Never in all my days did I believe that I would see a doctor of gender studies quoted in the Daily Mail. But there they were – these strange bedfellows of the Mail warning parents of the rise of male university students who ‘treat women like meat’ and the academic, who would normally never let this Bible of Middle England darken their door, telling us why this was happening.
Student leaders are warning female freshers to prepare for a “barrage of misogynistic abuse, harassment and worse from their male counterparts”. A ‘barrage’ and all for £9,000 a year. Good grief.
Dr Alison Phipps, Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Sussex, has a theory (she has to have one, it’s her job). She tells us: ‘It is not working-class lads getting into university and bringing laddish culture with them, it is the privileged boys and young men who maybe feel a bit threatened. This behaviour is a way of putting women back in their place. They are using sex and sexism to say: “This is our turf — get off it”.’ More on this later.
Jinan, a student at Cambridge, tells us something shocking. Some first year women get invited to ‘swaps’, a social event at which a male group from one college meets a female group from another. “The idea is you go to a restaurant where you can bring your own alcohol and everyone gets very, very drunk. It is a way of meeting people from other colleges and making friends. The problem is swaps often have dressing-up themes that are really sexist. The one I was invited to was entitled ‘What were you wearing when the police invaded the brothel?’ “
Tacky? Yes. But was poor Jinan frogmarched to one of these events and had her drink spiked? Em no. She replied with the sensible and obvious answer: she did not go as she deplored to the ‘sheer objectification of women’. Good for you Jinan.
Shockingly, Jinan later found out that there exists one male student whose sole claim to fame was that he had a ‘100 per cent success rate at swaps’. Call the police. There are young men out there who boast of having sex with lots of women. Who knew? And why do the feminists care, as I thought we had dispensed with the Victorian, archaic, laughable idea that sex should be between two people who love each other?
Jinan also was upset at the following: she saw a male student being asked what was the ‘rapist thing’ he had done. ‘He answered that he had made sure a girl was heavily drunk before attempting to kiss her, to which another boy replied, “that’s a pretty standard pulling technique for most guys.” I thought this was a standard technique for most of Britain, but then I am married old fart so perhaps things have changed.
Jinan believes: ‘It’s worrying that some boys, studying to become doctors, lawyers, scientists and teachers, think it’s acceptable to take advantage of a girl.’
Right – just so we are clear, are we saying that it is now a moral imperative that young men do not take advantage of a young women’s vulnerability and perhaps – dare I say it – immodesty? Are men today, once again guardians of women’s purity?
I, as a conservative, have no problem with this as a social norm, but Jinan (and I just say this as an aside) you might want to run that by your fellow female students and in particular the gender expert above because I am not too sure they will be on board with this revived social norm of ‘men as guardians of women.’ I think you might get some push back on that one over at The Guardian.
Then there was this: a pub-crawl where all the girls were told (by whom – we are not told) to dress “slutty”. “We also had to come up with a ‘slut’ name, which the older students encouraged us to write across our breasts. “On arriving at each bar, one of the older students would shout a code word for us to flash either our boobs or bottoms at men in the pub.”
Sensibly our informer tells us: “I didn’t take part in this, or adopt a ‘slut’ name, and was told I was being too ‘uptight’ and not ‘getting in the spirit of freshers week’.”
Again, I am bewildered. I salute the girl who told these people to get stuffed and mourn the fact that she is was ‘modesty shamed’, but it is clear that for those women – and we are talking about adult women now – who participated the slutty pub crawl did so consensually. This is called – in the feminist parlance of our time – respecting female agency.
I am also confused about the feminist stance on the slutty pub crawl. I thought we were having slut marches to ‘reclaim the word slut’ and that women should be ‘proud to be sluts.’ I have seen photos of actual slut marches with women who have written the word slut across their breasts. I thought it was fine now to let it all hang out – in this case literally. Please, someone help me – slut – good or bad?
Over to Dr Phipps once again. She believes that male students at university are feeling increasingly threatened. “I think this kind of sexist bullying is quite prominent because of this idea that women now have it all, that feminism has gone too far.”
Well, feminism has gone too far if you ask me Dr Gender Studies since you all started marching down the road in your pants and bras with slut written across your breasts and I really do not believe that our lads have a problem with women being at university.
Do you really expect us to buy this – what with all the no strings attached sex available, and the women you get to sleep with to boost your 100 per cent rate at “swaps” (what a quaint name)?
No, I don’t see the blokes crying into their pints over that one, especially as they do not even have to buy the ladies a drink these days, or indeed open the door for them. That would be patronising, would it not Dr Phipps?
These young men do not care one bit if these women go onto become PM, they just enjoy the university hook-up culture before the feminist emboldened glittering career begins. Now I don’t have a doctorate in “gender studies”, but I do trade in common sense.
