Why Fraternities?

~ Laura

In response to the horrific account of rape in a UVA fraternity, UVA closed all the fraternities down for two months. A blogger at Jezebel says that we should just shut down the whole system permanently.

After reading that Rolling Stone article along with all this Bill Cosby stuff, I’m gonna buy my nieces some mace.

Published by Laura

28 thoughts on “Why Fraternities?”

    1. Yes I don’t always want to be the naysayer, but you beat me to it, Sandra. Brushing this argument off, as people often do, with a scornful “rapists gonna rape” (1) massively discounts the culture of blaming girls and women and making it their responsibility, which amounts to tacit permission to rape in certain circumstances, (2) massively discounts the huge changes in society and social mores in general since
      WW1, and (3) subscribes to a view of men and boys as having ungovernable urges which can only be controlled by women, which is pretty much the Wahabist fundamentalist Islamic view of things – generally at the same time as they are deploring Wahabism and talking up how wonderful Western Civ is!

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  3. My 15 year old daughter read the entire article, and we talked about it with our 12 year old son too. (his was a more PG-13 version). It’s horrifying.

    Sandra, I totally get your point. Yet for me, it is somehow scarier to send a girl into that world than to parent a boy not to be a part of that world. (Does that make any sense?) I have no doubt that we will raise a son who won’t exhibit that behavior. I have many fears that my daughter will experience it….and we have no control over that. It’s scary.

    But now I am wishing I had raised more of a stink when the boy was joking about raping my daughter last year. I think a large part of teenage male society thinks of rape as a joke, especially on-line. They tweet rape jokes. The hashtag “F*(%-able” is one I see a lot. Some of the stuff I see on ask.fm makes me want to call the police.

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    1. I think it’s MUCH harder to parent a boy not to be part of that continuum than it is to keep a daughter “safe”. It’s the same continuum that had people looking the other way for decades WRT Bill Cosby and Jian Ghomeshi (here in Canada). Rape jokes are part of that continuum.

      And yes, I’m scared of my young daughter being out in the world as she gets older.

      Dads/men need to step up and be vocal and show some leadership too – at home and in the workplace. After the past three weeks of the Jian Ghomeshi scandal and now Cosby (both of whom I’d heard rumors about for years), I’m done. Enough already.

      There is such a peer pressure culture around this.

      I’m not surprised that you didn’t raise more of a stink – we’ve all drunk the koolaid of “boys will be boys”.

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  4. It’s pretty easy in some circumstances. You raise your kid to be kind and decent and you talk to them about rape culture and believing women, and if you are lucky, their dad and uncles and grandfathers back you up and model being a man instead of an asshole.

    I am with Kristen, I worry much more about my nieces.

    I’d be down with banning frats on campus or at least being quick to ban permanently any frat involved in such an incident. Same with sports teams. As my son says, after one pretty shitty incident, “I don’t know why we still have a football team.”

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  5. Do you really believe that rapists are average boys who never got a lecture from their average parents about being nice to girls?

    I do think we should teach our children about how to respect others regardless of their gender or sexual orientation or race or abilities. Do I think it will stop hateful behavior? No. That’s why I worry about my petite nieces. That’s why I won’t put Ian on the public school bus.

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    1. Nope – it’s a much larger cultural issue – up here in Canada since the Ghomeshi assaults become public (or “officially” public) three weeks ago there has been a lot of talk about rape culture and how pervasive it is. It goes far beyond campus.

      It’s part of the reason why 30 years of allegations against Cosby and 25 years of allegations against Ghomeshi were ignored. It underlies the belief that the women who spoke up must be in it for fame or dollars – someone in power could never take advantage of that position, right?

      Talk to your wives and daughters and moms and aunts and friends – hear how they (we) all have taken for granted being harassed/assaulted by a teacher or a prof or a boss in the workplace. How we whispered to each other about who to avoid but rarely even thought of speaking up about it let alone actually taking action. We knew what the consequences would be – nothing for them and punitive for us.

      It’s why teenage boys can joke about raping their classmates and it’s accepted as “boys will be boys”. It’s why my friend’s 12 year old daughter was called a “b**ch” two weeks ago because she turned down a classmate for a date. Isn’t it scary that a 12 year old’s hurt feelings go immediately to rage and attacking her verbally? At 12.

      Or that of course once a college boy gets drunk, the risk is that he’ll rape someone. Isn’t it sad/scary that once the inhibitions are removed that’s the risky default action? There are many actions that they don’t take once drunk – they still know enough for the most part to avoid drunk driving, to not assault their male friends, to not steal, etc.

      And yes I am scared for my 8 year old daughter. I don’t want her to have to live her life on guard. To learn to be invisible on public transit so she won’t be harassed. To be fodder for someone else’s lack of character/self control/criminal behavior/lack of respect.

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    2. Yes, I believe many of the frat boy rapists are ordinary boys, intoxicated boys, engaging in wolf pack behavior that I think is evolutionarily understandable (which does not make it either moral or uncontrollable).

      I am getting tired, partly for that reason, of the idea that telling girls to chose behaviors that decrease their risks is “blaming the victim.” I see it like the bike/car right of way issue — yup, bikes sometimes have the right, but it’s the cyclist who dies, if she collides with a car. If the collision occurs, we should hold the driver responsible. We should mark/control intersections to reduce the possibility of injury. We should have good institutional control of the roads for our goals. But, the cyclist should avoid dying, too, or doing the things that will increase the probability of dying (taking into account that there are going to be ordinary stupid people and vicious stupid people out there)

      Now, I think mace would generally be useless. It’s the psychological vulnerability that is the weakness in many of these rapes, not the physical. I read the article skipping the actual rapes, and what struck me was the abandonment by the “social striver” friends, including the friend who said “cute frat boys, why didn’t you just relax and enjoy it.” Girls need to be strong enough to know whether they are making the choice that’s right for them, even if it means they lose out on something (the party, or the job, or the boy).

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      1. But girls are not bikes (unpleasant connotations there of ‘the town bike’) , or wallets, or laptops, or unlocked cars. Of course it’s easier to try to train the girls to avoid social experimentation, or to restrict their movement to certain times and places, or suggest ever more modest clothing (that western Wahabism again!) Because that goes with our culture. Saying to boys that they are not entitled to sex, that they are not entitled to using a helpless person for their own sexual gratification, and that they won’t just get a slap on a wrist and a heap of sympathy for their “ruined career”, goes against our culture. That’s what feminism is working for. Otherwise it wouldn’t be work. It’d be a breeze.

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      2. I am comparing the woman/girl to the cyclist, not the bike. In the end, it’s necessary to protect yourself, not rely on the kindness or the correct-ability of strangers. Acknowledging that doesn’t mean that we can’t also fight the culture that accepts rape as inevitable.

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    3. This is really complex but yes, I do believe some rapists are otherwise relatively quote-unquote normal young men who either succumb to peer pressure or who gradually come to see sex as a right. There may be manipulative sociopaths at the top of the boy chain on campuses. But it is a big mistake to think it’s only the sociopaths involved.

      The idea that girls are achievements to be unlocked by the right combination of events is kind of pervasive. The Rugby Road song in the Rolling Stone piece is so crazy bad, but so clearly outlines the culture.

      I was raped by three guys at university in a dorm at a party, about 25 yrs ago. I didn’t report it. Mace wouldn’t have helped because it only occurred to me to fight really late — after I was pinned down. I had been warned, as all the freshman girls were, but I didn’t put the guys — one of whom I knew — together with warnings about rapists. I also had been abused as a kid and my radar was off.

      I didn’t report it for a lot of reasons, mostly boiling down to I was numb and just wanted to move past it. I doubted anyone would believe me, plus, I had been warned. But I also didn’t want to ruin the guys’ reputations. Weird, I know. Except — as a girl, that was the kind of responsibility I felt I had.

      I do think there is a change going on right now. When the University of Ottawa shut down the whole hockey team over an assault, on the grounds that those who didn’t report it were also guilty and the whole team’s culture was at fault, and that girls, STUDENTS deserve an education in a place that respects their dignity, that was real understanding. I hope UVA gets there.

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      1. And that’s where I think we can get caught on this issue – thinking that it’s the sociopaths. It’s not the sociopaths. It’s our partners, our sons, our neighbors, etc. These are people we live with and work with.

        I have a hard time grasping the amount of peer pressure and/or alcohol that it would take to allow me to think it was a mighty fine idea to rape someone. Think of the men who beat their wives. They are quite discerning in whom they beat – hit their boss? Nope, get fired. Hit their coworker? Nope, charged with assault. It’s amazing the self control that IS available in certain circumstances. Hence my cynicism about any excuses regarding being provoked or tempted or whatever.

        Applying that to the sexual assault/rape scenario, when 1 in 4 women are assaulted, are there THAT many men who are oh so out of control? Really? Because you know it is much more likely to have been assaulted by a coworker/neighbour/family member than the stereotypical but rare scenario of the strange man jumping out of the bushes to grab you.

        And the alcohol excuse I do find often convenient. Yes it lowers inhibitions but does it suddenly result in more break in’s? More vandalism? More theft? Why predominantly one crime?

        Perhaps if the consequences existed, there would be fewer assaults. That in addition to learning to see women as people rather than objects.

        Bringing it back to the Cosby and Ghomeshi situations – and let’s add in the harassers at college and work. They know EXACTLY what they are doing. They know enough to keep it secret, to pick their victims well, to have arguments in their defense that work to deflect blame and suspicion from them to their victims. They know enough to do as much as they can without suffering the consequences.

        More reporting. More convictions. More consequences. Fewer incidents. With anyone who thinks it’s okay to attack someone else.

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  6. On campus, lots of sex happens and the woman is blotto drunk and the guy is maybe that impaired and maybe not. And sometimes there is no clear non consent, but even so in the morning if she regrets, she can tag him as a rapist. And sometimes she (drunk) makes attempts to stop him (drunk), these attempts are either weak or strong, he pushes past them, and in the morning she has what I think is a better case – but it’s still very different from what I have always thought of as rape. And sometimes there are flat out false accusations, she initiated and later decides she regrets, or she decides she has been ill used when he finds someone else, or somehow else he displeases, and in the current climate she has a hell of a hammer available and she decides he is a nail. Very hard to decide between these alternatives when you are a campus disciplinary officer.

    I am working on my sons and my daughter to understand that getting very drunk is risky for a whole lot of reasons, not least that it can lead them to do things they will regret forever. My son is trying to get into UVa at this point, it is his dream school, so I think I can make particularly good use of this incident as a cautionary tale about wrong behavior.

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    2. I don’t know Dave. I have two boys, still young, and I would be lying if I said I have never thought about the kinds of scenarios you outline.

      But it’s actually not that hard in a lot of cases to distinguish between cases. My question for you is: knowing that UVA has an intense culture of disrespect for half (plus) its student population, that organized groups are singing songs about treating women solely as sexual objects, that the administration has never expelled a single student for a crime that has clearly been reported to school officials on multiple occasions, and which is in the national media as a shameful example…are you not talking to you son about ethical decision-making and taking that into account in selecting a “dream” school?

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      1. Yes, absolutely. and, my kids have constrained dreams – we’ve told them we don’t plan to pay for them to go out of the Virginia state system, and that our central goal is to get them through college debt free. So Haverford is not on his radar screen, nor Grinnell. I adore my guys, and can’t see them as evil, so I have a far easier time picturing them in some fumbling set of missed, mixed messages which in the hothouse climate of college today can lead someone to say “you raped me” and they get frog-marched off all bewildered to the campus sexual adjudication tribunal, than being part of an evil gang rape conspiracy.

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    3. “I have a far easier time picturing them in some fumbling set of missed, mixed messages which in the hothouse climate of college today can lead someone to say “you raped me” and they get frog-marched off all bewildered to the campus sexual adjudication tribunal, than being part of an evil gang rape conspiracy.”

      The problem here is that you have presented two extremes, neither of which is likely to be reality. Your sons will fall in the middle, as will most of our sons.

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  7. Heavy, abusive drinking has characterized young people in their late teens and early twenties for centuries, if not millennia. (Read medieval descriptions of the Latin quarter, or of Alcibiades and his friends.) The recent attempts to stamp out college drinking, by raising the drinking age, have made the situation much, much worse. Fraternity and sorority membership has risen dramatically in the past two decades, including at places like my alma mater that had none at all a few decades ago. Attempting to shut down the frats, which seems to be the current craze, will drive the parties off-campus and deeper underground. And where there is heavy drinking and both sexes, there will be lots of unhappy, confused, and ambiguous sexual encounters, and some rapes.

    A more logical policy would be to legalize drinking on campuses, have the universities run mixers, and keep the students living (and drinking, and having sex) in co-ed dorms. I doubt that anything so logical will appeal to the moralists of either left or right.

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    1. But then, they really won’t be the school’s responsibility. I think some schools are thinking in that direction — managing their personal risk, rather than the risk to the women. Then there are the colleges that think that affirmative “yeses” will solve the issue. I think I can support that, with the understanding that lots of boys will be putting themselves in a position to be accused of rape. They’ll have to decide if it’s worth the risk.

      I’m inclined to believe that heavy wide spread drinking and extramarital sex did not infiltrate the entire population, that it was a prerogative of a smaller segment of society (if only for financial reasons).

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  8. And sorry for the multiple comments, but imagine a school where kids get drunk, and a girl gets raped at a frat party…and reports it, because it’s NOT common and her friends DON’T insist that’s going to wreck all of their lives forever, and the administration brings in the police and the police interview all the frat party attendees…just stop the imagining there, before anyone is found guilty.

    Don’t you think all the young people at that point start to learn what the consequences are of treating women like shit? That they learn the real-life lessons that if there’s an accusation of a serious crime everyone who might have seen or heard about it is on some level accountable for providing witness?

    This is not that school. This is not a situation where personal responsibility is even close to the sole issue. If what you teach your son out of that article is “don’t drink too much” you are missing the point a bit here.

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    1. Do you mean, her friends don’t worry that complaining will wreck their social lives? That requires imagining a school where fraternities and sororities aren’t the only vehicle for alcohol consumption, which is what I would like to see. Or do you mean, imagine a school where 18 year olds don’t worry about the destruction of their social lives, because justice is more important? That would require a different set of 18 year olds than the ones I know.

      Don’t misunderstand me. I have a 20 year old daughter, and cases like this are very disturbing. But zero tolerance policies, or policies that aim to indoctrinate boys (or girls) into becoming angels, don’t work. We need policies that recognize human frailty–including the fact that the dividing line between good and evil runs down the middle of every human heart–and channel it into less harmful directions.

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      1. I agree with that rules based on the premise that everyone will turn into angels are bound for failure. We can work to become a more equitable, moral society, but we will not create a system where everyone makes perfect decisions.

        We can, however, think about a system where schools shift the balance of harm from the girls who get raped and the girls who have to manage their lives to minimize the risk of rape towards the boys (and not just the ones who are rapists). The “affirmative yes” rules try to do this.

        I wouldn’t accept such a system as law of the land — one where the state assumes a boy/man is a rapist, if they were accused, unless they can prove otherwise (which, in my mind, is what affirmative yes rules are, though, I think in practice they will not be that). But, I might be willing to consider it for a college campus, where rape is clearly a problem, where children are behaving badly, and where histories of institutional problems exist.

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  9. This article was disturbing on so many levels. There was the brutality of the rape itself. Five guys tackled a girl. They fell through a glass table. They held her down when a group of guys raped her. Not grey area drunk/ vague consent raping. This was clear cut rape. It sounds like it was part of a fraternity hazing ritual. And then there was the girls friends who told her to keep it quiet, so it wouldn’t wreck their social lives. Girls were complicit in this crime.

    Fraternity life contributed to both the rape itself and the pressure to keep it quiet. There was a disinterest by the university to get involved with policing the fraternity and investigating the charges.

    This case is so complicated that I don’t think we can point to one problem — binge drinking culture, lack of respect of women in the popular culture, fraternities, a state of nature college social scene. What happened to this girl is disgusting. And I think this case deserves a lot of scrutiny and discussion. I just don’t think that we are going to find one problem and one solution.

    Now onto ferguson…

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  10. One of the points that struck me about the UVA rape is the previous discussions we’ve had on middle class/lower class girls trying to break into the social structure of frat-heavy state campuses (I think from the “Paying for the Party” book.). Laura’s summary of the details of the rape — a fraternity hazing in which a vulnerable girl was picked as a target fit that scenario.

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