The Alabama Sorority Caper

OMFG… the sisters of the Alpha Phi Sorority at the University of Alabama put out a recruitment video. In it, the girls were having fun, were showing their support for the football team, and were acting like college girls. They were neither lewd nor lascivious; they were acting like college girls. 

The New York Times describes the video:

It mostly shows sorority members having a good time: dancing in front of their sorority house, blowing glitter and kisses, frolicking in swimsuits and taking a trip to the school’s Bryant-Denny football stadium in the company of the university’s mascot, an elephant known as Big Al.

Naturally, it caused yet another feminist freak out, this time by someone named A. L. Bailey who denounced the women of Alpha Phi for not living according to feminist ideology. (For my part I like it when women are so uncomfortable with being women that they cannot even use their real names, lest the names reveal their gender.)

Bailey described the video as she saw it... through the lens of her ideology:

It's a parade of white girls and blonde hair dye, coordinated clothing, bikinis and daisy dukes, glitter and kisses, bouncing bodies, euphoric hand-holding and hugging, gratuitous booty shots, and matching aviator sunglasses. It's all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition. It's all so ... unempowering. 

Of course, if Bailey wants to be respected for her mind, she should at least pretend that she has one. What is the point of denouncing these women for being feminine? What are they supposed to be: masculine? Neutered?

If you had ever imagined that feminism was about allowing women to choose freely what they want to be and how they want to present themselves, disabuse yourself of the notion. Feminists want women to be what feminists want them to be. They want women to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the cause. Anyone who deviates from the party line will be denounced as racist and sexist, as a mindless Barbie doll.

Trust me, if these sorority girls were hooking up, feminists would not have a problem with it. If they were drunk, on their knees at a fraternity party, feminists would be cheering them on. If they were sexting images of their private parts to whomever, many feminists would say it was normal. If they were part of weekend symposium on sex toys for women, feminists would not think that it was demeaning toward women.

And yet, being feminine, wearing a bikini, having blond or brown hair, giggling and bouncing around … those are steps too far for the feminist mind.

Apparently, Bailey believes that these sorority sisters are making it more difficult for anyone to take women seriously. In truth, it’s Bailey, the feminist scold who is making it impossible to take women seriously. If you are an employer and you have a choice between a sister from UAB’s Alpha Phi and A. L. Bailey, I promise you that the sorority sister will do a better job. People who are in the world of work consistently say so.

Don’t these sorority girls resemble a former cheerleader named Megyn Kelly?

By all appearances, the sorority sisters are comfortable being what they are. They are acting like college girls and they like being college girls. One suspects that they will like being women. Bailey, however, insults and demeans them by calling them bimbos.

Bailey believes that these women are sabotaging feminism. (If so, right on, sisters!)  She would do better to note that feminism undermines and sabotages women by teaching them to repress their femininity.

Did you know that women compete against other women? They compete for the attention of males, in roughly the same way that men compete for the attention of women. It should not come as a surprise. And women try to attract male attention by being feminine, not by being feminists.

Bailey seems to be a member in good standing of the thought police so she denounces the sorority for not being racially diverse and for not doing enough philanthropy.

To be fair, Bailey did a follow up interview in which she asked for forgiveness because she did not know what she was doing. She said that she did not intend to blame or to shame these women. But, of course, that is what she was doing. She denounced them and trashed them for the way that they chose to be women.

It’s feminism that makes women look bad, not in the aesthetic sense, but in the sense that it allows people to think that women are ideological zealots, wedded to their ideas, only loyal to their beliefs.

Bailey is not a professional thinker. She has imbibed an ideology and she applies it willy-nilly because that is what she was taught to do. When she insists over and over that she was not offended by the video, then perhaps she needs to look up the word offended… because she was acting like she was personally offended by it.

Then Bailey added:

And in my piece there wasn't a call to action, I did not ask for the video to be removed. I didn't ask for the girls to cover up. I didn't even ask the girls to change their ways or their girly behavior or anything like that. That's all fine by me, everybody was like, "well, that's their right to do that," and yes, that is their right to do that, that's absolutely right.

She added:

I was very careful in my wording to never insult the girls and to never try to directly shame them in any way.

Again, she probably does not know what she is doing. She called them bimbos and Stepford wives and said that they were hyperfeminine. She denounced the video for offering gratuitous booty shots. One wonders whether she is equally offended by the booty of Beyonce, for example.

Truth is, those are insults. Given the state of the culture and given the kinds of sexting that feminists are promoting, a few booty shots are not going to harm anyone.

Bailey insulted and demeaned the girls in the sorority and it produced certain consequences. She might not have intended them, but that does not matter. She is responsible for the consequences of her actions. If she prefers denial, there is very little we can do about it.