Education Commons^™

Plazing Inside The Fratriarchal Frame: American College Fraternity Men’S Gender Identity And Hazing, Emily Perlow

Doctoral Dissertations

Hazing is both common and accepted within college fraternity culture. It also annually results in dangerous or destructive behaviors that have long-term consequences for students and organizations. One of the reasons college administrators have been virtually ineffective at addressing hazing is that students do not identify their experiences as hazing. I hypothesize that students are performing accepted gender identities as a mechanism to achieve group acceptance. This performance of gender manifests as plazing, a term I have coined to describe a form of adult play behavior that meets the definition of hazing. Within the play frame, individuals negotiate gendered …