GUU and the Sense of Entitlement at Uni

Over the last week there has been a lot of excitement and comment generated by the misogynist abuse directed at two female debaters who were attending an event at Glasgow University Union. The university paper has been covering it, and so have national news outlets including the Huffington Post and the Guardian. The behaviour of a few individual members of GUU is absolutely appalling, but, sadly, not all that shocking. As has been seen recently women who speak out in the public realm are subjected to abuse not for their opinions but because they are women. It is, quite frankly, pathetic that we are still in this state in 2013.

However, the problem of misogyny seems to be endemic in the GUU, as detailed in this blog post by a former Glasgow uni student. Reading her words (which I encourage you to do, although I know I have already been quite link happy in this post) really made me feel sorry that she and other students like her had suffered in this way. I’m not going to discuss what happened at the GUU debate, that has already been done extremely well (see links above, and Google) but I have been thinking about the mindset that seems to have been betrayed by these men.

The things shouted at the women (‘get that woman out of my union!') are very telling. These appear to be privileged young men from wealthy backgrounds who feel able to dismiss anyone who isn’t exactly like them out of hand. This got me thinking about the greater environment of universities and how they are can very easily become places where a specific elite call the shots. Anyone who doesn’t fit the mould can be made to feel very uncomfortable.

I’ve been to three unis in two countries (Oooooooo! Get me!) and I have to say that I, thankfully, was never made to feel uncomfortable because I was a woman. I was never even made to feel uncomfortable for being British when I was studying abroad. I was, however, in England, made to feel uncomfortable about my accent.

I don’t have that strong an accent, but it is there. I did my first degree at Manchester (a place where Northern accents I assumed would be commonplace) but I still was once told in a seminar that I was ‘a chav’ because of how I talked. I was also aware that some societies were closed off from me because of either disproportionate joining fees or astronomical equipment costs. Those people who’d taken a proper ‘gap year’ (rather than a year out to work in a call centre, which was what my ‘gap year’ was) and gone travelling exuded a self-belief that came from the experiences they’d got. Then, when it came to my final year, there were those who could be set up with jobs or internships through existing family connections. They were the ones least concerned (particularly about revising. It makes sense. If you don’t need a 2:1 why bust your gut?) about the future.

There was a clear class of people far more comfortable than the rest of us. I’m not saying by any means that those from wealthy backgrounds were all dicks (you can be a tool regardless of where you’re from) but I can see how those young men in Glasgow, brought up believing that they were entitled to be there, came to the conclusion that they were above others. They were the best, the privileged, the elite and they could talk down to anyone they wanted. This sense of entitlement is there in British universities and anyone who doesn’t fit in with the clique is open to abuse. It’s not right, but it’s a world view held by people like this.

And it’s only going to get worse. With the increase in fees certain universities will become more and more homogenised as only a small section of society can afford to go. The original idea of university (to open your mind and expose yourself to new thinking, people and ideas) will suffer if everyone who goes there is from a similar background. The ideas held by misogynistic spoilt brats will be more likely to go unchallenged if they rarely come across someone whose lived experience is different from their own. Of course, I don’t think for a moment that everyone who is lucky enough to come from a comfortable background will think like this, but the evidence is that there is a portion that does.

We are on the verge of further segregating universities. Incidents like what happened at GUU will increase, and it won’t just be women who suffer. It will be everyone who doesn’t already enjoy the comfortable life of the elite.

Ghost Nation

When I was younger I had far better taste in music than I do now. This is because until I was about thirteen I didn’t really buy my own music, I just listened to my Dad’s. The thought has never even crossed his mind, but he is one of the coolest people I know. As he ferried me and my brother around the scabby fringes of West Yorkshire we would listen to his music. I have fond memories of Led Zeppelin, The Jam, The Clash, The Ramones and Steely Dan blaring away on the stereo in his car. One of the songs I remember most clearly (probably because it is objectively brilliant and still gets played at clubs and house parties) is Ghost Town by The Specials.

A few days ago the song came on while my music was on random. I must have been in a pretty reflective mood because suddenly I realised every one of the words being sung to me could describe the UK at this moment. The second verse rang particularly true;

This town’s becoming like a ghost town

Why must the youth fight against themselves?

Government leaving the youth on the shelf

This place is coming like a ghost town

No jobs to be found in this country

Can’t go on no more

The people getting angry

The song was released in 1981 during a time of turbulence and uncertainty in Britain. There were riots, rising unemployment and during the rest of the 1980s things would only get worse as Thatcher dismantled the unions, proved decisively that the Conservatives didn’t care about ordinary British working people and undermined British society so not people and their rights but profits and monetary value were considered the single most important thing of all.

The bleak story told in Ghost Town was of a town fallen prey to urban decay, unemployment and violence. Now, as I face 2013, I see the same problems destroying the lives of people around me. The government says there are jobs, but no one seems able to get them and more people are facing redundancy, pay freezes and cut hours. Inflation is pushing up food prices and yet it is perfectly fine to lecture people on how to eat and feed their kids. Education is considered so unimportant the government lets private companies run ‘academies’ that brainwash our children into a Thatcherite way of thinking. Those who depend on benefits, often the most vulnerable people in our society, are demonised and hounded by a system that it too scared to tax millionaires.

Government leaving the youth on the shelf

This is exactly how I feel. But in a way I’m one of the lucky ones. I got the opportunity to go to university like I wanted to. It left me saddled with a debt of £22,000 which I try not to think about but someone wanting to do the same thing as me now would be facing at least £30,000. I’ve not been able to pay back a penny of the money I borrowed. Neither have any of my closest friends from my undergraduate degree. This is because none of us have yet earned the £15,000 a year that requires you to start paying back. To get into the jobs we wanted when we started university (journalist, geologist, sociology lecturer, EU ambassador, engineer and petrol chemist to name a random sample) would have required us to take post graduate courses which have little or no funding available or work as an unpaid intern to gain experience. Few people can afford this.  

Again I was lucky. I used some family money that was left to me to put a deposit on a house to pay for an MA. I thought I might as well as these days it would have barely got me a cardboard box. But then I was then left unable by the almost entire absence of any money in the arts and humanities to continue to the level I wanted to. This is the doing of the current government. Personal experience suggests this to me because almost every professional at university I spoke to agreed I would have got funding for my MA as well as my PhD five years ago. I have no reason to believe they were just being nice to me.

Now to my friends who didn’t go to uni. Those who went straight to work found themselves constricted in jobs in companies who cannot afford to expand or whose only chance at promotion was to fund the training themselves. Few of them are now on more than £15,000 a year. The ones who went on to training placements, apprenticeships and NVQs found the same as those who’d gone to uni-when they finished there were no jobs for them.

The prevailing narrative is that young people should be thankful for any job that comes their way and forget any ambition they may have had or career they may have worked for. Jobs people enjoy are the preserves of the super rich and with the cutting of EMA, the rise in fees and the cuts to the education budgets this distinction will only increase. I’m pretty sure Mr Cameron has no idea how demoralising it is to find out you can’t do the job you wanted because the government has moved education and training down on the list of priorities.

The way young people are portrayed (explained more eloquently in this excellent blog post by Glosswitch) is also appalling. Apparently we have it better now than we ever have because we have mobile phones and don’t have to do national service. I would have assumed jobs and homes were more fundamental, but I’m clearly of a spoiled generation and should keep my trap shut. After all, we’re all in this together, aren’t we? Young people are feckless hooligans that need to be banned from wearing hoods and being in public spaces. They’re neglected and left with nothing to do then chastised for being angry and doing nothing. They can’t be trusted in their own homes until they are twenty-five (when they may well have kids of their own) and it’s perfectly alright to attack them and how they conduct themselves as ‘bad manners’ more than any other age group.  

The people getting angry

The riots in 2011 were painted as a load of feckless looters who were only after a new pair of trainers. But, as explained fantastically by a very clever lady on my MA who was doing her dissertation on the riots, thanks to Thatcherism materialism and extensive wealth are our modern status symbols. Those young people were trying to get the things they wanted and felt they were entitled to. Those TVs weren't just TVs, they were social standing. I am not defending the rioters and the arsonists and those who attacked the police who were just trying to do their job but the blanket condemnation is troubling and over simplifies the whole thing. Violence is not the answer but people won’t listen to the question.

They rioted in Manchester, a city I used to live in and have many friends in. Why did they riot in Manchester and not, say, Leeds or Newcastle (the other two cities I’ve lived in and know best)? Central Manchester is the preserve of the rich and ridiculous property prices are pushing ordinary people further and further out. It really is the London of the North. Disillusionment and wanting to claim back their city may have played some part in it. Again someone is probably going to accuse me of defending the actions of people who smashed up shops and set fire to buildings, but I’m not. I’m just trying to understand.

People are angry because the current government have demonstrated time and time again just how little they think of us and how little they think we are worth. People have a right to be angry and I think we need to get angrier. Our towns are left to decay, our young people are abandoned to a life of violence and unemployment and in desperation we turn on each other (immigrants and benefit cheats aren’t the problem here. Tory policy is).

The Specials were right in 1981 and they're right again in 2013, only I think, rather than Ghost Town, we’ve been left with the undermined, empty husk of a burnt out Ghost Nation.

The Charming Face of Homophobia and Heteronormativity

David Davies has said some pretty eyebrow raising things recently. He claimed that ‘most parents would prefer their children to be not be gay’ (which was then replied to by several witty individuals that the truth was most people would rather their children were gay than a Tory MP. I know my parents certainly would). Following this he decided to do an interview with the Guardian, presumable to set the record straight. Said article was published yesterday and, as I sat with my Bailey’s coffee preparing for a good old knees up with the in laws, I read it. I was left almost speechless at how someone can seem to be completely unaware of how offensive they were being.

Davies spent the majority of the interview (as was described by Decca Aitkenhead) squirming, looking flustered and apologetic and muttering that it really wasn’t his intention to cause offensive. He bleated that he didn’t understand this world, it was different and confusing to the one he’d grown up in and, really, he was just an endearingly bumbling fool who meant no harm. Kind of like a Welsh Boris Johnson, and, just like the original BoJo, despite his attempts at a cuddly image, so much of what he said wound me up.

I’m left with two possibilities. Either Davies is genuinely that clueless, in which case I will be kindly pointing out to him that the flimsy excuses he’s been hiding behind do not stop his views being extremely troubling and damaging for many people, or he is using it to try and dig himself out of the hole those comments dropped him in.

So, please allow me to take a systematic look at the things Davies got wrong.

"But I suppose, at a certain level, I see heterosexual sex as being – and it's probably the wrong word to use – but the norm. I think it's reasonable to say that the vast majority of people are not gay[….]I just worry if children are going to be taught that [heterosexuality] isn't necessarily the norm, and that you can carry on doing all sorts of other things, are we going to have a situation where the teacher's saying, 'Right, this is straight sex, this is gay sex, feel free to choose, it's perfectly normal to want to do both. And you know, why not try both out?' I mean, are we going to have that?”

This is the attitude that makes young non-heterosexual people feel scared, lonely and ostracized; the idea, still rampant in our society, that heterosexual sex is ‘the norm’. Also, I have never understood why there is any cause for concern over discussing homosexual sex. If a young person is not attracted to the same sex no amount of discussion of homosexual sex will alter that. There’s also an argument to be made that young people should be encouraged to explore their sexuality safely and in an informed way.

The sentence ‘right, this is straight sex, this is gay sex, feel free to choose, it’s perfectly normal to do both’ sounds like a fantastic way to approach sex education. If sex education covers pleasure and intimacy as part of sex it can quite easily then go on to discuss lesbian and gay sexual acts and relationships. For young gay and bisexual kids struggling with their sexuality such frank discussions could be a tremendous comfort.

Davies, however, doesn’t think that changing sex education like this would necessarily be a good idea. He cites the example of a friend he knew at school who came out as gay at 16 but, when Davies met up with him aged 20, he had settled down with a woman. Based on this one anecdote Davies seems to have been put off the idea that young people should be able to experiment and try things to see what works for them. Aitkenhead points out, as noted above, that if young people have no same sex desire sex education is unlikely to change that. Davies mumbles about worries concerning how much detail will be gone into, and when Aitkenhead explains that no amount of discussion of lesbian sex would have turned her younger self into a lesbian he decides ‘it’s different for girls’. On to the next bit of problematic drivel;

"But you're a lady, you're a woman, so you wouldn't have felt quite the same way. I mean, at school the girls all went out and bought Erasure without any issue." He's being perfectly serious. But what about the lesbians in my class – what would have helped them? "Oh, I don't know what they went out and bought." No, I mean what about them feeling confused and excluded? "I wish there was some way round this that meant they didn't feel excluded, I really do."

Somehow women are not just different to men but they don’t need to be shown the same level of concern. The flippancy of how he discusses these young women in comparison to the young men mentioned above is very telling. If I was being paranoid it would say this might be because gay men are far more visible than bisexual people and lesbians and so a clueless twit like Davies will not have given them much thought. If I was being more generous I would probably suggest that Davies simply hasn’t given it much thought because he rarely seems to give any thought to anything. In all honesty I’m inclined to believe option one, but that is an issue to be addressed in another post.

The other problem with the above quote, which was touched upon earlier in the interview when Davies discussed the school friend, is that it seems to equate a non-heterosexual identity with liking Erasure (I know. What. The. Actual. Fuck). Not only is this a bit of a tired reliance on stereotypes it is massively reductive and extremely insulting. Who does this man think he is to reduce people he has already demonstrated he knows fuck all about to taste in music?

Then he wishes there was some way to avoid such young people feeling excluded. There is. It might even be something to do with the broader sex education he had just expressed his mistrust for.

Aitkenhead then asks him a hypothetical question. What if his worst fears materialized and a change in sex education led to more openly gay people? What would be the problem? The best Davies can offer is a vague sense of ‘unease’. He can’t really put it into words, he just doesn’t really like the idea of it. Basically he doesn’t know why, he just doesn’t really like gay people. That, my friends, can also be said as disliking gay people for no good reason and/or because they are gay. Otherwise known as homophobia. It doesn’t matter how much he whines that it is just ‘instinct’ it’s still homophobic. Maybe if we lived in a society that didn’t treat heterosexuality as the ‘norm’ and therefore everything else as ‘abnormal’ snivellingly thoughtless little shitbags like Davies would be made quite so nervous by those big bad gays.

Then he drops another clanger;

"I make no bones about it, I'm a product of my upbringing and of the time I was brought up, so I'm not going to pretend not to be. It's not like I was brought up in San Francisco or somewhere like that.”

Ah, that old chestnut. The ‘it’s all down to the place I’m from/the time I grew up’ argument. This is, quite frankly, the biggest, most irritating pile of apologist wank I’ve ever heard. Whenever someone blames their upbringing for their intolerant views it’s either laziness or looking for excuses. The same goes for the ‘generational’ argument. I cannot believe no one else is insulted at the suggestion that, because a person is raised in a strictly religious household, or South Wales, or the 1940s that they cannot listen to or critically assess new ideas and arguments. I would rather someone brought out the arguments against something that they had come to a considered conclusion over rather than just blaming their parents like sulky teenagers. It’s crap and generally offensive all round.

Do I think David Davies is a hate filled, miss informed, ranting homophobe? No, actually I don’t. I believe him when he says he doesn’t really know much about the debates surrounding gay marriage (although one then wonders why he spoke about it on BBC Wales). I think, sadly, that he is blinded by our heteronormative society and so bound by the ideas we are spoon fed that he really doesn’t have a fucking clue. But he needs to get one. Everyone does. No one, lesbian, gay, straight, bi, queer, asexual, pansexual, poly or other is benefitting from a situation where the rights of millions of people can be questioned due to a sense of unease.

But I also think he’s avoiding the issue by hiding behind a wall of (probably at least partially) fabricated confusion. This isn’t sweet. It’s worry for a politicians to be so utterly uninformed about something he pipes off opinions about. He needs to educate himself and anyone else who wants to weigh in on the debate needs to as well. There is no received wisdom here. Although it pains me to say it even Tories have braincells. They should learn how to use them.