Oxford University Rugby Club has launched GoodLad, a campaign aiming for the “remodelling of masculintiy”, following NUS’ strongly critical report into ‘Lad Culture’, which identified extra-curricular activities, sports and nights-out as particularly problematic.
OURFC’s campaign is part of a wider OUSU-led programme to improvement awareness of sexual consent issues, called ‘It Happens Here.’ The programme will focus on drinking societies and University sports teams in particular.
Daniel Guinness, one of the founders, told Cherwell, “Remodeling of masculinity is what these workshops are about.
“As well as encouraging men to seriously reflect upon on their relationship with women in these sessions, discussions about male bonding will also be an important part of GoodLad.”
A representative of FemSoc, Alice Nutting said, “‘Lad culture’ may seem
like a harmless joke but it revolves around dangerous expectations of
‘masculine’ behavior… Hopefully GoodLad will be an accessible platform for men to discuss and question ideas about gender, sexual consent and communication.”
GoodLad will also target crewdating. Guinness continued, “We are trying to get this initiative driven by women and female societies by having them commit to preferentially [sic] crew date groups who have done
the workshops.”
This would involve allowing GoodLad to approve teams on crewdater.com, the online crew dating website. Guinness added, “We’re conscious that there are other equally important issues (homophobia being prominent amongst these) to be tackled. I think that it’s very important that men have a positive masculinity to aspire to, and the confidence to act upon this.”
