Quote:
Originally Posted by TSteven
Would you recommend that a woman going through sorority recruitment use "sorostitute"? Even if she was trying to make fun or light of the stereotype? Most - if not all - of the ladies I have the pleasure of of being acquainted with, would find it's use offense. As do the gentlemen. It is crass and common. Which is why if a man wants a bid to a fraternity, he should never use it.
To be clear, I am directing this toward fraternity rush. Even an active - who might use the term "in private" or with his friends - may find it offense when someone he does not know feels free to use it around him. This is similar to profanity. So if he wants a bid, he needs to be certain he does not offend any one member. Remember that in some chapters/fraternities it may only take one no vote to keep someone from receiving a bid.
I wanted to address this separately. I don't think there is anything wrong with discussing your Mother or Grandmother as long as the context is appropeate. A simple example may be "My Mother is an XYZ." when asked if anyone in your family belongs to a GLO. How a gentleman shows respect to women - and especially to his kin - is something that a lot of fraternities want to know. Especially before they consider extending him a bid. (Been there, heard it discussed.)
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I was kidding about the mother and grandmother comment for the most part; it was just thrown in to pretend I was addressing the topic of the thread. I intended it to be along the lines of someone being dumb enough to say something bad about someone's mother. I think it would be a bit odd to bring up someone's mom or grandmother, but there wouldn't be a reason, if topical, that moms and gmoms are specifically off limits. I agree that most fraternity men want to pledge other men who would treat the female members of their families with great respect.
I wouldn't recommend anyone use the word sorostitute. As I said in my first post, I'm not a fan of the term, and I don't see how it really behooves any member associated with Greek life to perpetuate bad stereotypes, but the kids these days, some of them who bear women no ill will, are using the term quite a bit. If we were on campus to hear the current undergrads, I think we'd spend a lot of time being offended.
I think any person going through rush should be even more cautious than the people who are members of a group although I think they should be careful too. To some degree, I think if a rusher used the term in conversation with a PNM, it might actually be kind of test to see if the PNM believed the stereotype, and it might reflect on her very poorly if she picked the term up and made a joke herself. ETA: I think this would also be true for men going through rush.
EagainTA: if you run a facebook search for "sorostitute" it returns 279 groups (at least mine does). Many of these end up being "Fratdaddies and Sorostitute" groups for individual campuses, and the membership in these groups seems to be primarily, if not exclusively Greek. (I can't really tell since I'm not in their networks to look at their profiles.) It appears to be the case that around half the members are women. I offer this as evidence NOT that the term is okay; simply that it is in current usage with a large number of undergraduates who I don't think are especially self-loathing or misogynistic, but are instead using the term publicly as a joke.