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.