From fraternity goonland, important lessons for our daughters

Bottom line: Being the drunkest woman on girls’ night out is akin to being the slowest gazelle on the savannah

On Sept. 9, 2011, a female Concordia University student went to a Montreal bar with a friend, met two McGill University football players, and returned with them to their apartment, where a sexual encounter took place. “The victim woke up about six hours later with little recollection of what had happened,” according to the account in Montreal’s Gazette. “As her memory returned, she went to police to report that she had been sexually assaulted.”

This sort of pick-up-gone-wrong is a common drama in student communities everywhere. Often, the narrative features the same two exacerbating factors: men who bolster their sexual aggressiveness by travelling in packs, and women whose judgment and situational awareness is debilitated by alcohol.

A month ago, Slate.com columnist Emily Yoffe wrote a brave column entitled “College Women: Stop Getting Drunk,” in which she wrote: “A misplaced fear of blaming the victim has made it somehow unacceptable to warn inexperi- enced young women that when they get wasted, they are putting themselves in potential peril.” Feminists were enraged. After Jian Ghomeshi interviewed Ms. Yoffe on his CBC radio show, one commenter asked: “Does Yoffe really think that if no more women ever got drunk, that men would stop raping?”

In a perfect world, it is true, lecturing women about the perils of excess alcohol consumption would be unnecessary. But we don’t live in that world. And any parent or educator who tells a hard-partying teenage girl “Your body belongs to you, so get as drunk as you like” is prioritizing ideology ahead of sexual safety.

The larger problem is the excessively formalistic, rape-whistle approach we take to educating young people about their sexual environments. This approach typically presumes rational interactions between an individual man and an individual woman. But the more common scenario I witnessed in university involved groups of men interacting with groups of women in chaotic, liquor-soaked venues, with the men competing (or collaborating) to peel away the most sexually available (i.e., the drunkest) specimens from a protective female pack. Being the drunkest woman on girls’ night out is akin to being the slowest gazelle on the savannah.

I have three young daughters, and when the time comes, I will make sure they know their legal rights in this area. But I will also make sure that they know the reality (as best as a middle-aged parent can remember it) of college hook-up culture — a milieu in which insecurity, loneliness, and statusseeking within peer groups can conspire to override a woman’s self-preservation instincts.

Thanks to the Internet, I won’t have to rely on my own memory: One of the documents I’m saving for my daughters is an email recently circulated by the social chair of Georgia Tech’s Phi Kappa Tau fraternity to his fellow frat brothers.

The theme is that Phi Kappa Tau expects its party-going members to be in a state of constant sexual mobilization. And the author gives a point-bypoint guide on the best strategy for picking up women:

“First, introduce yourself and get [a girl’s] name, ask if they are having a good time, and then ask if they want anything to drink … IF THEY ARE HAMMERED AT ANY POINT BEFORE MIDNIGHT, JUST SKIP THE CHIT CHAT AND GO DANCE … Here is how to dance: Grab them on the hips with your two hands and then let them grind against [you].”

The author then explains how to “escalate” the encounter by bringing the woman to a private area and having sex — after which, he counsels, “send them out of your room and on their way … IF ANYTHING EVER FAILS, GO GET MORE AL C O - HOL.” The email created a scandal for Phi Kappa Tau. But I’d argue that the author actually has done young women a service: I have never seen anything that more accurately describes the thought process and tactics of sexually aggressive college-age men — including the centrality of alcohol to the courtship process, the idea of women as trophies and disposable sex objects, and the notion that promiscuity is an important status-enhancer both for individual males and the larger tribal grouping (in this case, a fraternity) of which he is part. If you are a college-age woman, and you want an accurate, unsentimental description of how you are viewed by men as you get drunk at a party, this is it.

Of course, most female readers with partyland experience don’t need lessons on the male sexual mindset. But that invites another question: Why do college-age women subject themselves to this sort of environment in the first place? Why not stay home and study, and then get engaged to your gradschool T.A. when you’re 28?

That question brings me to a second, even more vulgar mass-circulated email that I am saving for my daughters.

This one is from a board member of Delta Gamma sorority at the University of Maryland. It is basically the female version of the above-described Georgia Tech fraternity send-out. “We have been [screwing] UP in terms of night time events and general social interactions with Sigma Nu [Delta Gamma’s officially designated “match-up” fraternity],” the note declares. “I’ve been getting texts about people LITERALLY being so [f-bomb] AWKWARD and so [fbomb] BORING. If you’re reading this right now and saying to yourself ‘But oh gee, Julia, I’ve been having so much fun with my sisters this week!’ then punch yourself in the face right now … Sigma Nu does not give a flying [f-bomb] about how much you [f-bomb] love to talk to your sisters … FRATS DON’T LIKE BORING SORORITIES.”

For those seeking insights into female group dynamics, it’s worth reading the whole email. While sex-obsessed fraternity members may be fixated on “macking,” this status-obsessed sorority taskmaster is more concerned with having sisters faithfully show up at events, act socially engaged, exhibit loyalty to their assigned fraternity, and generally comport themselves in a way that campus alpha males find pleasing.

It’s hard to say which of the two above-expressed emails is more offensive to the politically correct view of human nature. But taken together, they show why campus rape is always going to be a part of a culture in which (a) the most sexually aggressive men define their status according to conquests, and (b) the most socially ambitious women define their status by their publicly exhibited proximity to campus jocks and other alpha males.

A father can dream that his daughters will never expose themselves to this sort of unwholesome environment. But in the real world, a parent’s better option is to help educate his children about what life actually looks like, and urge that she face this reality with a strong, sober mind.