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We Gather (Capital) To Scatter (Our Members): on #lonsileaks and #sociospeaks

The last week has been a mess with a nice scoop of ice cream on top for the University of the Philippines. That scoop of ice cream, of course, is the University’s first chance at the men’s basketball championship in 32 years.

But I’m not here to talk about that. I want the mess, because that’s more interesting than screaming at dudes throwing balls.

On the 14th of November, a frankly pathetic brawl caught on CCTV followed by a shooting incident occurred within campus grounds between Alpha Phi Beta and Upsilon Sigma Phi. After a lull in any kind of reporting about it, clashing accounts from eyewitnesses and the fraternities involved (of course), and basically nothing else done regarding campus security apart from the momentary closing of the school gate near the gun fire, the issue was (barely) tackled briefly in a statement by the University of the Philippines-Diliman’s Chancellor Mike Tan. In it, he lightly acknowledges the fraternity-related violence that occurred, glazing over all other ideas of condemnation by saying that on the same day of the gun incident, the UP men’s basketball team won a game, which “would not have been possible without the widespread support of … an alumni group where Upsilon Sigma Phi, Alpha Phi Beta and all the other fraternities … have been key players”.  

A week later, on the 21st of November, a rogue—well, someone—took to Twitter with the aid of a Google Drive to release the entirety of a Facebook group chat from Batch 2017 of Upsilon that consists of over 40,000 messages. This event is what is now known as #LonsiLeaks—which I guess is made to sound like Watergate but with college boys instead. The messages in this group chat contained comments, “jokes”, and other kinds of uses of words of the most horrid, disgusting, inhumane thoughts and beliefs.

Misogyny? Check.

Homophobia and LGBT+ harassment? Check.

Belittling of the social sciences? Check.

Marcos apologism? Check.

Racism? Check.

Islamophobia? Check.

Support of massacres and genocide? Check.

Threats of violence and harm? Check.

Flaunting of control of seats of power and authority? Check.

You name it, Upsilon’s got it.

The backlash was, understandably, immense. Nearly every day since the exposé, a new statement from a different university organization, college student council, or department is released. Calls ranged from the unanimous hashtag #EndFRV; to general sentiments on ending impunity; to the more fearless demands for the President of the UP System, Danilo Concepcion, and the Executive Vice President, Ted Herbosa, to resign. The aforementioned men occupying the highest positions of the most notorious University are, unfortunately, members of Upsilon.

The best and most constructive responses have come from the faculties of departments that have been staunchly against the presence of elitism, violence and misogyny especially in the community. My personal favorite—and my obvious bias as a graduate of it—is that of the Department of Sociology, which was directly lambasted in the group chat of Upsilon. The Department has started a series of teach-ins called Fraternities and Society, discussing the social causes and consequences of fraternity violence. The speakers are all members of the faculty, experts on education, Marxism, social organization, gender, feminism, and even, most fittingly, fraternities.

Here was a small community of professors, intellectuals, researchers, and activists making a stand against a group of snotty rich boys protected by snobby powerful men, vicious and arrogant and disrespectful of women, LGBT+, indigenous peoples, non-Catholic religions and anything else that isn’t like them. And they were making a stand the way they knew best—through in-depth, open, informal, non-hierarchic education that uses sharp structural analysis.

The 29th of November saw the first of these sessions. I sat with other students and professors on the floor of our college’s spacious lobby, greeting friends and former teachers while I caught my breath from running straight out of work. With nothing else but a Facebook event page on such short notice, the teach-in attracted more than 40 people sitting or standing on that cold tiled floor, listening to Gerry Lanuza cite Freud, Engels and Deleuze and Guattari off the top of his head to explain misogyny and the capitalist heteropatriarchy.

But I’ll have to gloss over all that to jump to the most interesting concept I learned that night. It came from Andoy Evangelista as he talked about the nuances of the “backwards vs. modern” debate in conversations of progress and development. He mentioned it merely in passing, but he explained that homonationalism is the Empire’s (or the West’s) use of LGBT+ rights and women’s rights as a measure or standard of modernism. In my understanding, it was sort of a liberal-democratic thing, where you include people as tokens of identity politics rather than actually incorporating the necessary and contextually-appropriate changes in fundamental ways of living and organizing life and society to recognize, acknowledge, and respect the diversity of human life.

It was such a good point to discuss in the context of fraternities, the patriarchy, and the Classic Woke Ass Non-Upsilonian U.P. Student, as homonationalism is a slippery slope a truly radical and progressive person would have to be mindful of if they wanted to genuinely change things. It’s a reminder that there are historical, cultural, and colonial nuances that need to be kept in mind when we talk about radical change in a country as steeped in colonial mentality and fake measures of progress like the Philippines. Maybe we can start by checking the words we use when we argue for LGBT+ and women’s rights, by being wary of the comparisons we do and the benchmarks we set for ourselves in achieving culturally- and contextually-appropriate development. The West isn’t the one and only example of progress, unlike what white feminism wants us to believe.

Another thing to watch out for is homonationalism’s unfortunate use as a false sign of alllyship by people who aren’t really allies.  For one, most organizations’ responses to the #LonsiLeaks issue was to disavow the blatant misogyny, LGBT+phobia, Islamophobia, racism, and many other things wrong with that one group chat. And there’s nothing wrong with that, especially if values protecting diversity are what they really stand for. But Upsilon and its members started doing the same thing, crafting and posting statements claiming to simultaneously Wake Up Furious upon seeing the leaked messages. The fraternity and its many mouthpieces all said that everything in the chat was not in line with what they believe in and fight for, claiming to have worked hard to build safe spaces for the abovementioned sectors in the University.

I call bullshit on that.

I call bullshit on Upsilon’s statement because these stupid privileged boys could have only had the courage and platform to say the vilest things in an environment that made them see, feel, think, and believe that saying the vilest things does not have repercussions—and even if it did, there was someone to save you from the consequences anyway.

I call bullshit because Upsilon has existed for 100 years and you can’t tell me that in those 100 years, a group comprised exclusively of well-off men has not and has never produced and reproduced a culture of belittling and disrespect, of misogyny and violence, of secrecy and non-accountability.

I call bullshit because I have been privy to men’s conversations—men who aren’t even in fraternities—and the things they say in the comfort and confidence of people they know they can trust (i.e. Will not judge them, will laugh along with them, will not question them, will not point out that this is wrong, wrong, wrong) is nothing short of hair-raising, stomach-churning, nausea-inducing.

My friend told me that he has a theory about Upsilon, and frats in general. Upsilon’s motto is we gather light to scatter, and he told me that he believes that fraternities serve no other purpose than to keep pooling and collecting capital. For Upsilon, he says that light means the capital that they collect: money, power, connections.

He didn’t at first get to make the necessary connection as to what they were scattering, so I answered for him: “Their members.”

Upsilon, and all fraternities by extension, scatters its members. It plants them like seeds so it can further its control and capital, broaden itself and find an in for any industry and aspect of society that can be influenced.

Frankly, I don’t see them serving any other purpose myself.

Honestly, any way I look at it, fraternities are just unnecessary as a social organization. The only thing they offer people is upwards mobility for middle-upper class men, one foot in the door of wealth and power in the form of this “brotherhood”—a network of people who have become embedded in the various seats of power in the country.

I’m still trying to understand the reasons many have used to justify the existence and utilization of frats.

Belongingness and community? Colleges and universities have orgs that address all sorts of interests and advocacies. Or literally any other kinship ties.

Brotherhood? Literally, friends—and friends won’t make you dehumanize yourself or run to and fro just to prove you’re “loyal” to them. And inb4 “Iba kasi ang brotherhood ng frat (The brotherhood of fraternities is different)!”: if you’re looking for That Kind of Brotherhood™, you’re probably already incubating toxic notions and ideas of masculinity.

To help others? But there are so many other means to do that without needing to join frats. I really don’t get this.

A rite of passage? I actually don’t know what for, and what kind of difference going through the rite of passage of joining a frat would make.

Personal development? Jesus, I’m pretty sure you can get this in any other aspect of your life from any kind of organization or responsibility.

I really cannot think of anything else fraternities can offer aside from wealth, power and opportunities. I’m not an expert on fraternities, so I won’t deny I may be missing some things here, but personally as someone who has more than just dabbled with the topics of institutions and organizations for research, and as someone who has a handful of great, trustworthy, dependable, ambitious men in my circles who have no involvements with fraternities at all, I see fraternities only as a necessity in a country so corrupt and backwards that we still need to rely on the padrino system to get anywhere at all.

So maybe let me rephrase what I said a while ago: any way I look at it, in a society that aspires to be progressive, equal, and truly radical, fraternities are just unnecessary as a social organization.

-Adrienne Onday