Whales Tales Analysis

The target audience for “Whales Tales” was for college women, to help inform them of the potential dangers that some fraternities and men in general may pose. The author utilized all sections; introduction, the problem, the methodology, analysis, background info on the organization, his results, discussion and conclusion to convey his message of the objectification of women in fraternities. After Rhoads (1995) explained the problem he stated that this study built upon others’ work as well as his use of formal structured interviews, informal interviews, participant observations and informants. Rhoads also allowed his transcriptions be reviewed by participants for accuracy and comments.

Rhoads divulged he had worked in student affairs for 11

He was there observing the fraternity members tell their drinking stories and gain their insights. What was not discussed is actual observation of a male fraternity member “tricking” a girl to do something she really didn’t want to do or observation at a large party so he could see things first hand. All he had was second hand accounts, other researcher’s findings and some broad statistics about fraternities. As for his partial explanation of them calling a member a “woman,” most immature men do something similar. They call each other sissys, whimps, and far worse to get a response from other men. This could have been a poor choice of words or an isolated incident, when he observed them saying: “you’re a woman.” They could have cleaned this up for his sake and not used a more vulgar term. I believe there is an issue on most campuses of assaults on women (and men). I think through education and upgraded safety systems some issues could be alleviated. I also believe that there are some bad seeds in organizations which tarnish the entire groups’

His use of interviews and observation allowed him a unique look into a usually closed culture. Some weaknesses may have been his informants’ unwillingness to describe their first hand deviant actions and experiences. All Rhoads was able to witness was “talk”, the members used unfriendly language to describe women. They may have even done this to seem “cool” or put on a show for him as he observed. This appears to be an average study. Average in the sense it conveys some short comings of members of one particular fraternity. One that allows anyone to join, so there is no vetting process to weed out the bad candidates and ones, maybe the ones no other fraternity would take. Since this fraternity allows anyone to be a member, maybe a study of one that actually rushes or pledges members should be reviewed in a modern society. One could see how much indoctrination of knowledge is passed in that process and if the views of the LGBT community have changed with the times. Rhoads seem to pick this fraternity because their lack of a pledging process but still found that the culture is passed to new members