This article was originally featured in The Guardian. You can read the original article here.
From ‘no-muffing’ events to sexist chants: sports societies can be hives of sexist activity and it’s time things changed.
In my college bar at Cambridge University, I tried to say hi to a friend. He didn’t speak to me. I could see his mouth attempt to move, and I could also see his friend’s penetrative stare stop him in his tracks.
We stood in awkward silence until my friend pulled me away, whispering in my ear that this was part of a rugby social game. The game is called “no muffing”. Its rules are as follows: no speaking to a female unless she is your waitress. If you break this, you get punched in the face.
Cambridge sports teams are not alone in having incredibly sexist themes to their social events. There’s the rugby group in Oxford, whose social secretary sent an e-mail to the team encouraging them to spike a fresher’s drink. The title of the e-mail was “Free Pussy”.
Also reported last year, was the college rugby club at Durham University playing the “it’s not rape if…” game. And the group of hockey lads at Stirling university singing a sexist and racist chant on a bus. The very same chant was used in a Varsity rugby match at Cambridge University months later.
We have been bombarded with images and news stories showing the ugly side of sports teams. Their activities, laden with sexist overtones, are reflective of a wider culture of hypermasculinity and sexism at university. Students are starting to recognise that this needs to change.
A student from DeMontfort University, Leicester, regards the people in the rugby and football societies as “disgusting”. The student says: “When they’re out on the town they seem to think they have the right to touch or grope any girl they want.”
Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, says: “Sports culture reveals that there’s a huge amount of pressure on boys, a hypermasculinity that they’re pressured to perpetuate.
“Some young boys have said that they would really like to stand up and be able to support girls, but when they’ve tried, they’ve been ridiculed’.
For many, sports teams are a place of security, especially when suddenly unsettled by the switch from home to university life. One boy at Cambridge University described being part of a sports team as the “easiest way of being accepted”.
Yet he also mentioned the pressure that ensued once becoming part of the team, saying he was “sucked into” the lad banter.
This lad banter usually entails the humiliation of women. I spoke to one member of a university rowing team who said: “When we row we instantly rate the girls rowing near us. I know it’s chauvinistic, but I don’t give a shit”.
Another dismissed the idea of the “no muffing” game as being offensive: “it was pretty harmless, the confusion on the girls was funny”.
Bates describes the effects of this sort of attitude: “It dehumanises women. In order to prove yourself as a man you also have to show this disrespect of women.”
This is a problem that has been recognised by many university sports teams, and it is being increasingly addressed through workshops and conferences. A programme set up by students and graduates in Oxford called ‘The Good Lad Workshop’ aims to tackle the existence of lad culture in sports.
“Traditionally sports teams and groups of men are seen to be quite masculine,” says Dave Llewellyn, who runs the programme.
“When people actually sit down and chat they realise that everyone is on the same page, that no one is endorsing this behaviour. They just do it because they think that’s what everyone else does.
“I think in some cases there are students who feel ostracised by some behaviour and so don’t join a team or don’t stay as part of a team and I think that’s disappointing.”
In Stirling University there are efforts to address the struggles and barriers that women face in sport, culminating in the Women in Sport conference in October.
Rebecca Gracey, organiser of the conference says: “There is no denying that at time the atmosphere within [sports] clubs can be negative and offensive to others. The real aim and vision is to have a level playing field and slowly but surely we are seeing small steps in achieving this.”
It’s time that university sports teams critically assess the image that they give off to prospective participants. Sports teams have the potential to be powerfully inclusive, welcoming and community-forming environments.
University sports teams need to divest of the cult of masculinity that alienates other men and degrades women. They need to start making steps towards creating a safe environment that isn’t based on humiliation, intimidation or pressure.