Rally in Bristo Square over ‘raping trip’ fraternity

In the wake of the Delta Kappa Epsilon scandal, a “Rally Against Rape Culture” took place on Bristo Square on Tuesday evening. 

The facebook page for Tuesday nights “Rally Against Rape Culture” lists 436 people as attending, but there were probably only a little over one hundred people there.

It said media would be in attendance, and sure enough one photographer from a newspaper appeared in the crowd.

A rainy Edinburgh night

It’s probably not news that nobody gives a shit about student protests unless there’s a chance it’ll lead to a riot.

This event, however, comes a little more than a week after a student was attacked in the meadows a few days after the members of Delta Kappa Epsilon were accused of joking about a “rape trip.”

And the crowd was bigger than other student protests might have been on a drizzly Tuesday night.

Not quite a riot

One fresher said: “It could have been better organised and had more people in it, but then again most rallies I go to have even fewer people.”

She added: “Maybe if I were the girl giving the speech I would mention more about how everyone was bothered by the DKE, not just girls.”

One user posted a link to the facebook event on the Edinburgh subreddit, inviting people to come along, only to incite an argument over the existence of rape culture.

One user claimed: “’Rape culture’ is a feminist doctrine like ‘patriarchy theory’ (the belief that all men oppress all women without even knowing they’re doing it). They’re not mainstream ideas and have little or no support in most parts of society.”

Another was more blunt: “What a load of shit. What the fuck is rape culture? Horseshit.”

No to Rape Culture

In stark contrast to these more colloquial expressions of distaste, the facebook page read: “We stand against sexual violence, victim blaming narratives, and the culture which minimises the seriousness of these.”