How did we get here? Fraternities have been breeding grounds for rape culture for decades, it’s only in recent years that women and society have been speaking up against it, hence the movement to ban Greek life which has grown in the past 10-20 years. My mother-in-law, who attended UIUC in the 1950s, tells stories of joining the theater/stagecraft club in order to avoid having to go to the drunken parties her sorority and the associated frat hosted on weekend evenings (she had to commit her time to the theater performances on weekends, as a ready excuse to avoid the parties which were considered mandatory by her sorority). I remember even in the late 1980s protesting at “Take Back the Night” marches at my LAC, these were protests against rape/sexual assault in general, but date or frat party rape seemed to even then be the predominant type of sexual assault (at least among women I knew).
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