Notes on sororities and queerness

A small group of women were huddled together whispering about someone. One girl, Jane, is leading the conversation. Jane is a typical sorority girl. Beautiful, big hair, blue eyes. She has been in the organization much longer than me. As I got closer, I realized she was talking about me. 

 

“It’s like she's obsessed with me!” I remember her saying. 

 

I had been texting her all week, thinking we were getting close. I had messaged her that morning, to ask if she’d attend a party we were both invited to. She hadn’t responded. 

 

I thought back to my panic attack at a sorority mixer a few weeks ago. No one would let me outside to get air so I cried, exploding tears and snot all over the bathroom, while a dozen or so girls tried to calm me down. My face was red and my breath was stuck in my chest. As I overheard Jane, similar feelings returned. 

 

My chest was tight, my vision blurred. I turned away from the group of girls and ran to a friend's house a block away. I sat and poured big, sloppy tears all over her carpet. 

 

Obsession, crushes. All things queer women are used to hearing from straight women who find out about their queerness. Especially in the Greek system, this aspect of your identity becomes a target on your back. It is as if the second you come out to someone, they are already wondering if you have a crush on them. Sorority systems enforce these kinds of thinking, and are breeding grounds for it. 

 

Every day, I face the internal struggle of participating in Greek life. Every day I question my decision to join. Knowing it was mostly out of societal pressures and longing for the “college experience”, I wonder if it is worth it.  

 

In her groundbreaking work, Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick writes, “the fact that silence is rendered as pointed and performative as speech, in relations around the closet, depends on and highlights more broadly the fact that ignorance is as potent and as multiple a thing there as is knowledge.” The closet (a space in which queer people reside before they come out) is not just a physical space but a symbolic one, where silence may be a form of communication. Sedgwick provides a prescient insight into being Queer within Greek life: silence is a way of speaking louder than words. 

 

Silence in the look she gives you as you pass her. Silence in the way they stop talking when you enter the conversation. Silence that pushes you back into that space where no one knows who you are and they can’t judge you for it. Back to invisible, you slowly dissipate, each backhanded comment and strange stare makes it worse. 

​

In systems like Greek life, Queer people are viewed as predatory but simultaneously made invisible. It is in these confines that I reside. 

 

In middle school, I began to like women. It was a subtle fall into queerness, aided by the exploration of my fellow classmates and the “trend” of being gay in LA. In this realm, I began my own journey into queerness. 

 

Jenna was beautiful and funny. She wore flannel, which made me want to wear flannel too. I bought a green pleated pattern from H&M one day after school.Her hands were rough, and when her fingertips brushed against my cheek or my arms, small pieces of her skin clung onto me, almost leaving traces of herself on my body. I adopted her smile (gummy and toothy all at the same time), her favorite emoji (the laughing crying one), and her taste in music (all things rap). I thought about our wedding and the children we would adopt together. 

 

She would put her arm around my shoulders, a move signaling that she was the dominant one, and we would move through the hallways together. I was proud to be seen with her, she had a reputation as a “bad girl” and I liked that.

 

She taught me what a hickey was. She was experimental and daring. Jenna  was also a drug dealer, to my parent’s disapproval, but their reaction only furthered our romance. I held on tighter to her than I had to anyone before. 

 

After a while, Jenna slowly floated away from me. She stopped picking me up from math class. She stopped eating lunch with me. Despite the heartbreak, I felt lucky to have loved her. We might’ve been young but our connection remains one of the most important of my life. 

 

It was unlike the boy-girl love I experienced prior. It wasn’t frowned upon but at the same time, people took second looks when they saw us together. She made me see a world I had never explored before. Something deeper than a crush, an overwhelming wave of emotions, I truly had never felt a love like it before. 

 

“You know we didn't choose to be this way, but yet it's the greatest gift I think I've ever been given, because it teaches me what real love is,” Bill Kavanagh, a psychologist who specializes in LGBTQ issues, said about his queer sexuality.

 

I understand what Kavanagh is saying. The love I felt was as real as love can get.

​

The closer I got to Jane’s house, the faster I walked. It had been a few days since the incident involving her gossiping about me but anger still burned the inside of my eyes.

 

I steadied my pace as I approached her. The afternoon light bounced off the house and into my eyes. She sat, cross-legged at the base of a tree. She was wearing a blue sweatshirt and dangly gold earrings. I bet those cost a lot. She’s the type of person to only wear real gold, designer brands, no H&M for her. My pulse was so loud I was scared she could hear it. 

 

“So what’s wrong?” she started.

 

Everything in my mind screamed to say “You!” But I stopped myself.

 

“I don’t want you to be upset,” I said instead.

 

“Did I do something wrong?” Jane started fidgeting. I could feel her getting uncomfortable.

 

My blood only grew hotter. I  felt my heart racing faster. My arms felt numb.

 

Before I knew it, I exploded accusations onto Jane. My face heated up and I began to shake. I never liked confrontation. I was always the girl too scared to raise her hand in class. Always  the girl too scared to stand up for herself. But not today. Today was the perfect day for justice. 

 

“Do you know how what you did could be harmful,” I asked.

 

“What did I do?” Her voice echoed around the space, falling with a thud at my feet.

 

Calmly as I could, I tried to explain to Jane how systems of oppression upheld Greek life. How decades of racism, sexism, and misogyny built a social regime where only the richest and whitest men and women could join. How sexual assault cases reverberate through fraternities, how no sorority on our campus has a person of color as their president. How being a part of this system was contributing to a society in which certain people are valued above others. How viewing me as a predator was a product of homophobia. 

 

She started crying. 

 

I don’t think she understood. 

 

When I left Jane, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. I didn’t mean to make her upset with me. That was my worst fear. Her status in the group scared me and I didn’t want to be isolated. But her weaponized tears stung like a knife. 

 

All I wanted to do was explain my situation to her. All I wanted to do was feel heard. 

 

Our sorority might claim to be inclusive, but it’s situated in the Greek life system. Queer voices often go unheard in the Greek system. A study from 2021 states that sororities and fraternities promoted LGBTQ issues via social media posts about just 1% of the time and that the support usually drops off after Pride Month in June. 

 

 An older study (from 1996) suggests that 5-6% of fraternity members and 3-4% of sorority members identified as Queer. Trends in inclusivity and awareness suggest that those numbers are higher now, but probably not by much. I cannot speak for all Queer people who joined a sorority, but I do know that everyone-especially Queer folk-long for a sense of community. A place of belonging is important for marginalized communities. Perhaps joining Greek life is a way to belong. Perhaps it is also a way to prove to the world that they can fit into the norm, they can mold, they can conform. So as a way to connect and a way to confine, we seek out these “popular” groups. 

 

Jake Weinraub, a psychologist who has worked with queer youth, said, “I do know historically Greek life and being LGBT have not seemed compatible.” He explained that the systems holding up Greek life are hard to overcome. That the homophobia present in these places is oftentimes overwhelming and if not out front, it is hidden behind the curtains. How it is normal for queer people to police themselves and their expression to maintain safety in majority non-queer spaces. They change their appearance, try to fit into the designer molds. They don’t speak about who they are attracted to and engage in conversations about how cute the frat pledges are. 

 

“Over time, people just grow to accept the rules, know the rules, and then mold themselves into something that is perceived as more acceptable,” Jasmine, another queer woman in my sorority, said. Jasmine also spoke about the practice of masking oneself to fit into this space. She told me the biggest change was when she started dressing more feminine when she entered the sorority. 

 

She also spoke about being one of two queer women in the house and when being assigned living arrangements, being put in a room together. Jane had also been assigned to the same room and responded with disgust, stating, in an indirect way, how she wouldn’t want to live with the two gay girls. 

 

We also discussed heteronormativity via specific processes. For example: girls in sororities are “matched” with men in fraternities via parties and mixers in order to foster sexual relationships. Furthermore, sororities only mix with fraternities, enforcing relations between men and women. And if you’re  lesbian, bisexual, or queer you are seen as competition to fraternity men trying to sleep with the sorority women. You are a threat. It can be dangerous.

 

Some queer women join greek life for the feeling of family, to further the bonds of sisterhood. I think of one bisexual woman in a sorority at USC who lost both her parents early in life. To her, the sorority is her support system, a family that she doesn’t have outside of school.  

 

In Greek life, I find community. I find women who I relate to, women who are strong and driven. I had always longed for a feeling of belonging, to have a group that I could always come home to. I wanted to belong. The greek system has such a big influence on the politics of our school and a bigger influence on social life. I felt like I needed to be a part of it if I wanted to be a part of the social scene. And now everyday I dawn my armor and my sword. My thick skin gets thicker the longer I stay, my tongue sharper, learning to retort with catty comments and snide remarks when someone shoots the same my way. Though I face challenges, I can’t afford to dress like everyone else, I don’t always care about the frat boys, and I listen to different music, I still find ways to fit in. My whiteness and overall appearance helps with that. 

 

When I am debating whether or not to drop my house, I think of the women who rushed me to the bathroom while I was heaving, who helped me to breathe. I think of the woman who sighed and nodded her head when I told her about Jane, a quiet recognition that she had once felt the same way. And I know I wouldn’t have known them without this system. 

 

But I wonder if this methodical practice of “straight binary women” is worth it. If the flowy dresses, the spray tan, and the polished makeup is really who I am or if I am just playing a part. If I am betraying my gay friends. If I am betraying myself.

 

For now, I stick to the sorority. I stick to the bad parts, to the assumptions about me, to the rumors. And I stick to the good parts, the friendships, the laughter and love. But I also stick to my gut and I stick to speaking up when I feel wronged. The system will eventually crumble. Greek life will be brought to the ground in the end. But for now, I will suck the pink, purple, and light out of the space. I will fill myself with femininity until I can no longer stand it. Then, when I am full, I will quietly leave.