Hazing is not unethical, nor should it be illegal. Hazing is like BDSM, minus the sex. When it is safe, sane and consensual, hazing promotes group cohesion and intimacy. It is a fast-track to camaraderie, which is why so many fraternity/sororities use it.
I make this comment after being hazed myself, and deciding I couldn’t handle it. But several of my friends completed hazing, and went on to haze other people. I see effects as being net positive.
Fraternity hazing seems to regularly involve drunkenness. Combining drunkenness with BDSM seems to be considered a bad idea in the BDSM community, both in terms of consent and safety.
Given that you assert that hazing is a net positive, and you notice that it causes some deaths, this seems to imply that you believe the benefits exceed the cost of those deaths. Is this correct?
None of the 44 states with laws against hazing make an exception for consensual hazing, and some laws directly say that consent is not a legal defense.
I didn’t know that! I checked French law and it too explicitly prohibits consensual hazing. I’ve been (very mildly) hazed and I believed the opposite. Those are dumb laws. If they’re worried that people will be pressured to go along with it they should ban that directly.
I’m curious about your experience. Mind telling what the hazing was and whether you had any trouble getting out of it?
Officially, my university had zero-tolerance policy towards hazing. In practice, hazing was permitted so long as wasn’t dangerous. Some organizations inevitably pushed the line; they were punished. But my organization did not push the line.
Some activities I was a “victim” of:
Following a long list of arbitrary rules, such as which side of the sidewalk I could walk on.
Breaking these rules would result in group punishment. Every time one freshman messed up, all the freshmen would have to do push-ups or squats or something.
Memorizing arcane trivia about my organization and my university.
Speaking to upperclassmen in a formal and rigid procedure.
Lots of physical activity. Exercise was a way of life for the organization, and the upperclassmen would exercise with us for eight hours per week. (You were strongly encouraged to do more on your own) At one point, the upperclassmen were planning to make us run 18 miles. That was cancelled when the university raised an eyebrow.
I probably averaged 5.5 hours of sleep per night during the weekdays. I had to schedule naps during the day.
We had to pee in some unusual places.
Rules about how to eat, what we could wear, words we were forbidden to say, .
Rituals, all the time.
It lasts your whole freshman year.
We never used alcohol, and the upperclassmen were always watching for signs that our bodies had been pushed to hard. We also had lectures on safe sex and drug abuse. The upperclassmen cared about us, and they only hazing us for our benefit.
Leaving was fairly easy. About half the new recruits left during the first semester. We were supposed to be stigmatized by the people who stayed in the group, but they let us be friends anyway.
I was very depressed during that time and the stress of being hazed was too much for me to handle. But my friends who stayed in enjoyed it, even freshman year. Their perspective is being excluded from the hazing discussion.
Hazing is not unethical, nor should it be illegal. Hazing is like BDSM, minus the sex. When it is safe, sane and consensual, hazing promotes group cohesion and intimacy. It is a fast-track to camaraderie, which is why so many fraternity/sororities use it.
I make this comment after being hazed myself, and deciding I couldn’t handle it. But several of my friends completed hazing, and went on to haze other people. I see effects as being net positive.
Fraternity hazing seems to regularly involve drunkenness. Combining drunkenness with BDSM seems to be considered a bad idea in the BDSM community, both in terms of consent and safety.
About 80% of hazing deaths involve alcohol. I was lucky in that my organization was alcohol-free and safety-conscious.
Given that you assert that hazing is a net positive, and you notice that it causes some deaths, this seems to imply that you believe the benefits exceed the cost of those deaths. Is this correct?
I interpreted it to mean that hazing with safety considerations is good, not all current hazing.
Social pressure and alcohol mean in practice hazing isn’t safe, sane, or consensual.
Maybe I was lucky, but in my case the hazing was all three of these things.
Is anyone trying to ban consensual hazing?
None of the 44 states with laws against hazing make an exception for consensual hazing, and some laws directly say that consent is not a legal defense.
I didn’t know that! I checked French law and it too explicitly prohibits consensual hazing. I’ve been (very mildly) hazed and I believed the opposite. Those are dumb laws. If they’re worried that people will be pressured to go along with it they should ban that directly.
I’m curious about your experience. Mind telling what the hazing was and whether you had any trouble getting out of it?
Officially, my university had zero-tolerance policy towards hazing. In practice, hazing was permitted so long as wasn’t dangerous. Some organizations inevitably pushed the line; they were punished. But my organization did not push the line.
Some activities I was a “victim” of:
Following a long list of arbitrary rules, such as which side of the sidewalk I could walk on.
Breaking these rules would result in group punishment. Every time one freshman messed up, all the freshmen would have to do push-ups or squats or something.
Memorizing arcane trivia about my organization and my university.
Speaking to upperclassmen in a formal and rigid procedure.
Lots of physical activity. Exercise was a way of life for the organization, and the upperclassmen would exercise with us for eight hours per week. (You were strongly encouraged to do more on your own) At one point, the upperclassmen were planning to make us run 18 miles. That was cancelled when the university raised an eyebrow.
I probably averaged 5.5 hours of sleep per night during the weekdays. I had to schedule naps during the day.
We had to pee in some unusual places.
Rules about how to eat, what we could wear, words we were forbidden to say, .
Rituals, all the time.
It lasts your whole freshman year.
We never used alcohol, and the upperclassmen were always watching for signs that our bodies had been pushed to hard. We also had lectures on safe sex and drug abuse. The upperclassmen cared about us, and they only hazing us for our benefit.
Leaving was fairly easy. About half the new recruits left during the first semester. We were supposed to be stigmatized by the people who stayed in the group, but they let us be friends anyway.
I was very depressed during that time and the stress of being hazed was too much for me to handle. But my friends who stayed in enjoyed it, even freshman year. Their perspective is being excluded from the hazing discussion.