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Battle of the sexes at Wadham

Following “laddish” behaviour at a recent Student Union meeting, members of Wadham’s feminist group held a discussion on ‘Feminism and Lad Culture’ at their weekly meeting on Sunday.

Anna Bradshaw, one of the organisers, said, “’Feminism and Lad Culture’ has been on our list of potential discussion topics for a while, but we decided to talk about it last week in particular because of events in our SU. It’s something that a lot of people have been talking about at Wadham for the last few weeks.

“In my opinion, lad culture is a problem when it stops being cultural, and starts to become connected to a structure that should be more universal. Having ‘laddish’ sports teams is not a big problem, but sending offensive emails through their mailing lists is.”

Members were invited to “bring your thoughts, speculations, and angriest examples, and get ready to solve (or chat about) ALL THE PROBLEMS (or at least some of them).”

The initial Student Union meeting, which prompted recent discussions on “laddish behaviour,” had involved a motion lobbying college to abolish Meat-Free Mondays. Prior to the meeting, an email was sent out to the Wadham football team mailing list, calling on all members to attend. The email claimed that “vegan rainbow cake-loving wankers” would be “out in force,” and if the motion did not pass “we’re gonna [be] stuck playing find-the-cashew-nut in our shit veggie meals every Monday!”

A member of the Wadham feminist group said, “Recent occurrences like the ‘rainbow vegan cake-eating wankers’ email and finding out about the rugby team’s ‘lady’s half-hour’ were definitely a part of why the Wadham feminists thought it was particularly relevant to have a meeting about lad culture. Although in the past Wadham has always seemed a fairly safe space from all of these things, there are definitely some social spaces in the university that can be threatening to people who don’t fit in with ‘laddish’ ideas about how people ought to present their gender, sexuality and political opinions.’

She added, “In my opinion ‘laddishness’ is the grinning, infantilised face of modern rape culture, and attempts to write off manifestations of it such as Uni Lad, The Lad Bible etc as humour that doesnt hurt anyone are privilege-denying bullshit.”

Although she was reluctant to go into detail about what was discussed, Bradshaw said, “Very generally speaking, we spoke mainly about lad culture as a continuation of the masculine normal; differences and similarities between feminism and lad culture as groups; lad culture as a threat to the feminine, particularly in men; and whether feminism and lad culture are class-specific phenomena.”

“Wadham Feminists meets weekly, and is open to anyone, of any gender, from any college.” Wadham student and member of college football team, Omar Salih, commented, ‘Sorry have you already been to print as I was at an outdoor BBQ this afternoon?’

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