Feminist Frat Boys?

: Fraternity Men in the (Women's Studies)

House
Wantland, Ross.
Feminist Formations, Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2005, pp.
156-163 (Article)
Published by Indiana University Press

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ff/summary/v017/17.2wantland.html

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Feminist Frat Boys?:

Fraternity Men in the (Womens Studies) House
ROSS WANTLAND
[T]he true focus of revolutionary change is to see the piece of the oppressor
inside us.
Audre Lorde, quoted in Bell (1997, 12)

Fraternities have long been recognized as bastions of sexist attitudes and

behaviors. As institutions of higher education strive toward equal opportunity and access, fraternities can be seen as a final stronghold of the boys
club, a location where men who dont like to live among women can
act out in aggressive, segregated, and violent ways (OSullivan 1993, 28).
While higher education may be paying increasing attention to diversity,
the sexual/gender politics of campus greek systems often maintain white,
straight male supremacy. That is, the hegemonic masculinity of fraternities sets up and maintains gender, race, and sexual identity inequities on
the college campus. Many researchers have explored the ways in which
all-male culture is linked to sexual aggression (against women and men),
alcohol abuse, and sexist attitudes (Schwartz and DeKeseredy 1997). In
fact, statistics from college campuses reveal that fraternity men are vastly
over-represented as perpetrators of rape on campus. In a survey of womens
sexual experiences, Fritner and Rubinson found that, while fraternity men
accounted for only 25 percent of the undergraduate male population, they
represented 46 percent of the perpetrators of sexual violence (1993).
Womens studies professors speak anecdotally about the archetypal
frat boy in their classrooms: the arrogant young man who believes it
is his role to refute feminist perspectives and womens studies tenets, or
at least flirt with all the women in the class. This is a familiar narrative
of how these young men may attempt to assert their masculinity in a
mixed gender classroom space where male supremacyhence, their male
privilegeis challenged. Because of their reactions to (and avoidance of)
feminist education, these men are rarely the targets of womens studies
educational practices. Yet, given their positions within their masculine
sub-culture, fraternity menespecially the individual house leaders
possess the greatest potential for creating change among their peers. In
other words, Womens Studies for fraternity men could have a significant
impact within the greek sub-cultures on campuses. By locating Womens
Studies literally within fraternity houses, perhaps feminist practitioners
can begin to re-imagine the location, foci, and outcomes of the womens
studies classroom.

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157

Development of the Fraternity Peer Rape Education Program

(FPREP)
I work as a sexual assault educator and adjunct faculty member at a large
midwestern research one institution. Almost 40,000 students attend the
university, with an average fi rst-year class of 7,000 students. Its womens
studies program is strong, with an undergraduate major, eleven joint faculty, and more than 60 affiliated faculty. Additionally, the university has
a large greek system, purportedly the biggest in the United States. Within
this system, there are approximately 55 fraternities, including several
historically black, Latino, and Jewish chapters.
The Office of Womens Programs (OWP) is the university unit charged
with addressing issues of sexual violence on campus and provides all firstyears on campus with a mandatory rape education workshop during their
first semester. Sexual violence education is both normalized and, almost
universally, despised by the general student population. As a result, the
campus climate is open to the concept of sexual violence prevention but
remains indifferent to rape in most other ways.
As the coordinator of sexual assault education in the OWP, I teach
several courses that train students to become peer educators for these
workshops. These courses examine how sexual violence is a socially
constructed tool of sexism. Students in these courses build their own
understanding of how sexual violence operates in their lives and society
while simultaneously gaining facilitation skills for dialogues on campus
sexual violence.
We at the OWP wanted to involve the greek system, so we began to
look at the feasibility of a more sustained effort with the fraternities. We
looked at the work of Deborah Mahlstedt, creator of the Fraternity Violence Education Project at West Chester University (1998). Mahlstedts
program focused the responsibility for ending rape on the fraternity men
and targeted key fraternity leaders for education and support. It charged
them with changing their fraternity from the inside. This was true peer
educationthe students lived (and partied) among their target audience.
The first step in this endeavor was to convene some of the potential students for a conversation. When a focus group of fraternity men was asked
about the role of (fraternity) men in ending sexual violence, they spoke
of supporting survivors and stopping attempted rapes that they might
witness. In addition, they discussed their frustrations with the ways they
were stereotyped as potential rapists because of the actions of a few men.
However, when invited to define sexual violence, explicate the causes
of this violence, or identify potential solutions, they said that (sorority)
women incited this violence by their dress, their alcohol consumption,
and/or their flirtatious behavior. In other words, they blamed survivors of
rape for assaults committed against them.

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Ross Wantland

Underneath all of their defensiveness and bravado, however, I heard

some genuine concern about the well being of women in their lives. I
sensed that several of them had direct experience with a rape survivor.
They cared about sexual violence; they just did not understand what it
was, how it happened, or what their role was in ending it. Neither did they
have the tools to recognize and challenge the larger structures that support sexual violence. In many ways, these men were willing beneficiaries
of the sexual power structures on campus, but they also felt hurt and
dehumanized by a system that assumes that fraternity men will always
rape. Therefore, the course could highlight the ways both they and others
are harmed by this system and guide them through a self-examination
process in which they could accept responsibility for their own rapesupportive actions.

Design and Implementation

The universitys greek affairs office, the gender and womens studies
department, and the OWP collaborated to develop a program called the
Fraternity Peer Rape Education Program (FPREP). As a course offered
through the universitys gender and women studies department, interested
fraternity men received academic credit to be trained and supervised as
facilitators of sexual violence prevention workshops to their own chapters
and members. Based on a social justice learning pedagogy, FPREP assumed
that students were not merely passive receptacles of information; rather,
they had the capacity to be active equal participants in the learning experience (Adams 1997). Through interactive exercises, journaling, guided
discussions, and external assignments, students explored their role in the
support and dismantling of rape-supportive attitudes and structures.
FPREP was a two-semester course facilitated by one teaching assistant
(usually a former fraternity member) and me. During the first semester,
students learned about sexual violence in U.S. society and discussed
the ways that this violence influences their lives. During the second
semester, students developed, implemented, and evaluated workshops on
sexual violence prevention in their own chapters. At the close of the year,
students completed a final project detailing how they had changed, how
their interactions with their peers had changed, and how their chapters
might have changed.
The class itself was voluntary both for the individual member and their
chapter. Although the greek affairs office encouraged each chapter to send
a representative to the course, approximately ten chapters were involved
each year, representing less than 20 percent of all fraternities on campus.
Involved chapters tended to be average; most of the chapters were neither
the exemplars of the system, nor were they the shady chapters that are

Feminist Frat Boys?

159

so often blamed for much of the violence on campus. Most of the students,
on the other hand, were (or had been) officers in their chapter, so their
potential for leadership and influence was great.

Outcomes
Initially, many students reported concern about participating in an allmale course on rape. This concern seemed to stem from the level of
emotional intimacy and vulnerability with other men, especially with
men from other fraternities. Typically, during the first few class periods,
the men engaged in masculine posing as a way to situate themselves and
their respective fraternities in front of other men and/or fraternities. As a
result, there was frequently a re-creation of other all-male situations. For
instance, someone would make a joke that in some way promoted mens
dominance over women, and most of the class would laugh. At first, this
frustrated me; I believed that each man in the room was in agreement
with the joke. However, it became evident that by laughing along with
such a joke that made them uncomfortable, they were able to maintain
their group (masculine) status. As we (the instructors) pointed out those
instances and cast them into larger systems of masculinist culture, the
group was able to reflect on the reasons they may have laughed along.
They were empowered to challenge similar jokes in other all-male spaces.
The all-male classroom, then, highlighted the constructed nature of masculine relations, and allowed them to reflect on their shared discomfort
at their masculine training. In some instances, the classroom created
an outlet for these men to provide emotional support to each other as
they began to change, accept responsibility for, and heal from cultural
mandates of white male supremacy.
Moreover, the students were afraid of being subjected to malebashing, which was their conception of a womens studies education
that would hold men accountable for sexual violence. Students reported
feeling angry and defensive. They verbalized frustration at the feminist
male-bashing that they perceived in course readings, such as Dworkins
I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape
(1993). As they continued through the course, however, they recognized
this defensiveness as a crucial moment within their change process,
and redefined male-bashing writings as a valid response to sexual violence. Once they moved past anger, many student-facilitators recognized
increased awareness of their own beliefs and further understanding of
their positions within a culture that supports and encourages sexual
violence.
The classroom became a space where men could build alternative
relationships with men. In fact, they began to challenge one another as

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Ross Wantland

practice for challenging their fraternity brothers on their homophobia.

Occasionally, a student in the course said that something was so gay,
meaning that it was stupid or ridiculous. At the beginning of the course,
this was a common phrase for FPREP students to use. But as the course
wore on, the students began to view the slang use of gay as disrespectful. In time, the rest of the class would glare at offending students who
would quickly apologize. Soon they reported that similar interactions
began to occur within their chapters. Although most students were fairly
certain that homophobic remarks continued, just not in their presence,
it was a marked change for their fraternity brothers to even think about
the language they used.
As a result of these various experiences in the course, some studentfacilitators felt conflicted about this newfound awareness. They appreciated the role they could play in dismantling the structures that supported
sexual violence, but they also literally cursed the course for changing their
perceptions of their environments, the media, and social interactions. As
one student-facilitator said, I have a[n] exponentially heightened sense of
awareness everywhere I go in regards to language, body language, interactions, and any type of warning signs that something might be wrong. In
a way, this can be a curse since I am always noticing things that I dont
want to notice. Correspondingly, several student-facilitators began to
question values and actions that they witnessed within the greek system
(Wantland 2004). Ironically, this led some students to almost deactivate
from the very chapters and system that they were trying to change.
Awareness, then, did lead to changes in the FPREP students behaviors.
Several student-facilitators reported lowering their levels of drinking in
order to maintain awareness in social situations; other student-facilitators
said that the course led them to decrease or eliminate their use of pornography, because they believed that their consumption of pornography
encouraged their objectification of women. As several student-facilitators
were already supporting a survivor in their lives, a few of them discussed
the ways that the course helped them heal from their secondary trauma as
supporters. In order to avoid feeling hypocritical about the message they
were learning and presenting, it was necessary for them to change their
own behaviors toward women and men.
Last year, a student in my course ran into the teaching assistant at
3 a.m. on a weekend. He began yelling at the teaching assistant, cursing
at him and me for teaching the class. Why? Because he had been in a situation where he normally would have had sex with a woman, but since she
was intoxicated, he was suddenly unclear whether or not she could consent. Unable to ignore his new knowledge, he left the situation. Upon later
reflection in class, the student said, This class gave me fuckin morals.
After that, this student continued to struggle with sexist behaviors, but
he was now critically examining his environment. His attitude within the

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161

course began to shift. As a result of their new awareness, many studentfacilitators began to sense this necessity and responsibility to respond.
Therefore, they challenged themselves and engaged in discussions on rape
supportive attitudes and behaviors (Wantland 2004).
Change also took place beyond the class participants. Last year, my
teaching assistant, a senior member of his fraternity, showed up to a
chapter bar crawl, an organized event where the group travels from bar
to bar over a specified period of time. When he arrived, he discovered that
the t-shirt his chapter had purchased for all members to wear during the
bar crawl had a picture of an adult man holding the hand of a little girl
on the front and on the back the words, Our brotherhood is tighter than
your little sister. He was very upset about this, and he told his brothers that he would not wear that shirt. In the ensuing argument between
the underclassmen and seniors (led by the teaching assistant), the entire
chapter decided not to wear the shirts (after they spent hundreds of dollars to print them). Not every student had a story of this magnitude, in
which he stands up to the majority of his own chapter and wins them
over, but many students had a story about being emotionally supportive
to a brother whose girlfriend was sexually assaulted, challenging a sexist
comment within a small group of brothers, or reducing their consumption of alcohol to monitor the safety of women at a party. Although each
example was small in its overall impact on sexual assault at the campus,
each represented the beginnings of institutional change, because these
were fraternity menmen who supposedly will always rape(re)acting
against sexual violence.

Pedagogical Implications
Yet is this Womens Studies? hooks defines Womens Studies as a setting
where women could be informed about feminist thinking and feminist
theory (2000, 9). Although hooks does not explicitly mention men in this
passage, she makes it clear that women must be central to the content of
this education, and men and women must work together to end sexism
and promote feminism (2000). Nevertheless, after describing FPREP, I
am commonly asked by colleagues and students what exists for sorority
women. FPREP can stir up questions about who the primary constituency
of the discipline should be. In one sense, I can understand the concern of
taking the focus of Womens Studies off of women. On the other hand, this
could be seen as an implied blame of women for the assaults they suffer at
the hands of men who have not reflected on the implications of feminist
thought. Without actively involving men in womens studies education,
in other words, we create a womens studies classroom committed to
changing only half the society.

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This is not to say that locating Womens Studies within male supremacist spaces will be unproblematic. For example, the voices of women
(other than the authors of assigned readings) were largely absent in this
class. Since the group did not interact with women who were also actively
engaged in this learning, the FPREP students often assumed a masculinist
role of hero or protector of women. They often neglected (or literally
interrupted) womens voices, rather than recognizing and valuing these
voices as integral to their own work. Therefore, it is critical that men
doing this work remain open to the process of educating and challenging
themselves on the limitations of their own purviews at the same time
their feminist education demands that they widen them.

Re-Imagining Womens Studies

When a fraternity member reluctantly enrolls in the traditional womens
studies class, his defensiveness is often a drain on the classroom processes and interrupts the learning of other students who are more open
to Womens Studies. By transporting a womens studies classroom to an
other (all-male) location, FPREP has important implications for the
goals that womens studies practitioners embrace. The experiences of the
class members as well as the influence these men apply upon their fraternities create a unique space of resistance to sexual violence. Within this
all-male space, the men are able to challenge themselves in ways that look
much like traditional womens studies locations, even though particular
individual outcomes can be very different. By inviting fraternity men into
the womens studies house, we can re-imagine feminist education and
create necessary allies in our collective struggle for gender justice.
Ross Wantland
d is Coordinator of Sexual Assault Education, Founder of
the Fraternity Peer Rape Education Program (FPREP), and a Masters
student in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. Send correspondence to 300 Student Services Bldg.,
610 E. John St., Champaign, IL 61820; wantland@uiuc.edu.

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Feminist Frat Boys?

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