....and why no one seems to get it.
I usually write about things I study. Like health policy. But after seeing CNN and the Washington Post write about the brilliance/foolishness of sending flaming e-mails and expecting them to remain confidential. Or when the "Funny or Die" Parody came out or the Barbie Parody, or you name the parody.... Or when Jezebel, which is supposed to be vaguely feminist fer Chrissakes, wrote about said e-mail as if it were "cute" and calling on readers to post their versions of "Deranged e-mail from Sorority Sisters" - smoke started coming out of my ears.
I've taught at various colleges around the country for the past twenty years - from the Pac 10 to the Big East, to the Big 10 - and one thing I can tell you is that the message we should take from this "mean girl" rant is not, "Boy those sorority bitches sure can swear," or "Gee, internet generation, get a clue about privacy." No the message is when Rebecca Martinson accuses her sorority sisters of dooming their house to social failure by "c*ck-blocking" we should take her seriously.
My lifelong learning adventure in Greek gender culture began in the early 80s, when I was honored with an invitation to the Sigma Alpha Epsilon "High Seas" party. It was the Greek event of the year. House members had an annual contract with a nearby city to trim their palm trees to line the walls with palm fronds to set the mood. They crated in a ton of sand to create a "beach" in one of the rooms. But the REAL mood-setter was the punch known as "the death," due to its ability to render unconscious anyone who drank so much as a glass.
By midnight, SAE brothers had slung their dead-to-the world dates over their shoulders and were carrying them up to their rooms for a little rough and tumble. Or as I called it, "necrophilia." I remember my date's chagrin, when, as his brothers impatiently urged me to drink more punch, I told them that I preferred to be awake during sex because it just seemed more fun that way.
Fast forward thirty years. I spent hours during the 80s giving workshops on the dangers of contracting STDs while being date-raped due to unconsciousness at fraternity parties. More hours during the 90s listening to weeping sorority sisters in my office hours who were seeking ways out of unwanted pregnancies after said parties. And still more hours in the 2000s standing slack-jawed in the front of my "Women and Health" class listening to female members of the Greek system explain to me how giving blow jobs and pretending to be unconscious during intercourse were acceptable ways of protecting one's reputation as "not that kind of girl" while simultaneously protecting one's reputation as "not boring." None of this shocks me any more.
"Hookup culture" and its attendant pressures, so well-articulated in the flaming e-mail, is certainly not limited to fraternities and sororities on college campuses. However it does seem to originate and have found its ultimate codification in spoken and unspoken rule within the Greek system.
None of this is news. Date rape and hookup culture in the Greek system are both well-documented. And is it really date rape when the female members comply? Or is that just hookup culture? The lines blur and the mind aches - I can't think about it deeply enough to come up with an answer. The point is, there are STUDIES on collegiate hookup culture, its roots in Greek culture, and its real-life costs to women. Lots of studies.
So why, when the e-mail went viral, did no one take it for what it was? A serious, if vitriolic exhortation to lie back and think of Delta Gamma.
