anythings.org

I have issues with authors who write emotionally fueled pieces about their bad experiences and attempt to get people on their side. Almost every single article of this nature I have read is a thinly disguised grudge against some group, person, or figure. This article in The New York Times by an ex-sorority girl about “swearing off sorority sisterhood” is no exception to this rule.

Why The New York Times would print this trash is beyond me. I understand that this woman had bad experiences in college and that she feels her sorority is to blame. And while the sorority may have been partially to blame, her “article” comes off as a bitter rant against her sorority. She has a grudge, and who can blame her? She’s telling us the story of how she lost her virginity at a fraternity party, and somehow never manages to use the word “rape” despite the fact she was unconscious and drunk. Last time I checked, if you were unconscious or drunk you couldn’t consent to anything.

I indulged, partied hard and, a scant two months into the semester, lost my virginity. It happened after a fraternity barn dance. All I knew about my date was that he was festively inclined and physically stunning. My sisters considered him a catch. I felt lucky. After the usual alcoholic overindulgence, I followed him upstairs, where I soon passed out on his sofa. There, I assumed the starring role in a garden-variety “ledge party,” my deflowering on display for anyone desiring a peek. I suspect mine was one of the duller productions, but, alas, I remember none of it. I learned later that some sympathetic brothers had objected to the spectacle and pulled me from the wreckage, which, to me, was remarkable. Ledge parties weren’t merely tolerated in the fraternities — they were rewarded with knowing winks and backslaps. But my date had crossed a line: Apparently the fraternal code of ethics only approved of the performances when the girls were conscious (albeit still unaware they were being watched).

Of course, the fraternity brother was “blackballed” (who uses that term anymore?) and he eventually dropped out of school for his antics. Well, duh, of course he dropped out: he raped someone and had plenty of witnesses to the fact.

The author then spends the rest of the article talking about how her sisters systematically kicked her out of the house because of what she had done. Which makes absolutely no sense. I’m sensing we’re missing a part of the story here, or she’s reframing events to make it easier to connect the dots. Nevertheless, she can’t possibly understand why her sisters would do this to her because they were even bigger sluts: they didn’t get raped, they had sex all over the sorority house!

My sisters, of course, were hardly model citizens, either. Indeed, some boasted a sexual prowess that still makes me blush. They had sex in our chapter room, in hot tubs, behind rocks. They participated in communal bulimic binges and coordinated the termination of unwanted pregnancies. Many, naturally, had been victimized by ledge parties as well but had somehow managed to keep it quiet.

I love that she likens group bulimia to group abortions - because they are both equally terrible. Comparing abortion to bulimia is ridiculous: bulimia is a disorder and abortion is a medical procedure. It seems as though she was trying to think of every bad thing she could possibly say about her sorority experience to make it clear just how justified her anger was. Which is great and all, but it wouldn’t have been necessary had she actually focused on her experience of being raped.

On the final page of her article, she makes the point that I would have made in the first paragraph: her sisters didn’t support her during her time of crisis. Instead of supporting her, they cast her out.

And they not only failed to support me in crisis, they collectively kicked me as I lay in the gutter, judged me from under a veil of hypocrisy, then cast me out, leper-style. Their betrayal cut so deep that it has left me anxious and cowering to this day.

The sad thing is, she has made this generalization about sororities, which isn’t fair nor it is true. Instead of writing about her experiences in college and encouraging young women in similar situations to seek campus services, she wrote a bitter diatribe that has so much hate in it I had a difficult time reading it. When I was in college we had a fair amount of Greek participation in Take Back the Night, and because of this, many of my sister’s and the women of other houses felt able to discuss their experiences with each other. When one of our girls was raped by another sister’s boyfriend she was not ostracized; she was cared for, comforted, and helped in every way we knew how. The author’s experiences may have been terrible, but instead of seeking support elsewhere she did nothing (that we know of) and blamed the sorority for all of her problems and her difficulty healing. Has she not found any new friends? Does she not have anyone else she can rely on for support? Blaming a group of immature college girls for your problems is not the way to make people side with you.

The bottom line is this woman joined a bad sorority that had terrible girls in it. The fact that they were in a sorority does not make them bad girls, they were probably awful bitches on their own who used the Greek system to enhance their Mean Girls status. She had bad friends, and through no fault of her own: she was a freshman who was swayed by the advertising of the sorority and was attracted to their image. Of course, this is never the right reason to join a sorority, but it is also not the sorority’s fault that she started drinking, got raped, and had bad college memories. The fact is, if she was going to drink in college she would have done it with or without the sorority. If she was going to party with fraternities, she was going to do that regardless of whether she was Greek herself. The only person she can blame for her rape is the rapist. Not her sorority. Not herself. And not the woman who ran up to her in leggings to greet her when she was out with her children. The bottom line is she, like many drunken and vulnerable college freshman, was taken advantage of.

The author then closes her article pondering how she going to teach her daughters to “wander the duplicitous female maze” of college. Sure, I met some bad people in college. And yes, there are sororities out there that are awful and terrible and treat people as if they are nothing to them. However, there are also extremely kind and wonderful people that you can meet in college. Not every woman in a sorority is automatically evil: you have to leave that up to your daughters to figure out for themselves, they can’t learn everything from you. Raise your daughters to be strong and independent thinking women and they won’t have problems with the “duplicitous female maze”.

From my personal experience, this kind of stuff happens more in high school than it ever does in college. I’ve seen more girls ostracized for reporting being raped, attacked, or assaulted by the high school football star or the cute guy they were just dying to go out with. High schools don’t have resources for assaulted girls, and colleges are starting to realize that this is a huge problem and are making resources available to victims and survivors of sexual assault.

Again, I ask, why did The NYT print a trashy article that was merely a grudge disguised as a memoir?