UniLad, Lads and a Culture of Rape

As men we know what men are. We know what they talk about, when there are no women around. The language and the borderline, or overtly misogynistic culture that seems endemic in 'all male' environments. So in some ways, the tone and references made in Unilad should not have surprised or shocked me, but they did. They shocked me, because the 'Unilad' community think that talking about women in this way is acceptable to the society in which they live. To be precise, the surprise is that this kind of language is not exceptional and hidden, it has become embedded in the context of their everyday lives - it has become normal and in seeing it as normal they feel able to share it with the wider world. It is this presumption of normality on the part of the men concerned that is perhaps most disturbing.

The Unilad website and Facebook page has angered a great number of people and true to form the usual response to any kind of challenge, is to state that the whole thing was some form of joke and that people or feminists who don't get it should get back in the 'kitchen'. But they are of course missing the point and failing to realise that their views and 'humour' play an important part in sustaining what can only be described as a culture of misogyny and rape. The statistics speak for themselves.

In the 12 months between 2008 and 2009 over 43,000 people went to the police and stated that they had been subject to a serious sexual assault, most of these will have been women. Because of the appallingly low conviction rates for rape (which between 2007-2008 was only 6.7%), the government estimates that up to 95% of serious sexual crime goes unreported. On that basis we can estimate that in 2008-2009 there may have been as many 860000 serious sexual assaults - most of which will have been against women.  So if we accept that the real level of sexual crime could be up to 20 times greater than the reported rate - then a woman is far more likely to be sexually assaulted than involved in personal theft, she is more likely to be sexually assaulted than have her car stolen and she is far more likely to be the victim of serious sexual assault than she is to be burgled. In short, serious sexual assault is something that probably affects a far greater number of women in this country than we realise.

So the rape, sexual assault and denigration of women- is not something that I think that the Lads of UniLad or elswhere should be joking about - because lads - the prevalence of serious sexaul assault in our society means that the victims have every chance of being your sister, your mother and your future wife. But you will never know and they will never feel able to tell you, because deep down they will know what you are - part of the problem.