Calling your sexism ironic doesn’t make it funny

When it comes to student stereotypes, I never quite know what to think.

Do VK-necking rugby players actually like shouting out Rihanna lyrics, or is it all ironic?

Do history of art students roll their own fags because it’s cheaper or because they think it’ll make them look cooler?

Do I actually believe in these clichés or do I know I’m exaggerating to make a point?

One of the most interesting cases of this that I have come across is sports and drinking societies.

The view is often floated that men in these groups are not actually the lads that they seem to be.

At my uni – Cambridge – we call them drinking societies, and a friend once described them to me as “a bunch of nerdy boys putting on ties and pretending to be the boys who bullied them at school”.

As with all sweeping generalisations, there will be some truth in this for some individuals, and none for others.

But I think this claim highlights a valuable point. At my uni these guys aren’t your classic lads.

They probably quite like learning things. They probably spend a fair amont of time in the library. They are probably culturally aware enough to know that a lot of what they are doing is pretty damn absurd.

So we get things like the cringe email sent by one society that told new members to “smash the girls” and that their penises were in high demand.

It was the latest in a long line of exploits by drinking societies which on the surface look awful but are actually pretty self-aware.

These guys aren’t misogynists, they tell us. They are laughing at the very notion of misogyny.

And you know what, I actually believe them.

The problem is often the line blurs to the extent that it is hard to tell where the irony stops and the misogyny begins.

As a member of a male drinking society, you are likely (although not necessarily certain, obviously) to have an absolute shitload of privilege. Most will be cis-male, white, straight, able bodied. By mere virtue of being at uni and in a sports society, you’re intensely socially privileged.

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This means they should be thinking before throwing around “ironic” humour that could be potentially damaging.

What matters is not how the banter was formed in your head, but the effect it has on those who witness it, the effect it has on the society and culture that you have found yourselves right at the top of.

It doesn’t matter how ironic and fabricated that fine about taking a girl’s virginity and leaving her in a ditch – yeah, that’s a genuine fine I’ve come across – is in your head.

Because I never seem to go two weeks without a friend telling me she has been raped.

This makes me angry. It makes me furious. It makes me want to cry with frustration. And I reserve every right to hate any contribution you make to making light of this, to perpetuating a society that lets this happen.

Obviously not all drinking societies behave in this way. But if you think this undermines my argument in the slightest, have a quick Google of the phrase “not all men”.

I don’t hate drinking societies. To borrow a phrase from the racists, many of my good friends are in drinking societies.

I was even in a drinking society once.

I had an initiation in my first year, which ended with me curled up naked on my floor, covered in my own blood, rocking backwards and forwards, crying incoherently to my friend and pausing periodically only to vomit into a bucket. For five hours.

What a lad.

I mention this to show that I have been there. I understand the appeal of drinking societies.

At the time, I remember laughing the next day at the state that I was in. Looking at it written down, it doesn’t seem particularly funny.

It seems pretty fucking dark.

That’s the problem with all this stuff: from the inside it’s all good fun. But then you take a step back.

Then suddenly you aren’t laughing anymore.

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