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most girls hate the structure of sorority life and say that they wish they could be in a fraternity. whenever i ask a girl why they think sororities are like this, they respond with some sort of self-deprecatory thing towards their gender, like\u00a0\u201cgirls are too sensitive\u201d or\u00a0\u201cgirls are too bitchy\u201d to live like fraternity guys do. (can\u2019t exactly recall the logic behind this).\u00a0
none of the sororities at my school have houses. the urban myth is that this is because there\u2019s a local law that X amount of unmarried women living together constitutes a brothel and is illegal, but actually it\u2019s just tradition. a girl told me that she thinks this is a good thing because girls would never be able to live together like guys do, because\u00a0\u201cthere would be too much drama\u201d. i felt like she was taking a remarkably dismal view of her own gender, that women are essentially too catty and mercurial to pull off the very basic task of\u00a0\u201cliving with your friends\u201d, but what do i know?
idk what my point is, but i feel like this has something to do with gender roles.\u00a0
An old roommate of mine was an ER nurse. \u00a0He told me that it was standard practice in his hospital to have leadership positions elected from the staff. \u00a0Despite the overwhelmingly female composition of the profession, the elections heavily selected for men.
He asked about this and the female nurses invariably told him, \u201cwell, if we elected a woman there\u2019d be way too much drama. \u00a0A guy will just get things done and leave us alone.\u201d
One wonders what fraction of the variance in earnings is explained by stuff like this. \u00a0I have a hard time imagining it getting addressed any time soon, though. \u00a0"Women hold women back on account of being, or suspecting others of being, catty bitches\u201d doesn\u2019t sound like a very base-energizing campaign.
There’s a women-only pinball tournament in Seattle every year. The Portland girls who go up, who I have seen dealing with boors, abusers, misogynists, voyeurs, and absurd multi-way jealousy fights between lovers, ex-lovers, and hope-to-be-lovers report that it is the cattiest, grudge-bearingist, meanest, most pointlessly cruel and unpleasant competitive field they’ve ever faced.
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