Twitter’s Ill-Timed ‘Frat Party’
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The problem is not just the name, and I recognize that drinking games are not fundamentally sexist, but the structure of a party with this kind of theme pays homage to a culture that has some deeply-ingrained gender discrimination issues.
It's not "ill-timed", it's just wrong.
It was important only insomuch as it highlighted extreme bias in mass media. It was a wholly fabricated story and should not be used to shame frat culture.
Edit: to those downvoting, I'd love to hear how a fabricated story is somehow important. It was a huge blemish on Rolling Stone.
The UVa story was largely fabricated, but that doesn't mean that no one gets raped, shamed for being a victim of rape, ostracized for being a victim of rape, or encouraged to be silent when raped at a frat party at many universities. One of the most telling responses to the article before it was investigated was the fact that very few people were actually surprised.
That's important, even if the media successfully dodged having to deal with the deeper issues for another few years.
Since there aren't actually any examples of this happening, it certainly doesn't seem pervasive.
So even though the article wasn't true, and it was based on a completely fabricated story by a person who may actually be insane, it's still "important", because it provides ammunition to build up the narrative against those hated (i.e. White and Male) fraternities.
1) NYT, this is not 'ill-timed'... this would be dumb at any point in history.
2) Anyone that can't/won't understand that 'frat party' is at best not inclusive but more likely degrading and offensive is completely unqualified to lead people or organize anything. They should be fired immediately but I doubt anything meaningful at all will happen to them.
3) Who even thinks this kind of thing is fun? Chugging beer... seriously? How old are the people who work at Twitter?
Ugh... this kind of thing makes me so mad. Makes me ashamed for my vocation and for my gender. These idiots get all the attention from the slobbering tech media who perversely loves to perpetuate the culture... grow up, get a life, and stop the madness already.
(it's NOT A FRAT PARTY!)
E:
Being downvoted by a bunch of alcoholics I see /s.
The issue I'm pointing out here, in case anyone missed it, is that the party isn't welcome and opening to an entire group of people based on it's "theme". In this case: frat excludes females.
I don't drink. I actively avoid being around drunk people (though I don't care if they drink - so long as I don't have to be around them). So a beer-themed party would be very exclusionary of people like me.
I would not feel welcomed at this party. I would feel excluded and that I don't belong. So why isn't that an issue?
A typical American university "frat party" is hosted at a fraternity, and also welcomes attendees of both sexes.
The drinking-to-excess issue is a separate issue from the party theme. It sounds like they were going for a "college throwback" concept rather than "drink to excess".
(One hopes that professionals in the workplace realize that they probably shouldn't drink 'til they puke and fall under the beer pong table.)
Or am I not understanding the backlash properly?
Anyway - Newton's fourth law - "for every action there will be SJW overreaction". The SJW are losing a lot of credibility behaving like that.
That is the whole problem with the existing culture of tech - we want to see more women engineers, but there are all these subtle things going on in the industry that make them not want to be a part of the scene. With my data set of sample size of 1 (my wife who is an engineer at a big tech company), it's all those small things that make her want to quit and do something else. There is just this bro culture, where she always feels left out. Simplifying it down to what's wrong with beer pong, beer pong is fun is really missing the big picture.
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...
A lot of people seem to suggest that society will magically get better without people getting upset about the bad parts. But when I ask them for examples, they get mysteriously quiet. A pattern nicely parodied by this cartoon: https://thenib.com/great-moments-in-peaceful-protest-history...
Thanks for the heads up.
I can't see this usage any more without picturing a Ferengi saying it, or maybe Davis Aurini.
Am I supposed to just know who the people the poster was referencing are? This is a discussion board. If you have a statement to make, what's the point in shrouding it in such a vague kind of statement? What I wanted to know was "should I take your comment seriously enough to do enough searching to give it context on my own, or should I just ignore it?"
If the announcement said it was open to all, I'd feel invited and included.
The reason you don't see a lot of open sorority parties at colleges is that most sororities are not allowed to serve alcohol at events they host or cohost. That's a rule of the National Panhellenic Conference. This saves them about $100 per year per student on insurance, which is passed on to the students via lower dues.
There have been some sororities at some colleges trying to get permission to hold parties with alcohol, open to men, so that they can mingle with and drink with men but where they are the ones controlling the alcohol.
It seemed to me that certain parts of the media decided the case was a slam dunk, Pao lost, and now it's still being mentioned because...?
I like how the very first sentence claims discrimination against women in tech and links to Ellen Pao LOSING her case as proof.
If anything, this discriminates against older employees. When I was in college, there were always a lot of girls at house parties, but never any 50-year-old VPs of Engineering.
When are we just going to come out and say that all of this moral outrage has jumped the shark?
It would have been different if they called it a college party.
From the second paragraph of your own link: "In many instances membership in a fraternity is limited to males, but this is not always the case, and there are mixed male and female and even wholly female fraternities"
Particularly, in the collegiate context evoked by the phrase used, "fraternities" is generally the term used for all-male or co-ed societies of a particular type, while the corresponding term for all-female societies is "sororities".
That being said, "Frat party" certainly has a gendered connotation/implication, its just not a simple definitional thing of the type you present it as.
> It would have been different if they called it a college party.
The connotation being that colleges have no history excluding individuals based on their sex? Just as there have been male or female-only frats, haven't there also been male and female-only colleges?
The use of the word 'frat' really is the difference here. Beer and beer pong are the obvious connotations with frat parties. Scantily clad women, roofies, and rape, are some others, even if those associations are unfair. Why in the world would you associate your company with something like that?
The party itself isn't some egregious, unforgivable mistake, but the fact that while under investigation for gender discrimination, it does something like this, illustrates to me that Twitter is pretty oblivious to the problem.
There are some people who just don't want anything to change and resent the effort required to think about people who are different from them, but there are others who have ego invested in maintaining the exclusionary atmosphere of the profession. I suspect, though I don't have a citation, that those people are also more likely to participate in forums like Hacker's News that reinforce that sense of being special.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_Greek...
Greek may have generated less uproar, but that's not the word they chose.
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Women-friendly_events#Alc...
One thing that was hard for me as a guy to learn is that women can reasonably see all guys as Schrodinger's Rapist:
http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-sch...
If one is continually performing the "will I be safe" calculus, alcohol clearly increase risk. Much more so at a party whose whole purpose is getting smashed, and which has strong connotations of college sexual dynamics.
The sign than reads "Twitter Frat House" is unnecessary.
"Frat party" is offensive now? What about the very existence of frats altogether. Should we ban those? Oh what about men's clubs? What about groups of men? Tell you what, why don't we ban men gathering in groups of 3 or more. That oughta correct sexism.
No one said anything about being offended.
What they did do was identify a problem, based on it fitting the pattern of other things that are empirically problems. This is literally what hackers do. Hand us a codebase, we will go around looking for problems, calling attention to them, and fixing them. Hand us a legal situation (like copyright law on software), we'll investigate it and figure out ways to fix it. Hand us an industry, we'll find the inefficiencies and disrupt it.
There are certainly people who don't really feel compelled to call attention to problems. They tend to be either non-hackers who don't notice problems and have trouble believing reports of problems ("We take your security very seriously and follow industry best practice"), or malicious hackers who understand a problem but are benefiting from it continuing to exist.
Some people do believe that any men organizing and assembling in groups - specifically as men, and excluding women by choice - is actually unacceptable.
It would be interesting to compare the set of people who believe that, with the set of people who believe that exclusionary, so-called "safe spaces" are fine for women and/or minorities.
(Obviously, no sex-exclusive "safe spaces" are permissible for men, for any reason.)
A lot of people think so. ;)