In October 2010, 45 men, members and pledges of the Yale chapter of the Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) fraternity, surrounded the dorms that house most female freshman students, and loudly chanted: “NO MEANS YES! YES MEANS ANAL!” and “My name is Jack, I’m a necrophiliac, I fuck dead women and fill them with my semen!” (Gasso and Greenberg, 2010). As the pledges repeated these taunting chants, other men in the background instructed “Louder!” and the pledges complied. The account of this aggression was widely circulated through listservs, and the chanting was posted on YouTube.4
In March 2011, a Kappa Sigma brother at the University of Southern California began a weekly ‘Gullet Report’ email to educate his brothers on how to be a ‘Cocksman’. The primary purposes of the ‘Report’ were to “strengthen brotherhood and help pin-point sorostitiutes [sic] more inclined to put out.” ‘Sorostitute’ is a term used by fraternity brothers as shorthand to refer to sorority members as prostitutes. The author included a note to explain his reference to females as ‘targets’: “They aren’t actual people like us men,” he explained, “Consequently, giving them a certain name or distinction is pointless.” The email goes on to define pertinent terms (such as ‘Blackberry’, meaning a ‘black target’), a rating system (women ranked below 4 are ‘filth’), and important tips: for example, “Non-consent and rape are two different things” (Hartmann, 2011).
Each of these examples provides a glimpse into the current social climate on US college campuses.5 Adding to this culture of an aggressive and threatening atmosphere is a socially accepted practice on many college campuses called ‘pimp and ho’ parties. At these gatherings, men dress in ‘pimp’ outfits – long coats, jewelry, ‘bling’, fur, fake gold teeth, black curly wigs (stereotyping African American males), and women often dress up in revealing clothing, lingerie, stilettos, fishnet stockings and heavy make-up.
Dressed as pimps, the men evaluate the women at these parties, rate, and rank women and their potential economic value as ‘hos’, and offer to buy and sell them as commodities. These events are usually held at fraternity houses where the balance of gender power favors the men who live there – they control the guest list, they know the architecture of the building, they control the access to alcohol and they control the social hierarchy. The men also determine which freshmen women are going to be targeted. Like large animals in the wild, these upperclassmen often target and prey on the younger, smaller, weaker, and more vulnerable members of their society (Lisak, 2011).
Pornography plays a powerful role in creating images that glorify ‘pimp and ho’ culture as sexual, exciting, and desirable. It creates a critical backdrop to sexual culture on campus. The 3 examples offered above are united by the sexually derogatory way in which the men refer to women as objects to be raped, used, and whose will is to be disregarded. What is striking, but not immediately apparent, is the role that pornography plays in the construction of these attitudes.
The reason this violent sexual campus culture matters is twofold. First, these attitudes contribute to the astoundingly high level of rape and sexual assault on campus. Government studies in the United States estimate that 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 women will be sexually assaulted during her time in college (Krebs et al., 2007). There is an “inextricable correlation between men’s consumption of pornography and corresponding misogynist attitudes about women, sexual harassment and rape” (Jarrett, 2009, p. 1). When such attitudes are allowed to exist – if not prevail – unaddressed on a college campus, women are clearly at risk of sex discrimination that will affect their educational experience.
This chapter interrogates the current sexual culture on US campuses. First, it asks what men mean when they refer to women as ‘hos’, and how they construct female sexuality in all-male spaces, such as fraternities and in pornography, as reflected in the 3 examples. It focuses on the ubiquitous theme of ‘pimp and ho’ parties as representative of the cultural attitudes and social behavior relating to sexuality on campus.6
Second, it asks what it means for women to participate in a culture that refers to them as ‘hos’? The constant designation of women as ‘hos’ leaves little space for alternative definitions of female sexuality. Moreover, participation in this party culture makes women more vulnerable to being sexually assaulted, while simultaneously diminishing their ability and entitlement to complain about their victimization. If she dresses up as a ‘ho’ to attend a party and is assaulted, she is more likely to face victim-blaming questions than to be respected and feel comfortable asserting her rights to bodily integrity and sexual autonomy.
Third, the chapter asserts that women have a right not to be prostituted. Quite simply, referring to women in sexually derogatory terms fosters inequality. In the United States, Title IX of the Civil Rights Act confers a right to equal access to educational opportunities. Vice President Joseph Biden recently articulated this important civil right when he announced new guidelines to schools on preventing and addressing sexual violence.7 The establishment of the new guidelines coincided with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announcement that it was investigating Yale University in response to a complaint filed by 16 current and former students detailing the sexually hostile environment on campus, culminating in the ‘No Means Yes’ chanting described above. Thus, the chapter concludes with the recommendation that women bond together, supported by their schools, to reject the designation of themselves and one another as ‘hos’ – sexually devalued objects rather than humans with equal rights.
1 ‘Bros w Hos’: How Men Talk About Women in Male-Dominated Spaces
To change the culture of pornography use on campus, we need to confront directly what goes on in all-male spaces. Fraternities and locker rooms, as key spaces for male bonding, are important places to examine, as attitudes towards women and gay men are often the basis of jokes and male bonding activities. The privacy men have in these spaces allows them to talk uninterrupted and without consequence, ensuring unimpeded transmission of misogynist attitudes.
Athletes and fraternity members are more likely to commit gang rapes (Kimmel, 2008, pp. 238–239). Membership in these exclusive groups “confers on them an elite status that is easily translated into entitlement, and because the cement of their brotherhood is intense, and intensely sexualized, bonding” (Kimmel, 2008, pp. 238–239). I have seen a tremendous rise in the number of multi-perpetrator sexual assaults over the past few years,8 correlative with the rise in ‘gonzo’ porn, that involves several men taking turns penetrating, or penetrating all at once, one woman (see also Jensen, 2007, p. 59). Rather than being spontaneous cases of drunken misbehavior, evidence indicates that the vast majority of these rapes (around 71%) are premeditated and even scripted (Kimmel, 2008, p. 239). Acts of sexual violence appear not to be random, unrelated events, but rather central, even necessary, to the bonding that supports the sexual culture. The men seem to be operating on the principle that ‘Ain’t no fun unless we all get some’.9
A particularly troubling aspect of the Yale example was that it required men to proclaim the willingness to rape and disregard a woman’s will in order to gain admission into the exclusive all-male group. It also reflected the proliferation of anal sex that is increasingly common in mainstream pornography (Jensen, 2007, pp. 58–59).