My topic is how college parties, specifically fraternities, influence different people’s self-worth. I chose this topic by drawing on my feelings from the first college frat parties that I went to. There I discovered that my friend JJ, a boy, could only come into the party if he came with five girls. One JJ had the same worth as five girls according to this rule. Since then I have been doing research on how this makes the girls who go to parties, the boys who want to go, and the party throwers feel. My feelings of lack of self-worth have changed in a way that now I resent the system even more and want to do a dive into how fraternities deal with sexual assault. I have been reading Reddit pages about how other students feel, and a lot of them agree that this is a disgusting system and that it perpetuates rape culture while others see the value in it. In one reddit conversation about this system at UPenn, user ‘hashslingslasher’ wrote “Ugh I cannot stand "the ratio" it's really a disgusting practice... You're literally paying to get in wth (sic) girls as if they're objects. It's the sole reason I refused to join a frat.” The other side of this argument was commented below by the user “penn_studentt” when s/he wrote “Fraternities throw parties in their own houses, with their own drinks, their own music, and clean up afterwards (sic) themselves. Who do they want to party with?...Who is more likely to make the party more fun, five creepy guys who can't find girls to come out to parties with them, or a few guys and a large, fun group of girls?.” Although he did believe in this system, he admitted at the end of his comment that “the ratio system is an admittedly sexist but 100% necessary part of having open parties.” I believe that both sides of this are important to show the divide by students. While a lot of girls feel like objects and some guys admittedly see them as such, some girls still like the system because it gives them an easier time to get into parties. Other girls can see the sexism but don’t mind it as much as they mind the lack of guys at those parties. This is a system that I want to dive deeper into and interview students to see what they say,while also seeing how this affects the fraternities' view on their guests.
Glad you are catching up (before these early posts seem less relevant). I think that "ratio" is clearly a gendered practice (as Armstrong and Hamilton might call it), but I don't agree with the way you interpret the math. You write: "One JJ had the same worth as five girls according to this rule." I guess that makes sense on the logic of "ratio." But that does not seem correct, because "one JJ" with no girls is worthless and not wanted. JJ had to provide the five girls to earn a spot at the party and be of any value. Really, the girls are the valuable "commodity," and only a man who can provide that resource in the proper quantity is admitted. They are his entry fee. The girls would be admitted without him, I assume. They pay nothing for entry because they are highly desired. But men must pay -- or provide. It is definitely highly gendered. And it definitely turns women into commodities. But it does not make them less valuable than the men due to the mathematical "ratio" they are part of.
ReplyDelete....which, of course, raises the question: "why the hell do they call it 'ratio'"?
DeleteMaybe because they want to improve "the ratio of men to women"? The proper "ratio" would be 5 women for every man, maybe? Improve the odds?