The New York Times article was right – feminists can find an amazing home in sororities

This past weekend the New York Times published a piece entitled “When a Feminist Pledges a Sorority,” which documented the recent growth in sorority enrollment across the Ivy League, and featured a group of feminist sorority members at Columbia University.

“There was a time, not so long ago, when no self-respecting feminist would be caught dead in a sorority,” the writer declared, before explaining that perceptions seem to be changing, as many college women who consider themselves feminists are now embracing the sisterhood offered by Greek life.

The story elicited a certain amount of surprise and disagreement. A lot of people think sororities still represent superficiality and exclusion – the epitome of antifeminism.

But while the writer missed some important nuances of sorority life (involving pleasing fraternities and dressing for rush, which I will address), I found myself agreeing with the general sentiment that sororities and feminism are compatible.

I was in a sorority at Cornell and the truth is, to say sororities are antifeminist is a cop-out. In my experience – and not all sororities are the same – they’re imperfect organizations with plenty of potential for good and some room for improvement, just like any group of people.

Despite the image of exclusivity, the Panhellenic Council often goes to great lengths to get as many women into houses as possible, upping bid quotas and even seeking out new chapters to colonize on campus. The goal of Panhell is to help every girl find somewhere they can belong, as I did when I pledged my sophomore year. The older girls stressed “sisterhood,” and I did find a lot of parallels to family: some members were difficult, but you all look out for each other anyway. Whether or not I always loved it or everyone in it, it gave me a place to call home.

There were times that were amazing. I was surrounded by young women studying to be engineers, doctors and lawyers. Throughout the years, we cheered each other on and celebrated each others’ successes. We walked each other to classes and delivered frozen yogurt to girls who were having a bad day. It was my first exposure to the idea that women should go out of their way to lift each other up.

But in an organization of 150 girls, not everyone felt like sisters. Not everyone was close, not everyone was similar, not everyone clicked. Still, when we went out, we looked out for each other. If someone drank too much, other girls in the sorority never hesitated to step in to make sure she was okay, even if they had never spoken to her, simply because she was a sister. Nights like these opened my eyes to the capacity for human kindness – and made me hopeful this same kindness would be extended to all women, sisters or not.

When I told my mother I thought sororities fostered feminism, she laughed. She had joined a sorority in the 1970s, and in her eyes, there is nothing feminist about them.

“All we did was drink to try to impress boys,” she said. “It was totally stupid.”

There were glimpses of this in my own experience too, like when we felt pressure to trek through a blizzard to the house of a “popular” frat who had finally agreed to mix with us. It was no coincidence the boys had scheduled us on the night of this blizzard, when it was dangerous to even be out on the streets. Still, we came out in droves – and they received us unenthusiastically. I stayed for a total of twenty minutes before walking back up a hill, snow at my knees, and returning to the house. At the time, there was a distorted sense of pride that this group of inattentive assholes had agreed to party with us. It was good for our social standing. In retrospect, who cared?

In this respect – the unspoken need to maintain an image – I’ll admit there is room for improvement. During formal recruitment, when we would squeeze into high heels and coat our eyelashes with mascara, I asked myself why. After all, our best times together involved eating cereal in our pajamas at 3am. Now, suddenly, there were dress codes and makeup guides. It grated on me, but I justified it by convincing myself there was no harm in wanting to look our best. If dressing up and wearing makeup would somehow attract new members to the sisterhood I had come to love, what was so wrong with it? (Today, I think recruitment is probably the most cringeworthy part of sorority life).

At our core, my sorority was a kind and supportive organization, where I found great friends, inspiration and a lot of laughs. That’s not to say we weren’t ever foolish. Outwardly, I think we all occasionally felt pressure to project a certain image – and sometimes we succumbed to that pressure. But these are experiences we can learn from, and I don’t think they make sororities inherently antifeminist. I think they make us women in the world, trying to do our best.