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Pakistan to London

This article originally featured in gal-dem magzine’s “Secrets” Issue. You can buy the magazine here.

In a last ditch effort to become one with my roots, I interviewed my grandma about her immigration story. I thought it would be a perfect setup; she would recount the traditional narrative of immigration from her perspective. We’d bond like never before and I would come out of the interview adorned head to toe in a glamorous sari and magically speaking Urdu.

Turns out it’s really hard to interview your grandma when she’s just not that interested in speaking to you (I’m grandchild number 31 – I’m not even sure she knows who I am). It’s especially hard when you don’t speak the same language.

Every question was a painful process of asking a question, my mother interpreting, and my grandmother responding with something quite vague or completely off topic. At one point I asked her about her trip to England and somewhere amidst the layers of translation, I gathered she was talking about how many times she had been to Hajj.

The next time I asked a question she replied with “have you eaten”? and proceeded to tell my mum to make me some food. The answers because increasingly confusing. Dates, especially, were up for debate. Like my grandma’s birthday; she’s 82 – give or take five years.

I was keen to find out how my grandma had been able to navigate life in a new country. I asked her how she got her children to school in England. She replied by saying her children didn’t go to school. Turns out they had all been to school, they just walked there and grandma wasn’t very involved in the process.

Soon the notion of translating was lost altogether – it became a chat about my grandma between me and my mum while my grandma looked out of the window like a bored, silent witness.

In the rare moments that my mum left the room, I was paralysed by fear. My grandma would say something to me in Urdu, I wouldn’t understand. She’d repeat again in a more exasperated tone. I still wouldn’t understand. I wished so badly in those moments that repeating something in a different language three times would magically make you understand, but instead, I’d jump off the bed and run to find my mum.

At one point, I thought we might be getting somewhere as my grandmother kept urgently repeating the same phrase. Turns out she was telling me to shut the door behind me.

I did get one quote from her though, and it’s a pretty great one: “People told me that England would be so full of marble that you would be slipping everywhere. And I did slip, on all the dog shit!”.

The final blow happened when I had spent hours cobbling together a workable piece. I sent it over to my mother who promptly responded “You cannot print this”. Turns out no one had clocked this was an interview that would be published in print.

My mother proceeded to write up her very own version of events. She sent me through a voice note detailing my grandmother’s story, written entirely by my mother. It began as I imagine any Bollywood movie does, a story “of a couple who loved each other very much and went on to have seven children together and remain very much in love”.

So despite my noble efforts to become at one with my heritage, it turns out my grandmother is just not that interested in sharing her story. Especially to a grandchild she barely knows and who can’t even speak her language. Her immigration story remains a mystery. But who knows, maybe one day I will finally learn Urdu, have some epic bonding experience with her, and learn the real story.

Probably wouldn’t be allowed to print it though.

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What happened when I started a feminist society at my school

This article was originally featured in The Guardian. You can read the full article here. 

I am 17 years old and I am a feminist. I believe in gender equality, and am under no illusion about how far we are from achieving it. Identifying as a feminist has become particularly important to me since a school trip I took to Cambridge last year.

A group of men in a car started wolf-whistling and shouting sexual remarks at my friends and me. I asked the men if they thought it was appropriate for them to be abusing a group of 17-year-old girls. The response was furious. The men started swearing at me, called me a bitch and threw a cup coffee over me.

 

For those men we were just legs, breasts and pretty faces. Speaking up shattered their fantasy, and they responded violently to my voice.

Shockingly, the boys in my peer group have responded in exactly the same way to my feminism.

After returning from this school trip I started to notice how much the girls at my school suffer because of the pressures associated with our gender. Many of the girls have eating disorders, some have had peers heavily pressure them into sexual acts, others suffer in emotionally abusive relationships where they are constantly told they are worthless.

I decided to set up a feminist society at my school, which has previously been named one of “the best schools in the country”, to try to tackle these issues. However, this was more difficult than I imagined as my all-girls school was hesitant to allow the society. After a year-long struggle, the feminist society was finally ratified.

What I hadn’t anticipated on setting up the feminist society was a massive backlash from the boys in my wider peer circle. They took to Twitter and started a campaign of abuse against me. I was called a “feminist bitch”, accused of “feeding [girls] bullshit”, and in a particularly racist comment was told “all this feminism bull won’t stop uncle Sanjit from marrying you when you leave school”.

Our feminist society was derided with retorts such as, “FemSoc, is that for real? #DPMO” [don’t piss me off] and every attempt we made to start a serious debate was met with responses such as “feminism and rape are both ridiculously tiring”.

The more girls started to voice their opinions about gender issues, the more vitriolic the boys’ abuse became. One boy declared that “bitches should keep their bitchiness to their bitch-selves #BITCH” and another smugly quipped, “feminism doesn’t mean they don’t like the D, they just haven’t found one to satisfy them yet.” Any attempt we made to stick up for each other was aggressively shot down with “get in your lane before I par [ridicule] you too”, or belittled with remarks like “cute, they got offended”.

I fear that many boys of my age fundamentally don’t respect women. They want us around for parties, banter and most of all sex. But they don’t think of us as intellectual equals, highlighted by accusations of being hysterical and over sensitive when we attempted to discuss serious issues facing women.

The situation recently reached a crescendo when our feminist society decided to take part in a national project called Who Needs Feminism. We took photos of girls standing with a whiteboard on which they completed the sentence “I need feminism because…”, often delving into painful personal experiences to articulate why feminism was important to them.

When we posted these pictures online we were subject to a torrent of degrading and explicitly sexual comments.

We were told that our “militant vaginas” were “as dry as the Sahara desert”, girls who complained of sexual objectification in their photos were given ratings out of 10, details of the sex lives of some of the girls were posted beside their photos, and others were sent threatening messages warning them that things would soon “get personal”.

We, a group of 16-, 17- and 18-year-old girls, have made ourselves vulnerable by talking about our experiences of sexual and gender oppression only to elicit the wrath of our male peer group. Instead of our school taking action against such intimidating behaviour, it insisted that we remove the pictures. Without the support from our school, girls who had participated in the campaign were isolated, facing a great deal of verbal abuse with the full knowledge that there would be no repercussions for the perpetrators.

It’s been over a century since the birth of the suffragette movement and boys are still not being brought up to believe that women are their equals. Instead we have a whole new battleground opening up online where boys can attack, humiliate, belittle us and do everything in their power to destroy our confidence before we even leave high school.

It is appalling that an institution responsible for preparing young women for adult life has actively opposed our feminist work. I feel like the school is not supporting its girls in a crucial part of their evolution into being strong, assertive, confident women. If that’s the case for a well-established girls’ school, what hope does this generation of women have in challenging the misogyny that still pervades our society?

If you thought the fight for female equality was over, I’m sorry to tell you that a whole new round is only just beginning.

 Altrincham Grammar made the following comment about the feminist society:

“Altrincham Grammar School for Girls has supported Jinan in setting up the society, providing administrative assistance, guidance and proactively suggesting opportunities to help members to explore this issue which they feel passionately about.

“We are committed to protecting the safety and welfare of our students, which extends to their safety online. We consider very carefully any societies that the school gives its name and support to.

“As such, we will take steps to recommend students remove words or images that they place online that could compromise their safety or that of other students at the school.”

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Mind Matters: The mental health taboo at universities

This article was originally featured in The Guardian. You can read the full article here. 

“I was depressed and paranoid”, “I was anxious and out of control”, “I had severe depression, I couldn’t get out of bed and had difficulty speaking to large groups of people”.

These are the experiences of a group of students struggling with their mental health while at university, and they’re not alone. A National Union of Students (NUS) study conducted in May 2013 shows that one in five students consider themselves to have a mental health problem.

 

So why aren’t we talking about this more?

“Students face a particular set of challenges that can leave some struggling to cope,” says Colum McGuire, NUS welfare vice president. Students are under tremendous pressure to succeed academically, to maintain a healthy social life, and many that don’t fit into the traditional 18 year old just-left-home model also face difficulty juggling their university life with other commitments.

The lack of dialogue leaves many sufferers feeling isolated. Rebecca Latz, a first year student at the University of Huddersfield suffered with anxiety when she first started university. She describes feeling “abnormal” in comparison to her peers: “My friends were all really chilled out. I was the only really obviously anxious one.”

Habiba Khanom, a third-year student at City University London, suffered from an eating disorder, depression and social anxiety. She says: “I felt like I had no one to talk to. I found it hard to make friends because I felt like if I told someone, they wouldn’t want to be friends with me.”

When mental health is discussed, it is often met with a patronising response, albeit with good intentions.

Students are sometimes told “there’s nothing to panic about”, people often don’t know what to say, and one anonymous student felt as though the people she spoke to were “missing the point entirely”.

This misunderstanding of mental health problems can lead to its sufferers feeling increasingly burdensome and some may retreat into further isolation.

One anonymous student says: “When people begin to feel a burden and shut off it becomes a real problem.”

There needs to be a shift in the way that we view and speak about mental health. The stigma attached to mental health problems is damaging to those that need to voice their experiences. The fear of being misunderstood, of being embarrassed or of being patronised, smothers those that are in search of care or a listening ear.

At universities there are counselling services in place to help those who are struggling with mental health problems, but are they doing enough? One anonymous student says it took him six weeks to get an appointment with his university’s counselling service, and another says the lack of emotional support she received from her university left her feeling “afraid of asking anyone for help entirely”.

Chris Leaman, policy manager at Young Minds, says: “Students feel that universities only care about the results and they’re not investing in their welfare. Some universities have not had a clear policy and route to help students out with mental health”

Alan Percy, a representative of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and head of the counselling service at the University of Oxford, fears that newer universities may “slash all support services” to offer “bargain price” degrees at lower fees.

Campaigns to change the stigma around mental health are spreading across UK universities. Time for Change aims to encourage people to speak openly about mental health.

Yet students can still fall through the net, and Nightline, a helpline which provides emotional support to students, is only present in 90 UK universities and colleges.

In the NUS study into mental health, only one in ten of students surveyed went to the university authorities for help. We may be moving forward in talking about mental health, but we still have a way to go.

Mental health fluctuations affect us all, some more than others. We need to ensure that the correct systems are in place for everyone. The way to do that is to speak openly about mental health and remove the stigma which silences sufferers of mental health problems.

Students need to be reassured that they will get complete support from the university if they are having trouble with their mental health; and should be aware that these systems of support exist and that they should never be ashamed to use them.

We need to create safe environments where those struggling with mental health can talk about their experiences, both with other students and in counseling spaces. We all have a responsibility to be open and continue this conversation about mental health. Because no one should go through this alone.

If you have been affected by any of the issues mentioned in this piece, contact Samaritans or Nightline.

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Women are still terrified of reporting rape

Our culture devalues female experiences of violence, while men, such as Ched Evans, who are convicted of rape are often pitied in the media.

This article was originally featured in The Guardian. You can read the original article here. 

Media coverage of sexual violence never seems to be higher, yet it paints an inconsistent and incomplete picture that has left many of us confused. From reports that complaints of sexual violence are on the rise, to the public naming for the second time of the woman who was raped by professional footballer, Ched Evans, we learn that more women are coming forward but that they are far from always being believed.

Police figures released by the Office for National Statistics reveal that the number of rapes reported increased by 29% in the year to June. The police are quick to point to the growing confidence in victims to come forward and report rape. Yet police forces continue to woefully underperform when it comes to investigating rapes through to successful convictions. In the year 2013-14, a third of rape cases were dropped. This continued record of failure discourages women from reporting rape as institutions repeatedly demonstrate that they cannot deliver justice.

Beyond police forces, universities too are failing rape victims. One in four students at university receive unwanted sexual advances, yet only a tiny proportion of these incidents are reported.

In the Cambridge University Student Union’s women’s campaign survey into sexual harassment at the university, 88% of respondents who said they had experienced sexual harassment did not report the incident. Moreover, in many institutions policies to stamp out sexual harassment fail to provide adequate support for victims or to encourage them to come forward.

At my college in Cambridge, for instance, the harassment policy fails to state that it will investigate any complaint that is made, or that students who do make a complaint will be protected from adverse social or academic consequences. Instead, it warns that those who make false accusations will face severe consequences for disrupting the college community and “causing much stress. This is emphasised more than once in the policy. The focus on false accusations feeds into the culture of fear that intimidates victims from reporting rape.

The harassment policy also suggests one should speak to the perpetrator of the harassment to “reconcile”. It says: “Complaints of harassment may often, it is hoped, be resolved informally in consultation with the complainant.” This is obviously a distressing and potentially traumatising prospect for most victims of rape or sexual assault. What’s more, the policy does not even list what constitutes sexual harassment, thus leaving any victim feeling helpless and cautious when considering whether or not to report an incident. The body of support that is so desperately needed to encourage victims to come forward does not exist in most universities.

The cultural context that we live in also plays a role in discouraging the reporting of rape, along with adequate penalties for rapists. Men convicted of rape are often pitied in the media and, like Evans, quickly vault back to positions of fame. When US National Football League player, Ray Rice, viciously beat his fiancé unconscious, the media circulated a video to feed the public’s morbid curiosity. When men kill their partners, (twice a week in the UK) the world forgets the woman victim’s name as in the case of Reeva Steenkamp.

Coming forward in a culture that devalues female experiences of violence is extremely difficult, and if we really want to see a dramatic shift in how rape is dealt with as a crime we need to change our society’s treatment of violence against women. But there are still so many women who are terrified of reporting rape because the institutions that ought to be helping them threaten, traumatise, vilify and ultimately fail them. The attitudes of institutions and the backdrop of popular culture leads rape victims to doubt themselves, internalise feelings of shame and guilt and to suppress their experiences.

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Why all students need sexual consent education

This article was originally featured in The Guardian. You can read the original article here. 

Rape and sexual assault are rife in British universities: men and women need to be taught that sex requires enthusiastic verbal agreement.

The meaning of sexual consent is often misunderstood in disturbing ways by young people. There’s the idea that if you wear sexy clothing you’re asking for it; that silence during a sex act equals consent; and that women are always falsely accusing men of sexual assault and rape. Surveys have shown that one in two boys and one in three girls think it is OK to sometimes hit a woman or force her to have sex. All of which suggests a new approach is necessary. We need to teach young women and men about affirmative, enthusiastic and informed consent.

This year colleges at Cambridge University have introduced consent talks and workshops after a student survey revealed 77% of respondents had experienced some form of sexual harassment. This culture isn’t restricted to Cambridge. It’s estimated that more than 400,000 women are sexually assaulted each year in England and Wales, and I have friends in universities across the UK who have described being raped, assaulted or coerced into sex. One friend, who has been sexually pressured on a number of occasions, confessed that she was afraid of men walking out on her if she didn’t do what they wanted.

 

The introduction of consent education in Cambridge sparked controversy among students. It was suggested that the workshops and talks would be patronising and useless, because everyone already knew about consent. Some students reacted to the idea that consent workshops should be compulsory by saying this would be a “contradiction in terms”. One, writing in Cambridge’s Varsity newspaper, was furious that consent workshops equated rape, “a criminal act”, with “behaviour they [women] find offensive”. Others responded: “As future leaders, it is our responsibility to support [consent workshops].”

It’s an odd argument that these talks and workshops should be supported simply because students will soon be in positions of power. It’s also worrying that their introduction fuelled such a backlash. Universities are in desperate need of consent workshops because rape and sexual assault are rife in these environments. The Hidden Marks report by the National Union of Students showed that, from a nationwide sample of 2,000 female students, one in seven had been seriously physically or sexually assaulted, 68% had been subjected to sexual harassment, and 16% had experienced unwanted kissing or touching during their time at university. In other words, ask any female student and it’s highly probable that she will have a story to tell you about sexual harassment, which either she or someone she knows has experienced.

I think some of the fear around consent workshops stems from the way they bring rape so worryingly close to home. They acknowledge that a rapist isn’t just a stranger in a dark alley – it’s more likely to be the person next door who you were too drunk to consent to sleep with, or the friend who refused your request to stop halfway through. We need consent classes to teach students that sex is an activity that requires the enthusiastic verbal agreement of all participants. No absolutely means no. And yes absolutely means yes.

But the workshops are also a chance to discuss the subtleties of particular situations – those in which a person may not be able to consciously consent to sex, or those in which “yes” is assumed. Consent has to be a conscious, willing agreement, made without pressure or coercion.

Consent workshops aren’t about preaching or judging. I attended a training session earlier this year that explained how they would work, and we discussed the sorts of things in everyday life we typically ask consent for. This ranged from seeing if a chair is free, to going to the toilet during a class. It revealed that we ultimately ask for people’s consent all the time, so in sex it should be no different. We also discussed how to “check in” with your partner, to see if they consent at different stages of an encounter, and the ways in which people in ongoing relationships can negotiate an understanding of consent. When feeding back to the session, the phrase that kept being repeated was “Just ask”.

The idea of affirmative and enthusiastic consent encourages people to regard sex as a positive, willing action. It’s about teaching women and men not to be ashamed of sex, and to proceed consciously and confidently. An understanding of consent engenders respect for everyone: from those who choose to refrain from sex to those who are in relationships, and those who engage in sex in a wide variety of situations. Consent is about ensuring that people are completely comfortable in their sexual decisions, whatever those might be.

Colleges at Cambridge have taken a big step by introducing consent talks and workshops – but I’d like to see these made compulsory in all universities across the UK. The workshops bring home the difficult truth that we are all capable of violating someone else’s consent, while creating a safe space to discuss the meaning of consenting positively and enthusiastically. They are empowering, and absolutely necessary.

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It’s time for Muslim women to embrace vulnerability

This article was originally featured in gal-dem. You can read the original article here. 

Recently an image of a woman, Saffiyah Khan, protecting another Muslim woman went viral. In this photo, Saffiyah is seen standing up to a raging EDL protester, unphased by the abuse being hurled at her. This image has fast become a symbol of Muslim women’s resistance to Islamophobia. Saffiyah was defending a fellow Muslim woman in a threatening situation and she should be applauded for her bravery. But we should not restrict ourselves to solely celebrating Muslim women’s defiance.

Women in broader society have begun embracing the value of vulnerability and Muslim women also need the space to express their whole selves. In a TED talk that went viral in 2010, American Professor Brene Brown explained the power of vulnerability. In her research, she explains that “we associate vulnerability with emotions we want to avoid such as fear, shame, and uncertainty. Yet we too often lose sight of the fact that vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, belonging, creativity, authenticity, and love.” This message had a profound impact on women all over the world, with her talk racking up almost 30 million views.

“But this defensiveness shuts down the space that Muslim women should be allowed in order to question things”

For Muslim women, however, it still feels too dangerous to be vulnerable. Hate crimes have doubled since Brexit, and Muslim women who wear headscarves are particularly at risk. In March, the European court of justice ruled to ban the hijab in the workplace. With attacks from all sides, Muslim women around Europe, understandably responded with fervour, protesting outside the French embassy in London in March, and across Sweden on International Workers’ Day.

As others tried to threaten or control them, Muslim women answered with the defence of symbols like the headscarf – extolling its virtues, celebrating it as a form of liberation, and protecting it as a core part of their faith. But this defensiveness shuts down the space that Muslim women should be allowed in order to question things like the headscarf, to wonder if it is the right choice for them, and even to change their minds about whether or not they want to embrace it.  

The need to present a unified front in the face of challenges to their identity is stifling Muslim women. Muslim women deserve to have a space to explore their multifaceted identities. They should be afforded the same nuance that others are given. They should not feel like they have to carry the weight of defending Islam on their shoulders and silence the parts of themselves that are uncertain in the process. It is time to develop spaces where vulnerability is allowed, accepted, and celebrated alongside defiance.

“Muslim women are complex, multidimensional, and have layers of identities”

A recently published anthology entitled The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Speak, is a valuable start. This anthology, filled with poems, plays, articles and short stories celebrates the art created by a variety of Muslim women in all media. It is not prescriptive, it does not make every writer talk about their experiences of being a British Muslim woman. Instead, it offers a space and platform for Muslim women to openly express their vulnerabilities through their art. The anthology showed that Muslim women are complex, multidimensional, and have layers of identities. They’re not one monolithic force.

I have been embracing my own vulnerability by sharing my own experiences. I wore a headscarf for years. I defended it to the hilt when people questioned it – despite being unhappy with wearing it. Then I decided to take it off. As a result, I felt like I had lost a part of myself, and like I had betrayed my family and my Muslim friends. Living as a Muslim woman can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be frustrating, complicated and confusing. Admitting that makes me feel stronger.

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We march in solidarity with Palestine

This article originally featured on gal-dem’s website. You can read the original article here. 

Monday saw the biggest single massacre of Palestinian people since 2014. 58 Palestinians have been reported killed and at least 2,700 were wounded in Gaza, as Israeli military shot into crowds of unarmed protesters.

People within Gaza were protesting the US moving its embassy to Jerusalem. They were also protesting in the lead up to Nakba day – named by Palestinians to remember the day May 15, 1948, when over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes, displaced and without promise of return, to make way for the creation of Israel.

Since March 30, Palestinians in Gaza have been taking part in a number of demonstrations known as the Great Return March to protest their dispossession and their right to return as refugees. Since this date, at least 109 Palestinians have been killed and around 12,000 injured.

Yesterday in Downing Street, a demonstration was called to show solidarity with the Great Return March in Gaza, protest the unlawful killing of civilians in Gaza, and to call on the UK government to stand up for Palestinian rights in accordance with its obligation under international law.

Maisam, an attendee of the protest, left her family and friends behind in Gaza three years ago to do a masters degree in the UK. She hasn’t made it back to see them since. “Yesterday was one of those days that I feared since I left Gaza”, she says. “It’s so hard to be so far away. Sometimes, because of the internet issues, I have to wait overnight until I can hear from them just to know if they are ok. When something like this happens I don’t know what I can do to protect my family. I had to take the day off work today, because with everything that’s happening, how can I maintain a normal life?”

When I ask Maisam what this protest meant to her, she tells me that demonstrations like these are powerful acts of solidarity with those in Gaza: “I know that if people in Gaza are watching this now, they’re going to feel like the world is finally taking notice.”

Bashar, another Palestinian protester from Gaza tells me what he demands from Theresa May “We’re here to tell Theresa May to get her act together. The British government portrays itself to be a protector of human rights and humanity, yet humanity is being killed every day in Gaza.”

The crowds chant “Free free Palestine” and “1234, occupation no more, 5678, Israel is a terror state” and banners demanding a “stop [to] the massacre in Gaza” and “stop arming Israel” float above our heads.

Another protester speaks to me about her relation to Palestine through her Israeli roots: “My family is Israeli and some of them try to fight for Palestinian justice from within Israel. I’m here today in solidarity with the incredible power and resistance and resilience of the people in Gaza who are doing these protests every week. They’re walking out every week and they know they’re going to get shot. Can you even imagine the bravery that takes?”

The protester also comments on the politics that uphold a system of occupation in Palestine: “I don’t think people talk enough about the extreme rise of fascism within the Israeli state as a way that the Israeli state maintains its occupation. I think some serious political analysis of the politics of the Israeli state is necessary if we are to help dismantle the steps on which the occupation stands.”

As I speak to people whose lives and families have been destroyed by the Israeli occupation, I think back to the last protest I’d been on. It was protesting Donald Trump’s inauguration, and tens of thousands gathered in the very spot I stand today to show their anger at the appointment of a racist, misogynistic bigot as the world’s most powerful leader. Yet as I look around at the protest today I am shocked at how few of my peers attended. 

Some cited their busy schedules – which on a London weekday for an emergency protest is perhaps fair enough. But others cited something I have heard over and over again from my peer group in the past years. It’s the idea that they “just don’t know enough” to attend a protest, sign a petition, or share a post about Palestine and Israel. Wanting to not come across as overly political, or worse still, anti-semitic, they shy away from all interaction with the topic.

I am the first to say that there are deep gaps in my knowledge around certain areas of history, politics, and religion. But, attending this protest has shown me that understanding is consolidated and built on through these events, and through hearing other people’s stories and experiences.

I know that I believe in fighting for the dignity, human rights and freedom of a people who have been immorally subjugated for 70 years. And after attending this protest, I feel like I can say that with more confidence than before.

As one protester says, “Gaza is essentially an open-air prison, with people not having access to the most basic human dignity. And, in the most recent attack, we’re seeing their right to life is also being denied.”

 

Ways to support Palestine:

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Rape culture at university needs urgent action

This article was originally featured in The Guardian. You can read the original article here. 

I came home after my first term at Cambridge to many shocking stories about friends’ experiences at university. Almost all described how they had been sexually violated: some had had their drinks spiked, others had been taken advantage of while drunk, and one had been raped. Rape culture in our universities urgently needs to be addressed.

One friend described her experience of being sexually assaulted in the toilets of a club. It was the second night of freshers week and she was out with her friends. She kissed a guy, but after a while tried to walk away. He followed her and pulled her to the toilets. He began to undo his trousers. She said no, but he was persistent.

 

She was too drunk to move him physically out of the way or to call for help. Luckily her phone rang – a concerned friend was searching for her. She managed to leave the cubicle, but the experience was a sombre introduction to university life.

One terrified girl spoke of being raped by another student. There was not a shred of ambiguity in the situation. She said no, he insisted, and in the end he forcefully took her virginity. She has been scared to be intimate with anyone since.

I spoke to a close friend who recalled the multiple times that her drink had been spiked. She described her worst night: blacking out after 9pm, and waking up the next day with no idea of what happened. Another friend remembers being taken home by a stranger after asking him for directions, and recalls nothing beyond him coming into her flat. She is almost certain she was raped.

There is a persistence of rape culture in university social life, and little is being done to tackle it. Questions about sexual consent are rarely addressed by our institutions of higher education, and a “laddish” approach to women’s sexual rights is pervasive. While some universities warn women to protect themselves, few attempt to educate men about a woman’s right consciously to consent to sexual acts.

At Cambridge, “swaps” between men and women of different colleges are a well-known social event. These dinners create an atmosphere in which women are heavily encouraged to drink to the point at which they become sexually vulnerable to the men.

One male friend admitted that swaps are “a bit rapey” and resolved not to go back. Other boys, meanwhile, talk of “success rates” at swaps – that is to say how many managed to have sex with girls afterwards. One boy said: “I only came on this swap because I heard there was a 70% success rate last year.”

Swaps are usually accompanied by sexist themes in order to pressure the girls into dressing provocatively. In my first week at university, I was invited to a swap which was themed “what were you wearing when the police invaded the brothel?”

This is part of a rape culture which leads boys to see women primarily as objects for their sexual satisfaction. It’s part of a wider culture that teaches girls to be sexual in accordance to men’s desires, but shames them if they explore their own sexuality.

Most of all, it’s a culture that belittles a woman’s right to say no. Joking about rape is a core part of the laddish environment that I have witnessed at university. At one student party, a boy was asked about “rapiest” thing he had done. He said 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.”

It’s worrying that some boys who are studying to become doctors, lawyers, scientists and teachers think that it’s acceptable to take advantage of a girl regardless of her consent. It’s disturbing that they find it amusing to encourage girls to drink to the point when they can no longer refuse to have sex with them.

Our universities cannot go on like this. Girls enter university and find themselves in a world of sexual assault, objectification and harassment. We’re shown that even if you say no, he can still have sex with you. That it’s your fault if you were too drunk, and that your clothes ask for the attention. We’re being told to shut up and cover up.

A recent NUS study shows that women students are at increased risk of sexual harassment and violence. Such a toxic environment is hindering the emotional development of young men and women. Yet there is no policy in place to help eradicate this aspect of university life.

Universities must create a strategy for tackling this issue, beginning with the introduction of compulsory consent workshops for all students, if we are to have any hope of eradicating the insidious rape culture that is currently going unchallenged.

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Technology is inherently political

This article originally appeared on The Social Change Agency blog. You can read the original article here. 

These were the words of Andrea Figari, Director of Community Engagement at Tactical Tech during the Activism in the Quantified society workshop at The Glass Room. Technology is growing at a rapid pace, and our awareness of our digital rights and privacy aren’t growing at the same rate.

That’s why The Glass Room has come to London. For those of you who don’t know, The Glass Room is a tech pop-up exhibition. Walking around it, you feel like you’re in an episode of The Black Mirror as statistics and toy models and books about how much data huge companies have on you litter the room.

As The Glass Room put it, they are a “disruptive intervention that urges visitors to reevaluate how we use technology and offers a space for reflection”. And it’s completely necessary.

It’s especially necessary when we think about tech in relation to civil society. As activists across the globe are being subject to greater scrutiny and surveillance, where has our right to digital privacy gone? It was only this year that 10 human rights defenders in Turkey were arrested whilst attending a conference on digital security.

These are topics that must be addressed if we want to live in a world that promotes freedom and democracy. However, some of these changes can happen from within.

The question of data protection and privacy does not only apply to the corporate sector. The charity sector is also responsible for ensuring the data of their supporters is adequately protected. Often, it’s even more important in the charity sector, who may be dealing with marginalised communities, to protect the data of their supporters or beneficiaries.

Charities are doing a fantastic job of protecting people’s civil liberties and providing huge amounts of people with a route to speak to power. But there’s been a growing amount of mistrust between charities, the public and decision makers, and trust is essential in mobilising people to create change.

Technology, data protection and digital privacy are all intertwined in digital campaigning, and we need to address this problem creatively and collaboratively.