Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity at Yale
We were highly gratified by the reaction on social media to yesterday’s post on the mindset – unfortunately widespread – that regards women as either sexual possessions or conquests. Our two examples were the man in Veracruz, Mexico who habitually padlocked his “girlfriend” into her jeans everyday, and the member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity at Georgia Tech who wrote out for his less experienced frat brothers how to use alcohol and other means to get women, or “girls,” as he so artfully called them, to become “rapebait.” We were particularly pleased that so many women readers urged younger women to have the confidence and backbone to stand up for their own self-respect and dignity.
But lest you think this kind of treatment is confined to the rural Third World or Southern bastions of traditional male chauvinism, please recall the incident two years ago at one of our most esteemed institutions of higher learning.
In the spring of 2011, Yale University suspended its chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity – whose alumni include both Presidents Bush – from most university activities for five years after its brothers sent pledges out to parade around the august and tradition-dripping New Haven, Connecticut campus chanting “No means yes! Yes means anal!”
The response of the frat’s national office – presumably composed of actual adults – was to impose its own six-week suspension of pledging activities and to protest the university’s imposed punishment as way too harsh for something that was merely “inappropriate and in poor taste.”
Before we go any further, just for the hell of it, let us quote the following:
Article II, Constitution of DKE
THE OBJECTS of Delta Kappa Epsilon
are the cultivation of general literature and social culture, the advancement and encouragement of intellectual excellence, the promotion of honorable friendship and useful citizenship, the development of a spirit of tolerance and respect for the rights and views of others, the maintenance of gentlemanly dignity, self-respect, and morality in all circumstances, and the union of stout hearts and kindred interests to secure to merit its due reward.
As Matthew Burgoyne reported in Ms. magazine at the time, this was far from an isolated incident at Yale. The same memorable phrases were chanted by frat boys outside the campus Women’s Center in 2006. In 2008, brothers of Zeta Psi posed for photographs outside the center carrying signs proclaiming, “WE LOVE YALE SLUTS.” And the following year a mass email rated incoming freshman women on how many drinks a man would need to be willing to sleep with her.
I’ll tell you what I would have done if I were the president of Yale, an institution that has no trouble filling its class many times over. I would have suspended every member of the DKE chapter and sent a letter to each one saying that if you want to be reinstated, there is only one way: You make an appointment and show up in my office with your mother, your sister or, if you have neither, some other close female family member, and in front of them and me, you repeat your chant. And if you mom or sis then has the impulse to beat some sensitivity into your sorry ass, we will have a fine selection of fraternity paddles available for the purpose. More likely, they will want to smack you repeatedly upside your misguided heads.
What does it take to get across the message that this type of attitude toward women is unacceptable in any civilized society?
Each year, the top colleges and universities like Yale make a big deal of accepting only the very best high school students. And then, four years later, through some mysterious alchemy, they manage to turn out the very best college graduates. Wow. Is that amazing or what! I’d be significantly more impressed if they took marginal high school students and turned out accomplished college graduates.
But maybe, since they won’t do that, with all of their resources and all of their brilliant minds, they ought to spend some time during those four years trying to turn out decent human beings. And from what I’ve seen, they’ve got their work cut out for them.
drJ – Thank you for much to consider. I believe you are right that the situation is more complicated than meets the eye.
Dr. J, indeed, lack of empathy must be involved, as you say. But the lack of empathy seems to be a convenient mechanism at times to simply enable selfish behavior; hence, the double standard.
I’m going to boil it down to a real-life phenomenon that is fairly common, one might even say an everyday occurrence, and get everyone’s thoughts on it.
My good friend’s husband, for a quick background, suffers from social anxiety, which he doesn’t try to deal with. His interaction is always on his terms, when he decides to. His only pasttime besides staying on the internet is going to strip clubs. His wife, my friend, did challenge him on it, but then she likes to hang out with her old crowd from time to time, which he’s not nuts about, so it’s a compromise as far as she is concerned. She has talked to him about objectifying the strippers, about the likelihood that they have grown up with abuse or boundary issues, tried to get him to see the harm in it.
They have two children. The youngest is an adopted girl now in kindergarten. She is extremely strong-willed and precocious, extremely social, demanding an audience at every turn — but then she is 5.
At a recent get-together, the husband announced to his wife’s mother, “I’m not going to let my daughter date just any old guy. I’m going to teach her how not to be taken advantage of,” etc. The mother-in=law’s wise response was (having raised a teenager very pushy and proactive at meeting men) “You’re assuming it’s the boys who will be the problem.”
The wife, my friend, told me he later told her because of all this, he was no longer going to frequent strip bars, to which she replied, “Hypocrite much?”
For myself, I had a good laugh and viewed it as a positive change.
So did he suddenly develop empathy because he had the daughter and felt protective?
Or did he simply become possessive of his daughter for his own selfish reasons?
Cornerstone,
Great questions! Works in progress.
Thanks for the trust,
Dr.J
Hi Cornerstone,
Wow. A real life situation for me to tackle, I love it! I will say though, the remarks I do tend to make about empathy are done from a great deal of independent study on research that supports the very notion. However, the term they referred to is Reflective Function. I will admit the answers are never that simple and if I had the opportunity, there are clinical questions that I would also like to address with them as well. But, if you’re ever in a situation with a child, friend, spouse or even stranger and you find the tension rising more and more between because your wills are at odds and your both defending why your reasons for your decision making were the right ones, don’t change your mind but try adding instead I understand why you would be feel…upset, angry, sad, disappointed, afraid or whatever, by when I said… or did… Try it and see it for yourself and how happy your friend would be if it ever stops a child from having a meltdown.
I thought it might be best to share with you the way I process the information you provide instead of offering any direct interpretations. Given this is not my website and the implications of the ethics involved, this seems the best approach to take.
When I refer to the concept of empathy, it is based on a concept Reflective Function which attachment researchers, Fonagy, et.al, (2004) introduced in their book, Affect Reflation, Mentalization and The Development of Self, (2004). Fonagy described RF as the capacity to understand the meaning behind behaviors observed in others and oneself such as beliefs, thoughts, perceptions and feelings, and according to the authors, is the basis of healthy relationships and self-awareness. Their research, as well as, others in the field of attachment, had established significant relationships between Maternal Reflective Function and the establishment of infant Emotional security, the first and one of the major developmental milestones imperative for the infant to accomplish. Not-withstanding organic or genetic pre-determinants, without emotional security acquired by the end of the first year, the young is child will not have the foundation needed to develop the precursor for the capacity to feel empathy, emotion-regulation. to self-regulate, Thus, without the capacity to self-regulate, the possibility of character DO and disorders of attention and dysregulation increase significantly.
The first thing I would ask you to do in response to your questions, is wonder about your friend’s husband first comment that he wants to make sure that he teaches his daughter who is only 5 not to go out with just any old guy and never be taken advantage of. If you were to apply the concept of empathy to him as he something he feel toward his daughter then he would be thinking what her inner world is like, what right now, what’s important to her, where is she developmentally, what are her favorite things to do and most importantly, how does a 5-year-old learn? The primary modality that children learn until about age 5 or t is through play. According to Vgotsky, and it still holds true, preschoolers and kindergarteners learn best through role play they create and act out with authority figures, scaffolding effect. Most girls around her age, if given the opportunity, will choose to play the role of princess. This has been my experience clinically and personally and don’t think there’s anything cuter. The caretaker takes their direction, even if means the child demands that you play the evil step mother. There’s a strong chance she will do that, but I don’t mind, it’s actually very therapeutic for them. . So if you’re trying to assess capacity for empathy and one factor to consider is the father’s concern that he will teach his 5-year-old how to avoid being taken advantage of when she date men, what would your assessment be? Is he meeting his daughter developmentally or where she’s at? Or is it about him or the strippers or both? Who needs protection from whom?
The mother-in-law’s comment, if I understand it correctly, suggested that females can be a predators too. Following this comment, your friend’s husband indicated that he will not be going to strip bars anymore. The question you shared is if this facilitated a sudden capacity for him to feel empathy. According to attachment research most of the programs designed to improve maternal sensitivity typically occur over the course of a few months and require very supportive clinicians and training. Although this applies mostly to women with BPD, my clinical experience has demonstrated internalizing, feeling and providing empathy takes time. It’s sort of like learning how to ride a bicycle except here, there’s more resistance to get on the bike. If you’re not predisposed to provide empathy it’s difficult to internalize and provide it. To be discussed another time.
Finally, the last thing to consider, as with anything, is that there is more than what meets the eye. The situation is more complicated than described. All situations are. Everything takes time. It’s just the way it is. I hope this helped. Feel free to ask any further questions.
Take care,
Dr. J
I suppose the reasons for the male tendency to objectify woman may be found in the individual, their society, and culture as well. But if I were to guess what the one common denominator is for the problem, I would say it’s the intergenerational transmission of childhood sexual abuse and incest. The passage of trauma, even if secondary, continues to impact the lives of generations to come and influence the mindset of many.
To address more specifically the tendency for some men to objectify women, I will first consider it as misogyny. As such, the misogynistic behavior displayed by the Yale students, at first glance, reveals a great deal of deep seated contempt toward women and female sexuality. But, as Phaedrus once said, “Things are not always what they seem; …”and I for one, firmly agree. If you look at any ‘good piece of work’ long enough, more will always be revealed. This fact holds true for everyone, even the scholars. We all have an unconscious and we all have the capacity to reveal our secrets unknowingly, even the ones we keep from ourselves. Yale scholars are no exception. An admission to Yale University does not preclude one from possibly meeting this fate. In applying Phaedrus’ concept here, an alternate explanation for the misogynistic behavior to be that it’s a projection. Once it is seen as a defense mechanism and that is used whenever they are in emotionally or sexually charged situations, the meaning of the behavior changes. The act of projection on can only assume serves to protect their fragile self-esteem by warding off unwanted and unacceptable feelings, fantasies, and fears which, therefore, reveal much more about their insecurities than it does about any women they may be trying to reduce. It also decreases the intensity of the emotions that the behavior tries to elicit. Perhaps the misogynist, or in this case, the Yale student, should tread more cautiously, lest they find themselves revealing too much to the public about their inner most fears that are quite personal in nature.
Another reason I believe there is a male tendency to objectify women is closely tied to the absence of empathy and based on the theory and research derived by psychoanalytic attachment psychology . In order to objectify anyone, there has to be an absence of empathy. The two go hand in hand. The capacity to feel or provide empathy lies on a continuum and is strongly determined by the quality of early attachment relationships. The way in which attachment researchers measure the quality of this relationship is through a concept they call maternal “reflective function” (RF) but to simplify, can also be understood as maternal empathy. Their research supports that infants with mother’s, who score high on their level of RF, develop secure attachments and infant’s with mother’s who score low develop insecure attachment. Maternal RF or empathy is also, then, a reflection of the potential to objectify the infant. If they lack the capacity to feel empathy they are very likely to objectify their infants. This is displayed by an inability to separate maternal needs from the infants, and marks the beginning of psychopathology due to the experience as object by the infant and its corresponding affects. In adulthood, this can manifest itself through the objectification of others, as observed in the Yale students. This gets further complicated when the emotional pain experienced by the infant or toddler reaches intolerable proportions and consequently, one way relief is found is through an almost instinctual reversal of turning the pain into pleasure. Due to a host of factors that involve both nature and nurture, the infant comes to associate the pain they experience, in submitting to their mother’s needs, with pleasure and thus explains the start for other seeds that later manifest in the perversions. This may help explain the behaviors noted in the Mexican couple. The degree of sadomasochism within an individual due to maternal insensitivity such as significant empathic failure or early trauma depends on its’ severity and timing. But, perhaps one of the reasons it’s so difficult to make sense of the behaviors observed in the Mexican couple is because, I suspect, it relates on some level, even if only small, to sadomasochistic gratification and, underlying sexual gratification controls some degree of decision making, conscious or not, and that is why it is so difficult to understand, and so difficult to stop from happening over again. There are other ways pain and pleasure can get fused not only through object relations and maternal attachment. Sexual abuse, for one, in early childhood, could create similar fusions, according to many analytic theorists.
There are always a certain percentage who will cater to these men. Why? Because they’re the product of a cycle from generation to generation. In truth, it doesn’t take much to create a girl with soft boundaries and an overly tolerant attitude. It doesn’t take a monster of a father, only one who doesn’t practice what he preaches or doesn’t preach at all. Women from my generation grew up floundering in a sea of double standard, Often those who didn’t drown were those who were simply best able to navigate the rough waters by whatever means necessary. The truth is that there’s a whole female subculture out there who see opportunity by acting like they think whatever men say or do is cool, even when it demeans them, because they want the young men to think they’re cool. The younger the women are, the bigger percentage of them will be that way. The younger women are, the more likely they are to go along with it than to do without male attention. My mother’s generation called this “slim pickins.”
Ironic that young women don’t understand until they’re much older that it was in their youth that they had the most leverage to change the mindset of young men.
Amen!
I heartily agree!
Mr. Olshaker:
You say:
“What does it take to get across the message that this type of attitude toward women is unacceptable in any civilized society?”
My answer:
For women to stop catering to it.