00:04:46.820These are four of the several brave plaintiffs and witnesses who have signed on to this lawsuit.
00:04:53.100And so, again, I just want to express my gratitude for you guys.
00:04:59.180You might not think it, but it makes issues that we're dealing with in women's sports.
00:05:03.740Of course, they're all related in terms of, I would say, the gaslighting and the emotional blackmail.
00:05:09.180And, again, redefining sex-based terms that in the nearly 250 years we've been established as a country,
00:05:14.540and, of course, a lot longer than that, we've never struggled to define.
00:05:19.180It's all very related, and so I wanted to thank you guys again.
00:05:23.080I want to take you guys back, though, to when you first learned, found out that you would be having to accept a male into your sorority houses,
00:05:34.680into your sorority house, the feelings you guys felt.
00:05:39.720Again, relating this to the feelings I felt, I can only imagine, because, of course, a sorority house, that's a very intimate space.
00:05:50.280And so, Hannah, I guess I'll ask you, what were those feelings you guys had?
00:05:56.220It was a lot of not knowing the right thing to do.
00:06:00.880Like, are we supposed to, like, stand there and welcome this individual or, like, do something about it?
00:06:08.740I, like, personally, I, like, did not know what to do.
00:06:11.460And I talked to my parents, and they were like, this is not okay.
00:06:13.800And I'm like, okay, I'm not the only one who feels like this.
00:06:16.300And Maddie was my roommate at the time, and we're like, this is not, this is not okay.
00:06:20.520This has not been able to happen in the first place, like, guidelines-wise.
00:06:27.500So after finding out that more people felt the same way, I'm like, okay, this, something needs to be done.
00:06:32.280And so we went through the chain of command, through headquarters, through every, anyone who would answer an email or a phone call, pretty much, until they quit replying to us.
00:06:43.960And then it was just, like, one more email, one more phone call.
00:06:46.800My dad kept making phone calls, like, okay, this is the last one.
00:06:49.520And then I made that last-ditch effort, saying, okay, this is it.
00:13:03.600I don't think it's your all's job to have to leave what you're entitled to, which, as I said earlier, is sisterhood when you're joining a sorority.
00:13:15.000I wanted to ask you really quick, May, too, because I just thought of something, and I'm curious.
00:13:20.900Is Kappa the only sorority who has kind of taken this approach, this stance, or are there other sororities who are kind of doing the same thing, just without, I guess, the same national attention that Kappa has gotten?
00:13:34.440Well, it's very unfortunate, Riley, but all of the Panhellenic sororities, which are, you know, I guess the traditional Greek letter organizations on campus, technically have signed on to Panhellenic policies that define woman in what's in your brain terms rather than sex-based terms.
00:14:06.120There's no such thing as a lady brain.
00:14:08.460But, yeah, so all of the sororities are at risk of initiating a male.
00:14:16.980At the end of the day, though, each sorority, it's their own decision about who to initiate.
00:14:23.780So even though each sorority has sort of signed on to Panhellenic policies, and that's dangerous, and, you know, IWF does plan to do something about that, you know, preview.
00:14:35.620At the end of the day, it is the sorority that's making these decisions.
00:14:38.800So we know that Kappa has made this decision.
00:14:43.260We also know that Phi Mu, for example, has kicked out some of its alumni for disagreeing with Phi Mu's stance on accepting males.
00:14:54.500There's no lawsuit from people in Phi Mu chapters.
00:14:58.980So the reason why Kappa is so nationally prominent is, one, you know, the women in front of you are the ones who brought this to light and are helping share this information, which otherwise would not have been universally known.
00:15:14.820But also, Kappa has just really gone above and beyond a lot of the other sororities.
00:15:21.060I mean, very much feeling free to put a lot of political statements out there and making it a little bit of an unfriendly place to be like an average American.
00:15:32.800And so hopefully that message is being received by Kappa's leadership, which is Kappa is supposed to be a diverse place.
00:16:28.600I guess I didn't ask this question, too, and it's because it's something I already know.
00:16:32.860After talking with you guys and understanding kind of the severity of what you guys were dealing with, what some of you still are dealing with,
00:16:40.920I'll ask you, Allie, again, because, again, I know you're out of the sorority and you've graduated and since moved on.
00:16:46.440And when this male was allowed into your sorority, was this a different process than what the girls, any other girl, what you all even had to go through to get admitted and accepted and initiated into Kappa?
00:17:03.180Yeah, it was different than how it usually goes.
00:17:06.200So this individual went through our formal recruitment where they go and see all the houses and all the houses turned down this individual.
00:17:13.720Not necessarily because he is a male, but because nobody had anything in common with him.
00:17:20.060You know, it's a very mutual process when you choose your house.
00:17:23.720And so no one had anything in common with him.
00:17:27.160So then we have continuous open bidding, which we call COB.
00:17:30.280And that is a process where you can go and contact the house and say, hey, I'm still interested in joining and go through a less formal way of bidding in.
00:17:38.320And so our membership chair reached out to this individual and went through the process to get admitted.
00:17:45.340And we had to vote on it before this vote.
00:17:49.420It went different than it has ever in the past in my four years there.
00:17:53.260Like I said, I was a senior when this happened.
00:17:56.280And we had to vote through a Google Doc form and put our emails in.
00:18:01.200So it wasn't anonymous like it should have been.
00:18:03.240And before this vote, also, some of the girls in my pledge class stood up and gave speeches about how if you did not give membership to this individual, then you were transphobic.
00:18:14.100And you didn't align with Kappa's values.
00:18:15.980And you shouldn't be here if you don't let this person in.
00:18:19.240And so there was a little bit of bullying sort of to be able to get this person in.
00:18:24.300And the vote happened not only once, but twice.
00:18:28.980So there was just a lot of things that happened with it that were very sketchy to say.
00:18:34.780And like it just it didn't feel right from the very beginning.
00:18:37.700So it was not the same as any other girl who got into that sorority.
00:18:41.440No. And that's a classic tactic that's used, I would say, across the board regarding the gender ideology movement as a whole is name calling and fear mongering and saying, well, if you don't do this, then you're this, which is just silly and wrong.
00:19:01.320And it places someone else's internal torment on your shoulders as a young girl when that shouldn't be something that you all have to carry.
00:19:09.480And so, Jalen, I wanted to ask, you know, someone who's still a part of the sorority.
00:19:15.700I mean, do you I can't imagine this actually aligns with Kappa's values.
00:19:21.720And so do you see this as something that they truly believe or is this kind of your classic case of virtue signaling?
00:19:30.300Again, which I feel like we see pretty often happening.
00:19:33.840I feel like this really is the classic case of people have these virtues and they don't see how things play out until it's too late.
00:19:42.060And it's one of those things that once you take a stance, like, of course, everybody wants to be more accepting, but you don't look at what you're doing and why these boundaries are set up in the first place.
00:19:52.020I mean, I truly believe that everybody should find a space of their own, but it shouldn't be able to compromise those spaces that make us feel safe.
00:20:00.300And there's really that value that we all see just from that virtue standpoint, that there's a lot of girls in the sorority who want to be accepting and who've even told me themselves that they feel really uncomfortable by what's happening, but they're just too scared to speak out because they don't want to be labeled as transphobic.
00:20:20.500Absolutely, because being kind, being inclusive, those are great things.
00:20:53.720I think as concerned citizens, especially as I would imagine sorority sisters across the nation, not limited to just Kappa.
00:21:04.120I would imagine every sorority, regardless of age, like you mentioned, Maddie, whether you're 18 years old or 87 years old, what's the call to action here?
00:21:14.660Well, I honestly think that one of the most important things is to speak up when these spaces get compromised.
00:21:22.220I think that there's actually a strong majority of people who are super uncomfortable.
00:21:26.420I've had lots of people tell me again that they agree with what we're doing, but they're scared of the attention it draws because they don't want to get backlash.
00:21:35.820So I think the most important thing for just any citizen is to stand up for what you believe in and preserve these women's spaces, ultimately.
00:21:44.420To piggyback off of Jalen, I would just say recognizing that putting inclusivity and being kind, I guess, and welcoming these members is jeopardizing safety, not only in sororities, but in sports, bathrooms, locker rooms.
00:22:00.200Like, it's not a safe situation for anyone in that uncomfortable position, if you're ever put in that, like we were.
00:22:08.900Just recognizing that it's okay to feel uncomfortable and say something about it, because if everyone just sits back and lets it happen, it's going to erase women's sports.
00:22:40.020What's the next step in the lawsuit that we can all be following along and really cheering for you guys for?
00:22:46.080I guess, Mae, you're probably the best person to answer.
00:22:49.020Well, so, lawsuits are very boring, so everyone has to stay tuned for some boring stuff before we have some fireworks.
00:22:58.100We filed our brief at the beginning of December.
00:23:00.700CAPA is going to respond at the beginning of January, saying it can do whatever it wants.
00:23:05.920And then we will respond to CAPA a month after that, so the beginning of February, clarifying our position, responding to any particularly crazy arguments.
00:23:15.540And then the court is going to hear oral argument.
00:23:20.680I mean, if you ever want to know what a definition of woman is, you have an opportunity to listen to a federal court argument about it.
00:23:28.340And then the court will come to its decision when it comes to it.
00:23:31.680You know, the thing about court cases is they don't really have timelines.
00:23:35.360The judges can basically make their decision whenever they want, which is, of course, rough for these girls because they are sitting there without any, you know, any solution until the court comes to their defense.
00:23:49.960So we hope that the court, and we will reiterate this, that they need to take this on quickly because there are people actually being harmed.
00:23:58.460And one other thing that the public can do, which is we do need to put some pressure on Panhellenic to let them know that they are not speaking for all women, not speaking for all sorority women.
00:24:10.600So if you go to Independent Women Forum website, you can sign up for Independent Women's Network, too.
00:24:18.580There will be some news about ways that the public can participate in a pressure that we're going to put on Panhellenic.
00:24:25.680And what we've seen on this issue and many others is pressure works.
00:24:32.660They kind of what, again, what has been the general consensus is they like to move in secrecy and behind closed doors and kind of just spring this upon people and their own timing.
00:24:45.880But when they realize that the public is outraged, we saw this with St. Mary's recently, an all-females Catholic institution that then allowed males into their school, to which, of course, the public was outraged.
00:25:01.640And very quickly, they changed their policy, making St. Mary's once again an all-Catholic university.
00:25:07.080And there's many stories, or an all-women's Catholic university.
00:25:10.400So there's many stories just like that.
00:25:18.980And you girls, again, thank you for finding the strength and the tenacity and the grit to take this on, not just for yourselves, but for so many who stand beside you, who came before you, and who will continue to come after you.
00:25:34.560You have totally set the precedent with this case, again, far, far broader than you could ever even imagine.
00:25:43.540Thank you for joining the podcast this week.
00:25:45.720As Mae said, everyone should go to IWF.org.
00:25:50.800That is for Independent Women's Forum.
00:25:53.160They have got some phenomenal resources on how to get involved, how to support these girls, and a lot broader on these issues that are affecting women, adversely, of course.