Out-of-Touch SNL Sorority Sketch Becomes The Joke

With the ridiculousness of American politics these days, the line between parody and real life sometimes grows confusingly thin. Such is the case with many sketches on Saturday Night Live, where actors hardly have to add much comedic enhancement to current events. By holding up a mirror to politicians who lack self-awareness or to double standards in society, comedians often make important points, even—and especially—when these points are wrapped up in jokes. 

But last month, the SNL cast—with an assist from host Nikki Glaser—became the butt of their own jokes in a sketch about men joining sororities. In the sketch, Glaser played a sorority leader addressing accusations that a disguised man had invaded the sorority chapter.

During the dialogue, it quickly became clear that SNL cast member Mikey Day (donning women’s clothes, a mask, and a wig) was the accused. The raunchiest of the dialogue suggested that the masked “sister” liked to watch the others at bikini carwash fundraisers with a pile of towels on “her” lap, implying that the frat guy in disguise was an opportunistic pervert. The skit ended with Nikki Glaser’s character revealing that she, too, was a man in disguise.

I’ve watched many SNL political sketches and chuckled, thinking, “This would be funny if it weren’t happening in real life.” The same was true here. But this seemed totally lost on the actors portraying the sorority sisters, who mocked the one sister who expressed concern. Viewers of November’s sketch were left scratching our heads, wondering, “Do they get it? Do they know that what they are making fun of is really happening?”

Several national sororities have changed their policies in recent years to explicitly allow membership for people who “identify” as women, not just biological women (as sorority founders obviously intended). Real-life mockery and downright vitriol have been directed at sorority women who have complained about transgender-identifying males joining their chapters. But these women—and other so-called TERFs like J.K. Rowling, Jennifer Sey, and Riley Gaines—get no love from the woke entertainment establishment at SNL or elsewhere on late-night TV. 

While the social-justice warriors at SNL might see a difference between disguised frat boys and other biological males infiltrating sororities (and women-only sports, locker rooms, prisons, and domestic violence shelters), there’s really no difference. “Frat guys” and “transgender women” are both males. A man doesn’t have to watch a bikini carwash in horny excitement to make women uncomfortable; his mere presence in certain women-only environments is enough. 

When I lived in the Phi Mu house at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sorority members had to yell “Man on the floor!” if a dad, brother, or boyfriend was coming upstairs to the sisters-only living quarters. This only happened a couple of times a year: moving days.

Why this rule? With shared hall bathrooms, we often went from our bedrooms to the showers and back, wrapped in towels or bathrobes. We also found that the bonds of sisterhood were tighter in a female-only house, where the absence of men changed the cultural climate. 

Progressives understand this concept and fawn over “no drama” women-only retirement communities in Texas, or women-only villages in places like Kenya, Senegal, or Egypt. Are sorority women not deserving of the same freedom of association? 

Perhaps because sororities have traditionally (and often unfairly) had the reputation of being an exclusive club for hot girls, they are the target of liberal disdain. But sadly, sororities’ attempts to become more inclusive often just result in a different metric for who is included. One joke in the SNL skit captured this: “What’s our motto? ‘We don’t judge people by how they look; we judge them by how much money their parents make!’” In any membership organization, some people are in, some people are out. What’s the standard for membership going to be?

If this sketch had been written by people who really understand the issue, the joke might have instead gone something like this: “What’s our motto? ‘We don’t exclude men; we exclude women who aren’t willing to pretend that men are women!’” The sketch would have been much funnier if it had gone after the real thing—the absurdity of gender ideology—but because this sacred cow of the Left is off limits, SNL danced around and pretended to make fun of… frat boys desperate to see scantily clad girls, I think? How original. 

The role of political comedy should be to make citizens laugh as well as think. The best outcome is that the audience engages in some self-reflection and critical thinking, and this is good for a republic where the voices of citizens matter. 

But in this case, the need for self-reflection is on the other side of the fourth wall. What a joke.