Sexism on campus

I'm an ignorant, uneducated moron because I've had a baby before finishing university.

I'm going to be screwed then, because I had 2. And a grand daughter before even starting this time around!

I've had a look at the feminist group for the Uni I'm hoping to go to. The 'about' bit on their Facebook page whiffles on about sex-positive feminism and has a male webmaster. Probably not for me then!

As if to emphasise my point, another TSR thread which started as a debate about the breastfeeding row, has ended with a poster going through my profile and refusing to talk to me, because I'm an ignorant, uneducated moron because I've had a baby before finishing university.

He's conveniently ignored the fact that I've finished my second year top of my class despite having a baby on the last full day of the year, but hey. What was that 'I need feminism because...' campaign again? Because I think these attitudes are why I need feminism!

Yes, maybe so, basil.

fish, I think some of them really don't know. Because there is such a huge culture of it being funny or parodic sexism rather than 'real' sexism.

TBH I think the rise in "hard core" feminism, is more due to the rise in backlash IYSWIM. Women who weren't particularly radical or even that interested in feminism, have been horrified by the horrible misogyny that has got worse not better and have become more interested in feminism as a result.

sant - yes, I think I saw.

I think you absolutely can't separate campuses from society. IMO that is the issue - I have heard the suggestion that people at university sometimes imagine they're somehow beyond the law, that this is not 'real life' they're living. But it is, obviously!

thesame - I wonder, though ... is the backlash partly because we're getting stronger? I can't tell if I was just naive, but I think ten years ago, feminism didn't have the popular profile it does now. I think now, although we might complain about versions of 'feminism' that seem a bit trite, there is also a rise in quite hard-core feminism?

I think it's partly internet facilitated ease of access combined with a backlash with the force of a hurricane.

An unapologetic backlash. Like "lads" aren't gonna take all that namby-pamby equality nonsense anymore. They're not gonna apologise for seeing women as sexual objects.

I miss the early 90s. Times were so hopeful then, but already on the turn.

Oh this is interesting. I'm a Glasgow University girl and the sexism there (especially in one of the unions) made headlines just about Christmastime I think.

Do you think that you can really segregate campuses from society as a whole?

Oh, absolutely. I don't think it is the whole story either.

I think other factors are, firstly, the sense that we're 'post-feminist' (which includes women feeling they can't talk about sexism, and men feeling they're victimised by feminism, and everything in between), and secondly, as you say, 'banter'. Which is basically postmodernism.

I guess it must partly go back to what Kirsty Wark's documentary says - it's partly the internet?

I was also at uni during the early 90's and I think that we were still at that time under the cloud of HIV and AIDS. it might be a left of field opinion, but I think that the whole 80's safe sex thing impacted positively on sexual conduct.

I agree with this - AIDS was just coming into the news as we hit puberty and had sex ed classes, and IME, people just expected to use condoms - not that there were as any choices back then, implants and injections weren't yet available, I don't think. There might have been minor grumbles about condoms, but no real objections. There were still celebrities making the news because they died of AIDS-related illnesses. (Freddie Mercury died at the start of my second year - I still remember feeling shocked, as he'd only announced he had AIDS the day before.) There were free condoms all over the place. Also, some of our mature students were second wave feminists, camped at Greenham Common and so on. And we all drank in the Mandela Bar.

From what I see and hear about universities these days, I think it has gone backwards. It was never perfect, but porn wasn't as widespread - it was still just top-shelf magazines, and not everyone had video players, let alone DVDs. I agree that lad culture did make a difference. And there was more respect.

God, I feel old now.

Oh yes, so true, re the language....

I was more struck by how incoherent the men's explanations were (assuming they've not been stupidly shortened). 'I think empowering women is the way forward. It should become embarrassing if a man is known to have slept with a girl when she's too drunk and she hasn't given consent."'

Right, so, er, empowering women will give them the power to make men embarrassed ... but not the power to make men not rape? That sounds useful.

The language there is something that I think is pretty common, and a problem. A lot of students seem to be really good at speaking a kind of shorthand, post-feminist jargon full of words like 'banter' and 'empowered' and they don't actually think about what the words mean. They just know these are the sorts of things you say to demonstrate you understand there are Women Things but you're not going to discuss them too deeply.

Did you notice that of the 5 students quoted, the 2 boys both think it's a bad idea and the 3 girls all think it's good?

Just seen this: www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/05/sexual-consent-classes-for-university-students

I was also at uni during the early 90's and I think that we were still at that time under the cloud of HIV and AIDS. it might be a left of field opinion, but I think that the whole 80's safe sex thing impacted positively on sexual conduct.

We had it rammed down our throats (bad turn of phrase...sorry) that sex meant condoms, that we (as women) should insist on our partners wearing them. it made us sexually confident and able to express what we wanted. men also felt the need to protect themselves. There was just more respect in general. Many people chose not to have sex at all.

I was a member of my university's Women's Group. We had regularly weekly meetings and organised protests. the worst it got was protesting about a pin ball machine which featured a woman reclining in her underwear on it. The university removed it.

Then as said above...Lad culture kicked in and it all went to shit. the backlash happened.

Actually that reminds me - Susan Faludi, the writer of Backlash came to our Uni (in little old NZ) and I attended her speech. She was awesome and I think quite prophetic.

I am hoping that the examples given above are just about young men who just don't know any better. Hopefully they grow up. Although, my son is 15 and would think these views are disgusting and treats his girlfriend beautifully. He is already past the interest in porn stage - a point these men/boys should bear in mind. they are not 12...

I was an undergraduate in the early 90s and the lad culture thing was just getting going - I think that was the turning point. There was lots of that 'feminism has already won!' stuff being written (Naomi Wolf, I'm looking at you) and lads' mags were starting up.

In the late 80s it had seemed likely that Page 3 would get banned, then by 1994 boys at college were openly reading it in the common room, which I don't think they'd have done a decade earlier.

Arf. No I think she's got at least one, LRD, possibly more.

Wow! That is some serious through the looking glass stuff.

And these are supposed to be our brightest and best?

God help us all!

Give her time, basil, this heterosexuality may well be just a phase.

Does she lack strong lesbian role models?

When I look at lad culture I fervently hope that DD will be a lesbian.

But she's 12 now and she hasn't mentioned it.

Oh, TSR is awful. It's also monumentally badly informed (and they don't seem to realize we can go on there, so moaning about your evil teacher or smirking about how you bunked off is really pretty obvious).

I think the saddest thing I saw on there was a thread about what was 'fat' in a girl. It was sincerely agreed anything over size 10 was really very unhealthy and could never be attractive.