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Sorority Files Lawsuit After Sacred Secrets Posted On Penny Arcade Forums
Limekiller42 writes: Lawyers for the Phi Sigma Sigma sorority have filed suit in Seattle's King County Superior Court against an unidentified person for "publicizing the sorority's secret handshake, robe colors and other practices." The well-written article is by Levi Pulkkinen of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and states that the sorority is seeking a restraining order and financial compensation for damages.
There is no "damage" here aside from learning that this secret society is as ludicrous as all the rest. A fact that most people would know already.
Yes , but they're also the next generation of politicians and business "leaders".
The tribal instinct remains strong. Human beings tend to feel more secure when they can form themselves into groups with whom they identify and that exclude those with whom they do not identify. The "secret rituals" are one of the key ways of reinforcing this feeling of being in a cohesive tribe, protected against intrusion from outside.
Some fairly modern tribes, such as country clubs and gentlemen's clubs, are now legally constrained in their ability to exclude members they feel uncomfortable with. Criminal tribes, like the mafia and yakuza are typically particularly careful about the members they recruit, and have many rituals designed to inspire loyalty and the feeling of exclusivity.
Regardless of type, the instinct we have to form ourselves into tribes remains, long after it outlasted its useful protective purpose in primitive societies.
No, you're talking about the extremists, who get the most attention because they're the loudest.
Look a little closer into most any given group (there are certainly notable exceptions) and you'll find a bunch of normal people with perfectly normal human wants and needs that assumes the group in general is good, and will do good, or at least not actively bad, things if given the freedom to do so.
The same group of normal people, however, really only understand the concept of "normal", so when you present them with something like extremism, they tend to keep their heads down because they neither understand how to fight the irrationality of the extremism in the first place, nor the irrationality coming from the outside that tends to condemn the entire group and want to avoid getting stigmatized for the actions of a few bad actors, nor even endure the eye-rolling or different levels of shaming (up to and including abuse) that others do when they try to straighten out the matter and try to express their viewpoint on the situation, which may be perfectly rational and reasonable, but a lot of people will reject outright simply because of those same bad actors in the first place.
Another anecdote: I'm also a vegetarian. I don't advocate for it. I don't tell people they should. In fact, I actively tell people not to if they don't really "want" to, but think they "have" to (that's the right way to give yourself an eating disorder).
Still, I've had to endure a lot of defensiveness from people who think that once that detail comes out, I'm going to start spouting whatever propaganda that the loudest and most obnoxious vegetarians/vegans feel compelled to spout.
Do those people make vegetarianism bad? Of fucking course not. Are those people the majority of vegetarians? Absolutely fucking not. Most of us will leave you alone, even when you turn up your nose at us. We wish you wouldn't assume the worst of us, but we know it's coming.
This is why broad-brush generalizations suck. And yes, that includes religions.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.