Frat boys are such fun. The very word reminds me of fun-loving George Bush, whom I usually thought of as frat boy. Some frat boys at the University of Vermont sound super fun.
The fraternity circulated a questionnaire to its members, asking their names, major, favorite frat-related memories, favorite actor, and who they would pick to rape. Just normal questionnaire stuff, you know.
We were sent a copy of the questionnaire, which mostly consists of benign questions like name, birthday, major, amount of time with SigEp and favorite SigEp memories, hobbies, future goals, etc. It’s actually kind of nerdy and cute, until you get to the final three “personal questions.”
1. Where in public would I want to have sex?
2. Who’s my favorite artist?
3. If I could rape someone, who would it be?
Boys just wanna have fun, boom boom.
This is similar to the frat boys at Yale yelling “No means yes, yes means anal” outside a womens’ dorm. Gotta keep the rape culture intact.
Well, there’s another college my hypothetical children would not be going to.
I almost typed “hypothetical daughter,” but who would want their son in that kind of toxic atmosphere either?
I am ashamed that this happened at UVM, just a mile from where I live (shocked, too, though maybe I shouldn’t be). I’m delighted, though, that my friend who goes by SallyStrange online helped organize a demonstration that I believe took place today (I couldn’t go for work reasons).
Who sells a “No Fratties” t-shirt, and why aren’t they setting up shop at campus towns everywhere?
Why is it that Sig Apes are assholes on all campuses? I saw similar attitudes at Indiana U., Purdue U., Ball State U., Michigan State and U. of Michigan during the late 70’s.
Quibbling, but those are essentially the same source.
Re: Yale: I am a former Yale student, and I hope you don’t dismiss the University out of hand due to that event. The event itself has made rape culture a very prominent issue on campus, and there continues to be ongoing investigation and debate and suggestions for improvement, as well as lawsuits. I expect Yale to be a better place for going through this. I hope you keep in mind, sad as it is, that you heard about the chant because it’s Yale, not solely because similar things never happen on other campuses. You can’t protect your children from rape culture by picking their school – all you can do is hope they develop a decent set of morals with your guidance and take care of themselves. There are many, many, wonderful people there, and you will get a top notch education if you want it. Best wishes.
Your concern to defend Yale, which is clearly more important than condemning the actions of this fraternity, Ben, is duly noted.
As is the fact that this happened at the University of Vermont.
Not at Yale.
Now, why is it, do you suppose, that you were so automatically inclined to read your own university’s name, and so automatically inclined to defend its honor more than anything else, that you entirely missed the plain written fact that this refers to the University of Vermont?
What the hell?
In post #1 I mentioned Yale.
I know similar things took place at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in the 1970s.
I never ceased to be amazed at the level of unenlightened stupidity that comes from the “bro” culture that is so many fraternities.
A concise list of fraternity-inspired bigotry
My personal favorite:
@Zugswang — Oh my Ceiling Cat, that’s AWFUL!
Their history makes for interesting reading. Founded in 1900 by an 18-year-old Baptist divinity student…
One discussion thread I saw on this incident had a commenter who felt the frat boys’ 1st amendment rights were being violated if their charter were revoked. The charter that was granted under conditions that they had agreed to. WTF?
Frats have always seemed like artificial in-groups for people who had to pay for friendship. They may not have started out that way, but…
Because my many, many psychological issues won’t let me see a questionnaire without filling it out…
1: On top of a Mosque and/or Church.
2: Alan Moore
3: If I absolutely had to pick someone? Whatever asshole thought that this was a good question.
I hope Ophelia forgives me for saying this but: Fuck you very much.
So you’re making it my problem not to be raped?
So it’s essentially my fault if I don’t take care of myself?
Ya know, my university (in a country far, far away) just sent me an email informing all the students about a misogynist who runs around attacking women on and off campus and who almost raped a woman last week.
Their advice: Don’t go to the university car park alone.
Unwritten next sentence: It’s your problem if you don’t follow our advice and get hurt.
Yeah, that’s totally worth the pain and the fear the women on campus (Yale and Vermont and probably every other fucking uni on planet earth) must be feeling now so the men can learn.
Here’s a hint: If you made it to college-age without having learned that it is indeed wrong to rape, you have no place there.
You know what would make campuses better places for women? If those perps were expelled, and if funding were cut until universities comply.
I judge universities for their lack of effort to make them safe places for women.
Oh, the poor boys have their lives ruined? Over a “juvenile joke”? Better theirs than those of their victims. Better they are expelled than a rape victim drops out becaue xe can’t cope with the permanent level of threat and the PTSD.
“Their advice: Don’t go to the university car park alone.
Unwritten next sentence: It’s your problem if you don’t follow our advice and get hurt.”
I agree there’s much about Ben’s comment that is objectionable. “develop a decent set of morals…” WTF? However, if I had a daughter on a campus with a loose rapist I would damn well tell her “DON’T GO TO THE UNIVERSITY CAR PARK ALONE.” And there is no way I could possibly intend your second sentence.
Ah fraternities. Where rape is a joke. Gay is an insult. Everyone is a bro. And no one ever gets more than a slap on the wrist regardless of the crime.
Gotta love dude culture.
Hunt
But that’s what you’re doing, because you’re making it her problem. Now she has to organize her life around this advice, now she has to give up her freedom and curb her social life, because you’re implying that it is actually on her side of the problem to solve it.
All those wonderful rape-prevention tricks, they either don’t work or they add up to leaving the house only in a burka and with a male family member.
I’m all for staying safe personally. I’ve had my amount of shit already and thankfully nothing serious has happened to me.
But you know what was the reaction I got from people who love and car about me the one time somebody inteded (most likely, fortunately I reached my car before he reached me) to rape me?
How I could have been so stupid to park my car there.
If you intend it or not, it is victim-blaming.
Shouldn’t any answer except, ‘I would never rape anyone, period’ exclude the student not only from the fraternity but from the university as well?
Isn’t it comparable to asking, ‘Who would you murder if you could?’ Does the fraternity want would-be murderers as members?
Yeah, dream on, Ray.
Does anybody else think that the framing of the question is really weird? The question assumes that the recipient of said questioner is willing to rape someone. So is the question one of proximity? If I could be near one particular person to rape, who would it be? Or is the “if I could” set up a bizarre way of saying: are you a rapist? Bottom line: who does this? Douchebags.
@ Ray
For the record, that’s totally what I would do with a questionnaire. I’m sure there are fraternities with other kinds of trick-questions, but probably less benign.
—
I tend to worry about burglary / zombie invasion. I make sure the doors are locked, and I place objects in the house (when I have a home, that is) the way I would be glad to have placed them if something happens.
I’m clearly paranoid as fuck, and probably not very efficient.
But it is my problem. If I’m defenseless when I need defense, that’s a big problem for me, on a personal level, and it’s a problem that I would want to solve.
But it’s not fucking evil-or-something of me to have a problem. Giliell, I guess that what we think is at least almost the same, but your way of putting it sounds like blaming the victim to me. I don’t deserve to be killed if I have a problem with violent indruders some day. They don’t get a free pass to enter my home unharmed because I have to improvise something or run the fuck away.
@ Ray
“What I would do with a questionnaire if I were a frat-questionnaire-maker-official (I guess?)”
Edited for concision: You don’t relinquish help by admitting the problem. That’s the whole “boys don’t cry” fuckstorm all over again.
Svlad Cjelli
I admit to having a cold, but your writing makes no sense to me, especially your claim that I was engaging in victim blaming.
How is it victim blaming if I say that women are not the ones who have to follow special rules in order to prevent rape, how is it victim-blaming if I reject that the responsibility is dumped on me, and in this case me in person?
What my university is actually asking me to do is to drop out of college.
I’ve been desperately trying to get my shit together, but since I don’t have anybody who could take me by the hand to get from my car to campus and back again, I either have to accept that I could very well be raped or attacked, since I have been warned, or stay at home.
So, tell me, who’s the victim and who’s blaming them?
I find it odd that a large number of people are raped every year, but the concern here doesn’t seem to be with actually stopping rape… but in words.
And come on… there’s no one you would rape? Jerry Sandusky? The Pope? Lenin’s corpse? [I think necrophilia counts as rape, since they can’t consent, in the same way that sex with anyone below the age of consent is technically rape.] And it raises some ethical questions, like… what if you’re alone with the someone of the other gender and you’re the last people on Earth, but they have a “headache” every night, and you need to repopulate the world? Try to ignore for a second that the world would be better off without us, though.
Sometimes rape is even funny. Is it okay if I tell a rape joke? I just want to ask to make sure, because I don’t want to be accused of forcing it on anyone. No, that wasn’t the joke. The joke is that I know everyone has the same position regarding rape: on top. Otherwise, it’s impossible to hold them down. And no, covering your mouth if you laugh at that doesn’t make you a better person, and neither does not laughing.
I’m just saying… I think you guys are getting angry over rather trivial things which allude to very serious problems. Yes, we get it, we all hate rape, but saying so doesn’t do anything (and neither does making light of rape make the problem worse). I wish law enforcement did more to both prevent rape and actually prosecute it when it’s reported, and the fact that people are bullied into either not officially reporting it or coerced by law enforcement into not pressing charges is a grim reality, but that is what people should be disgusted with: the reality, not a distasteful allusion.
Yes: there is no one I would rape, just as there is no one I would torture. What a revolting question!
Being disgusted with an allusion does not preclude being disgusted with the reality.
Language matters, discourse matters, culture matters.
And no: it’s not ok to tell a rape joke.
Go away.
@Giliell
I agree with your reaction to Ben, Hunt and Svlad’s comments. However, I think it is important to distinguish between victim blaming and warning people of danger. For example, I think your university would have been seriously remiss if they did not warn you that there is an attacker on the loose. Of course they also need to take decisive action to make your campus safe, otherwise the warning would indeed amount to little more than victim blaming. Most likely, they should have phrased the warning differently though, to avoid any semblance of victim blaming. To be honest, I’m not sure exactly what would be the best way for them to go about it though. Perhaps they should have omitted the advice about not going to the carpark alone and instead outlined exactly what action they are taking to bring the perpetrator to justice and keep everyone safe in the meantime? Does anybody have any better suggestions?
Oh god…
No. And even if I were willing to that would not make it right. That someone is evil does not make raping them suddenly morally right.
What?!
Boyo, you better be a poe.
No.
Anyone else feeling kinda ill? Some alarm bells going off?
No.
No. No. A million fucking times no.
What does getting nauseous and triggered make me? Fuck off, toxic slime.
Bret: I didn’t even so much as crack a smile.
You fail at comedy.
Do you understand the term rape culture? Making rape ‘jokes’ unnacceptable in as many situations as possible helps to reduce the prevalence of the severely misogynistic rape culture prevalent in the United States.
See, there’s the rape culture thing again. To threaten (or use) rape as a punishment implies that certain people ask to be raped and deserve to be raped. No one, repeat, NO ONE, deserves to be raped. Even disgusting pieces of humanity such as Sandusky do not deserve to be raped (and with my history, I have a very good reason to want to see people like him punished as severely as legally possible).
That’s not an ethical question. That is a five-year-old playing ‘what about . . .”.
For a victim, or a potential victim, it is not funny.
First, not everyone here is a ‘guy’ so park your male privilege somewhere else.
Second, how big does a problem have to be before one starts dealing with it? If we ignore the small stuff that is relatively easy to deal with, how do we deal with the really big and intractable stuff? Additionally, dealing with the small instances of misogyny and rape culture will make the big stuff even more obvious and, hopefully, easier to eliminate.
And don’t you see that the rape culture enabled by the ‘distateful allusions’ makes the reality of rape that much easier for the perpetrator?
Ugh. I wouldn’t blame Ophelia at all for scrubbing Bret and any responses to him from the thread.
You’re a deeply unpleasant individual and I feel sorry for anyone who has to interact with you.
@Bret
But it wasn’t funny at all. What it was was disturbing.
Again, disturbing. It reflects poorly on you for even asking. Newsflash: We aren’t a bunch of rapists here who think that rape has legitimate uses. Rape is not ever OK under any circumstances.
@Bret:
You’re a disgusting slime! There are trigger warnings on a lot of sites for reasons and you waltz in here speaking of a violent situation as though it’s funny.
I wouldn’t be upset if Ophelia banned you this second.
(I also posted this at X Blogs as it covers the same ground)
This sort of thinking is rooted in an authoritarian sense of of entitlement and drive to dominate. In MBA programs the admonition was to “Bear down” as if it was all about summoning the confidence, focus and will and getting your way by imposing it upon the lesser people. Yes, this kind of starts to sound a little like fascism.
Domination is not something that you work with the target toward. It is imposed upon the situation and people from outside. How those inside may feel about this outside force isn’t really a consideration for the entitled authoritarian.
Rape is just a small-scale, and particularly disgusting, example of that thinking. In fact rape seems to be, for me, the most appropriate descriptor for much of what big business does to nations, peoples, economies, and societies as they move forward and systematically privatize profits, and pleasures, and socialize liabilities, and pain.
Fraternities are the ‘charm school’ feeders for big business. Their willingness to rape is a mark that they are almost indoctrinated. Their willingness to talk about it openly shows they still need a little more time in the oven. I’m sure they will get a stern talking to about public relations and maintaining a public image to disguise their intentions.
Hein
Oh, I agree that while we’re fighting rape culture we must at the same time protect our personal safety.
I have two little daughters, believe me, I’m very protective.
And come the day they go clubbing, although I wished they wouldn’t have to, I’ll make sure they have money for a taxi home.
I agree. I think they sent out the warning way too late since the attempted rape was only the last step in a long series of attacks.
Well, this:
They should do something to make the campus a safe place for women and inform people of that.
I would not have objected to a request to please use the main road to the carpark, especially after dark, which they can and will guard, and not take the shorter and nicer way through the botanical garden.
I’ve said this before:
I think it would help if people who are actually pro-women and against rape understood that all their wonderful rape advice mounts up to the exact same thing religious fundamentalists insist on: Don’t go there, don’t do that, don’t wear that, only do that while with a man and so on.
And it raises some ethical questions, like… what if you’re alone with the someone of the other gender and you’re the last people on Earth, but they have a “headache” every night, and you need to repopulate the world?
The only ethical question that appalling remark raised for me was, “Just how much of a woman-hating douchebag are you?”
And the answer is obviously: A great big steaming one.
Why isn’t the question “if you could have sex with anyone, who would it be?” Why even use the word rape?
It’s chilling to think these are going to be the future educated men of America. They are potentially our future prosecuters, judges, doctors, lawyers, law makers, among other things.
I once read a book called “Against The Tide” that was about men throughout history who’ve fought for women’s rights against strong opposition. The editor decided to include a fraternity’s charter (don’t remember the school) that declared they were against rape and would not tolerate it in their fraternity. I thought it was incredibly sad and pathetic that this was considered such a bold, feminist statement, enough to be included in this book. Is the bar actually that low?
Julian, he’s not a poe, unfortunately.
When I’m grand empress of the world, Bret and his like will be required to get forehead tattoos that say SHITBAG: ENGAGE AT OWN RISK.
Grace:
They’re the elite ruling class. Of course they think that “lesser people” exist for them to exploit. It’s always been this way; at least it gets talked about now.
There’s a woman out there with a website discussion how she was gang-raped at a frat house back in the late ’60s and early ’70s. All her rapists eventually rose to prominence in society.
The Greek system exists to reinforce the entitlement inculcated in society’s GoldenSons by their parents and teachers. To a lesser extent, the same thing for the sorority girls, but they’ve traditionally been trained to be the wives, hostesses, etc. in the world of the elites.
Ugh no. Rape is torture. “If you could use your penis to torture someone, who would it be?” That’s what’s really being asked.
And yes, I’m very proud to be part of the group that organized the rally. Thanks to their efforts, the story made national news.
I actually don’t think this reflects poorly on UVM at all. The administration actually responded quite swiftly. It’s definitely not the case that rape culture is more pronounced at UVM than at other colleges. Hopefully this episode will lead to better policies to deal with rape and sexual assaults among students. For that there’s nothing to do but wait and see how things play out. Fraternity membership has been declining at UVM for a while now. I doubt many students feel like losing Epsilon whatever would be a big loss.
Ms. Daisy, can I please just wear some sort of headgear all the time (maybe with a little billboard with the message), instead of getting a tattoo? I feel uncomfortable having my body penetrated with a needle…
Ignoring the sack of shit masquerading a human being.
@SallyStrange
Congratulations. And it’s reassuring to hear the school didn’t try to side step the issue. This kind of threat against the student body should be taken seriously.
Great work, Sally. Well done.
@ Gilliel
I thought you objected to the idea of a warning itself. In some sense that victims make themselves open to legitimate blame by trying to protect themselves.
But that’s not what you objected to, after all.
I can’t believe the callousness and lack of human decency you show in continuing to even post here. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
CC: Bret’s being ‘edgy’.
Oh yeah, he’s not afraid to go there! Take that, proponents of human decency! Bret rebels against your petty concepts of ‘ethics’ and ‘basic compassion!’
There’s a new bad boy in town, you better believe it! That’s our Bret: Always stickin it to The Man. In yo FACE!
Well, you’ve got to admire their chutzpah. These boys clearly aren’t going let a little thing like what people think of them get in the way of their fun. I have a few more questions I’d like to suggest for further questionnaires:
– Which baby would you most like to brain with a rock?
– If you were cutting off someone’s digits with a pair of pinking shears, which finger would you start with?
– Which is more fun: mowing down a young family in your car or roasting a sackload of kittens over an open fire?
Do you think they’ll let me join their club?
BTW, what is wrong with this web-page? Every time I scroll to the bottom, the text jumps down so I can’t see it. It’s really annoying and it makes it much harder to leave comments. (My browser is Chrome, if that is relevent).