COMMENTARY: Hazing is an abuse of power and ought to be abolished

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.) UNDATED _ It’s simple: Hazing is an abuse of power, an assault on the […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ It’s simple: Hazing is an abuse of power, an assault on the temporarily weak by the temporarily strong. It is quasi-legitimated torture and is immoral, sinful and evil. It ought to be abolished. Everywhere.


While that seems obvious, it is necessary to restate it because a series of recent incidents, some of them related to the abuse of women, suggest how ingrained the practice of hazing is in some parts of society.

Hazing is related to sexual harassment. Men that have power over women in the workplace may want to punish women for daring to intervene in their business. Hazing keeps women in their place. Sex may not be the end result of sexual harassment, it’s the wielding of power that some men enjoy. But for the man that forces a woman into a physical encounter, it’s the torment of power that matters more than the sexual pleasure.

Hazing is a man’s game. Although sometimes women engage in it, they are usually quite incapable of the brutality in which male hazers revel. It’s hard to imagine a woman forcing pins into another’s chest as some male military officers do. Or setting fire to another’s clothes as some cadets at The Citadel did.

What kind of man is it that get his kicks out of such activities?

Whether the targets be women or other men, I suspect that the man who loves to haze is the man who is insecure in his own sexual ability and finds reassurance of his masculinity by tormenting others. He would, no doubt, make an excellent concentration camp guard.

Some men argue that hazing creates a sense of fraternity that binds men together. They say it is a rite of passage that creates a sense of brotherhood among the men who endure it and an important part of primitive societies in which men have to fight to protect their society from invaders.

This is patent nonsense. You do not become a better Marine, for example, because you have been hazed and you have hazed others. Loyalty to the Corps, to the extent it exists, is a result of the traditions and the training that turn young men _ and women _ into professional soldiers and not the result of torture received and given.

We are not, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, a primitive, warrior society. Our martial skills are nuanced, sophisticated, and professional, requiring expert training rather than shared pain above that which basic training requires.


Indeed, how much basic training ritual is really necessary and how much is simply another form of quasi-legitimate torture is an open question.

It is also an open question whether the male bonding rituals of primitive tribes really affected the ability of the tribesmen to resist attackers. They may have merely expressed the macho dominance and torture needs among those men, too. You tortured one another because it was fun. Then you went out and captured people from other tribes so you could torture them because that was even more fun.

For everyone who argues that torture made him a”real”man or a”real”Marine, there are many more silent victims who ended up hating their tormentors and despising the ideals that the tormentors embody.

When I was in seminary, some of my classmates took me out in a canoe during a summer vacation and tipped it over. They thought it was great fun, a ritual that was necessary in order to accept me.

But did that incident make me a more loyal, more sensitive, more skillful priest? I disliked them then and I still dislike them. They were boors, savages who took great fun in dunking me in the middle of the lake.

I did not know then, and I do not know now, why it was so much fun. In my wildest moments I couldn’t do that to anyone and, to tell the truth, I think myself a better _ rather than a poorer _ man for that fact.


One can never justify cruelty to others on the grounds it is fun or that it binds people together or is part of tradition. The fully human person, of whatever gender, is one who has no need to be cruel to others and who offers no rationalizations to justify such cruelty.

MJP END GREELEY

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