It wasn’t published as a masters thesis. It was accepted as a masters thesis, and it’s available on the web, but I wouldn’t say it was published any more than this comment I’m now typing is published.
It’s true that at a successful party at an upper tier frat the ratio can be 3:1 girls to guys. But there are plenty of other fraternity parties where there aren’t enough women, and it isn’t because the guys are keeping them out. The girls want to go to the parties at the top houses, and they think the way these parties are structured makes them the happiest. They are casting their votes with their feet.
I’m skeptical that a 1:1 ratio would be safer, much less much safer. It’s true that the competition for a man with a 3:1 ratio is fiercer, but doesn’t that presume (at least a little bit) that they’re trying to catch a man for a hookup to begin with? After all, not that many hookups turn into relationships. The girls know this. And the 3:1 ratio gives women the freedom to not have to engage much with the guys l if they don’t want to; there are plenty of others for the guys to talk to.
Why do I think this is going on? I think people underestimate the degree to which these women compete with each other for social status. Women join sororities for all sorts of reasons, but many do so just for the social prestige. They value their own social status as well as the social status of their prospective hookups / dates a lot. Going to the wrong parties given by the “wrong” guys lowers their house’s prestige.
(As a man, I’d say a lot of this is just women trying to compete with each other. For God’s sake, many spend thousands of dollars /year on shoes. I’m not exaggerating too much if I say that no heterosexual man in the history of the world ever spent 2 seconds total in his life noticing or thinking about a woman’s shoes. Same goes for clothes in general, though that’s a little more complicated.)
The most important point about the economic analysis I would make is this - This is voluntary behavior on the part of students. The women are choosing to go to parties where the ratio is 2 or 3 to 1. Some posters here may not like it, but the women involved do. And if you try to change the rules to stop what you don’t like, then it won’t’ work (e.g. sororities hosting the bashes) or the same behavior will probably manifest itself in other forms.
I don’t read that much into the ***-blocking comment. The two major problems are (1) it’s hard for a third party to figure out if a drunk girl will later regret what she’s doing (2) after the vast majority of drunken hookups both parties seem to have no severe regrets. Besides, if a women’s own sorority sisters won’t help her than all this bystander intervention talk is nonsense. But I don’t think this is true for the most part.
The thesis was clearly not “peer reviewed” at least in the form I saw. The editorialist is a USC junior who writes an opinion column. He clearly worked hard on this article, but let’s not give it more authority than it deserves.
Added: I’ll throw this out again - my understanding is that women are as much behind the growth in hookup culture as the men.
Mom2and,
I don’t know about changing my mind.
Doesn’t sound like the idea of throwing parties in a sorority house is a great idea.
I don’t know if the hookup culture is working for women.
I am generalising…
Guys want sex and then relationships. Women want relationships and then sex.
If sex comes before relationships, and the relationships don’t occur, the women are going to be disappointed.
I was listening to KGO radio, a local station. There was a woman on who wrote a book about dating for women over the age of 30, or was it 50? Anyway, when women and men aren’t at the same place at the same time, there are major issues.
My daughter said a lot of her friends are disappointed with guys. My daughter is in her late 20’s now.
Your argument is a good one, @al2simon. But I was just speculating, and I think you are too. To the research! I found this peer-reviewed article, [Explaining Party Rape,](http://gendersexuality.uchicago.edu/projects/sexual_assault/pdf/2006_armstrong_ethnography.pdf) to be informative. The authors spent nine months among freshman girls at a “party dorm” at a Midwestern university, and they present an ethnographic study about the party culture there.
This stuff is breezy pop sociology, not peer reviewed published scholarly journal stuff.
Pretty much the same reasoning as the “Economics of Sex” that got a good bit of play in the past several months.
Thesis is that because of contraception and changing social mores, the social/relationship “price” that men are willing to pay for sex has declined. So women are now stuck in a “price war” with other women over what they can “charge” for sex. Resulting in less commitment, fewer relationships, more hook-ups etc.
The only thing the theory leaves out is the concept that many young women these days feel they are in fact better off without the relationship with the guy. These days, the male not the female is considered the ball and chain.
“My premise was that the college would be saying to the sororities: which would you prefer, having parties with alcohol yourselves, or having fraternities stopped from having parties with alcohol? I thought (perhaps wrongly) that the sororities would prefer the alcohol parties to no alcohol parties.”
The college wants to *solve the problem/i, not please the sororities’ particular tastes and preferences.
If the college wanted to solve the problem of the frats serving alcohol to underage students, they could accomplish that with ease, by shutting down any frat that served alcohol to underage students. But they have not done that. They don’t want to stop underage drinking; they just want to mitigate some of the bad effects.
"This attention was not automatic, but required the skillful deployment of physical and cultural assets. Most of the party-oriented women on the floor arrived with appropriate gender presentations and the money and know-how to preserve and refine them. While some more closely resembled the “ideal” college party girl (white, even features, thin but busty, tan, long straight hair, skillfully made-up, and well-dressed in the latest youth styles), most worked hard to attain this presentation. They regularly straightened their hair, tanned, exercised, dieted, and purchased new clothes.
Women found that achieving high erotic status in the party scene required looking “hot” but not “slutty,” a difficult and ongoing challenge (West and Zimmerman 1987). Mastering these distinctions allowed them to establish themselves as “classy” in contrast to other women (Handler 1995; Stombler 1994). "
Is this supposed to be damning - that attractive young girls like to look attractive and seek to do so, as opposed to rolling out of bed and showing up in pajama pants? Normal people consider it a good thing to want to look reasonably attractive and present oneself in an attractive manner in social situations. Not sure why this is presented so scornfully.
Cardinal Fang: Thanks for the article. It sounds about right to me. The only thing I don’t really see addressed is gang rape. There is the suggested threesome.
“I don’t know if the hookup culture is working for women.”
Then they need not participate in it, and reserve this for men they are in a relationship with. Problem solved!
The part that’s supposed to be damning is that of the 55 women they were studying, one was raped and another assaulted the first week of school at fraternity parties.
CF, thanks for posting the article.
The section on victim blaming was quite good. As was the section where a guy talked to a woman for 15 minutes and he felt that was enough time spent communicating. Enough time to get some action.
The article also speaks to the issue of social class and how important social class is.
The article pretty much describes the scene in the 70s where I went to school, right down to the dorm catering to the girls who are interested in such things. And those dorms were closest to fraternity and sorority row. One thing discussed is something I haven’t liked to bring up. Girlfriends are seen as off-limits for assaults. I guess they are seen as private property. It always bothered me women who were safe in these groups, because of their recognized relationships with one of the fraternity members, weren’t distressed what was happening to other women.
Is anyone surprised by what they read in the article?
“The part that’s supposed to be damning is that of the 55 women they were studying, one was raped and another assaulted the first week of school at fraternity parties.”
Oh. Since you c&p’ed stuff about girls looking all girly-girl, that made me think that’s what you thought was the objectionable part.
One thing that I was – perhaps not surprised but struck by – was the part about how women felt pressured to go to those parties. I always thought that most of the people (male and female) who went to fraternity parties at least enjoyed the atmosphere. If they did go because all of their friends were, they wouldn’t go again. I was surprised that there was at least a small contingent of women who go to parties that they don’t enjoy and feel pressured to have sex with men at those parties as ‘payment’ for the privilege.
It sounds ridiculous like that, but there’s probably some very strong cultural norms in place that someone who isn’t from that background can really understand right away without reading stories from people who are part of that world. It might be the same reason why people allow themselves to be hazed when joining clubs or groups. For them, being accepted is more important than physical safety or even enjoyment.
I c&p’ed the part about the women getting all dolled up to get sexual attention from men because I wanted to counter al2simon’s claim that women dress up for other women. These young women were dressing for men.
Yes, college age men and women “display” and present themselves in an appealing fashion, often to attract the opposite sex. Didn’t you, when you were single and on the market? It’s not that I could tell you today what I wore to a frat party, but yeah, I tried to look “good” by mid-eighties lights. How is that not anything but completely normal?
Tell that to al2simon, not to me.
My dad was a fashion designer in the shoe business, he notices women’s shoes and he’s heterosexual so I knew al2simon was wrong :-).