Sisterhood and Sexual Assault: Engaging Sorority Members in Dialogue, Critical Analysis, and Feminist Praxis

• Author: M. Elise Radina
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12234
• Published date: 01 February 2017
• Date: 01 February 2017

M. E R Miami University

Sisterhood and Sexual Assault: Engaging Sorority

Members in Dialogue, Critical Analysis, and

Feminist Praxis

Taking a feminist pedagogy and praxis

approach, I present a course model for engag-

ing sorority members in critical analysis and

feminist praxis around the issue of campus rape

culture. This course model responds to two

problems: (a) the prevailing disconnect between

the efforts of departments of student affairs and

academic affairs and (b) the untapped potential

that faculty members with sorority or fraternity

afliations have as change agents by identifying

themselves publically on campus. The resulting

course provides a women-only space where

issues such as sexual assault can be analyzed,

critiqued, and challenged in ways that incorpo-

rate the nuances within Greek subcultures on

university campuses. Such courses may provide

students with the intellectual space to challenge

campus issues such as campus rape culture as

well as empower them to engage in feminist

praxis as change agents.

B

Feminist pedagogy (Belenky, Clinchy, Gold-

berger, & Tarule, 1986) attempts to engage stu-

dents in self-reection, struggle, and dialogue,

and often does so around difcult issues related

to gender, race, sexual orientation, and other

Department of Family Studies and Social Work, Miami

University,Oxford, OH 45056 (radiname@miamioh.edu).

Key Words: Pedagogical and curriculum issues, sexual

abuse.

seats of social injustice. At the same time, the

classroom is intentionally managed to maxi-

mize equality and community, where individual

voices are encouraged and group sharing and

learning are essential. Students are empowered

to ask difcult questions, challenge ideologies,

and make personal and perhaps social change

(Belenky et al., 1986).

In what follows, I present and discuss a course

model that incorporates feminist pedagogical

practice and critical analysis of Greek commu-

nity life in a women-only space. Such a course

capitalizes on the feminist and sorority notions

of sisterhood and intentionally provides a phys-

ical and intellectual “safe space” (Lewis, Sharp,

Remnant, & Redpath, 2015) in which college

women who are part of Greek campus subcul-

tures can authentically engage with one another

around issues and experiences of common con-

cern. For the purposes of this article, I focus on

how such a course model can be used to engage

students in feminist praxis toward eradicating

campus rape culture.

An undergraduate student writing from a fem-

inist perspective described campus rape culture

as “women being told to always travel in groups

at night, asked what they were wearing the day

or night of an assault, [and whether] they were

drinking or partying. Victim blaming, telling a

woman she was ‘asking for it,’ is a facet of

rape culture, and rape culture promotes victim

silence” (Ray, 2013, p. 40). Indeed, rape culture

is common on college campuses to the extent

that sexual assault is commonplace, accepted,

126 Family Relations 66 (February 2017): 126–138

DOI:10.1111/fare.12234