This week we had the opportunity to do a question and answer session with Alexandra Robbins, investigative journalist and bestselling author of The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities, and her latest book, Fraternity: An Inside Look at a Year of College Boys Becoming Men. Ms. Robbins spent two years interviewing fraternity members to write Fraternity. Clery Center has worked on hazing awareness and prevention for years via our partnership with StopHazing and “We Don’t Haze” project, so Ms. Robbins agreed to answer a series of questions about masculinity, gender identity, and of course, hazing. Thank you, Ms. Robbins, for taking the time to answer our questions!
CLERY CENTER: You’ve said that “both toxic masculinity and traditional masculinity are confusing — even insulting — terms that should be changed or abandoned.” Why do you believe that and what would you propose as an alternative?
A. ROBBINS: I think the terms are misleading and misused. They were meant to describe dangerous gender constraints and the way they affect men, but the media uses them to describe ways that some men treat women. Because “masculinity” is in these terms and they are used in a derogatory way, many men feel attacked. So the descriptions aren’t helping to solve the problem, if that makes sense. For example, many people misinterpret “traditional masculinity” to include activities that males traditionally participate in. So a network TV host who despised the Gillette ad said something defensive like, her father was a traditional man who was in the military and had guns, but he was also a good man. That’s not what “traditional masculinity” actually refers to, but the meaning has been diluted and so the term is no longer helpful. Rather than focus on the semantics, I think there should be more education for people of all genders about various other ways to be masculine. Academia has used terms like “productive masculinity” and “healthy masculinity,” and I like the idea of focusing on the positives.
CC: In the book there seems to be such a stark contrast between activities you describe that allow fraternity members to openly communicate about their emotions and experiences and those that remove autonomy and individuality and place members at risk, particularly through instances of hazing. How or why do you think members justify these contradictions?
AR: It depends on the chapter. Every chapter is different. Many focus on the former; Oliver, one of the students I followed for a year, made sure that his chapter emphasized individuality and low-risk behavior. And that’s an important point, too: There are high-risk chapters and low-risk chapters, but we typically don’t hear about the low-risk groups in the media. The drinking and sexual assault statistics of those chapters are no different than those of the general student population.
In chapters that do include both sets of behaviors, it’s likely that members don’t realize there is a contradiction because they are so subsumed by the group. Groupthink is powerful, especially among teenagers, and especially in groups that may prioritize conformity more than others because of a lack of diversity in membership. So fraternities can be particularly susceptible to it. Members might also deprioritize their individuality under the weight of tradition, which can inform both rituals – including the positive ones in your question – and hazing.
CC: While the book discusses fraternities of color and queer, trans, or gender nonconforming fraternity members, they aren’t represented in either of the two central narratives of the book. How did you come to that decision?
AR: If you’re referring to chapters that are exclusively groups of color or GBTQ/progressive chapters, they aren’t the groups that are generally misunderstood or that appear in negative headlines. While they are also called fraternities, they are very different groups than the predominantly white organizations. I interviewed members of various types of fraternities for the essays in the book, however, and describe the many strong benefits of membership to these populations in particular.
CC: You’ve written books about both sororities and fraternities. While researching and writing these projects, what, if anything, did you learn about your own gender identity and the benefits/drawbacks of groups coalescing around gender?
AR: Regarding the first question, researching masculinity and discussing it with students made me realize that being called and then identifying as a “tomboy” when I was growing up was perhaps not as innocuous as I assumed. For me personally, it was fine, but what messages did that send to boys who were not into sports? That’s not something I considered before this project.
Because of work I’d previously done on conformity, I knew that single-gender organizations can be more prone to it. But working on Fraternity convinced me that there are benefits to single-gender groups, too. Many of the guys I spoke with would not have felt comfortable crying, confessing vulnerabilities, or asking for help in co-ed groups, for example, and it’s important for students to learn they can emotionally lean on other people.
CC: Have either of the two young men you followed for these stories read the book? Are you able to share how they feel about their own stories as seen through the lens of this book? Towards the end of the book, you remind Jake of some of the things he noted at the beginning of the project and he himself seemed surprised at both the positive and negative ways his personality changed from the beginning of the book when he was first joining a fraternity to the end of the book where he was participating in hazing activities he initially swore he’d never do.
AR: Oh, yes – for all my books, I show the “main characters” their stories before the proofs so they can review for accuracy and so there are no surprises. Jake especially had a fascinating journey that I think is important for educators, parents, and students to follow so that they know what conversations they could be having to help students through freshman year. He was so generous about letting readers and me into his thought processes so we can see how those changes happened; he held nothing back. Now that he’s had some distance from freshman year, he has additional thoughts, but we’re going to wait to share those until after people have had a chance to read the book.
CC: The book describes experiences of hazing and provides recommendations on how to build healthy fraternities or identify problematic organizations. We know that hazing doesn’t just occur in Greek life – are there lessons from this book that you would extend to other student organizations?
AR: Sure, I think the same suggestions apply. It’s not enough to tell students not to haze. Alums have to back up that message, hazers should be severely penalized, and – this is the key that many coaches and other organizational leaders might not realize – in groups with an entrenched hazing culture, there should be a replacement (safe) group bonding experience at the start of each period during which there are new members added to the group.
CC: There’s currently proposed legislation (the Campus Report and Educate about Campus Hazing (REACH) Act) that would amend the Clery Act to require institutions to report statistics and implement prevention programs on campus hazing. How, if at all, could more transparency about hazing influence or affect fraternities in particular?
AR: As it stands now, most parents and students don’t have accurate, up-to-date information about the record of a chapter. This should be easily accessible on campus websites, both to make members feel more accountable and to inform members, potential recruits, potential party attendees, and their families about the risk level and culture of the chapter they may interact with. More transparency should help, at the very least to hammer home the message to undergrads that the tolerance for this behavior has changed since their alums were active members.
CC: Oliver gives examples of his fraternity taking information they learned in sexual assault prevention programs and applying it through bystander intervention, in contrast with other organizations who haven’t received such programming or who ignore or don’t take such programming seriously. With those examples in mind, what would campuses need to do or who would they need to engage for hazing prevention programming to be effective?
AR: Sexual assault prevention and hazing prevention are two different situations, but a factor in both of them is alcohol. I’m a big believer in social norms campaigns. College students tend to overestimate the amount of alcohol their classmates drink and how frequently they drink it, as well as how often their peers have sex and how accepting they are of rape myths and forced sex. If programs can show students that their classmates aren’t engaging in these behaviors and adopting these attitudes as often as they believe, the behavior should improve. Also, students told me that medical amnesty policies could help improve the culture, but that’s anecdotal; I haven’t yet examined that idea.
Thank you again to Alexandra Robbins for taking the time to answer our questions! You can connect with her on Twitter and you can read more about Clery Center’s hazing awareness and prevention initiative here.
