Pi Beta Nanny

Like most myths, there’s a strong element of truth behind it. Fraternity parties were bacchanalias. The problem is that this was no mystery, and was precisely why people went to them. There would be drinking. There would be dancing. There would be sex, if you were lucky. Debauchery? It could happen.

The difference wasn’t that women were unaware of the fact that they were going into the lion’s den when they decided to try their hand at being Sigma Chi’s sweetheart, but that the sexual revolution was on, and if women wanted to drink, to get drunk, to have sex, so what? The fight wasn’t over sex or no sex, but the chauvinist belief in the virtue of the virgin.

If a woman chose to have sex, that was entirely her business. She was no more a slut than the guy. That, at the time, was the radical shift. Women with adult prerogative. Women with the right to do whatever the hell they wanted to do, even unmarried sex, without fear that she would be tainted in perpetuity as a harlot. It was revolutionary. It was long ago.*

During a fraternity party at a West Coast college in 2016, a drunk boy and an equally drunk girl went into a bedroom. Two freshmen noticed them go upstairs. They rounded up several other students and found the couple. One student, flanked by the rest as backup, said to the boy: “Hey, dude? You can’t do this.” Another student offered to walk the girl home.

The students who thwarted a potential crisis were neither women nor members of a sexual assault awareness group; they were freshman members of the fraternity that hosted the party. They had been counseled by their chapter president, who told me this story, that it was their mission to prevent sexual assaults and to treat women right.

Want to guess who’s the hero of this story? Hint: it’s not the girl who, equally drunk with a boy, who asserted her autonomy to make her own choices without some frosh deciding that he knew better about how she should conduct her sex life than she did.

There were, even in the bad old days, rules that applied. No one forced themselves on anyone else. No one “took advantage” of someone who was passed out. This shouldn’t be confused with the sudden epidemic of “blackouts,” where women appear fully functional, totally capable of enthusiastic consent to the fellow she’s with and all who observe her, but after the next day’s regret, suddenly realized she was in a blackout state and has no memory of her ripping the clothing off the guy. No one ever spoke of such things years ago.** Now, it happens constantly.

But drunken sex? Happened all the time. Maybe your father and mother did it. Maybe your grandparents. Maybe they even fought  for their right to to do it, because the days of a man refusing to marry a woman who wasn’t a virgin were history. The point was that women could make their own choices, whether to get drunk, to smoke a cigar, to have sex.

If this is really the future you were hoping to accomplish, to have your choices as a woman subject to the review committee of random freshmen or sniffling scolds because you’re unworthy, incapable, of deciding for yourself whether you want to go to a party, get drunk, have sex, and need a committee of men to oversee your decisions and veto what they decide are inappropriate ones?

Forget the sex part, as that’s inflammatory these days because the Sexual Revolution failed, and it’s back to being a moral and traumatic act that will destroy your life rather than a physical one for fun, and consider whether a good fraternity is the one that will decide for you whether your exercise of free will is morally acceptable?

If this saves you from yourself, and that’s what you want from others because you think so little of yourself, of your freedom to make your own decisions even if you may later regret them, then praise the new fraternity for defending your womanhood. All it cost you was your autonomy. All it cost the women who came before you was their fight to establish themselves as the equal of men, with the right to make their own decisions no matter what men thought of them, and the right to have sex whenever and with whomever they wanted. But if you want the fraternity boys to save you from your poor girl*** choices, you be you.

*The headline given this op-ed, “A Frat Boy and a Gentleman,” brings to mind an old joke. Calling a fraternity a frat is like calling a country a…well, you get the idea.

**There is always someone, upon reading such things, who comes forward to swear it happened to them during the Summer of Love, but they just didn’t bother to mention it to anyone until now. Right.

***Face it, woman are capable of making adult decision. Girls?

28 thoughts on “Pi Beta Nanny

  1. Jesse Duran

    Can we be honest about what happened here? Fraternities need to protect their reputations and build some social capital for future problems (I know from experience I am a recent graduate). Two freshmen went into a fraternity bedroom to have sex on a frat members bed… and the frat stopped them and kicked them out. Then, some exec board member had the smart idea to turn this into a social justice bonus and build a little social capital for the future and maybe get some bonus points for future job applications.

    Seems pretty simple to me.

    1. SHG Post author

      Everything seems pretty simple to recent graduates. Your point about fraternities being self-protective is no doubt true, though that wasn’t the purpose to which this was used in the op-ed, which gave rise to the anecdote. As for whether that was the case in this particular instance (assuming it in fact happened at all), be careful about projecting your experience onto others. You could have made the point without assuming your truth is the truth.

      Regardless, you made a good point even if it’s not really relevant to critiquing the purpose of the op-ed.

  2. AE

    Today, a mob of entitled men exercised their male privilege to control a woman’s body. Truly, we live in The Handmaid’s Tale, where women are now treated as the chattels of the Patriarchy.

      1. AE

        Oops, sorry. Demon Rum was involved. That changes everything.

        And this is a college campus, not a Supreme Court protest.

        Someone has been slipping me the wrong Narrative Memos.

      2. B. McLeod

        Well, the frosh coitus interruptus squad directed their comments to the male (even if it effectively meant that the woman couldn’t have sex either). So it was OK, because they didn’t tell the drunk woman she couldn’t have sex. She just had to find someone else after she was back home.

        1. SHG Post author

          A mob of white boys can’t tell a woman what to do, even if she relies on them to save her feminine virtue.

  3. Matthew Scott Wideman

    I saw the beginning of this as I graduated from college in 2006 and I served on my fraternities executive committee. It’s going to be hard to young man at these institutions because they are guilty X’s 2 before they are innocent. I saw girls get black out drunk, make accusations she was drugged at our fraternity, and then be back there the next weekend. The sad part is there is becoming a standard of zero accountability for the women. They can clearly have an alcohol and drug problem and yet once an alcohol over consumption incident happens the man is on super probation and the woman is treated as a victim. As 19 year olds we voted to ban girls from our house. I can remember carrying girls to my Jeep and dropping them off at their sorority house, to prevent another bullshit incident. None of them every had to go to rehab or counseling despite serious issues. Yet, the men they were involved with were treated with suspicion and made to go to alcohol counseling.

    I used to serve on the house Corp of my fraternity. A girl got alcohol poisoning after drinking at another house and girls apartment. The boys did exactly what I told them to do in my mini seminar. Took her alcohol away, got her food, water, and called the Paramedics (all on camera I might add). The school put the fraternity on 6months probation. The young woman was not required to go to any counseling. As a young attorney, I could not believe the conversation I was having with the School Dean and general fraternity. I was disgusted to the lack of questioning in reason. A person with a serious alcohol issue is a liability, and I was blown away that nothing was done to either help this person or prevent another alcohol related incident. I am glad I graduated in 2006.

    1. SHG Post author

      The transition from a child at home in high school to an “adult” away at college has always been a hard one, but it’s one we all made. We make mistakes along the way. That’s part of growing up.

  4. Jake

    I asked a woman (Mrs. Jake) and she is for the frat’s policy in this situation on the following grounds:

    A. The worst case outcomes in either case (intervene/don’t intervene) are very different. Given the risks for all parties involved caution is advisable and prudent.

    B. The frat has a right to set policy regarding behavior in their facility.

    C. The randy couple are perfectly free to resume elelsewhere.

    1. SHG Post author

      Since no one else know here (including the women) knows any women, Mrs. Jake’s opinions clear this up for everyone.

          1. Mrs. Jake

            That’s not what I told him. I told him to get off the damn computer and take out the garbage. Did he listen to me? No. No he did not.

    2. Miles

      Not that it ever crossed my mind that a woman would have you (or, frankly, that you were interested in women), but in light of this comment, I appreciate how there’s someone for everyone, Jake.

    3. Sacho

      You’re right Jake. But why stop there? A quick worst case outcome analysis shows that you should ban frat parties in general.

      Remember, YOLO

      1. SHG Post author

        Mrs. Jake’s point, that fraternities have the right to impose whatever rules they want in their house, is correct but absurdly irrelevant. Don’t follow the strawman down the rabbit hole.

  5. Joe

    One student, flanked by the rest as backup, said to the boy: “Hey, dude? You can’t do this.” He continued, “Let’s face it, we’re jealous. We developed a pretext to cockblock you. When this is over we’re going to pretend like we’re heroes. Nobody will be able to tell the difference between cockblocking and actual concern. You’re outmatched, bro. We’ve got you cornered. Go play some beer pong.”

  6. Casual Lurker

    You shouldn’t have posted that Dworkin picture before the Govt. shutdown had ended. It’s just plain cruel. With the funding pipeline held up, our Xanax stockpile is in short supply. You should see the faces of those afflicted with the resulting crippling anxiety.

  7. Ray Lee

    **There is always someone, upon reading such things, who comes forward to swear it happened to them during the Summer of Love, but they just didn’t bother to mention it to anyone until now. Right.

    You apparently focused on the pictures to the exclusion of the “letters” section of Penthouse.

    1. SHG Post author

      I only read it for the pictures. Except that one letter asking how one learns to become a pimp and whether there’s a school that provides a degree for that.

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