Hazing the Other: The "Brotherhood" We Never Rushed

This paper argues that fraternity hazing functions as a microcosm of patriarchal oppression, revealing the mechanisms through which systems of domination reproduce themselves. Beginning with an analysis of institutional definitions of hazing, I demonstrate that their inadequacy reflects oppression's inherent resistance to localization as discrete, punishable acts. Drawing on Arnold van Gennep's concept of liminality and feminist critiques of consent, particularly Catharine MacKinnon's analysis of coerced consent under conditions of power imbalance, I establish that hazing operates through a coercive social contract in which subordinates must consent to violation as the price of belonging. Employing Dianne Taylor's Foucaultian analysis of humiliation and Sanjay Palshikar's conception of humiliation as communication across power boundaries, I argue that "New Member Education" teaches pledges that subordinate members are unworthy of freedom, which is the same lesson women receive through patriarchal socialization. The paper traces structural parallels between the pledge's predicament and women's navigation of marriage, workplace harassment, and normative femininity: in each case, subjects face a double bind of submitting to degradation or forfeiting access to economic and social power. Engaging Åsa Burman's work on structural power, I examine how intersecting oppressions of race, class, and gender compound within Greek life. I conclude that anti-hazing policies necessarily fail because they treat structural oppression as isolated incidents. Fraternities serve as training grounds where young men learn the contractual logic of domination they will later deploy in broader society. Recognizing hazing as structural rather than incidental demands that reform efforts address the exclusionary foundations of Greek life, not merely the symptoms of its hierarchy.