Sexism on campus

At my uni it isn't too bad... there's a bit of a 'lad' culture, but not particularly outrageous. Then again, we've had a fantastic women's officer in the students guild... she's just graduated so I'm hoping to run in October and carry on her excellent work in tackling sexism before it starts.

For really outrageous examples of sexism among students, I direct you to TheStudentRoom. The majority are either examples of 'Lad' culture, obsessed with being regarded as 'alpha' and convinced that they are god's gift to women - or young men who seem to lack social skills and respect for women, but believe women should automatically respect them, and that women owe them dates and sex. It's disgusting and one of the reasons why I rarely go on the forums any more, as the admins and moderators do very little to combat it.

Are you fed up of being disrespected by women?
Five reasons we need feminism (some of the replies are awful)
This one is just ridiculous
Lad culture is a good thing

The worst thing is, many of these members aren't trolls - they genuinely feel this way, and they are students. There are plenty of other threads in a similar vein. Honestly the worst ones aren't the 'lad culture' ones - they're the young men who genuinely feel so entitled to respect and sex from women, and blame women for the fact that they aren't having sex. :(

Oh, sorry, I missed out what we should do.

Well, the problem is the third wave and the rise of 'gender performance' and 'sex-positive feminism,' both of which in the context of university women mean 'anything I do that looks like misogyny, is ironic and therefore beyond critique' and 'you must not be other than sexually available,' respectively.

So we should get rid of those and start doing proper feminism in academia.

I've been a student for the past ten years (ouch). I think it is bad now and it was bad ten years ago. However, I think as a society we are far more conscious of it than we were ten years ago. In a class of 30, now, I would expect maybe four or five students to raise explicitly feminist points of view without me prompting it. In my classes back then, it would have been maybe one or two.

I think the internet is a big part of it. I know the net was around ten years ago and we all used it, but there weren't social networks that brought together all students - facebook was just starting up back then. These days lots of them know things like what happened to the women's debate team, or whether LSE is still fielding sexist shites as student journalists, almost as soon as it happens.

I was at uni in the 80's.

It just wasn't like that. Sexism was just not cool, it was for thickies.

And the notion of ladette to me was sexist. Aw look at da pwetty girlie dwinking dat weally big mans beer.. Pwhoar sexy girl.

But hey coz it was Cool Britannia and spice girls were singing zig a zig ah we believed a lot of codswallop.

Well I think that's a bit rose tinted tbh. I was at uni in mid 90s. Tbh it sounds the bloody same but people notice, comment, report, do something.

I heard rape jokes too incase you think I meant just 'normal' sexism. It's good. Much like racism being noticed and acted on because it's reported more. The more it's discussed the more knowledgeable we are the more it can be confronted.