My Sorority Forced Us To Accept A Man As A “Sister.” Here’s What Really Happened Inside.

Recently, Saturday Night Live aired a sketch portraying a college sorority meeting. During the meeting, the leader announces that there is a fraternity member masquerading as a sorority sister, infiltrating multiple sororities on campus. One girl, named Maddie, nervously pipes up and says, “I don’t want to call anyone out, but... I think someone in our sorority might be a frat guy with a hyper-realistic mask.”

The camera pans, and clearly, sitting on the couch, is a man dressed as a woman named “Alyssa,” pretending to blend in. The chapter leader and other members of the chapter immediately act shocked, calling their fellow sister “crazy” and “mean” for speaking up and suggesting one of their members is actually a man, even right after the leader tells the girls to “say something if you saw something strange.” The other girls proceed to tell Maddie that she is “just jealous” and that her comments are “making Alyssa sad,” and one girl threatens to “slap her” if she doesn't stop pointing out the obvious.

At the end of the sketch, after all the female members leave the room, “Alyssa” takes off the mask revealing what “she” actually is, a man pretending to be a girl.

It seems ridiculous, like, well, a comedy skit, but for my sorority sisters and me, just a few years ago, it was reality.

My college experience at the University of Wyoming began like that of many others. I took the opportunity to rush for Kappa Kappa Gamma, yearning for the same sisterhood, lifelong friendships, and a sense of community that so many other college students desire to become a part of over the course of their enrollment at school. For a while, that is exactly what I found.

But my senior year, everything changed.

A man who identified as transgender began touring and meeting with several sororities at the school, including my own, Kappa Kappa Gamma. He asked to be accepted as one of us, to live with us, to share our private spaces.

At first, the sorority recruitment process worked as it always had. The man, who wanted to be accepted, ultimately did not get into any of the sororities on campus due to “personality conflicts.” At least, that is what we were told. The true story was yet to come out.

Suddenly, although voting had already taken place, we were called to a second vote by sorority leadership, despite the fact that Kappa Kappa Gamma acknowledges and self-defines as a “single-sex haven.” Secretly, they had been meeting with him behind the scenes, scheming for ways that he could gain admittance. Instead of conducting the usual anonymous vote, they had the audacity to ask members to attach their names and email addresses to the vote. On top of that, they chose to do it on a night that not everyone was home. It was a blatant attack on our privacy and our ability to make choices for ourselves.

As portrayed in the SNL sketch, the sorority girl who spoke up was also uncomfortable with the male dressed as a female. And why would she not be? When men are allowed, and even welcomed, into women’s spaces, it not only compromises the integrity of those spaces but makes clear that women’s needs for comfort and consent come second to male desires.

When men are allowed, and even welcomed, into women’s spaces, it not only compromises the integrity of those spaces but makes clear that women’s needs for comfort and consent come second to male desires.

When leadership required the senior girls to stand up and defend why everyone should be voting for a man to enter a woman’s space, it was plain and simple: they were going to bully us into acceptance. We were not just being asked to welcome a new member; we were being pressured to erase our boundaries for the sake of “equality.”

My experience is only one of many. Similar stories of girls being forced to stay quiet in the name of acceptance have become the norm. At universities across the nation, young women have been forced to share intimate living spaces with men. Few are brave enough to speak up, but when they do, it's met with intense opposition, with members of their community smearing them as “bigoted” and “intolerant.”

One story that stands out is Payton McNabb’s. While attending Western Carolina University, she was expelled from her chapter of Delta Zeta after confronting a biological man who was using one of the school’s women’s restrooms. Even after WCU ruled that Payton had not violated any school rules, Delta Zeta still ruled that she had violated their “anti-bullying policy” and said she engaged in “moral-prejudicial conduct.”

Payton’s campus civil rights victory was the first big win for women’s right to privacy in single-sex spaces on college campuses. Payton’s story hit home for me because it proved this was not an isolated incident. There is a pattern of delegitimizing women’s fears and concerns scattered in every facet of a woman's life: her gym locker room, her sporting event, her bathroom, her sorority house. The list continues. When women’s natural discomfort around men in their private spaces becomes grounds for punishment, when we ask for privacy and are told we are the problem, it is clear that the “believe all women” slogan now comes attached with an asterisk: only believe the women who align with the politically correct ideology.

In years past, feminism used to look like fighting for the right to work, to vote, or to have an equal voice in society. Today, we are still fighting for women’s rights, but for different reasons. Our elected officials and representatives downright refuse to define what a woman actually is. Our case was eventually led by Independent Women’s Law Center, and by August of 2023, the federal judge in Wyoming who was reviewing the case ultimately dismissed it, citing that we were not entitled to a female-only space because Kappa bylaws do not define what a woman is. Even to this day, we are still fighting the federal courts over our trauma because they will not acknowledge biological reality.

In years past, feminism used to look like fighting for the right to work, to vote, or to have an equal voice in society. Today, we are still fighting for women’s rights, but for different reasons.

This modern “feminist” movement negates reality and embraces delusion. The same movement that once championed women’s ability to carve a path for themselves now pressures us to accept male inclusion as “empowerment.” Women everywhere should feel robbed of our rightful inheritance. How dare they allow men to overtake places that we once felt safe in?

When the male was admitted into our sorority, I remember a shadow of grief over the house. We didn't know how to act. We knew that this was not a normal feeling or situation, and it was isolating. On one hand, I regretted not standing up to leadership during the second round of voting, but on the other, I learned an important lesson. Just because a person in leadership, or above you, or someone you respect condones something as right does not inherently make it right.

It was especially hard for the girls who had overcome sexual assault and abuse. They had no say as to whether a man could be in such close proximity to them in their most intimate spaces. And it didn't help that this man in particular continued to take unwanted photographs in the sorority and even asked us invasive, sexual questions.

Why would a system that fought so fiercely for women to be equal now move the goalposts? Can we be so short-sighted as a society not to see the damage that we are doing to women’s and girls’ lives? It's especially saddening to know that these questions are only ever met with gaslighting about equality and justice; that we should continue to accept and affirm these men claiming to be women for the betterment of women.

But when has affirming a lie ever resulted in the betterment of anything? The truth is this: by allowing our feminism to center men, we have destroyed women’s rights.

What should have been, and was for many years, a safe place for young women to grow, confide, and produce true sisterhood was politicized. Before this, politics never entered our home. Afterwards, it tore us apart.

So, when SNL turns that reality into a laughing stock, it is not funny. It mocks women’s experiences, reducing our trauma to punchlines by those who will never walk in our shoes.

SNL can laugh all they want, but we, the girls who are dealing with this issue to this day, are not laughing.