Pembroke’s Misogynists are the exception, not the rule

Try explaining crew dating to a non-Oxbridge student. Go on, imagine giving it a go.

“A group of self-professed loveless jocks corral an equivalent number of women into the back of a dingy restaurant, and proceed to slut shame them for an hour or so all the while boasting of their own sexual proficiencies.”

Amid this arena where consent is ‘political correctness gone mad’, there is no shortage of pheromones and these embattled women are encouraged to drink and down pennied glasses thanks to transgressions of archaic and spurious rules.

Once they’re judged suitably liquored-up, lust-addled Lotharios aim to seal the deal. Should the club be successfully reached, a fresh influx of crapulous Casanovas, rejected by their own ‘dates’, will make a final assault.

Like the mayfly, the crewdater has just a few hours to find a mate before succumbing to death/a late night Ahmed’s

So far so frightful. But crewdates need not be intrinsically misogynistic. A crewdate is essentially just a gathering – it cannot be more than the sum of its parts.

Some of those parts are misogynistic dickbags for whom joking about date rape is just the beginning of the night. But the majority are different.

But the shitlads of Pembroke RFC are the exemption not the rule, and even for them it was too much – the leak of the email coming from within the club.

A crewdate is unlikely ever to be a force for good in the world, but it doesn’t have to be one for bad either .There are 283 crewdating societies/teams out there, and not all of them make light of rape culture.

Crewdates are a helluva lot of fun with the right group, and the actions of the few shouldn’t put off the many.

So shall we say this Thursday, New Jamals, 8pm?

These are the views of Sam Maywood, not the Tab as a whole. If you’d like to write a response or disagree with Same, please email [email protected].