Sit down, speak up: an open letter

Dear men and boys, do you hate women?
No?

Then why are there so many cases of women and girls being made the subject of cruel and demoralising ‘banter’?

Why is it tolerated for those who answered no to my first question to sing songs like ‘shut the f**k up, do the f***ing washing up’ and to call a girl a ‘skank’ and a ‘slut’ for no reason other than that she is female?

Why is it tolerated that boys get a special ‘lad culture’, a ‘brotherhood of banter’ which allows them to club together and adopt a mentality that sees women as objects and prizes to ‘score’, or weaker and lesser beings to ridicule?

Why is it tolerated that they are protected by phrases such as ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘it’s just a joke’?

I’m asking because, time and time again, not only am I seeing these things happen and experiencing just how painful they are to hear, but I’m also seeing more and more instances where girls either don’t feel the need to stand up for themselves, or feel as if they can’t. It’s a tragedy that it is so engrained into our culture that girls are made fun of by ‘lads’ and are expected to take it because it’s ‘just a bit of fun’. There is nothing funny about demoralising someone because of their gender.

“Why are there so many cases of women and girls being made the subject of cruel and demoralising ‘banter’?” 

The sex that you were born as is never a weakness. It should not be tolerated by anyone that people act like this. It is an insult to our development as human beings.

On Monday October 27 I was on the same Uni Express bus as a group of boys from the Men’s Football Club. I had just had a friendly exchange with their captain Tom, who had told me they were initiating their freshers and encouraging them to tell a joke or a fact and then sing a song. It was all fun and everyone (even people not from the club) were smiling and having a good time. At one point, a fresher told a fact that I (in the spirit of the joke) corrected. I was then delighted to hear one of the leaders of the group bringing the boys in for a song directed at me – “shut the f**k up, do the f***ing washing up”.

I made it clear that I wasn’t going to take that, and the rest of the journey consisted of constantly being reminded of my ‘place’ as a woman, being made fun of for standing up to myself and experiencing multiple sexist jibes and jokes at my expense. Some of the freshers quickly followed the lead of their seniors and joined in too. When I left the bus I heard myself being called a ‘skank’ and a ‘slut’, I turned around and asked whoever said that to come and say that to my face; I was met with a group of supposedly innocent faces.

Was I wrong in standing up for myself? Was it right that I was made fun of because of my gender?

How many of those boys would have said that they were just having fun and they didn’t really mean it? How many of those boys had sisters, girlfriends, aunties, mothers – that wouldn’t tolerate having such things said to them?

And that leads me back to my first question: do they hate women? The answer is that probably every one of those boys guilty of getting involved doesn’t hate women and probably aren’t actually sexist or misogynistic most of the time. The problem is that they get caught up in the ‘banter’ and don’t look at how what they are saying affects others around them. All it would have taken was one of the boys in a position of authority to say enough was enough and that’s not what their club was about. All it would have taken was for someone to not call me standing up for myself a ‘rant’ and giving the freshers extra points for ‘pissing her off ’. But they didn’t. They had every opportunity to say no and call it to an end, but instead, I got called a ‘bitch’.

I am not a ‘bitch’ for refusing to accept misogyny.

The question isn’t just whether you hate women. It is: do you hate yourself? Do you want yourself to be seen by others as a sexist bully? Would you act that way in front of your family or anyone that you respect?

This is more than what happened to me on Monday night, because when you insult a woman like that you aren’t just insulting one gender, you’re actually insulting the other billions of people in the world who are tolerant, kind and don’t want to live in a world where anyone feels like a target. This ‘lad culture’ is absolute poison and it doesn’t just target women: it’s homophobic and racist too, and I’m sad to say it doesn’t even stop there.

I also must emphasise to all those people who worry that if they don’t join in then they would be called ‘weak’: acting like a ‘lad’ does not equate to your masculinity.

I must also highlight that as human beings, we are responsible for the world that we live in and we are responsible for creating a non-violent and tolerant community. Therefore in response to the football team’s generous offer to “get to the bottom of what happened” ,“before anything is posted in the Boar”, regarding “some unacceptable behaviour from one or two of the boys on Monday night” – I politely decline, because you had an opportunity to discipline “the boys culpable” that night and you had the opportunity to exert your authority and stop what was happening. But you did not. Instead you chose to involve yourself in the behaviour and sit idly by. I will never roll over for sexism and I refuse to have the incident downplayed to ‘one or two of the boys’. This response demonstrates clearly that more often than not, the ‘lads’ involved in the banter do not want to be seen as sexist bullies, because in normal life, they aren’t.

“I am not a ‘bitch’ for refusing to accept misogyny. The question isn’t just whether you hate women. It is: do you hate yourself?”

However, that just isn’t good enough. I won’t accept it, and nobody else should either.

Boys, remember this: When you were first conceived, before you had fingers, toes or even a heart – you were neither male nor female. Read what I just wrote imagining the scenario it had been slightly different and you were born female.

How would you have felt, sat on that bus?

The only way that we can get rid of this poison is by accepting our own individual responsibility to the world that we want to live in. If you witness such behaviour, no matter who it is – tell them that it is wrong, refuse to accept it and don’t get involved. Only by standing up to this unacceptable bullying, no matter who it’s targeting, will it stop.

I stood up for myself because I’m a woman and I’m proud of it – and nobody has the right to tell me otherwise.