Alice Dear: How Does Lad Culture Allow Misogyny to be Socially Acceptable at a Time When the Common Consensus is that ‘Women Are Equal Now’?
It is a common consensus in Britain today that gender equality has been reached. This essay will investigate why this is not the case by focussing on the contributing factors that have led to this misconception. It will explore how misogyny has become socially acceptable through ‘lad culture’ and how the third-wave feminist movement is helping to open people’s minds to feminism and campaign for gender equality. The topics investigated into will focus on the concept of ‘banter’, relationships, university campuses, depression, T.V. and media.
Today the statistics present a pessimistic outlook for Britain. It comes 57th in the world for gender equality in parliament; under ¼ PMs are female; 4/38 Lord Justices of Appeal and 17/100 High Court judges are women; 1/10 engineers are female; the Royal Society has never had a female president; it has been 13yrs since the Royal Opera House commissioned a female choreographer; and only 10/2300 works in the National Gallery’s collection are by female artists. (Bates, 2014)
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British campuses have allowed misogyny to become socially acceptable through ‘lad culture’. ‘Lad culture’ is unavoidable in British Universities; it is especially prominent in Fresher’s week. While the students battle for authority and the alpha’s attempt to assert dominance, the new group dynamics form. One student commented; ‘rugby initiations; they’re all lads… dressing up as women… they love that.’ (Dear, 2014, Pp13) Dressing up as women is the ultimate laugh for these lads; they can simultaneously make fun of women and show off their macho bodies. Another student remarks; ‘I don’t think there is a lot of respect for women in lad culture these days. Lads at uni are almost indoctrinated into lad culture… especially in fresher’s week with the obsession “how many girls can you bang”, as if we’re a piece of meat!’(Dear, 2014, Pp12) Lad culture’s hierarchy focuses on skills based on sport, ‘pulling’, drinking and ‘banter’. The group of men privilege a form of hyper masculinity. Their power comes from intimidation; as Zygmunt Bauman puts it in his Liquid Modernity Thesis; ‘Terror, after all, is the poor-man’s version of PR.’ (Bauman, Gane, 2004) Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project which focuses on drawing attention to gender inequality, remarks how a university professor told a female student ‘you look prettier when you shut up.’(Bates, 2014) Female students are compromised by lad culture as it fails to support women for anything other than sexual objects. Gender inequality in British universities is rife, for example the amount of chemistry undergraduates reaching the level of professor has got worse; although 50% chemistry undergraduates are women, only 6% become professors. The research study Hidden Marks, suggested that 1/7 female students will be a victim of serious sexual and physical violence; and that 68% female students experience verbal harassment in and around campus. (Bates, 2014) Students must feel safe and free at university and currently for girls this is not the case. It is crucial that British Universities take responsibility for the students on their campuses and make a proactive effort to both support victims and aim to start tackling gender inequality through a combination of education and understanding a model of consent.
The misogyny hidden behind lad culture negatively impacts the whole of society, not just females. In today’s society there is a huge pressure on young adults; partially due to pessimistic job and housing prospects. Britain’s renowned binge drinking culture appears to hold its roots in the ‘YOLO’ theology; young people, students in particular, feel this is their last chance to be irresponsible before they face the ‘real’ world. This links in to lad culture as the reckless behaviour becomes a way to assert themselves as young males; they attempt to give off the appearance that they are happy and care-free. However in one report almost all of the participants remarked that it was just ‘lad bravado’ (Dear,2014); this is potentially dangerous in a society where male suicide rates are consistently higher than female rates; demonstrated in the graph below:
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As Nicki Minaj puts it, ‘when you’re young, it’s easy to feel trapped, it’s easy to feel that you’re not understood, that’s why we say ‘you don’t understand.’ (Minaj, 2010) Luckily most women find a relief and security in confiding to others, this helps to reduce the pressure on that individual. However for men, there is the ‘insidious influence of macho conditioning that beseeches to “man up” and demands that “boys don’t cry” on pain of mockery and humiliation. These values are directly implicated in men’s reluctance to seek help and support, whether from friends or professionals, preferring to self-medicate with alcohol or drugs.’(Hattenstone, 2013) This sounds alarms for the alcohol-fuelled, macho lad culture. Unfortunately statistics show that in the last three decades, despite improvements in psychiatric and emergency care medicine, policies and a degree of social, political and personal empowerment, the number of male suicides had risen to 4,590. Those excluded from lad culture such as women and LGBT people are also negatively affected, with one student remarking that ‘if you’re gay, for example, and not seen part of lad culture…then you feel you’re no longer a man.’ (Dear, 2014, Pp3). A group-centred culture such as lad culture could be beneficial in reducing loneliness, however only if the members feel free to share their thoughts and feelings without judgement; true friendship, rather that one-up-man-ship. Bauman reinforces the importance of community, ‘a key idea of the Liquid Modernity Thesis is that society is undergoing a process of individualisation; that agency is becoming disengaged from the social system, and individual choices and lives are becoming isolated from collective projects and actions.’ (Bauman, Gane, 2004) He states that ‘the overall effects of “individualisation by decree of fate” are what Dany-Robert Dufour (2001) described recently as “new forms of alienation and inequality”…in the absence of the Other to which one could relate the logic of one’s own life-pursuits, the individual is doomed to seek… “A self-referential definition”... The new individuals are abandoned rather than liberated.’ (Bauman, Gane, 2004, p.41). This explains why although on the surface ‘lad culture’ seems to be reinforcing loyal friendships, in actual fact it can lead to individuals feeling more isolated due to competition with other group members.
Media has been a crucial device in allowing misogyny in lad culture to become socially acceptable. Social media plays a large role in the spread of both lad culture and third-wave feminism. One student described the spread of lad culture; ‘being a #lad has developed as a more prominent social group in recent years due to social media spreading the lad ethos… it leads men to act in a certain way, rather than allowing them to act how they choose.’ (Dear, 2014, Pp4)
Facebook, in particular, has a huge influence over young adult’s lives; every student has a profile. In an attempt to be user friendly, it takes down content that promotes anti-Semitism and racism, but images showing harm to women remain. The Everyday Sexism Project used #FBrape to launch a campaign that bought attention to this sexism. 60,000 people tweeted using the hashtag, and 5,000 people wrote to advertisers. One week later Facebook released a public statement that they would change their policies on gender violence and what constituted hate speech. They also committed to recognising the implications on the real world pandemic of violence against women. Laura Bates believes that this was a ‘tipping point for our international attitudes on violence towards women’ (Bates, 2014) because of Facebook’s huge influence on normative ideas on what is or isn’t acceptable. A great benefit of social media means that people can be proactive without the issue of travel and time.
Newspapers and magazines also have a huge influence on popular culture. Recently, The Sun, attracted attention with Page 3. Third-wave feminists argue that Page 3 girls, as long as they are choosing this as their career, are still empowered. Therefore, it’s with the newspaper itself that they hold an issue. Newspapers should be representative of society; filled with diverse representations of women in both articles and images. Today, men take up the news, and photographs of women take up the advertisements; women are only on 1/5 of front page articles. If newspapers are to represent women’s roles in society today, purely providing a page of attractive, young girls topless, is a problem. However, banning Page 3 removes choice and puts judgement on women. This is an opinion that Elizabeth Wurtzel puts forward; ‘I intend to do what I want to do and be whom I want to be and answer only to myself: that is, quite simply, the bitch philosophy.’ (Wurtzel, 1998) She also raises the issue of reclaiming derogatory terms, using them instead, to empower women.
By making light of a serious situation such as rape, or using it to abuse and exclude other members of society, ‘banter’ has been a crucial device in allowing misogyny in lad culture to become socially acceptable. The line has been blurred by society concerning ‘banter’ as to what is fun and what is abusive. The power of lad culture comes from degrading anything which doesn’t follow it’s principle of hyper masculinity; unfortunately ‘banter’ is one device used to degrade others without facing consequences as it can be masked as a light-hearted joke. Most often at the butt of the jokes are women and LGBT people; ‘slags’, ‘wenches’ and ‘frigid’ are forms of insults targeted at women who are not submissive to this culture; ‘gay’ and ‘pussy’ are used to target men who do not conform to the group behaviour or compulsive heterosexuality required. Interestingly words associated with women such as ‘pussy’ are used as insults to men; which result in degrading both the individual man and all females.
However, it is important to state that humour is not the issue, it is abuse with the mask of ‘banter’. For example, T.V. programmes such as the Inbetweeners and Dapper Laughs have allowed misogyny to become socially acceptable. The Inbetweeners use ‘banter’ as a comical device to make fun of the four main characters themselves; by either ‘ripping’ each other or by coming up with ridiculous insults that make themselves the joke rather than their intended target. For instance, catchphrases such as ‘bus wankers’, ‘car friend’, ‘bumder’ and ‘clunge’. Yet due to the show’s success, these catchphrases have become engrained in popular culture where there are no rules on how to use them or in what context.
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T.V. has also been a crucial device in allowing misogyny in lad culture to become socially acceptable and normalised. In films only 28% women have speaking roles, and shockingly only 5% of the major films were directed by women, an amount that has halved since 1998. (Bates, 2014) With two coming-of-age films and three T.V series, the previously mentioned Inbetweeners ‘flawlessly encapsulated the dynamic of London lad culture: the banter, the booze, and most importantly, the birds… it’s lewd, crude, and has you cringing in your seat.’ However, as Rebecca Gillie goes on to explain, the writers ‘know when and where to draw the line.’ (Gillie, 2011) These awkward teenage boys reflect innocent and clueless attempts at romance and toilet humour. In contrast ITV2 comedian Dapper Laughs quit comedy after a petition was made to remove his T.V programme. A large amount of the public believed that his attempts to get laughs from shouting abuse at others was crossing the line, and negatively influencing others to view this behaviour as acceptable. Instead of making fun of himself; he was using harassment and violence against women to get laughs.
A socially accepted misogyny in lad culture has led to double standards in relationships. A common consensus among the British public is that relationships are more disposable today than they have been in the past; mainly due to a more open minded view on dating, sex before marriage and divorce. Misogyny has become socially acceptable in reality T.V shows such as The Only Way is Essex and Made in Chelsea. These programmes have become renowned for their cast members messy on-off relationships; usually drama centring on the scandal of a cheating male. The Evolutionary Theory could be one explanation for this; researchers have documented the sex differences in response to infidelity (Buss, Larsen and Western, 1996 and Buss et al 1992) .The majority of research suggests that men become more distressed considering their partners sexual infidelity, whereas women become more distressed considering their partners’ emotional infidelity. This is because men have paternal uncertainty meaning a woman’s infidelity could lead to cuckoldry. Women fear emotional infidelity as it could lead to her mate deserting her, resulting in a loss of protection and resources (Buss, 1995; Shackleford and Buss, 1997). This may explain why more men think that they can get away with cheating; overall more men are likely to cheat than women (Johnson, 1970; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin and Gebhard, 1953).
‘Lad Code’ has been used to assert misogyny in lad culture; it ensures loyalty towards the other men in the group first and foremost. This supposedly means that there is no negative consequence for reckless behaviour; instead rewards of ‘lad points’. Following this principle, the men must take advantage of the women at their ‘disposal’, the higher their ‘conquest’ number, the better. When women behave in this way they get labelled as, at best, ‘easy’. Minaj, describes these double standards, stating ‘[when I am] assertive, I’m a bitch. When a man is assertive, he’s a boss. He bossed up. No negative connotation behind ‘bossed up’. But lots of negative connotation behind being a bitch.’ (Minaj, 2010) These double standards may not seem serious but they are all forms of gender inequality. The statistics reveal a harsh reality; 1/5 people thought it was acceptable to hit their girlfriends in response to them being in revealing clothes in public; 36% believe a women is partially or fully responsible if she’s drunk while sexually assaulted or raped; ¼ women are victims of domestic violence and 1/5 women are victims of sexual offences. (Bates, 2014).
The lines between lad culture and ‘rape culture’ are blurred. Rape jokes are just part of the way that these serious issues are undermined, unfortunately people of power and influence continue this; in 2011 a Toronto police officer, Michael Sanguinetti, stated that ‘women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised.’ (Pilkington, 2011) Feminists argue that people should be taught not to rape rather than taught how not to be raped. Putting the blame on the victim takes responsibility away from the rapist, as if justifying the crime due to his gender. The idea of a girl’s appearance indicating that she is ‘asking for it’ is prevalent within both ‘lad’ and ‘rape’ culture. After this incident the first SlutWalk was organised. This protest movement involves people walking together dressed in anything from heels and bras, to jeans and trainers, carrying banners with statements such as ‘cleavage is not consent.’ Third-wave feminists advocate a model of free-will and choice. They believe that expressions of femininity and female sexuality challenge objectification; they dismiss any restriction on defining how women can dress, act or express themselves.
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While lads continue to use words such as ‘bitch’, ‘wench’ and ‘cunt’ to refer to women in a derogatory manner, feminists from Germaine Greer to Nicki Minaj have attempted to reclaim them for empowerment. There is a dilemma on what to call the female sex organs; ‘vagina’ is one term most are comfortable with, perhaps because it originates from Latin, sounding more official or medical, but the meaning of ‘vagina’ is ‘sheath for a sword’. Reminding society of its deep misogynistic history, the female organs termed as a place for a weapon and nothing else. On the other end of the spectrum is ‘Cunt’. Considered in the English language the most offensive insult. Historically dictionaries have refused to even print the word, or if they have, they used asterisks to mask the letters; being described in one as ‘a nasty word for a nasty thing.’(Greer, 2011) Greer defines her goal as ‘women's liberation’ meaning embracing sex differences in a positive fashion – a struggle for the freedom of women to define their own values and order their own priorities. Germaine Greer preferred the term ‘cunt’, over the other possible nouns, as it stands for the whole area of the female sex organs. She wanted to take the malice out of the word ‘cunt’, yet today, even with others including Sam Taylor-Wood, creating a necklace spelling the word, it still remains an offensive term. ‘It didn’t work,’ she says but that she is ‘perversely pleased, because it meant it kept that power... I don’t think now that I want the ‘c’ word to be tamed, I love the idea that this word is still so sacred that you can use it like a torpedo.’(Greer, 2011) For gender equality to be reached in Britain women must embrace their own strengths and powers as women. ‘Feminism aims to change culture, to give us confidence to demand more, to imbue women with faith in their decisions and the ballsiness not to care if others will judge them…confidence is the key: social change, yes, but also a revolution within.’ (Peckham and Turner, 2014, p.195)
Throughout this essay I have been investigating into the effects of lad culture in preserving the patriarchal system in Britain today. It is a fact; women are not equal. Look at every political, financial, social, cultural and educational institution. Lad culture centres on hierarchy, misogyny and exclusion and abuse of the out-group. Yet there may still be hope for gender equality in Britain in the form of third-wave feminism. In order to make a change for women it is essential that society does not settle, instead continuing to question gender based assumptions. Emma Watson, the youngest UN Women Goodwill Ambassador to date, explains at the HeForShe convention; ‘we want to end gender inequality – and to do that, we need everyone involved…feminism is not here to dictate to you. It’s not prescriptive, it’s not dogmatic. All we are here to do is give you a choice… Feminism, women’s rights and gender equality aren’t about man-hating.’
Men are getting involved and identifying as feminists because they are not just ‘men’, but fathers, brothers, cousins, sons, grandfathers, husbands and friends. Feminism benefits all; more gender-equal corporations – those with better mentoring programmes, women’s support networks and parental leave benefits – tend to have higher levels of job satisfaction, productivity, reputations and a lower employee turnover. More gender equal companies report lower levels of depression. Professor Michael Kimmel gives a male feminist perspective; ‘men who support feminism don’t see relationships with women as adversarial, as a battle of the sexes, but are open to colleagues, friends, and partners, who are as fully themselves as we believe we are entitled to be. And they see spending time with their children as confirming their masculinity, not diminishing it. They see their friendships with other men deepen as they can talk about their health, their feelings, and their family lives.’ (Kimmel, 2014, p.210) The crucial element of third-wave feminism is both sexes working together. 25-year-old political campaigner, Elle Gellard, states; ‘feminism is about choosing solidarity- and fathers, sons, and brothers have as much of a role to play in achieving it as we do.’ A point that Jane Shepherdson, the Chief Executive of Whistles, reinforces; ‘a strong woman is not a threat, she is a partner.’(ELLE, 2014, p.213) It is time for feminism to take over lad culture; as novelist Floyd Dell said over 100 years ago; ‘feminism is going to make it possible for the first time for men to be free.’ (Dell, 1914)
