Another path to greatness - part III

[chopc]

Here is the new thread

@LoonvanBoon my comment about finding your tribe was in response to the poster who said her DC won't have any friends at Durham

You said you hardly came across people like that in Oxford . Does this mean there were some who were like that? All kinds of people everywhere? A single individual or a small group are not reflective of a college IMO

My DS attends one of the Elite schools mentioned in Everyone is Invited - he agreed most of the boys are lovely and has not come across misogynistic behaviour or talk. Probably doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Means he doesn't hang out with people who may have those tendencies

My DH started in the city in the late 90's and I can tell you for sure he wouldn't have engaged in such behaviour which goodbye thinks was normal. Or was it only in the 80's?

And for what it's worth when people are recruited they do a social media check and my DH is always careful about what he posts on SM and tells the kids the same ..... obviously it hasn't held this individual back .......

chopc - you are right of course and DS is also in one of the schools investigated as a result of everyone’s invited. Unfortunately, although he would say that this type of behaviour is perpetrated by a minority, it is still a minority with a disproportionate impact due to the nature of the behaviour. It’s insidious.

The fact this Chalky whathisname now refers to himself as “gentleman extraordinaire and top banter fulfiller” says it all really.

I googled “room tour St John’s Durham” and this is what came up. In fact, I can’t really find a student-made video worth watching as they’re all just someone legging it round in a dragon costume or other jolly jinx or rolling round on the floor or whatever. To be absolutely honest, the overall impression I get is more like a boarding school where they’re all about 13 and it’s a bit of shame as other student videos tend to be slightly more informative (well, the few I’ve seen anyway). But maybe it’s simply that the more immature ones at St John’s are the ones who make the videos and that the vast majority are totally different to what is being portrayed. I am definitely keeping an open mind at this stage. But maybe the college should know that this is what comes up when you Google “room tours” and yes, prospective students and their parents will be watching it and forming opinions.

Quest1on- How is your DS feeling?

Do you think perhaps your opinions are a little swayed by your DS not being enthusiastic about any of his fantastic options? There is good and bad in every one. All are popular Unis. But plenty of negatives if you want them.
Perhaps he can consider UCAS Extra like Bend's DD did?

To be honest, we haven’t talked about unis these last few days as he’s had full-on exams. But he’s much more positive in general, yes. He was just having a weird day last week. He is very aware he’s lucky to have choices. But I guess LSE / UCL and Durham are a bit like chalk and cheese, experience-wise and, as you say, good and bad in both, as anywhere. He may well take a gap year also as something else has come up, but I don’t know if he’d defer or just reapply. It’s something called “reflection week” at his school next week so let’s hope that works!

A little anecdote...

DS1 (gap year) is currently working in a pub. He served two ladies last night and they started questioning him about his study plans. He explained he was off to Durham in September, having failed to get into Oxford twice. One of the women told him that she had a son at Oxford and he hated it. She left DS a £25 tip.

This cheered him up no end. (Even if the tip was pooled with 10 others).

I watched the relevant video. Whilst I think most of it was teenagers having a laugh the scene where the focus was on the girls breasts whilst being interviewed was not only cringeworthy but very uncomfortable viewing as obviously the girls was uncomfortable ............ I don't think anyone would dream of doing that today

I would like it if it was like a huge boarding school. DS likes to be organised (my fault as I have been organising him since he was a few weeks old) and he likes planned activity and to have a full diary . He thrives when busy although is tired

chopc, that post where you mentioned tribes was addressed to quest1on, hence my response. I said in my first post on the topic that I was sure this would only be a minority of students, as it was when I was at university. I repeated the point about it being unrepresentative later.

There was no contrast being made between Durham and Oxford: I used them both as examples of elite universities, and added that my sons have mentioned examples of sexist behaviour at their comprehensive school too. It's doubtless a minority of men, but it seems to be widespread (the Warwick 'rape chat' case of a couple of years ago also springs to mind) and, as others have said, it has a disproportionate impact.

I don't think any of us need to be defensive about particular institutions: this is about the behaviour of (some) men. Fwiw, my sons' friends who are going to Durham this autumn are two very confident and assertive young women; and I feel sorry for any young men who engage in puerile, sexist stunts in their vicinity. One of them may be going to St John's, but it might be St Chad's, I can't remember.

I have sometimes wondered if it's getting worse, but I suspect it's more that young women are speaking up about their experiences to a greater extent. Also, young men 30 years ago weren't able to film their behaviour and stick it on YouTube; and offensive conversations about women were at least likely to be private, not publicly visible in WhatsApp groups.

Unfortunately I don’t think it’s a minority of students. The stories on Everyone’s Invited have illustrated how prevalent unwanted sexual attention and harassment is in our schools and in our universities. It MUST be taken seriously, each and every incident no matter how ‘minor’ it seems. Enough is enough.

It is one reason I paid school fees from age 5 to 18 - girls tend not to be subject to this kind of thing in girls' schools. I know my three sons would never do this kind of thing and most men never have. It is just a very persistent minority (and very occasionally girls too) who do it and they do so much of it on and on some men all their lives that there are just vast numbers of women who are their victims.

I am sure no one will make decisions on university (or private or state school) based on this kind of thing (unless it is endemic institutional rape of little boys in boarding schools kind of activities). Teenage boys' bad behaviour sadly affects them regardless of class or socio-economic background and the rise of the smart phone means much more of it is recorded.

Leaving sex aside, the London university experience is a bit different from other universities - it has some of the best in the UK and ti is probably more international. Whether that imports more men who have a worse view of women than most men in the UK is another issue too. However all good universities have international students even if not not so many on undergraduate courses.

At the end of the day our children going to any of these places are going to good universities. My son went back to Bristol for his last term there ever yesterday. Very sad for him as he has loved 4 years there. I am sure had he picked Durham instead (he chose Bristol over Durham) he would have been equally as happy. (My 5 children avoided London simply because we live here and wanted a change)

quest1on, have you or your son seen the St John's College 2020 open day video? It sounds like it was made when the 'real life' open day had to be cancelled, and features the JCR reps, though there aren't many room tours: apparently the rooms are all different anyway.

The students here come across really well, as does the college. Stupidly I forgot to copy the link but I'm sure it's easy to find.

Loonvan - thanks yes, I did just see that one this morning and they come across much better.

bend, it certainly doesn't seem to be a minority of women who have experienced this kind of behaviour - and I agree about the zero tolerance - but I sincerely hope it's a minority of men doing it. If more than 50% of men behave like this we've got bigger problems than I thought.

Unfortunately I suspect there's a large group of men who, while they wouldn't harass women themselves, find it very difficult to challenge sexist behaviour and attitudes in their peers, and so collude with it to an extent. It's hard for young men to stand up to the peer group and we obviously need to change attitudes generally, by the sort of refusal to minimize that you mention, for that to be easier.

Xenia, our catchment area comprehensives are single sex, with a Joint 6th form. It's not what I would have chosen, but can see the advantages for the girls, who seem to get on very well, outperform the boys' school (obviously part of a national pattern) and emerge into the 6th form apparently confident and ambitious.

I'm not sure it worked well for the boys, though. There's a sort of laddishness that's sometimes reinforced by mainly male teachers, a massive focus on sport to the exclusion of academic achievement and a curriculum based on a lowest common denominator stereotype of male interests - nobody got the chance to learn more than one language, for instance.

One of my biggest gripes, though, is that when it came to sex and relationships education, every single bit of it was delivered by /dumped on female teachers.

It could have been such a positive move to have young, male, sporty teachers talking openly about sex and relationships and challenging societal sexism; modelling, for example, a clear understanding of issues around consent. It seemed like such a wasted opportunity: any boys who already devalued women were dismissive and just behaved badly in the sessions.

Utterly harmless?? You think a woman being groped is harmless?

bend with respect, since I was the young woman groped, I think I should be the one entitled to say it failed to harm me. That is very different from giving a licence to men to grope. Groping is grim. My point was that since I was entirely unscathed by the sort of behaviour I encountered, I wouldn't be making historic allegations and wasting police time. The idea is palpably absurd.

Yes I looked at the 2020 video first and was surprised that you'd made such as thing about the 2012 one, so it makes sense that you hadn't looked at more than that one.

I don't know who asked for quest1on's post to be deleted. Possibly MN did it without a request. I asked for jano69's to be deleted because it posted a link to the young man's professional social media acount and invited grown up women to jeer at him, which was plain nasty.

I think some of us are probably lucky that our own youthful exploits weren't recorded on video or phones. I dread to think how mine might have impacted on me (hazy memory of all my particular low spots but no doubt there were.... several).

The only time I've been really rattled by predatory behaviour by a male stranger is when an author living locally hid behind bushes to watch me, followed me around and parked on the hill opposite and spied on me sunbathing with binoculars. He remains an absolute pillar of the community but to be fair, he never attempted anything physical. It was creepy though. It lasted for months whnever I came home from London where I was dealing with the less creepy men at work.

@goodbyestranger

Utterly harmless?? You think a woman being groped is harmless?

bend with respect, since I was the young woman groped, I think I should be the one entitled to say it failed to harm me. That is very different from giving a licence to men to grope. Groping is grim. My point was that since I was entirely unscathed by the sort of behaviour I encountered, I wouldn't be making historic allegations and wasting police time. The idea is palpably absurd.

Speak for yourself @goodbyestranger but there are many many other women who feel differently.

I was groped by my piano teacher in the 80s. And I later found out I wasn’t the only victim. The b***d died many years ago but if he was still alive I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to prosecute.

I am surprised by your attitude. Why should these vile men get away with it? Suppose you don’t take any action and your attacker goes on to grope other women?

It was endemic in the eighties bend. Even if I had the desire, I don't have the time. It had no impact on me whatsoever. It was what it was. Had I been raped by a stranger then I might take it more seriously but I'd rather keep some perspective. I'd have been exhausted had I possessed your degree of outrage. We seem to have moved from a place where a double-barrelled kid at Durham made a dumb video where a fellow student gives every impression of liking a video taken of her fully covered chest in a dress to inciting me to make accusations of historic sexual harrassment against a fleet of City bankers. It really is ridiculous. For a start, you're ignoring the not slight difficulty of supplying evidence! Also, they weren't all vile - that's unfair.

I should think my 'attackers' are now either in their dotage, making lascivious remarks to their carers, or are happily married men with grown up families and no doubt a few with wives on MN.

@goodbyestranger I’m not just talking about your own personal experience although I do find your casualness baffling. You really don’t think there should be repercussions because something
happened a long time ago? You think women speaking out on Me Too are over reacting and should just accept those were the times?

And old men making lascivious comments to their carers is NOT ok. How would you feel if the carer was your daughter? She should just suck it up?

I really can’t believe what I’m reading.

I'm sorry that happened to you, bend.

It astonishes me that serial abusers like that obviously felt they could commit their crimes with total impunity. I'd like to think that's something that has changed.

Thinking back to university, I remember hearing about far more issues with adults than with fellow students. There were two GPs associated with our college, and it was an open secret that the male one was a 'groper'. Before I knew that I had a very awkward appointment with him, about an ear infection, where he repeatedly stroked my legs while supposedly looking into my ear. I pretended nothing untoward was happening and was angry with myself afterwards. I didn't even tell anyone until I heard other stories about him at a later date.

What's disturbing in hindsight is that the female GP at this practice gave a talk to the women in my college in our first week, and emphasised how she was always there for female students. She advised us that if we stressed to the receptionist that we wanted to see her specifically, we'd always be given an appointment.

At the time I thought she was alluding to appointments about sexual health etc. I've wondered since if she was also aware that her (senior) colleague was a complete 'perv' (which was how we referred to it then) and warning us not to make appointments with him. If so, she obviously didn't feel able to do anything about it either :(

bend you were talking about me initially and saying that the men in question should be brought to book. That's what I responded to.

My DD's are well able to deal with lascivious old men, especially those who aren't very mobile. They're probably far too old to benefit from a life lesson in appropriate behaviour.

I think it's helpful to distinguish between harmful behaviour and that which isn't harmful.

I was properly assaulted aged twelve in Paris. It was a one off. Not nice but not much one could do about it. That would have been a case for reporting but the man disappeared. I barely thought about it since but that assault is in a different category to the City stuff I'm referring to.

We seem to have moved from a place where a double-barrelled kid at Durham made a dumb video where a fellow student gives every impression of liking a video taken of her fully covered chest in a dress to inciting me to make accusations of historic sexual harrassment against a fleet of City bankers.

Goodbye, you were the one who first made the link between the guy at Durham and the issue of sexual harassment in the City. You suggested Chalkly-thingy's father and/or grandfather were probably the kind of men who behaved 'inappropriately' to you years ago and it might have been learned behaviour. Which might well be true; but I have to say, the idea of intergenerational male entitlement that your speculation conjured up made it all seem even more unpleasant to me.

I don't know what happened to you in your job, and I respect any woman's decision about whether to take action (or not) in cases of harassment, or worse. Or indeed to say that it didn't particularly upset them personally.

But if things have improved in the workplace, and they surely have in this respect, it's partly because many women did complain and kept complaining (probably helped by increasing power of numbers), not because men just decided to behave better. So, like bend, I don't see these issues on a purely individual level.

Nor do I see it on a purely individual level loon but bend narrowed it by going over the top about my needing to hound City colleagues from the eighties, which is absurd.

By linking the eighties type of behaviour to this rather silly video which people were getting ridiculously steamed up about (if only because the girl shows no indication of doing anything other than collaborating happily), I was merely saying: our generation didn't cover itself in glory on the entitlement front/ this generation is decidedly better.

The fact remains that my ire was overwhelmingly reserved for the idea that a young man who made a super silly video should have his LinkedIn profile posted on MN for grown up women to jeer at.