There were two defining moments of my noughth week as a postgraduate. The first was the moment the doors were closed to the outside university during a talk about graduate women in academia. The discussion in progress concerned harassment, because it is, apparently, so rife that any female student’s supervisor is one move away from indecent behaviour at any moment. And those doors were shut on a room in the Exam Schools, the walls of which were covered in portraits of old, dead, white men. The doors were closed to protect the old, surviving, white men from knowing the truth about themselves and their forbears.
The second defining moment was discovering the OxStu’s Agony Lad’s Oxford Bucket List. To provide a summary for those of you who are blessed with the ignorance of this particular highlight of the Freshers’ pull out guide, the Agony Lad, a regular feature of the OxStu, purports that you will receive a Fail if you, among other things: vom in a tutorial, knock someone up, or speak in a Union debate. Thirds are awarded to those who get (fucking) wasted, give Agony Lad a hand-job, and pull at Park End. Seconds to any of you who suck the Agony Knob or have sex in a library, and firsts to anyone who gets Proctored. Or pulls a tutor. Or lets the Agony Lad ‘sneak meat in the back door’. This last, and therefore most ‘prestigious’, act on his syllabus removes the hint of consent that was just about present in the previous items. This is what surprised me: to remove agency from the most ‘highly-valued’ sexual act on the list is to undermine agency and consent in those that went before it.
The Cherwell reported in 0th week that the University of Oxford is joint second in the world according to the THE World Rankings. The student population of Oxford is obviously not stupid enough to take Agony Lad’s Bucket List at face value; it is clearly a joke. I’m not offended, though doubtless others are. I am disappointed. I am disappointed that an institution which has turned out some of the best thinkers, both male and female, in the last century provides this to their freshers in a complimentary bag as they arrive at the Exam Schools for their first foray into extra-curricular student life. I am disappointed that this stereotype endures. I am also disappointed at the poor humour contained here: one can fail for both drinking too much (vomming in a tutorial) and drinking too little (becoming tee-total). But I digress. I am disappointed that the Agony Lad feels the need to derive his humour and his self-worth by what he can do to a woman, and what a woman can permit him, or not, to do to her body.
It is therefore absolutely no wonder that the university feels the need to host specific talks aimed at women entering graduate study if attitudes like this are commonplace. Just three pages beyond the Agony Lad’s comprehensive list is the bio and contact information for Sarah Pine, the VP for Women. I labour under no illusions that a significant portion of undergraduate life is about sex, in one shape or other. However, for those of us who wish to distance ourselves from this behavior and these attitudes towards women, it is culturally isolating to see it spelled out so starkly and deliberately in Oxford’s second most widely-read student paper.
And is where taste comes in. Clearly this is tasteless; it doesn’t take my degree in English Literature to notice that it is an entirely taste-free zone. However, the care taken in hyphenating “hand” and “job”, or the dutifully capitalized P in “Proctored” tell the casual reader that this was not put together in a hurry. Thought went into the Agony Lad’s offering. If enough care was taken with this piece to check all the spellings (I note that “Knob” is both spelt with a K and capitalized) then enough care could, and should, have been taken to, you know, check that women were not being purely defined by what they will and will not do with a man. Because Oxford didn’t get to being second in the world because some fresher let a Blue violate her in the name of banter. We as a student body are in danger of looking like imposters now we’ve got here if Agony Lad is going to be anywhere near our student press.
So, back to graduate women in academia and the closed door. Sexism is still ingrained in higher education, whether it’s the pay gap, or the rife sexual harassment, or the snide comments from more senior fellows. This university needs to face the way it tackles issues of gender equality. Women entering academia might not need extra encouragement at graduate level if discriminatory and disrespectful attitudes are not fostered and propagated from the very first day of university. And yes, even in the guise of humour. There are funnier things to write in a freshers’ guide to Oxford that do not concern non-consensual anal sex. Stop perpetuating stereotypes that do none of us any favours and keep your humour consistent. Agony Lad’s logic is lacking: one surely cannot fail if one is required both never to pull at Oxford and to knock someone up. The mind boggles.
