to exist.
Even if you are a woman, a person of color or a member of the LGBT community, you may still have been exempt from this feeling of isolation and marginalization. To share an identity with others is only to share in one aspect of a multifaceted reality, and every lived experience is different. Just because you have always interpreted the Little Pub as a harmless, unbiased space does not mean that it is that way for everybody.
Regardless of your personal experience, the reality is that a significant number of people on this campus have expressed feeling uncomfortable, inferior and outnumbered in the Little Pub. Even though white men going to The Little Pub is not inherently sexist, and this marginalization is not a deliberate or malicious act, it is indicative of something much bigger. It all comes down to the simple fact that it is uncomfortable to live, learn, and grow in a place that is overwhelmingly populated by the dominant or privileged group. Instead of just avoiding these places that feel unwelcoming, PUB POWER is taking a stand to fight complacency.
Not only is the movement dedicated to disrupting the norm of the Little Pub as a male-oriented space, but it encourages people who have previously felt unwelcome to reclaim this space as belonging to them too.
The Little Pub is known as a well-loved and popular campus space and coming to the realization that it might not be this way for everybody can be uncomfortable. I encourage you to challenge your discomfort, question why this movement threatens you, and bite back the initial impulse to dismiss this as “victimization.” These social spaces belong to all of us. The bodies that embody these spaces make an important statement about the culture and values of the space itself as well as the institution it represents.
The Little Pub belongs to each and every one of us, both literally and figuratively. In the purest sense, a public space is meant to instill a sense of belonging — that we are a part of a larger community and that, in turn, this community belongs to all of us.
