An email written by a brother of the Kappa Sigma fraternity at USC has been making national headlines with his instructions on how to be a "Cocksman," telling his fraternity to "take notes" about how to have sex with girls. He decrees:
"Note: I will refer to females as "targets". They aren't actual people like us men. Consequently, giving them a certain name or distinction is pointless." (You can read the email here. )
The language is sexist, racist, gross, foul, offensive, and degrading.
What scares me most is not the sex-for-ranking stuff, but rather how violent the language is. The document is a literal "battle plan," encouraging treating women in a violent and derogatory manner. By referring to women as "targets," it's almost as if they're animals -- being hunted and treated in a predatory nature.
The fraternity is apologizing like crazy, but let's be real: This sort of stuff happens all the time. I'm aware of fraternity listservs in college that regularly circulated pictures of past weekend's hookups for guys to rate, or lists of the hottest freshman girls. A friend once forwarded me such a post, and it was horrifying, but also deeply fascinating. These fraternity listservs are seen as the ultimate secret, and completely anti-female. Is this what happens among all frat guys? There's an element of morbid curiosity too -- it's a peek into a male psyche, although I'd hope not a common one.
I remember an instance of someone telling me that FFJD was on a fraternity listserv, I sat there wondering (and dreading) some of the things that would probably be written. For some reason, among frat brothers, sharing and swapping stories, sexual encounters, advice, and divulging very personal information about women in the community is not only commonplace, but encouraged.
Apparently in college we love to organize everything, even our sex lives. But this is something that probably shouldn't be on anyone's to-do list. Or any list really. As I wrote about before, we are obsessed with rating things -- the email lays out a very detailed number scale on which to rate women. I've accidentally witnessed my own rating (by two boys when I lived in South America who didn't realize I was American) and sure, girls have done it to guys.
Since when, between the Duke F*ck List, and this stuff, did sex in college mean a sport? Tactics? Strategy? By making sex into a game, it removes all romance, intimacy, and love.
This sex for sport/win is not something, sadly, just associated with college -- read Maureen Dowd's piece on the D.C.-Area high school that had the senior boys ranking freshman girls, with a point system.
Fraternity and sorority culture is a great bonding tool -- it fosters campus life, engages groups of students in new and different ways. I've written before about my love of my sorority. I also recognize the danger of a group mentality. It's examples like this that bring out the worst in the Greek system.
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But these are college guys...I am convinced this is a prank by someone who idolizes Tucker Max.
The breakdown goes something like this: Objects of sexual desire (OSD) are things, not real people. People can be OSDs. Individually, OSDs are usually people. In groups even OSDs that have attained personhood, are things.
This is not abnormal and shouldn’t illicit feelings of horror. What happens is, boys grow up. They develop empathy and if they become aware of how they classify people, they attempt to objectively look past their classifications. If they don’t, we refer to them as having arrested development.
I assume something similar happens with women.
"What happens is, boys grow up."
WHICH DIDN't HAPPEN HERE. Ugh. *shudders* You are aware, these are NOT boys but college students aren't you?
I am utterly horrified by this comment and how anyone can conflate adolescent selfishness with this conscious level of objectification and desire for revenge.
First – OSD was simply and abbreviation for Object of Sexual Desire. I didn’t want to just limit the discussion to men who objectify women. Based on that definition, I would hope you would rethink your assertion that people stop objectifying other people at early childhood.
Second – the part of the brain responsible for higher cognitive function (particularly extrapolation of long-term consequences) doesn’t fully develop until around the age of 25. So in that regard, college age males might still be thought of as boys.
None of that is meant as an endorsement of the activities of the students who were the subject of this article. I was merely trying to say that it was the toxic result of group-fed antisocial behavior that on a smaller, individual level, is pretty normal. As a society we have a habit of identifying behavior which is antisocial and then rather than accept that it something normal that we need to overcome, we pretend it’s unnatural and only exists in deviants.
Now I’m going to go read the article you posted below. It looks like a good read.
http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/34/4/538.full
Making a comment about a woman's body to one of your buddies is not anywhere near the same thing as physically harming that woman or making her feel unsafe. More of a distinction needs to be made between the two behaviors, because they're not anywhere near the same thing.
"I have long held that, historicalÂly, the personhood or individualÂity of women was non-existeÂnt or suspect."
Bull. Some men are threatened by it, and others want to deny it in lieue of their own ease and narcissistic pleasure.
From an early age, youth are taught to view other people as little more than a means to get what they want: sex, fame, money, prestige, political power.
Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to teach the Golden Rule in grade school.
Every week or so, there was some sort of scandal: Hazing run amok, organized cheating, and outright bullying of students who weren't associated with the Greeks.
My daughter graduated from USC a few years ago, and has informed me that the "Greeks" are still out of control at USC.