Eat Me, Bro

Today I learned an interesting new phrase, a new idiom to add to my repertoire of expressions that I can call upon when speaking to those of lesser intelligence (i.e. frat boys and/or the people in my criminology class). This slang term was featured in an article, for lack of a better word, which a friend of mine had posted on facebook (in what I read as a lame attempt to elicit a few laughs for a few obviously comically stunted individuals). As a consumer of sexual research, I was drawn to the title, “Birth Control not Involving Condoms,” excited about what kind of new form of contraception the
drug companies were marketing now. I was instead directed to a blogging website entitled broslikethis.com, where young, obviously fecund, college-aged men could express themselves in a sort of Tucker Max-esque fashion, in a safe, feminist-free, all male cyber environment. It was at this website, this space of hormonal breathing room, where I was initiated into the world, and word, of “bros”. According to a very enthusiastic, yet clearly deranged reader, a bro is a white young man who typically come from an upper-middle class to upper class upbringing who exhibits alpha male tendencies and is usually found wielding a red cup and talking to an underage girl who he thinks he has a chance to score with. Basically, your average frat boy.
Attached to this message you will find the article to which I am referring, the one that my dear, dear friend posted to his facebook wall. Please take a moment to both read and reflect upon this new blog (which I have never heard of before but will now be following diligently), as I am sure it will provoke some interesting thoughts and opinions to stir within your psyche. Now, as I know you have all been made acutely aware, I am a Women's Studies major; with this in mind, please understand that it has been my duty, for the past 4 years, to fight the misogynistic, patriarchal society in which we live by reading countless pages of literature devoted to such hotly contested topics as the one so famously articulated in this very blog. But, I know what you all are thinking: "Jeez, Danielle, you are just a crazy lesbian feminist who has an ax to grind with men, particularly those with whom you have exchanged bodily fluids. You are only insulted by this blog because you have beef with the boy who posted it, and men in general. Get over yourself and go back to your crime shows!” To this I say: Nay! I am not heated-up by the blog because I am a feminist and/or crazy. I am, instead, affronted by this blog BECAUSE I HAVE A VAGINA. All women, and self-respecting men, should feel insulted by this disgusting attempt at humor!

At this point, I ask you all to go back and give this blog another glance. Do you notice now how the writer, a supposed "bro", has relinquished his responsibility for safe sex, because it "suffocates his joint", and has, instead, placed all of the burden of contraception upon the "bra", or female version of “bro”(do I sense a little irony in that clever nickname? I think so)? Does it now become clear to you that the common "bro" (read: boy you encounter at such locations as Rick's, Skeeps, the entirety of Church Street, the YU library, the Brookdale Lounge, and most Upper West Side Synagogues) is only concerned with finding a strategic, yet comical, patch of skin upon which to blow his load, regardless of the repercussions (i.e. the ultimate "bro-hater"= babies and/or STDs and AIDS)? Are you not, now, concerned with the fitness of our species? The quality of human nature? Your faith in humanity? Because I know I am.
I can only hope that this website was designed to be a joke and that both the writers and readers of this blog discuss these topics out of jest. But I think we all know that this country is not made up of geniuses-- I sincerely doubt that every "bro" who reads this blog does so with a grain of salt. And for that, I worry.
I am not sure if anything can be done about this particular blog entry, or any other one that is featured on broslikethis.com, and I am not sure if doing anything would even help the status of women in this society or those poor boys who take this shit seriously. What do know, however, is that contraception is not only a woman’s responsibility, the morning after pill (I'm sorry- "murder pill") is NOT a form of birth control, and that abortion is not a cure-all. So, to all of you avid readers of and writers for broslikethis.com, I say—eat me. I can’t get pregnant, and steal your “brohood”, from that.

http://www.broslikethissite.com/2009/06/24-birth-control-not-involving-condoms.html