Or that her sorority sisters' reaction was not about "shark-infested waters of our own design" but was rather about the sisters' fear of slut-by-association. Sure, women can be petty and back-biting; part of that's because women are competitive people, just like everyone else (read: men), and part of it is because teh patriarchy has pretty strict standards for acceptable womanly behavior: no unsanctioned sexual activity, no publicly acknowledged sexual activity, and absolutely no overtly competitive behavior.

My sisters, of course, were hardly model citizens, either. Indeed, some boasted a sexual prowess that still makes me blush. They had sex in our chapter room, in hot tubs, behind rocks. They participated in communal bulimic binges and coordinated the termination of unwanted pregnancies. Many, naturally, had been victimized by ledge parties as well but had somehow managed to keep it quiet.

Interesting--she employs the same method of judging her sisters for failing to conform to the ideal that's used against her, but she doesn't actually acknowledge it.

You kind of want to just explain to her that the way to save her daughters is to teach them to be critical of sexist assumptions about women, *including* the assumption that we're all supposed to be supportive sisters at all times. Sigh.

If I had read this a few years ago, I would have nodded along righteously. I've always had trouble with female friendships, feeling like I could be vulnerable to them and then finding out that they'd betray that confidence the first chance they got. But over time, I think I've stopped thinking women's betrayal is some special case; men do this all the time, of course, but in ways that women are likelier to internalize. (That is, if a female friend calls you fat, or a slut, she's being a competitive backstabbing bitch, but if a man says those things, it's more likely to become a part of your self-image. "He's just being honest, and it teaches me something about how men view me" or whatever.)

It's true in academia too. Female profs can be really openly mean to a female student, and everyone talks about what hateful bitches they are, but a male prof who is hypercritical is considered to be just preparing you for the man's world you're entering, and everyone gives them a pass. Or it's written off as the natural insensitivity of the male libido.

In my case, I think I've gotten to the point where I've stopped thinking that women suck or that men suck, but instead that a lot of people are mean in sexist ways, both male and female, and that it takes a lot of work to find social environments in which you feel at least temporarily safe. What's perhaps needed is not expecting less from the women or men in our lives, but expecting more from both.

Doesn't it seem like the sisters weren't criticizing her sexuality as much as they were her class-signifiers? The father's profession thing, the pearls, the sweatpants, the fact that her rape became an open subject and not hidden, the Prince dance, etc.? It's not so much that they hated her for being a "slut," but for being "tacky."

I felt like her "sister" was a jackass with a very weak apology for some terrible behavior. I'm glad the author cut her off. Not that I'm judgmental or anything.

3: We're all brothers and sisters, and we all suck! Hallelujah! There's neither Jew nor Greek, no high nor low, no master, no slave -- just the free and equal children of the good Lord, who all suck! Praise Him!

Geez. It doesn't sound like her sisters kicked her out for being raped. It sounds like she was possibly developing depression post-rape and being slovenly, and got kicked out for that, but the big problem is that she has totally left the guys off the hook. They were entitled to do such things.

I think she has a big chunk of self-loathing for herself for being a woman, and she towards women in general.

6: Easy on the clutch there, Jonathan Edwards.

I agree with 4 and 7. Sounds like after the ordeal, she just wasn't as perky and eager to please anymore, and they were like "god, don't be such a downer, man."

I mean, they were assholes, but not as much of assholes if they had expelled her for being a slut.

I have to say that despite the lack of any traumatic experiences that were remotely similar in intensity or importance, her piece actually resonated with me. I think she was very clear about the fact that she's troubled by her feelings, that the piece mostly stood as her memoir and analysis of their roots, and that her ambivalent conclusion also acknowledged that its a slightly illogical, problematic way to feel---but she made it very clear that it is, in fact, very much a visceral feeling. She wasn't starting with overgeneralized analysis to get to a conclusion, she was using analysis to try to make sense of strong feelings. I also think that she was pretty clear that her issues are mainly with women in certain contexts--groups, new people, perfectionists, those who remind her of her one-time sorority sisters. This seems very natural to me. The context and kind of man who raped her is one that she now knows how to better avoid, better protect herself from. She now can feel a little safer from them, better able to defend herself. She never found a good way to defend herself against the kind of emotional abuse meted out to her by her so-called friends. She logically knows that just as all men aren't rapists, all women aren't emotional abusive groupists*, but since the injuries of the latter are so nebulous and a-physical, its a lot harder to defend against them, and therefore harder to learn to trust someone who might fall into that category. I think it's pretty well established that there are a lot of mentally abusive social patterns among women out there. They're largely a result of society's sexual inequality and gender bias, but that doesn't really excuse it.

2: I think she's pointing out their hypocrisy; also she's pointing out the disparity of where they cut the line against each other versus against her, since the bar is much higher for her. And yes, 4, it seems like the ultimate cause was class, that's sort of the point of the line in 2---she was never one of them, and so it was easy to peck her out.

3. My experience is the opposite---professionally, I've found men much morel likely to be openly mean, and the back-room commentary to much more easily fall into, "jesus, he's such a fucking asshole, screw him." That might be because most of those above me were men, they could be openly mean, and we could chafe under their yoke with a sense of solidarity. When a woman said something mean, it was usually subtle enough that it stung awfully, took down status, and was very difficult to combat b/c if you said anything you yourself were being bitchy. (Professionally I've heard women describe women as being a bitch---in front of men---far more often then I've ever overheard men describe a woman as a bitch, which is basically never, even with large quantities of eavesdropping on my part.)

And I don't think she's let the guys off the hook---she clearly condemns it, it's just that she's dealt with that, it was a separate, it doesn't plague her, this does. Sweat pants aren't necessarily slovenly.

*yeah, I know it's not a word but I just got off 4 days of conferencing and my brain is drained of vocabulary. I'm still wiping up the drips from my shoulders.

The way she tells it, it was pretty explictly linked to her having gotten drunk and embarrassed the sorority by being raped -- that might not have been the final straw, but it was perceived as an offense. Which is horrendous, of course: I don't have any trouble at all with her reaction to the sorority and the women who participated in expelling her from it, just with generalizing it to all women.

I hope I can phrase what I'm trying to say here:

Sometimes it seems like people travel in non-mixing layers throughout society. So that this woman keeps meeting the same type of women, yet I seem to never meet them. (And by meet I most likely mean "bond" or "connect" yet it feels like you really never meet them at all.)

The reason I'm treading carefully is that this is the premise of "abused people pick their abusers" which gets uncomfortable close to blaming the victim.

But this piece does waft of it.

yeah, while reading it I was (as always) wondering what the unfoggedariat would say. it is a change from the usual. it does seem like she's letting the actual rapist off the hook because of lowered standards for male behavior--they's just rapey like that. the women seem to be getting judged against some gold standard of sisterhood and love. her sorority sisters were being total bitches, but bitches in exactly the way one would expect from sorority sisters, were one to imagine them behaving bitchily. class-consciousness and slut-shaming from sorority girls? whoever would have thought. the jujitsu 'they were total sluts' is problematic as well.

my feelings towards the author are sympathetic, though. its clear she knows that there's something unreasonable about her continuing inability to trust women. I don't know if it's so much that it's easier to avoid men who might rape you as it is that you are so powerless and brutalized in that situation that it might be more psychologically satisfying to choose to avoid back-biting women instead of men.

I left out the part about confirmation bias, which is the flip side of the non-mixing layers of people - you feed the people you meet through your pre-existing expectation filters, of course, in the absence of real information about them.

When I was an undergrad, a woman came forward with her rape story & subsequent university hearings that lead to the rapist being expelled. One of the things she described the article she wrote for the school paper was walking up to strangers at campus parties and telling them she was a rape victim. Not out of any take-back-the-night or put-a-face-on-the-victim kind of motivation, just that the rape was consuming her thoughts, including how she thought of herself.

So I see 7 as not in tension with 11. She saw their reactions as responding to the fact of her rape; they probably were over it lot faster than she was and just saw someone being slovenly.

She condemns the men, too, but they at least kicked the dude out of the fraternity.

My sympathy is limited a little bit because of my low opinions of sororities: gee, what a surprise, that the spoiled brats who turned up their nose at your dentist father weren't the rock of fucking ages when you needed them.

So that this woman keeps meeting the same type of women, yet I seem to never meet them.

Yeah, I know what you mean, this is fairly unfamiliar to me too. I wonder if part of it is people who socialize in groups rather than pairs -- I tend to think of my friendships, even among people who all know each other, as a series of two-person relationships: me and A, me and B, A and B, rather than as a larger social unit, which is what you need for a lot of this sort of dynamic to make sense.

So I see 7 as not in tension with 11. She saw their reactions as responding to the fact of her rape; they probably were over it lot faster than she was and just saw someone being slovenly.

I read it as saying that they didn't see her victimization as much different from the way they had been treated by guys, and looked down on her for being less cynical and jaded than they were.

just with generalizing it to all women.

But ishe isn't generalizing it as a conclusion; she's acknowledging a visceral feeling a feeling--an extreme anxiety-- that has been caused by experience, and, she implies, experience beyond the original awful incident. It's not generalized to all women, it's trigged by women in groups. She can't handle group intimacy. She understands why. She realizes it's problematic. But it's not totally without basis either. I don't think she's letting the guy off the hook---he's just not the topic of the essay, and his part of it has been dealt with. The situation of that betrayal---having to physically trust a man with your person---is not likely to present itself to her nearly as much these days. The situation of the other betrayal---a group of female friends who have emotional power over you and the ability to exlcude her---is much more frequent.

But this piece does waft of it.

I wonder if part of it is people who socialize in groups rather than pairs -- I tend to think of my friendships, even among people who all know each other, as a series of two-person relationships: me and A, me and B, A and B, rather than as a larger social unit, which is what you need for a lot of this sort of dynamic to make sense.

I've met these sorts of women all the time, and always in situations where I couldn't quite control whom I was hanging out with---small schools, small workplaces, social groups awkwardly joined for an odd reason, interest-based clubs.

Finally, off to board my plane. Can't wait to get home. Stay warm, you crazy east-coasters.

my sympathies to the columnist
though what's good to be in sorority?
i'd prefer to be on my own anywhere anytime
perhaps she should teach her girls do not feel the very need to belong to any group
or feel victimized for being evicted from sorority or whatever
just think 'they' don't deserve to be with me and that solves all
if a friend betrays you that's a different story

and his part of it has been dealt with.

This part does not ring true to me.

I think that she had a point, not that the other girls were sluts, but that they blackballed her to protect their own image even though she was about the same as them. In the general area of "she was guilty of getting caught", the way Victorians could do all kinds of things, but their lives were completely ruined if the police or the newspapers got involved.

It may be that the supposed "picked her own abusers" dynamic is just because she was a fairly ordinary, centrist, conventionally middle class person who did the ordinary thing expected of everyone, and that Heebie and LB and others here aren't, but lived their lives in a more purposive way. In which case her story has a pretty broad meaning.

I think a lot of people here have felt the tension of showing up at college, or in a new city, and being offered a hand into some group that's cooler or more exclusive than the social set you'd previously been involved in, and that transition is especially tense for a 17/18-year-old who gets heavily rushed by a Greek organization. I remember getting rushed by one of the pretty-girl sororities and thinking (despite my lifelong hatred of such things), "They want me? Don't they know I'm a dork? ...Could I pass?" I reluctantly went to a couple of their events, where they fawned over my weird blue nail polish ("Where did you get that? Can I borrow it?") and complimented my totally unfashionable hair and clothes. I didn't believe them, but I was fascinated by how actively they seemed to want me and I needed to make friends.

Then, the next day, they saw me with a boy I knew from the internet who had come to visit me. When I explained how I knew him, they stopped calling me. I never got my nail polish back.

But I had friends who went through with it. The judgment and policing doesn't get heavy until you actually pledge. Then it's about crafting you into their type.

My initial reaction was like Heebie's--you hang out with shallow rich bitches and you're going to get burned--but, thinking back on what it felt like to have the opportunity to be counted among them, it's a hard temptation to pass up when you're a class-conscious girl who's never been offered that hand up the social ladder.

It's not generalized to all women,

I guess we're reading it differently; I didn't see her saying anything that distinguished the context in which women make her anxious from any other context in which she might relate to other women.

but the big problem is that she has totally left the guys off the hook.

I don't know about this. The whole essay is triggered by having met one of the women who treated her so badly. Is she supposed to append a footnote saying that "of course the mens were much much worse" ? It's not what she's talking about.

She points out that the other women were sexually active. So what? It's a data point she needs in trying to figure out why they were so hostile to her. Clearly sexual activity in itself is not the problem. But why should she phrase her remarks charitably? Fuck them. I've met plenty of people like her sorority sisters. They're the willing tools of the patriarchy because it pays off for them.

I do find it a little odd that she would join a group that was competitive and exclusionary by its very nature, and then generalize that mindset to all women. Book groups?

My initial reaction was like Heebie's--you hang out with shallow rich bitches and you're going to get burned

Wait, I don't think I said this. (Although it is a true statement.)

Oh, sorry, Heebie! I meant Cala.

but the big problem is that she has totally left the guys off the hook.

I don't know about this. The whole essay is triggered by having met one of the women who treated her so badly. Is she supposed to append a footnote saying that "of course the mens were much much worse" ? It's not what she's talking about.

I'm getting into hypothetical territory here, but I think this is because she is unaware of having a self-loathing-misogynistic streak.

I'm totally projecting my very personal experience here. That when I started to realize that I loathed myself for being a woman, and idealized guys for being men, and dealt with that, other women seemed much less threatening and evil.

This is a terrible story, and a terrible thing that happened to the author. But I feel the same way as much of you: she improperly generalizes to _all_ women. I don't think she brought this on herself, and I don't think she deserved it because joined a sorority and should have know better than to trust those bitch types (I too hate them, although I want to resist generalizing about them), but it's a weird I blame the matriarchy argument that does involve a not-insigificant amount of misogynist self-loathing.

Yeah, I blame the patriarchy.

I also blame pack-like groups. I haven't really met such women, but then again I avoid groups in general. Meeting people of either gender one-on-one helps you weed out the characteristics you don't want to associate with. The author herself admits that she has a few close female friends. It is interesting that she became a lawyer; based on the time frame mentioned in the article it's not like she entered her profession at a particularly woman-friendly time. I am sure she encountered the same distrust of groups problems at law school, but she seems to focus on distrust of women.

I agree with Brother Emerson in 6 (not necessarily 21). The problem isn't overgeneralization, it's undergeneralization. She should have realized that the world is a pool of filth infested with sharks of all genders, and she shouldn't bother trying to protect her children, because they are going to betray her, too.

Why be a self loathing misogynist when you can be a self loathing misanthrope?

Agree with chalk in #29. And I give her a pass about just about anything she comes up with in telling this story.

I have a dumb question for those of you not raised as Christians. (Bave and I were talking theology last night and I realized how much my thought-structures are still patterned in subtle ways by residual Christian doctrine.) I think we can agree that it is bad if kids are raised to get their self-worth from social success. Trying to be in the "in" crowd or fit in with the meanest or most powerful people is a kind of survival strategy, but I doubt anyone here is raising their kid to see their social success as a marker of their actual worth as a person. This, clearly, would result in extreme vanity or hopelessness.

On the other hand, it's also bad to be raised to think (as a lot of fundamentalist Christians are) that your intrinsic value has an inverse relationship to your social success. God loves you when people despise you, you have to suffer to gain strength and wisdom, etc. The kid learns to take a kind of resentful pleasure in being an outcast. This leads to a perverse masochism, weirdly mixed with massive egotism.

So what kind of thought-structures are other people raised with w/r/t social value and self-worth. In some cases, I'm guessing it's the love of one's family that creates that sense of self-worth. Or maybe an emphasis on skill ("Who cares if people make fun of you? Look at these beautiful pictures you've drawn!") or emotional health or prudence or other virtues. Where do you think you got the sense that it was okay for people to make fun of you, because you've got X on your side? Do you still value the things about yourself that you valued as a kid?

This leads to a perverse masochism, weirdly mixed with massive egotism.

It's me, it's me!

Fundamentalist Christians raise children that way? They always seem so conformist and collectivist, counter to their putative Protestantism. I had the impression that, to some extent, fundamentalist congregations and umbrella organizations defined themselves in opposition to the fallen world, and with the usual minority-sect vanities, but didn't know those attitudes were recapitulated individually.

They're really good at it, even if you're not in a fundie family.

At least it explains the feeling of defensive entitlement among them, whether they've actually suffered or not.

She's lucky she didn't get raped at Olivet -- she could've gotten kicked out of the school, not just her sorority (which wouldn't have existed anyway).

Is 30 supposed to be sarcasm?

32: Churches have mean in-groups just like any other type of social grouping. The narcissism of the outcast doesn't seem to me to be limited to Christians -- look at the people who think that lack of success is proof of the truly radical nature of their art, etc.

I have trouble believing that the attitude of "well, I'm really too good for their snobby asses!" is anything more than a particular moment in the process of coming to grips with lack of social status -- a temporary line of defense that no one is able to keep up for long.

"well, I'm really too good for their snobby asses!"

I agree that this is a near-universal feeling among those who don't fit in, but on what basis do non-Christians base that sense of self-worth?

40:Empiricism.

i think one's loving family is the source of one's self-worth
like no matter what will happen to me outside in the big world, whether i'll succeed or fail, i can always be back home, where my people love me, miss me and value me for who i am and their love will never change no matter what
that gives you confidence in everything and you try to not fail them
that and realization that everything will pass sooner or later, bad or good

Wow, I actually should've read your comment more carefully.

Bearing in mind that I'm not the target audience for your question, I would hypothesize that it's not a matter of self-worth directly, but rather of the understandable desire to find something negative about the people excluding you. The first thing that leaps to mind: "They're exclusionary."

The self-worth thing is a second step. Since you were, by definition, reaching out to those people and trying to be friends, you do not share that trait -- hence you're morally superior to them.

The whole thing rests on the notion -- easily picked up from American ideology in general -- that excluding people arbitrarily (and the person being excluded is bound to feel, at least initially, that the exclusion is arbitrary) is bad.

30 is a case of pretending to say something ironically to mask the fact that you sincerely believe the sentiment being expressed, because you are aware that it is either foolish or looked down on by your contemporaries.

This is one of those higher order ironies that David Foster Wallace likes to write about. It is actually fairly clumsy, and I'm sorry I fell into it.

"Madness is a rare thing in individuals--but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages it is the rule."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Let me see, what word would Nietzsche use for the social bonding of an oppressed subgroup based on a moral superiority to their oppressive masters? Starts with an 'r' I think.

but on what basis do non-Christians base that sense of self-worth?

Some combination of everything you mention; affection from family and friends, ability to successfully accomplish things, and some inate ego.

Thinking about it, I have always felt socially out of the mainstream in a variety of ways (some chosen intentionally, some by default) and don't generally worry about it too much. I know that there would be different opportunities available if I were better at socializing, but I'm willing to trade off missing those opportunities for not having to learn how to pass convincingly. I can think of one instance, however, in which being socially ostracized not only hurt but hurt memorably (in Middle School, of course) and the key to that experience was having the feeling that I couldn't get away.

I never got teased that much growing up I think because I wasn't trying to play the game and failing, I really wasn't playing the games at all.

44:That's ok, 38 was meant ironically also.

I think I am outa here, before I get in trouble. More trouble.

What's the over/under for how many comments mcmanus leaves in the remainder of this thread?

McManus fear the wrath of Unfogged, as well he should. Look at what happened to those several pe/rsons of whom we must not sp/eak.

48:Subtle, kotsko

47:"But I really didn't want [to comment on this tread] anyway."

||

Fucking inconsistent Rex Grossman.

Pay them no mind, bob. Spelling, grace and novelty are tools of the bourgeoisie.

After all, here I am with three daughters. What am I to teach them?

You teach them that while it is probably inevitable that we internalize some of the crazy values of our peers, this is a tendency in ourselves we need to fight. The damage done by the rapist was unambiguous; the damage done by the sorority sisters was magnified by the author's inability to separate and appropriately label good and bad values.

It's a naive and incomplete lesson, but still a useful one that my mom gave me: "Sticks and stones ..."

Do you still value the things about yourself that you valued as a kid?

Yes.

I think I was taught that the peers who were jerks were jerks, and that their jerkiness was nothing to do with me one way or another, and that my value had to do with how I dealt with other people myself.

Re. "of course sorority women are shallow"--the thing is, be honest: women (esp. young women, but certainly not exclusively young women) often *do* deal with conflict in peer groups through ostracizing others, or by cutting themselves off from the people they dislike. I just don't think women learn how to deal with conflict, or how to get along with people they dislike, very well; there's too much of a premium on being "nice." And maybe because women are pretty good verbally, they (we) are good at the subtle put down. Men and women both care about their standing in the group; I think for women, especially, jockeying for status *has* to be subtle and coded, and always, always has to be expressed as something being wrong with the other person, lest you, the person doing the excluding, be seen as not nice.

Do fraternities/sororoties exist outside the US? I've never heard of them in Europe.

Do fraternities/sororoties exist outside the US? I've never heard of them in Europe.

Germany has its Verbindungen and Burschenschaften, which are comparable in some ways, but not exactly the same thing.

In the words of Chris Rock: "Everyone loves white women, except white women"

women (esp. young women, but certainly not exclusively young women) often *do* deal with conflict in peer groups through ostracizing others, or by cutting themselves off from the people they dislike.

Or just by cutting themselves... there is that too.

Back onto the original post topic, I find it very strange that often people, women and men, tend to blame those they think should be sympathetic, but aren't, more than those who actually perpetrated the hurt.

Do fraternities/sororities exist outside the US? I've never heard of them in Europe.

Dueling societies. Heidi Klum had to pay thousands of dollars to have her dueling scar removed. It was a wrencing decision for her, because in Germany a woman without a scar is undesirable and often must marry a Turk or a Finn.

Scizor Cyster,

This is totally understandable. Most people are aware that there are bad people out there. It's just especially painful when those who are supposed to be your friends turn out to be those people.

59 is god's own truth.

See, guys. You thought I was kidding, but Blume is a Germanist.

AWB, I think your guesses in the last paragraph of 32 are the answer, at least for me. It's a little funny, I don't think about the sense of self-worth my parents instilled in me as having anything to do with my religious upbringing. What we got out of religion was a sense of tradition and morality.

But yes: love of family, affirmation from loving parents, and pride in my accomplishments and abilities.

Reading about the behaviour of the fratboys in this story, I feel a mixture of anger and despair.

The sorority sisters behaved very badly, of course. But the fratboys behaved even worse. One of them was guilty of a serious crime, and several of them must be seen as his accomplices. Oh, but they (later, and after the fact, which is to say, after the crime) "blackballed" the rapist from their fraternity: an admission that someone was guilty of something rather serious, of course, but also an implicit insistence that they made and lived by their own rules, outside the bounds of regular human decency, not to mention the bounds of the criminal code.

I bet most of these guys are married now, and with children and mortgages and insurance policies, and I bet most (or probably all) of them never see themselves as rapists or accomplices to the crime of rape.

It is understandable, though, that the author blames the women more than the men. We are more apt to blame those who fail to provide the expected measure of sympathy than to blame those who commit the acts for which we would demand that sympathy. Understandable, but regrettable nonetheless.

IA's comment makes me realize that the reason I think maybe the betrayal of the women is so hurtful to this woman is that she may feel they had not even self-interest in turning their backs on her. The guys are victimizing her out of self-interest, but the women are victimizing her... why? For some social standard that they all suffer under?

I'm not excusing the failure to feel the most anger at the men who hurt her, but I'm wondering if this is why the betrayal of another woman is felt so deeply. We get why men are out to hurt us--they at least take pleasure in our suffering; why women would want to hurt someone, not even for the purpose of irrational sexual/violent desire--that makes so little sense.

Of course, that comment shouldn't read that women never act out of sexual/violent desire, but I specifically mean in cases like this, where those seem not to be the motives a sorority has for casting her out in time of need.

I think that it was a scapegoating thing, which would be especially infuriating. It was more than just the failure to support a sister with a unique personal problem.

The guys are victimizing her out of self-interest, but the women are victimizing her... why?

To preserve their status in the (shitty) social system?

65, 66: Isn't it just exactly that it is self-interest? When something bad happens to someone, one of the ways a person can respond to it is by saying, "Well, so-and-so is a bad person, that's why that happened to her. I am a good person and that would not happen to me. " In this case, in order to sustain that delusion, you have to clense the sorority of the person who was too naive/lower-class/stupid/whatever to fit your brand of sophistication about her sexual activities.

We were protestants, United Church of Canada there, Presbyterian here, and pretty involved and pius, but looked at it much more like MRH's family than the alternative.

69: Exactly. No matter what bad thing happens, it has to be someone's fault, and the bad thing could have been avoided had that person not made the mistake.

It's my mother's mode of operation with regard to illness, medicine, and dying. It hasn't and won't prevent bad shit from happening to her and those around her but it somehow makes her feel better in between.

United Church of Canada

= the NDP at prayer.

My parent's votes were usually among the dozen or so for NDP in our riding, Eastview.

"Will Tommy Douglas win dad?"

It's a little funny, I don't think about the sense of self-worth my parents instilled in me as having anything to do with my religious upbringing.

I doubt it does. I would give more or less the same answers to the question that have been given so far, but with the additional note that the balance of the different factors will be different for different people. If your religion doesn't give you a ready-made attitude for these situations (which most don't; I think Christianity is the outlier here, and not even all denominations, as IDP shows) you have to figure one out for yourself.

73: We were catholic, and deeply suspicious of Scottish-born protestants (what with the orange picnics and the king billy parades and such), but my parents loved Tommy Douglas for real.

It hurts to think his grandson plays Jack Bauer on TV.

Most of Canada's best politicians came from Scotland, really. With the usual, and entirely predictable, exceptions made for Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Thomas D'Arcy McGee.

Tommy Douglas is probably the best-loved-ever political figure in Canada.

United Church of Canada

= the NDP at prayer

I wonder if there's any Trinitarian denomination of which something like that could be said here, that it was almost entirely liberals. NDP is New Democratic Party, the party explicitly advocating democratic socialism.

The American Denom. with the same initials, the United Churches of Christ, would be my nominee.

On Bauer's other side, my family knew the Sutherlands; My grandfather close friends with Donald's uncle, I think.

From the second most fun to dissect part of the Sunday Times, the Vows column:

"I invited him to join me on a tour of the Arizona State Prison in Florence," she said. "I'd been working on legislation dealing with capital punishment. Mark is the son of police officers -- well, he just really wanted to sit in 'the chair.' "

77: Well, of course. Canada really is a small country. Full disclosure: I'm related (by only by marriage!) to James Patrick Whelan, the tailor from Galway who hanged for the murder of Thomas D'Arcy McGee. Not saying he didn't have Fenian sympathies, but he was totally framed. He haunts the gaol even to this day, poor man, which is now a youth hostel. 5,000 people turned out to witness his execution, which took place during a snowstorm. They got to find mee guilty yet, he scratched into a tin plate, because he knew he was innocent, but also knew it wouldn't matter.

the Vows column

Zach! Zaaaaaach!

Do fraternities/sororoties exist outside the US? I've never heard of them in Europe.

In Australia we don't have a lot of the specific details. In fact I don't really understand the specific details exactly, but I believe the bug one we're missing is the way you join after university starts after some process of culling and grooming. And less secret society aspects: no handshakes or whatever it is.

But the older universities do have a very similar vibe with their residential colleges (large dorm buildings where 100-400 students live, generally with some notional or real religious affiliation). For reasons I don't really understand but that probably have something to do with them costing a lot, having far fewer places than are required to house the number of students who live away from home (the vast bulk live in private rental properties), and drawing heavily on boarding schools for their student body, they have what seem to be similar kinds of social dynamics.

The students are chosen to live there in the summer between high school and university. Once they arrived they are strongly encouraged to make the college the centre of their social life, with the colleges running separate student orientations that intentionally have schedule conflicts with the university-wide ones, and having their own bars and their own sporting competitions. There's a strong insider-outsider ethos: students who draw most of their friends from outside their college or at most the other colleges can expect to get lots of comments. Drinking heavily is institutionalised, with one of the 'sporting' competitions when I was at college being the boat racing, ie competitive beer drinking (but perhaps you always get this when you let 18-21 years olds build institutions). The colleges at my university were 99% white even though for the student body the percentage would have been more like 65%. Everyone is assumed to be straight and willing to do the prescribed amount of picking up: not too little and not too much.

In my first week there was an introductory dinner for students from my women's college and a nearby men's college. "You might have heard that one quarter of our residents marry [men from the other college]," the principal said. "This is a myth. The number is more like a third."

The students themselves do not have the power to expel residents. I imagine they could easily actively make the environment intolerable for someone, but I didn't see it done. (Many hate the atmosphere and leave, but I didn't see it happen after an active persection.)

I'd be curious what it's like at Oxford or Cambridge on which I understand our system is modelled, but where ALL students apparently have to have a college affiliation.

Many hate the atmosphere and leave, but I didn't see it happen after an active persection.

Oh wait, yes I did, or rather I heard about it after the fact. In my first year in one of the other colleges one student pursued a complaint about sexual harrassment and another about race-based harrassment. Neither were at all popular for it and both were subject to increased harrassment. One left. The other tried and failed to take over the students' internal governing committee and then stuck around for a few years anyway.

And I mean "persecution". This time for sure.

I was disappointed that Jerry Falwell didn't live to complain about the Wubbzy Golden Rule.

My parent's votes were usually among the dozen or so for NDP in our riding, Eastview.

I'm in Gilles Duceppe's riding, and whenever I line up to put in my useless NDP vote, I am surrounded by swooning middle-aged to elderly women who are mumbling "ooooh, he's so dreamy..." (about Gilles, of course) and then I realize just how futlie my vote is.

RE: I'm not excusing the failure to feel the most anger at the men who hurt her, but I'm wondering if this is why the betrayal of another woman is felt so deeply.

It's sad that women's betrayal of one another is so self-perpetuating, and (as someone has already pointed out) based on the good girl/bad girl dichotomy, which is instilled societally to keep women in line, and to shun those bad girls that "get raped".

It's just like another human penomenon that drives me nuts: When woman A is cheated on by her lover with woman B, woman A will blame woman B, and not the obvious culprit: the lover.
It only makes sense in a very twisted mindframe.

Fuck. Where did those cultural smelling salts get to anyway?

What we got out of religion was a sense of tradition and morality.

The sense of tradition I got, certainly, but the notion of Judaism providing a sense of morality seems utterly alien to me. The only congregation I can ever remember even addressing the subject was the Reconstructionist one my mother joined, and I knew after one service that it wasn't for me (since it totally fell down on the "tradition" part).

based on the time frame mentioned in the article it's not like she entered her profession at a particularly woman-friendly time

Hey, wait a minute! If she was a college freshman 20ish years ago, she would have been entering the profession...um, around the time my wife and I did. I don't think there's been a whole lot of change in the woman-friendliness of the profession in that time. It's maybe gotten a bit more misanthropic but not, I think, particularly more or less misogynistic than it was when we started.

And get off my damn lawn!

I'd be curious what it's like at Oxford or Cambridge on which I understand our system is modelled, but where ALL students apparently have to have a college affiliation.

The Oxford college system is utterly unlike a fraternity or sorority and not really that much like the Australian system, either, I suspect.

I think undergraduates do tend to socialize a fair bit within their college [but I don't know for certain since I had my undergraduate education elsewhere] but colleges are also teaching venues and an undergraduate in a subject that college has strengths in might well get the majority of their tutorials within the college.

Oxford and Cambridge make more sense if you see them as federations of small independent colleges rather than unified institutions.

In re: 59, 61... I wouldn't exaggerate the signficance of dueling societies in Germany. They still exist, sure, but they are widely considered a throwback to another age. And they are demographically insignificant: a minority of young people go to university, a small minority of them join Verbindungen, and an even smaller minority of them are schlagend, or dueling.

Moreover, Verbindungen are largely invisible on campus (apart from the handsome houses they inhabit): they are deliberately insular, and members tend not to advertise their affiliation, less they be scorned by their more progressive classmates. This is true even in the more traditional campuses (Heidelberg, Goettingen, Marburg), where you occasionally see Korps members in uniform; on a progressive campus, you might never know they were there. There is no comparison to the U.S. campuses where "Greek life" dominates the social calendar and the status hierarchy.

89: Tell it to Heidi Klum, buddy.

From the second most fun to dissect part of the Sunday Times, the Vows column

...aka "The Women's Sports Page"

No one needs to point out the irony of me posting 91 on a thread devoted to "misogynistic overgeneralization", OK?

Actually, that link to the Vows dissections eventually made me watch several of the "Vows" videos on the NYT site, all of which made me want to kill myself. Every single story on there is about how the guy was a total dick the first several times they met, but became increasingly insistent and ingratiating, encroaching on her life in various ways while she remained somewhat oblivious to the possibility that someone so hostile and judgmental could actually be interested in her. Eventually, he becomes obsessed with the concept of a proposal, which she (in at least half the cases) doesn't even remember saying yes to, but he went to all that trouble to [rent the monkey suit, whatever], etc.

It's always the guy who's obsessed with pursuing the woman; it's always the woman who is hesitant about marriage but feels guilty about not feeling as comfortable with the relationship as he is. And I learned what I already suspected: weddings are for dudes. 91 is false.

Oh, and several of the proposals themselves are disgustingly thoughtless and vain. One guy, proposing to his wedding-cake-catering girlfriend, pretends to order a "backup" cake from a deli as she's preparing a lavish custom thing for a wedding. She's stressed as fuck, hasn't slept in days, is deeply insulted by his insistence on not trusting she'll get it done, and seems to be having a sort of career crisis. He insists she open the cake box (as she is covered in flour, bedraggled, and exhausted after making the delivery), and there is a really expensive cake in the shape of a ring box with a sugar model of a huge ring inside it. She's all "WTF?" and not in the mood to put two and two together. But, see, it's all about him at this point, so she realizes what the game is, chokes down her resentment, and agrees to marry this asshole. What do you say at that point? He did spend a lot of money and effort on insulting her and buying a product she spends her life making from someone else.

It's always the guy who's obsessed with pursuing the woman;

And you think this can be taken at face value? As opposed to being, say, bullshit? We're from a culture in which the men traditionally do the pursuing, after all. Of course every narrative is going to present it that way.

Well, the sense I got in all these videos was that both people were pretty desperate to find someone, and the guy settles for the girl before she fully settles for him.

One woman, deadpan: "So I didn't know what to think about him, but it turned out he had recently enjoyed a visit to Paris! And I had really left my heart in Paris while traveling there. It was uncanny how much we had in common."

Sure, they're both complicit in the recreation of stupid heteronormative narratives of compatibility (on the women's side) and pursuit (on the men's).

I know someone who uses the NYT vows stuff in their undergrad sociology classes reading out a couple of examples and each time changing the details so that they fit the script less and less well ("Ms Lytton-Schrank is a partner in the law firm of Gubbins and Goldfarb. Mr Wilson works as a mailman and is presently in a drug rehabilitation program.")

the guy settles for the girl before she fully settles for him.

I can sort of see that. I think looking at my friends it does tend to be slightly more that way than the other way round [maybe 60/40].

However, the ones who've made the really big deal about weddings [rather than just moving in together] have tended to be women. The bridezilla stereotype mightn't be that common here, but it's not non-existent.

I think I did phrase that wrong. I actually disagree that the wedding is "for" the women--look how miserable the more "demanding" brides are--since it seems to me to be more about displaying family status for the sake of social competition. But the proposal and the marriage itself are both highly dude-centric. Then, I suppose, the baby-having is culturally woman-centric again.

"A woman's wedding day is the happiest day in her life". People will actually say that with no idea that it's a pretty grim thing to say.

Mr Wilson works as a mailman

The postal service is a freaking great job. Hello???? Federal benefits!

As the daughter of an IRS officer, I can confirm the awesomeness of federal benefits. And a federal pension.

94- The idea is to have a husband who's asshole enough to achieve the well-paid career, societal status and the best lexus deal while having that tender side for the wife and kids.

"So I didn't know what to think about him, but it turned out he had recently enjoyed a visit to Paris! And I had really left my heart in Paris while traveling there. It was uncanny how much we had in common."

In my one foray into wedding planning, I saw (in the lobby of a location I was scouting) a copy of Local City Bride Magazine, one of those local features + lots of ads things. Several absurdly extravagant local weddings were featured, with various silly themes. But the best one was the couple who published photos of the wedding and of them noodling around Paris on their honeymoon: they paid a photographer to come along with them, because they wanted to remember etc, etc.

104:

Didnt Tommie and Pamela Lee do something similar?

I have a dumb question for those of you not raised as Christians. ... So what kind of thought-structures are other people raised with w/r/t social value and self-worth.

Myrrh (ahem) in 63 does it pretty much right on the nose. Unconditional love from your parents is the foundation here. Combine with confidence in your own talents. (Neither of these are easy or universal to come by.) As far as belief systems, I would guess that T.A. for Tots and Free To Be You And Me play significant roles in my own childhood development.

Last year I did some therapy around being a little golden boy in my youth, and how it can make parental love seem if not quite conditional on accomplishment, than at least tied to it. It was very interesting to me; I'm still preposterously well-adjusted, but it was good to see where the ache lives.

Warm fuzzies for all!

the notion of Judaism providing a sense of morality seems utterly alien to me

Not me. I still have a pretty strong (and unfulfilled) notion of Old Testament charity, not to mention the whole twentieth-century-look-who-the-white-people-in-the-civil-rights-movement-are thing. The underdog thing. The "you know, if your nation has ethnic cleansing in its origin story, you probably should take greater pains to avoid perpetrating it" thing.

The weird part to me is that after college, all those girls who had been victimized by "ledge parties", "Playing through", "the glass of water trick" and the various and sundry tales of debauchery, suddenly become virgins for the wedding to the frat boy, and go on to be President of the Juniour League, Garden Club and and Hospital Guild.

they paid a photographer to come along with them, because they wanted to remember etc, etc.

Apparently the latest thing is to pay a photographer to snap "candid" shots of the prospective groom proposing marriage to the prospective bride. So that the wedding album will tell the complete story and etc.

And by latest thing, I mean that it was recently done by the friend of a friend of someone who writes for the NYTimes, who then wrote about it in the Style section.

A general comment on the "rich assholes" comments on this and other threads: IME most groups of privileged people turn out to contain something like the same mix of assholes and decent people as pretty much any other group of human beings. Yea verily, even many of us who despise Greek systems and the like turn out not to be immune to status-driven behavior, and many of the people that we sometimes assume to be an undifferentiated mass of wealthy, shallow, selfish idiots turn out to be perfectly nice.

The sense of tradition I got, certainly, but the notion of Judaism providing a sense of morality seems utterly alien to me.

Well, as I think you already deduced, I'm Reform.