The Blog I'm Not Writing

Department Of Who Said,
The More Things Change The More They Remain The Same

Apparently, it was a French journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr.  And what he said, in French (surprise!) and in 1849, was,

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

Historians say Karr was expressing his cynicism about the likelihood that the recent French Revolution (1848), or any political disruption or reform, might be able to change human behavior and social structures.

In choosing that department title, moiself  doesn’t mean to imply there’s been no social progress since the mid-nineteenth century.  But the chilling story of the so-called Cornell Seven has a heart breaking, odiferous stench of familiarity to it.  It has given moiself  the ____ – I don’t know the right word; the impetus?  The permission? – to write about my own memorable encounter with the pack animal mentality that can be nurtured and even protected in our misogynous and sexist culture…and in particular, in all-male “bro” environments such as fraternities.

 

 

For those readers living under the proverbial rock, [1]  here’s a (very, very) brief summary of what has come to be called the Cornell Seven story – a criminal incident which was mishandled by the Cornell police and only came to light recently when the victim filed a civil complaint. Do your own research for more of the disturbing details (which include Snapchat messages the rapists sent to other fraternity members inviting them to join in the assault)…but if you do so,  I’d advise having an emesis basin handy:

“The 101-page complaint states that (Jane Doe) ‘was plied with alcohol and drugs to the point of intoxication’ at the fraternity house, and alleges in graphic detail that she was sexually assaulted and raped by members of the fraternity over the course of about seven hours….
 (excerpt, The Washington Post, “What to know about
the Cornell University rape allegations”)

 

 

I’d been saving (?) this story, my own story of facing frat misogyny (don’t worry; I was not assaulted, physically).  There have been times over the decades where it has come back to me, and I knew I’d write about it, eventually.  But the when eluded moiself, until….

 

*   *   *

Department Of Notes I Wrote To Moiself  in 2015

The notes were prompted by news of the SAE-OU racist chant incident:

The University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon racist incident…occurred on March 7, 2015, when members of the University of Oklahoma (OU) chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) were filmed performing a racist song that used the word ‘nigger’ and referenced Jim Crow….

On March 7, 2015, two videos were recorded of SAE members and their dates riding on a chartered bus to the Oklahoma City Golf & Country Club, where an event celebrating the national organization’s Founder’s Day was being held. In the video the students are heard singing a chant to the tune of the nursery rhyme “If You’re Happy and You Know It“. Below is how the chant was sung:

‘There will never be a nigger at SAE/There will never be a nigger at SAE
You can hang ’em from a tree/But they’ll never sign with me,
There will never be a nigger at SAE.’ “
(excerpts Wikipeda, 2015 U. of Oklahoma SAE racism incident )

 

SAE’s website’s home page lists SAE’s motto as,
“The true gentleman starts here.”

*   *   *

The notes I wrote to moiself  (in my file of possible blog subjects):

“the thing w/the SAE chant; my experiences w/UCD frat…how much detail go into? So not surprising about the SAE thing – the big ruckus when it’s racism, not sexism. Someday, tell. details/how much to tell…haven’t decided yet. The vile songs/chants – I unfortunately have the original “sheet music.” The names…anonymous or anagram-ized.”

*   *   *

Department Of Background To The Details

Even back in the late 1970s-early 1980s, other fraternities were using the  “But we’re not as bad as SAE” defense  [2]  whenever they got in trouble. And frats were always getting in trouble.  And you do realize that frat is an anagram for fart.

 

 

Once again, I digress.

Dateline: University of California at Davis, late 1970s. The Greek Life was not especially big at my alma mater, with less than 10% of students belonging to fraternities.  Not being the “type” to be interested in that culture, I didn’t have many friends – well, any friends – who were frat members,   [3] and didn’t pay much attention to their goings-on, until The Lupe Incident was all over the local news.

The Aggie, UCD’s student newspaper, broke the story.   [4]  Background:  Fraternities each had their own songbooks, which they distributed to their pledges.  The books consisted of lyrics to songs and chants which the pledges were required to learn and which the frat members would drunkenly howl recite at parties and meetings, from frat-only events to gatherings where one fraternity made fun of/insulted its rival fraternities.  Late in 1975, a Latino frat pledge objected to a certain song in his fraternity’s (Alpha Gamma Rho – AGR) songbook.  The pledge leaked a copy of the song to the campus Chicano/Latino organizations and community members, and “The Lupe Incident” was born.

The lyrics of “Lupe” sing the…uh…praises…   [5]  of a goodtime Latina  ( “…my fun-loving/cock-sucking Mexican whore,” who, among her many  sexual attributes, “tastes better than blueberry pie” ).  The Latino pledge and the wider Chicano community held that the song specifically degraded Mexican women.  [6]   By early 1976 hundreds of Latino students and allies organized and staged protests and presented a list of demands to AGR and to UCD administrators.  AGR officially apologized and…I’m not sure of the other consequences. But the incident left a sour taste in my mouth, one that had little to do with a vulgar, racist and sexist song referencing performing oral sex on a Latina named for a beloved figure in Mexican Catholicism.

 

 

Forward to late 1979.  [7]   One of my apartment mates, Yanny, was a personal friend of mine.  [8]  Yanny was also a friend of my boyfriend, Jay; both were seniors.  Jay had surprised me when, as a junior, he’d joined a fraternity (“SEF”  [9] ), and also when he ran for the vice-presidency of SEF during his senior year.  He’d defended joining his particular fraternity by saying that SEF was the “nerd” fraternity – composed of engineering majors (like him), and that they were good guys….  We’d been around the block with that issue, and I had even gone to a couple of frat parties with him, to be a good sport.   [10]  Jay had parental urging (read: pressure) re how joining a frat would provide him with post-graduate networking opportunities, and besides, he said, he could eat at the frat for free several times a week    [11]….and SEF wasn’t a *real* frat, more of a social club….

Also, by being SEF’s vice president, Jay said that he could have some positive influence should stereotypical frat behavior creep into the SEF ranks.  So.  Jay knew my opinion of fraternities (one step above pit toilets re their contribution to civilization); he’d heard my arguments that research shows frat members have a higher risk for subjecting women to sexual coercion/assault, and that the culture’s structure/social events often treat women as sexual commodities, or at least reinforce outdated models of patriarchal masculinity, and that frats are exclusivist and elitist institutions which still practice segregation and hazing and promote conformity to groupthink and are frequently linked to dangerous consumption of alcohol and “recreational” drugs and promote so-called brotherhood (protection of their membership from consequences of their wrongdoing) over accountability….

 

 

I’d said my piece.  Jay disagreed with some of my points, agreed with others, and joined SEF.  As did Yanny, early in his senior year, when Jay and another friend invited him to do so.   It was funny to me, now and then, that Yanny came to me seeking my opinion – absolution ? – re his decision.  I’m sure he’d already decided to join SEF; nevertheless, I heard his confession, which was almost word-for-word the reasons/excuses offered by Jay (some mumbling the party line about how frats raise money for charity and promote leadership and fellowship and organizational skills; he could eat for free at the frat several times a week; his father said it would be a good networking opportunity….).

 

 

One weekday afternoon, a few weeks after Yanny joined SEF, he and I were home in our apartment, chatting in the living room.  Knowing he’d recently attended a SEF event, I asked Yanny about how his frat life was going. Was it as dull as he’d reassured me?  Probably nothing along the Lupe lines, eh?  Yanny laughed…kinda sorta.  A  there’s-something-I-gotta-tell-you  can be communicated via an uncomfortable laugh, and it was definitely communicated in Yanny’s.  We briefly discussed the Lupe incident, and I brought up the fact that I’d been cynical about the Latino pledgeboy’s righteous indignation about the so-called insult to his heritage:

“What if the girl’s name in the song had been ‘raceless,’ or sans ethnic identity?  If it were ‘Sally‘ being debased in song, would he have protested the song’s demeaning sexual references, or joined in singing it with gusto? ‘Racism, well, okay boys, I guess we can’t get away with that anymore, but degrading women is fine…. ‘ “

Oh, you have no idea; you were right, Yanny said.  I was confused; I asked Yanny what idea I should have, and what was I right about?  Yanny kept repeating that phrase, in several different ways, saying that I was right, that “really bad stuff” still abounds in the frat culture, even in the “better” ones.  He said he’d received SEF’s songbook, and, “Boy, if you saw that…well, you really should see that.  There’s several… one really bad…. No, really; you should see that.”  Why should I see…what?  I asked him.  What would I see?  He repeated several times that I would be shocked by what I’d see in the songbook – which was on top of his desk – but I really should see it…but he has to go to class…but, yeah, I should see that songbook, …and it’s on his desk, and he has to go to class….

 

 

Yanny darted into his bedroom. I heard paper-shuffling sounds; he returned to the living room with his bookbag and announced that he was off to class. All alone in the apartment, I remained on the couch for a minute, bemused by the fact that Yanny had just spent several minutes essentially telling me that I should go to his room and look at the SEF songbook.  So, I did.

Yanny’s bedroom door was wide open. I took the songbook from atop his desk (it was the only object on his desk, angled in a way that practically bellowed, HERE I AM. [12]  I took it with me to the living room, sat down on the couch, and thumbed through it.  The book consisted of pages of mimeographed chants and songs, ranging in content from silly/stupid to vulgar to inuendo-and-scatological reference-filled.  Several of the chants touted SEF’s superiority to other fraternities. The one about Sigma Nu, a rival frat, was particularly, graphically memorable:

Butt fuck, Butt fuck
Gonorrhea goo
Lift up the cow’s tail
Out comes Sigma Nu

Ah yes, lads:  enlighten me once again about how fraternities promote leadership, brotherhood, community service, gentlemanly behavior, and social maturation.

Then there was The Song.  The one I assumed Yanny had wanted me to see.  It had music accompanying the lyrics, which were set to the tune of “When the Caissons Go Rolling Along.”  The song’s title was, “When The End Of The Month Rolls Along.”

Summary:  the song’s many, many verses lament how you – as a guy – aren’t going to “get any” when the end of the month rolls around; that is, when your targeted female sex partner is having her menstrual period:

“You can tell by her waddle there’s a tampon up her twaddle” …
“You can tell by her fanny that you won’t be getting any…”

Feeble rhyme schemes along with vulgar misogyny – what a surprise.

Those are a the milder lyrics; I’ll spare y’all all of the verses and chorus.

As I sat trembling on the couch, I wish I’d spared moiself  from the  “ditty” of sexism, from the girls-are-really-disgusting-and-unclean-but-at-least-some-times-we-can-fuck-them  sentiments, all set to the tune of a patriotic marching anthem.

 

 

I knew I had to do something.

I had Jay’s class schedule written down; he had classes for the entire afternoon. I wanted to “warn” him what I was going to do, but there was no way to do so (this was pre-cellphones/home phone answering machines; there was no way to contact him).  As I biked to campus, the songbook in my backpack, I thought that perhaps it was best that there was no way to tell him, lest he might somehow convince me to ignore what I’d seen.

I made two photocopies of the songbook, and took them to the campus Women’s Resource and Research Center.

 

 

You might think that a counselor (read: righteous feminist advocate) at a campus Women’s Center would have urged me to go public no matter what, but she didn’t.  The concern she showed for *me,* re the possible personal blowback to moiself, was the one good thing to come out of that mess.  I will never forget her kindness, the look of concern on her face, when I’d presented her with the material and asked her assistance in…in doing what, exactly?  What was the right thing to do?  She didn’t seem to think I was a coward for hesitating even for a second to pursue having this festering turd of woman-hating filth brought into the open. This was decades before the MeToo movement, but the reality of what could happen when a woman spoke up about such things… She said that *she* understood the cost of doing so, but, did I? 

After discussing the situation with me and consulting with other Women’s Center staff, she said she would not (immediately) contact the press or the school administration, but would first talk to the SEF president, and get back to me.  The campus phone system had the capability of doing multiple line calls, and the next day she arranged a call between herself, moiself, and the SEF president.

The SEF president – what a piece of work.  I could practically smell his fear over the phone line, and his groveling mendacity made me want to wash my hands after hanging up from the call.  He repeatedly, gushingly assured me that he was not angry with me, that those chants and songs were not a true reflection of the “mission” of dignity and brotherhood promoted by of the Greek system…

(The more he touted the virtues of fraternities, the more I heard…
 Butt fuck, Butt fuck /Gonorrhea goo…)

…and that he was really, truly, sorry for my distress; and that this was a wakeup call, this was actually for the good of the fraternity, a chance for them to live up to their goals of good citizenship and character development and maturation and….

( Butt fuck, Butt fuck /Gonorrhea goo… )

…why, this incident might even, ultimately, make them better people!  He was almost glad they got “caught.”

 

 

Message received, dude.  Like all clandestinely braying racist/gay-bashing/misogynist vampires who wither under the light of exposure, the only thing SEF Prezboy was sorry for was for getting caught.  And he was so creepily smooth about it.  At any moment during the call I half-expected him to inform the counselor and moiself  that we all, in fact, saw eye-to-eye, and could he count on our vote in November?

Nevertheless, the three of us agreed on a course of action.  SEF Prezboy promised he would instruct all frat members to destroy their copies of the songbook, and he personally would sweep the frathouse to make sure every last copy was accounted for.  The counselor agreed to destroy the copy I’d given her, and I agreed to destroy my copy.  [13]

And, with no evidence, he is free to later turn around and deny the content, I thought, even as I was agreeing to destroy my copy.   So of course I lied. I kept my copy.

I lied ( “Yes, believe me, I don’t want to keep such filth around” ) and felt good about it.   I lied to that needledick fraudster, who only said what he said as he felt the knife of exposure at his neck.  Of course I kept the evidence.  I remember thinking, This weasel-butted snakeoil salesman is going to run for office one day, and I need to be prepared to take him down, if necessary.  [14]

 

 

But that was the next day.  That night, after I’d returned from the Women’s Center, I phoned Jay.  I asked him to please come to my apartment – I had something to tell him, but not over the phone. I told Yanny what I’d done, and he didn’t bat the proverbial eyelash.  He said it was probably best if he were not in the apartment when Jay came over, and left to go study in the library.

The frustration, outrage, and ultimately the sadness that I felt on so many levels – culturally, politically, personally – I tried to articulate them to Jay. To his credit, my boyfriend didn’t try to defend…anything.  He was obviously (to me) unhappy that I hadn’t told him what I’d planned to do ( as if I’d planned anything, I said – I’d acted, reacted, on gut-wrenching instinct).  But he said very little.  He listened to me; he wisely chose not to defend the indefensible. At one point he mumbled some mealy-mouthed comment about working from the inside to change things, then dropped that.  And as I was listening to him trying to find a way to sincerely apologize, I realized that we – he and I – had no future.

 

 

Department Of The Aftermath

I didn’t break up with Jay, not right then.  Yet I knew that I would, eventually, because I’d realized that I no longer respected him.  Maybe it’s not even respect.  I was disappointed that Jay didn’t seem to see how important it was, the issues behind the When The End Of The Month Rolls Around lyrics – how important it was and *should* be, for all humans, not only women.  I was disappointed that he didn’t feel the same way as I did about such poison, despite him being One Of The Good Guys®, a guy who (thought he) would never knowingly participate in promoting misogyny, hatred, or vitriol of any kind….

In a way, that was unfair of moiself.  Of course, Jay couldn’t feel the same way that I did.  How could he, in the world of upper-class white male privilege from whence he came and in which he lived?  The word *privilege,* when referring to the isms (e.g., racism/ sexism/classism), has been accused of being overused, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable or applicable.  We didn’t have the term then, but, looking back, that’s what it was. Jay’s privilege prevented him from understanding my simmering rage, and also that which was even more important to the future of our relationship: my spirit-enervating disheartenment.

 

 

If there was any harassment or blowback to Jay, he never mentioned it to me (nor did Yanny).  I got the strong impression that SEF Prezboy was determined to keep what had happened on the down low; he wanted to act as if the songbook never existed, and did not want it getting out to anyone, even/especially the other SEF bros, that their veep’s bitch girlfriend had ratted them out.  I remember considering that possibility – of blowback to Jay –  then thinking, Actually, I’m not a bitch, but consequences are….  Jay was their effin’ veep; he had to have known what was in SEF’s “songbook.”

I felt no satisfaction in doing (what to this day I still consider) the right thing.  For a long time afterward, I just felt…numb.  There was no great victory; just disappointment at yet another revelation of organized, institutionalized, male ass-hattery/sexism and woman-hating disguised as boys-will-be-boys hijinks, the reaction to which the frat president probably/privately considering overreacting by two radical militant feminist man-haters.  And the relationship with the boy I loved, whom I broke up with a few months later and whom I still consider to be one of the more decent, well-meaning people I have ever known, was collateral damage.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [15]

 

 

*   *   *

May you do the right thing, no matter how it feels;
May it eventually feel good when you do the right thing;
even if at first it feels so awful;
May every frat boy someday be required to have the
How To Avoid Sexual Assault guide tattooed on his chest;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] a preferred residence, I can understand, given the news as of late…and a place I tried to hide under when I first heard of the story.

[2] and the “joke” was that SAE stood for, Sexual Assault Expected

[3] What little contact I had with the Greek system was with frats; sororities were new to UCD (not on campus until 1973) and I’m not writing about them here.

[4] But their current website, I was unable to find a reference…don’t know how far back their online archives go, and I wasn’t interested in spending hours searching.

[5] In horny fratboy terms

[6] “Lupe,” a common name for Guadalupe, references the sacred cultural and spiritual figure of Mexico’s Virgen de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe). 

[7] I’d graduated that June, traveled the summer after graduation and returned to the apartment I shared with three other students.  I stayed for several months, seeking a job related to my major, before heading to the Bay Area in early 1980.

[8] All names (except Lupe) are nicknames/pseudonyms

[9] “Stupid Engineer Frat” – yes, even (some) organizations get pen names here.

[10] I did attend two parties held at his fraternity; not all that memorable (in fact kinda boring) , certainly not the high raunch other frats were known for

[11] He wouldn’t be living at the fraternity; not all frat houses had living or dorm like capacities, and most of the members of his fraternity did not live at the house.

[12] Which was usually a mess, piled high with papers and notebooks and texts, but which he’d cleared off – that was the paper shuffling I’d heard.

[13] There would be no press contacted re this (although he and the counselor were going to work out something with the administration…I’m not sure if the reported him or his fraternity).

[14] To this day have some of the evidence (copies of the songs/chants) in my files, but I (mercifully) don’t remember the SEF president’s name.

[15] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org