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Is hatred of young men on campus just made up for click-bait headlines, or is it real?

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On Friday the Independent posted an article, by an anonymous writer, demanding that “white men should never hold elected positions at British universities again” and that “being a student union president should no longer be a place for privileged white boys to swing their dicks around”.

Many people’s initial reaction was to check the date to see if it was April 1st already. But wind-up or not, the article actually  just expressed in blunt terms attitudes towards young male students that have become all too common. Here Spiked Online writer, Ella Whelan, describes what she saw first hand while recently studying at the University of Sussex.

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Increasingly, students at UK universities are encouraged to act like children. Student Unions now give advice for everything from cooking to sexual relationships (the latter now being a compulsory workshop held at some of the top universities). Its seems that mistakes are now unacceptable at university, and not with regards to studies. Students are allowing their peers to police their private lives, from what music they play in the student haunts to the type of conversation that is and isn’t allowed between members of the opposite sex.

‘Palpable hatred of young masculinity’

The infantilisation of students in the name of protection has come at a great cost. My own alma mater Sussex university has recently introduced a series of Sexual Consent Workshops which seek to educate students on the proper way to conduct relationships without breaching consent. This is predominantly aimed at young men, as the potential rapists waiting to be educated, the main targets being sports clubs and anyone prone to drinking, flirting and geezer-style behaviour.

This is not only a huge problem for guys, but equally a terrible insult to women. What students unions seem to argue, is that young people can’t be trusted to have sex; women are too vulnerable and weak to make it clear what they want, and men are too boorish to understand the fundamentals of human interaction.

This palpable hatred of young masculinity amongst student activists and radical feminists in student politics is extremely fashionable. Last Friday The Independent ran an article, which was later pulled, by an anonymous writer calling for all white males to be banned from union elections.

Earlier in the week a campaign was called to pressurise The Gardenia, a late night cafe in Cambridge, to close after allegations of predatory male behaviour running unchecked. The Gardenia campaign is not a critique of some idiot overstepping the line, it is part of a wider attack on young men at university.

The two-word warning…

Lad culture and laddish behaviour is a new term to me. I started University four years ago, and have only heard these types of slogans come about recently. On Wednesdays the sports socials would tour around Brighton drinking heavily and making lots of noise, there would occasionally be the odd time in which you had to nudge a lad who was standing too close, but confident in my ability to give the two word warning to anyone I didn’t fancy, nights out were always great fun.

(Incidentally, the most persistent and annoying advances often came from PC poetry events and indie gigs at the Green Door Store, which often housed the loudest daytime feminist supporters.)

Flirting, meeting drunk strangers and sexual relationships at university are nothing if not messy,  spontaneous, and fun. Activists whose attempts to try to curtail young people from making mistakes claim to prevent rape, but all it does is treat individuals who are supposed to be adults like kids.

Rape is not a natural outcome of laddish behaviour, and a suggestion otherwise is extremely dangerous. What tends to be the underlying view in this type of feminism is a fear and distaste for working class boys who are laddish, like football, like a drink and generally don’t say please may I before they lean in for a kiss. In my experience, if you are unsure enough that you have to ask, the answer should be pretty clear.

‘Die Cis Scum’

I went to a university in which certain loud groups in student politics wore Die Cis Scum badges and marched around against rape culture on a Tuesday morning. The majority of students took no notice and continued to get pissed and do what they wanted.

However there is a danger in ignoring a pervading trend of censorship at university. Young lads seem to have been targeted the most under censorious student unions; Spiked Online’s recent rankings of UK universities attitudes to free speech found that there had been a total of twenty six bans of The Sun, twenty one bans of the Robin Thicke song ‘Blurred Lines’ and eight bans of ‘unruly sports teams’. The implication often made that all men are predisposed to be pigs is pathetic and untrue.

Sexism is not about simply being ‘nasty’ to women, and feminism is not about being sympathetic to women. The way to deal with the broader problems, which go far beyond petty squabbles over language, is to debate and discuss them freely.  If there are really people out there who today believe that the coarse comments of a few drunk lads are the real problem, then things are far worse than we thought.

By Ella Whelan

Photo: Flickr/Bryan Ledgard

Ella is a writer for Spiked Online and a research coordinator for Spiked Online’s Free Speech University Rankings.

The associated Down With Campus Censorship Campaign is running an upcoming tour of debates in Bristol, Cambridge, King’s, LSE and others. To find out more, visit the campaign website here.

You can also read more of Ella’s writing on her website here.

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‘Men don’t have problems, they cause them’ is now the only politically correct thing you can say about men

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There is now a pervasive drive to limit the discussion of men and masculinity to a single, poisonous, narrative: Men don’t have problems, they cause them. This is how it’s happening in schools, universities, across the media and even in the UN itself.

— This is article #99 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

On Monday, The Times reported on the Raising Awareness and Prevention initiative – a project in which a former New York sex-crime prosecutor goes into London schools to lecture boys on how porn is generating a rise in misogyny. The article starts with this sentence: “Mission impossible: one hour to re-programme teenage boys’ sexual manners so they are fit for a feminist world”.

It ends with this: “These are boys any parent would be proud of and they are also now scarred for life. Any time they imagine doing something furtive online, it will trigger the thought that adults of influence – maybe even some formidable American women – are seeing into their souls via their search history. Mission accomplished.”

This isn’t sex education. It’s indoctrination, bordering on abuse. It’s also just one example of what is now a pervasive drive to limit the discussion of men and masculinity to a single narrative: Men don’t have problems, they cause them.

‘Good Lad’ workshop

The boundaries of what some people would like to see as permissible speech about men was summed up earlier this month, when rugby players at Oxford University took part in a ‘Good Lad’ workshop, aimed at combatting what the organisers say is a crisis of sexual assault and harassment on campus.

In 2009, another men’s group was set up at Oxford University, this time not aimed at teaching men how to stop harassing women, but as a space for young men to explore what it means to be a man in contemporary UK society. The group was vociferously condemned as “reactionary and ridiculous” by the very same campaigners who say that male students should take part in forums such as the ‘Good Lad’ workshop.

At the time, Olivia Bailey, then NUS national women’s officer, said: “What exactly will a men’s society do? To suggest that men need a specific space to be ‘men’ is ludicrous, when everywhere you turn you will find male-dominated spaces.”

You can speak up as a man, as long as it’s to apologise

So, just to be clear, the only time men are permitted to come together to talk about their experiences of being men, is when they hold themselves in contrition in an attempt prevent themselves from abusing women? Right. OK then.

But student campaigners aren’t the only ones committed to controlling the conversation about what it means to be a man. In January of this year, the Southbank Centre held the Being A Man festival, the first of its kind in the UK and organised by the same people who run the well-established, feminist-orientated, Women of the World Festival.

I was genuinely excited at the prospect of such a high-profile event that would put a vibrant discussion of men and masculinity at the heart of the UK’s cultural establishment. Except that isn’t what happened. What actually took place was a series of ideological set pieces, in which prominent feminists and their allies told us what they think men are and how we need to change.

Over the course of two days, we were told that men should be feminists, but offered no view on why they shouldn’t be; that male violence against women is a problem, but given no views on the problem of female perpetrators and male victims; that porn is bad for you, but offered no perspectives on how men can explore, express and celebrate their sexuality. And so on.

HeForShe

In the run-up to the festival, the organisers arranged a series of panel discussions among men to explore what the big issues for men are that the festival should address. From the line-up of speakers at the event, it’s hard not to conclude they didn’t simply exclude any voices that weren’t in line with their own feminist worldview.

It’s one thing if student campaigners and metropolitan pundits try to limit what you can say about men, but it’s quite another when the UN gets in on the act. The UN’s recently-launched HeForShe campaign, championed by Emma Watson, calls on men to help end violence against women – and who wouldn’t want to help do that? But the glaring, frankly bizarre, elephant in the room is that the campaign deliberately, explicitly omits concern for male victims of violence.

This is the pledge the UN is asking men to sign up to: “I commit to take action against all forms of violence and discrimination faced by women and girls.” Discrimination can be a very subjective topic, but the UN’s data on violence is unequivocal, globally men and boys are almost four times more likely to be murdered than women and girls.

These messages are being targeted at boys and young men at ages when they are most vulnerable and insecure about their place in the world. The narrative itself excludes discussion of the impact this is having on young men, or of the problems they face due to their own gender.

Young men ‘shouted at and publicly humiliated’

insideMAN recently took the unusual step of actually asking young men how they feel about the conversation that is being had about them, rather than with them. The responses of these teenagers, who are relentlessly subjected to social media propaganda about the failures of their sex – from EveryDaySexism, to Hollaback, to the FCKH8 video – should stand as a wakeup call.

They said that if they make any attempt to contradict these prevailing messages, they “will draw fire… so the only option is to shut up”. Asked what conditions would make them feel able speak their minds, they said “they would need a safe space where they could feel confident they would not be shouted at and publicly humiliated; where their motives were not under immediate suspicion simply on account of their gender. They want protecting against fundamentalism by prominent and leading figures in the campaign for gender equality – people who can defend the sincerity of their interest and allow real discussion”.

But the concluding line of the article is most damning of all. “As the boys left our house they said how great it was to be able to have a sensible conversation about these things. I was struck that this was the first opportunity they had ever had to discuss gender equality without having to self-censor.”

Not to worry though, soon they’ll be at university and there’ll be Good Lad workshop they can go to.

By A Man

 

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

When it comes to depictions of men, Gutter Glossies and Ivory Tower Feminists are on the same page

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Would you rather people thought you were a dim-witted sex object, or a paedophile and a rapist? Well?

It’s a crass question, of course, but it’s nonetheless one that occurred to me recently as I browsed the more lurid end of Tesco’s magazine racks and compared the titles that were on display with the on-going campaigns against Lads Mags and Page 3.

For every Lads Mag targeted at men with a half-naked woman on the cover, there was a Gutter Glossietm targeted at women with a prurient headline about men who are killers and rapists; yet while the former are seen by many as deeply damaging to society’s attitudes towards women, the latter don’t seem to be considered a problem for how society sees men.

Here are last week’s lead stories from Love it!, Pick Me Up!, Real People and Take a Break: ‘Cannibal killer who ate his ex’; ‘Playground Paedo… Lured my poor girl’; ‘Love Rat! Faked cancer to wed us both’; ‘My girl, 10, was raped by her friends, but she got the blame’.

Bullies, killers and predators

Go to any newsagent this week and you’ll see the same stories, just with different headlines.

If, as anti-Lads Mags and Page 3 campaigners say, images of semi-naked models are damaging to men’s attitudes to women, what must be the impact on women’s attitudes to men of constant messages — absorbed unthinkingly on a daily basis over a cup of tea — that men are bullies, killers and sexual predators?

Over the past year, Ivory Tower Feminist TM groups (I’m having that one too) such as #EverydaySexism, No More Page 3 and the NUS, have waged high-profile campaigns against imagery and language they say demeans women and even normalises sexual assault.

They have succeeded in banning Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines from being played in student unions, in removing the Sun from university news agents and getting lads mags taken down from the shelves of Co-op.

Double standards

The campaigners say their censoriousness is justified to combat misogyny and to prevent sexual assault. But if you believe these magazines have that effect on young men (which I do not), then cogency demands they should also be worried about the impact that depictions of men as paedophiles and bullies will have on women’s attitudes to, say, male primary school teachers, or the importance they place on a father’s post-separation contact with his children.

But when it comes to this type of sexism, for some reason the anti-sexism campaigners don’t seem to be terribly bothered. Why are they outraged for children to be confronted by the breasts of Sarah, from Coventry, in their dad’s copy of the Sun; but perfectly happy for kids to see men presented as vile monsters in mum’s copy of Chat?

And with more and more children growing up in fatherless families, raised by single mums and taught by female teachers, isn’t it reasonable to suggest that children will have fewer real-world experiences of men than of women, to counterbalance toxic gendered portrayals in the media?

I mean, it’s almost as if it’s the gender of who’s being demeaned that’s most important, rather than the sexist nature of what’s on display. But then that seems kind of, well, sexist.

Enough to make an editor weep

And then there are the circulation figures. The sheer number of women reading these magazines quite simply dwarfs the number of young men who read lads mags. In the Second half 2013:

Take a Break: 696,507

Real People: 185,682

Pick me Up!: 183,210

Love It!: 112,695

Total: 1,178,094

FHM:  96,452

Zoo: 29,521

Nuts closed down due to poor circulation in April of this year.

Total: 125,973

It’s enough to make the (former) editor of Nuts weep.

Anti-lads mags campaigns consistently cite titles such as FHM and Zoo as evidence of widespread, societally-ingrained sexism and misogyny among young men. But if that’s the case, given the primary way in which magazines such as Love it! and Real People  are targeted at their audience and their vastly higher circulation figures, what does their success say about their female readers’ attitudes?

I’d like to think both the readers of lads mags and trashy women’s magazines are usually perfectly capable of separating fact from fantasy. But the anti-sexism campaigners aren’t even asking any of these questions, and I have a hunch why.

You see, when it comes to their attitudes towards men, both the Gutter Glossiestm   and the Ivory Tower Feministstm  seem to be on exactly the same page.

By Dan Bell

Do you think there should be as much concern over the messages about men in women’s magazines as there is for depictions of women in Lads Mags and on Page 3? Or do you think the imbalance in concern is justified because Lads Mags and Page 3 are damaging, while women’s magazines are not? Do you think these depictions of men and women have a real impact on people’s attitudes and behaviour towards the opposite sex? Lets us know in a comment or a tweet.

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Why is the NUS waging an ideological campaign to vilify a disadvantaged minority group?

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Two weeks ago the NUS launched its latest attack on “lad culture” at UK universities, with the publication of a survey of students’ experiences of sexism, with the accompanying claim that harassment “is rife on campus”.

The survey found 37% of women and 12% of men who responded said they had faced unwelcome sexual advances, while 36% of women who took part said they had experienced unwanted sexual comments about their body, compared with 16% of men.

The first question that springs to mind, is why findings showing that a third to fifty percent of those experiencing sexism are male students, isn’t also evidence of “ladette culture”?

The report also included these quotes from students who took part, neither of which were highlighted in the accompanying press release or articles:

‘Lad Culture Summit’

“I think it is a little overdramatizing and sexist in that it only looks at the over sexualisation of women. As a woman I do not feel that I am vulnerable and that I do go out to events dressed sexily because I want to and I can handle myself.” Woman, 3rd year university

“Although I have witnessed other men making sexual comments amongst themselves about a woman’s personal appearance, I notice that this behaviour amongst women discussing a man’s physical attractiveness is just as common and deemed much more socially acceptable!” Man, 2nd year university

But the most important question is why, in light of the deepening crisis in young men’s university attendance and educational achievement in general, does the NUS feel that “lad culture” is the most pressing gender issue on campus in the first place?

Since 2010, the NUS has produced a series of high-profile reports, consultations and surveys aimed at revealing what it says is a widespread climate of sexism against female students at UK universities, including a “Lad Culture Summit” in February of this year, covered with live updates on the Guardian website.

Male students a ‘disadvantaged group’

If there is an issue with “lad culture” on campus, then clearly it should be addressed. But the NUS is tasked with representing all of its members – not just female students. So why has it simultaneously downplayed male students’ experiences of sexism and produced no research into the issues facing men at university?

In January this year UCAS reported that there were now a third more girls applying for university than boys, leading the head of the organisation to state that male students are becoming “a disadvantaged group”.

Then in September, exam results revealed the gap had widened even further, with 52,000 less men than women allocated places, jumping from 46,000 fewer places for male students last year.

This disparity hides even starker figures at individual campuses and on particular courses. In 2013, the Guardian published a gender breakdown of students across universities and subject areas, with the conclusion: “The sheer number of female students means that they outnumber boys on the majority of courses, but those most dominated by women include veterinary science and subjects allied to medicine and education.”

What are male students’ needs?

At 20 institutions there were twice as many female fulltime undergraduates as male undergraduates. At Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education, respectively 79.5%, 83.3% and 85.7% of undergraduate students were female.

In terms of subject areas, law, veterinary science, education and subjects allied to medicine, respectively 61.7%, 79.5%, 80.4% and 82.1% of undergraduates were female.

These figures beg the question, what must it be like for a young man to be so completely outnumbered by female students? How does this impact on his experience of university? To what extent does this imbalance affect male students’ ability to be heard and have their educational needs acknowledged, particularly in a climate that appears to cast male students as privileged, potential aggressors?

These figures also throw into question the claims by the NUS that there is widespread sexism against female students on campus. On courses and at universities where 80% of students are female, are female students really facing a culture that is “rife” with sexual harassment and sexism?

NUS has no men’s officer

I asked the NUS if they had done any research into men’s experience of university in light of the gender gap on campus, or if they were planning any work to raise awareness of the crisis in male applicants. The press office declined to answer repeated requests for this information. From the list of reports published on the NUS research website, none address male-specific concerns of students. The NUS has a women’s officer, but no men’s officer. The press office said they did not know if there were any NUS men’s officers at individual universities.

This is from the NUS press office response to my questions.

“The plain fact is that there are too few women in leadership positions, whether in the student movement, education, workplace or wider society – and those that are face intolerable barriers.

“Having the post of women’s officer is not much to ask in the face of such inequalities and they are often campaigning on campuses for things men already have. The sexism that women face is part of the system and exists at every level of our lives. It’s important to remember that the remaining posts in students’ unions, often four or five of them, campaign on behalf of men too.”

‘To suggest that men need a specific space to be ‘men’ is ludicrous’

Leaving aside the debatable question as to whether the lack of women in leadership roles is due to the “intolerable barriers” they face, or what exactly the “things men already have” on campus but women don’t are; surely the role of the NUS is to represent students, not to campaign for more women in Parliament or on the boards of FTSE 100 companies?

But the NUS’ underlying attitude to the welfare of male students was most-starkly revealed in 2009 — a year before the first report that led to its anti-lad culture campaign — when students at Manchester and Oxford universities set up men’s societies, to discuss what it means to be a man in contemporary society and address issues such as men’s mental health, testicular cancer and men’s experience of domestic violence.

The societies were ferociously attacked by student women’s officers, with Olivia Bailey, then NUS national women’s officer, stating: “Discrimination against men on the basis of gender is so unusual as to be non-existent, so what exactly will a men’s society do?”

“To suggest that men need a specific space to be ‘men’ is ludicrous, when everywhere you turn you will find male-dominated spaces,” she added.

By “everywhere you turn”, she presumably did not mean virtually every university in the UK.

The stated aim of the lad culture campaign is to ensure that “students’ unions and universities must work together to create campuses that are welcoming, safe and supportive to all”.

It is hard to see how an organisation whose role is to represent all students, yet focuses exclusively on the problems faced by women, while simultaneously vilifying male students and dismissing their concerns, will achieve this goal.

By Dan Bell

Do you think the NUS should be doing more to support male students? What do you think about the lad culture campaign? Are you a student, what do you think of the NUS’ approach to gender issues in general?

If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

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Teenage boy tells Yvette Cooper why she has no right to re-educate young men as feminists

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If you liked this post and want to see more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

Last week Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper wrote in the Independent that boys should be taught in schools to “grow up as confident feminists”.

She said there should be compulsory education in schools to teach boys not to be abusers, in order to tackle what she described as widespread violence against women.

Her article is the latest in ongoing commentary and concern by leading political figures about a perceived culture of misogyny among Britain’s young men.

What has been missing from the discussion, however, is how boys themselves feel about being cast as potential abusers, who need to be re-educated about their masculinity.

We asked YouTube broadcaster Josh O’Brien, a 17-year-old sociology and politics student, to respond to Yvette Cooper’s statement.

‘Lad Culture’

The Shadow Home Secretary’s article, follows last year’s high-profile speech by Labour MP Diane Abbott in which she said Britain’s boys are growing up in a culture of “hyper-masculinity”, which she said is fuelling misogyny and homophobia.

Then in February 2014, following the banning of controversial pop song “Blurred Lines” by numerous student unions on the basis that it promoted “rape culture” on campus; the NUS held a summit calling for universities to tackle what it says is an endemic “lad culture” which normalises sexual assault of female students.

Meanwhile, the “Great Men Value Women” initiative has been launched as a pilot workshop for boys in London schools, to ensure that young men take an “active role in promoting gender equality”.

The workshops aim to “improve the experience of boys and girls at school and challenge negative gender stereotypes affect which a boys’ behavior, mental health and academic performance, as well as the ways in which they interact with young women”.

What do you think? Should schools be teaching boys to be “confident feminists”? Do you recognise a widespread culture of misogyny among Britain’s young men? What do you think is the impact on boys and young men of teaching them that they are potential abusers in need of re-education?

Josh O’Brien writes and makes youtube videos from an anti-feminist, pro MRM perspective. He has one novel currently released, Supercenaries, and is working on a gender issues book called “On Gynocentrism and Patriarchy” in his spare time. Watch his other videos on his channel and follow him on twitter @fruitbatob

Further reading: