Every year, students at the Columbia sorority Alpha Chi Omega hold an event called “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” — a fundraiser designed to raise awareness of sexual violence by having men walk through campus wearing high heels.
The Columbia fundraiser has been held for the past three years as part of the international movement “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes.”
This year’s fundraiser, which was held this Sunday, will be the very last one — following complaints of “insensitivity,” and “transphobia” from campus members.
Men walking in high-heels is “cissexist” and “transphobic,” one student group, No Red Tape, argued.
Essentially, the feminist-inspired event to help survivors of sexual violence was called to a halt by other advocates against sexual violence who didn’t take well to the premise of men walking around in high-heels.
“After hearing negative feedback for the first time on Sunday,” a spokesperson for Alpha Chi Omega wrote, “we have recognized the event’s potential to be insensitive to victims and promote transphobia.”
The negative feedback seems to have come from Columbia No Red Tape, which was associated with Emma Sulkowicz’s Mattress Performance two years ago.
“Conflating the idea of womanhood with symbols such as high heels — as the Alpha Chi Omega event did — draws on harmful and cissexist standards,” said No Red Tape’s statement on the issue.
In penance, the sorority stressed that they didn’t mean to promote transphobia by having men walking in high-heels. In fact, they even had training prior to the event to teach participants about how “men walking in high heels should not be funny because it defies a gender construct, which would be transphobic.”
The sorority then apologized for the lack of intersectional-awareness their event conveyed.
“Members of the community have reached out to convey that our attempts to ensure that this event is not transphobic or focused around cis-female survivors have not been sufficient to mitigate transphobia,” they wrote in a statement.
Sofia Gouin, a Columbia College sophomore, criticized the event in a statement to the school newspaper.
“Just because something is done for the right reasons doesn’t mean it’s being done the right way. Supporting survivors is a noble cause, but you have to think about the way you’re coming into that space,” Gouin said.
“Alpha Chi Omega sincerely apologizes for any pain Walk a Mile has caused and will not hold the event again,” their statement concluded.
