UniLad magazine advocating rape - have there been threads on this already?

[Kveta]

link to story here

I am still going after reading this, and wondered if anyone has more coherent thoughts on the matter than me?

Given that these young men have made their comments on a public site with no controls (you don't even have to 'like' UniLad to comment or view) anyone could contact the relevant universities (somewhere like corporate communications would be a good start) and the NUS and push for disciplinary procedures.

One or two universities have already started investigating. I certainly hope that others follow suit.

Can we report any of these young men to the police? The ones who are advocating rape?

After all, rape is really common, while rioting isn't, and those young men who advocated a riot that didn't happen, got sent to prison.

Some good points Victor and Basil (sounds like you're both smoking cigars and drinking port! :o )

Trotting out rape myths, making excuses for rape, even some jokes that trivialise rape are abhorrent, but the statements on this site (and some of the comments in support of these,) actually advocate/recommend/incite/etc. men to rape.

Yep, what's the difference in saying, "Alright lads, get out and smash up JJB Sport, hey you'll get away with it like the others did," and "Alright lads, get out and rape women, hey you'll get away with it like the others did," eh?

SardineQueen

I disagree with your post

Some women who haven't been raped, whose friends haven't been raped, whose family members haven't been raped think like that I guess. I think until it enters your world as a thing that happens, and you realise how much it happens, it's easy to see it as so rare and outrageous that of course anyone who talks about doing it is joking

I don't know anyone who has been raped (well, not that they have mentioned anyway) & I don't think like any of those people who have posted on UniLad (on FB). You don't have to experience rape first hand or see it's effects first hand to know how awful & life changing it is. Don't tar people like me with people like that, thank you!

Many many people are fully able to comprehend the effects of rape & don't spout hatred like that! I resent that implication, to be honest.

Helpful?

different You're getting the wrong end of the stick SQ doesn't say that noone who hasn't experienced rape first hand can comprehend the effects, but that not having experienced rape might contribute to not comprehending the effects in those who don't.

Anyway - not that it really is an excuse - I think both lad mag likers and writers are probably still quite young, immature and naive, and are actually not realising what they are talking about. That's a sad state of affairs, and clearly needs to be addressed.

I really wonder about these MRA sites masquarading as a "normal university lads" site or Pistonheads for car afficionados or that other site (name evades me) which tried to do an MN site invasion the other day.

They appear to be normal people but in fact they are hard core MRA, misogynist places where people (yes, women as well as men) outdo each other in offensiveness. But these sites all appear to be originated and run by men, with a few uneducated female stragglers trying to get in on the act.

My question, is the a female dominated site that prides itself on this kind of idiotic, offensive, political correctness smashing, delighting in abuse type crap?

The Netmums site gets a bashing in some zones of MN for frivolousness and poor grammar and spelling but Netmums seems to be a gang if harmless mums gossiping in the same as MN, (maybe differnet topics, I don't know, never really been) but a world away from this unilads claptrap.

I am a few parenting sites and an expat forum and I have never, ever come across any attitudes like this.

But it seems there are LOADS of sites run by men along these lines.

The opposite dynamic seems to exist on MN; someone uses a word like "mentally handicapped" or "coloured" or similar and people are queuing up to upbraid the OP. You get the very occasional stirrer like Donnie who delights in agreeing with weird, out of date terms, but on the whole, people here vy to be holier than thou, often going OTT on an OP who just got it a bit wrong, sometimes in ignorance not from malice.

Does anyone know of a female dominated / run site where there is the kind of vicious, fuck you, extremist masquarading as normal attitude of unilads?

differentid that isn't what I meant, apologies if I didn't explain myself very well.

I think that for some young women, thinking these jokes are funny is part of that "I'm invincible" feeling that you have when you are young. The idea in society and in the press is that rape is something that is done by a stranger in an alley and is fairly rare. So for young women who have not been exposed to it firsthand either themselves or family etc the likelihood of it happening to them seems similar to the likelihood of anything else really bad happening - it won't because the are invincible. It just seems impossible. Also, the idea is that rape is something that is done by a stranger in an alley means that if your nice normal friend in class is making a joke about saying "surprise" then obviously it's just a joke because obviously he isn't a rapist.

For some/many women I think that life experience has to happen before they understand that nice normal men can and do rape and there's very little that is done about it. And then they become feminists

I did put "some" in my post as I was trying to think about why some younger women might support these comments and jokes and that is what I thought. I don't believe that people can't understand about rape unless it has happened to them or someone close to them - but for some that is what it takes. And of course for some they go through life believing the myths and that only stranger rape is real rape and anything else is mixed signals etc. and never open their eyes.

I was talking to my 14 year old yesterday, and she said that I was sexist ,because in her eyes I am obviously anoyed when i hear/read of boys/men behaving badly.(I write annoyed, because i dont think i rant).I say probably i am, I dont dislike men, but i think i'm more protective of women, and feel the need to empower my daughters,so they can deal with situations. It clearly isnt working-society is far too powerful.
She actually said that she wont have any problems and looked at me as if i was a mad shit stirrer.

Why do girls, in every generation, always think that this misogyny is going away, and that somehow its all going to be full of reliable blokes.

Because they are young and confident, which is as it should be.

And then life happens and they come around to a different way of thinking! Which is also the way it should be, I guess.

It takes a special sort of young person to have insight past their feelings of invulnerability and confidence and to look outside their direct experience and immediate thoughts of getting off with people and going out and all that stuff that consumes your brain when you are young - I certainly didn't very much anyway

SardineQueen

Thanks for explaining...maybe I read it wrong, but your later explanation makes it clearer for me. I completely understand what you were trying to say.

Sorry for being abrupt :)

Oh & I totally agree that it is a 'it won't happen to me' mentality. They do think they are invincible, and think perhaps if they become 'one of the lads' it can't happen to them.

I kept seeing references to UniLad and its writer Alex Partridge yesterday morning on Twitter starting to appear. I got curious and investigated the matter and what i read got me so angry that i couldn't just stay silent. I spoke to my editor about the issue and he decided to write a story about it on our site as we felt that the issue was too important to disappear in the million of trending topics that Twitter has daily. The Huffington Post UK seemed to have picked up the story pretty quickly too. This is the story which we then published yesterday afternoon www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/44930/twitter-fury-over-surprise-rape-article-gets-unilad-suspended

A few hours later Jezebel.com also picked it up jezebel.com/5881333/lad-mag-suggests-guys-get-rapey-because-odds-are-in-their-favor

I know this is not the first time this level of stupidity and misogyny arises where people think joking about rape is funny but i just hope that highlighting the outrage that it causes might make them realise how wrong they really are.

Hey no worries differentid I probably should have put out things more carefully in the first place. It's an emotive topic.

Viz the "can't grasp it until it happens to them/ touches them personally" thing, I think that links in with the various reports around at the moment showing that men who become fathers of girls, suddenly develop a realisation that women aren't equal after all and it dawns on them that one day, some fucker will treat their loved daughter the way they've treated women in the past and they get all interested in equality.

Having mothers, sisters, female cousins, friends and colleagues isn't enough, apparently, to enable many men to empathise with women as fellow humans. They actually have to help reproduce one, before the penny drops.