I am a sorority woman. My chapter is my heart and soul. I have served as T-shirt chair, and VP of public relations for my own chapter, and I am currently a member of Panhellenic exec. I work hard, every day, to show the world all of the wonderful things that sorority women are capable of. We have conferences and conventions, we raise millions of dollars for our philanthropies, we participate in “pay it forward” initiatives, we celebrate International Women’s Friendship Month and Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. We bring crowds to cancer walks, and we finish each semester off with incredible grades, the highest on our campuses.
With all that said, we are members of the internet generation, and my goodness, TSM has been my guilty pleasure. I loved the funny list-articles, the adorable videos, and I learned from the personal stories of abuse victims. Reading TSM had become something that I did daily. Sometimes I found myself opinionated so I created an account. I wrote a few articles, none of which got posted, and I made my fair share of comments on articles that did post.
I learned one day though, that behind the fun, TSM is the single worst representation of a group of women that could exist. The writers claim to be feminists, and politically inclined, yet they write ridiculous articles about blow-jobs and “confessions of a standards chair.” The majority of the articles on this website bring sorority women down. All of the things we work for, all of the time, effort, and money that we put forward into our organizations gets brought back down to ground level with these stupid articles. The worst part, is how they treat their commenters. Whenever a serious article is written and the readers disagree with it, authors (and now commenters) reply to comments with “this is satire,” or “this is a comedy website.” No, it’s actually not. It’s mean, and untrue, and disgusting. Pretending that every single article on that website that readers dislike is suddenly satire is rude and immature. Belittling readers is a horrific offense. Treating the people around you with disrespect is in no way whatsoever a “total sorority move.”
So from here on out, I will no longer be reading TSM. I will not share articles on Facebook or Twitter, and I will not promote a company that tears down everything I spend my days working so hard on. I hope the other bright and accomplished sorority women that I know will stand by me. I wish at minimum that TSM will revamp their website and broadcast what Greek Life really is, rather than reaffirming incorrect stereotypes, day in, and day out.
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