Universities & 'lad culture': calling time on harassment

I grew up  thinking, because everyone else around me seemed to think or take as read, that what is now being called 'lad culture' was something we just had to accept. And while I was sometimes encouraged to be part of it, I felt that drinking to the point of illness and bullying relatively random bystanders didn't seem such a good thing to me. Though I have grown to understand that there's something about bonding with mates and telling stories about it afterwards which is the 'good' thing that appeals and holds it together over time. On the other hand, I suspect strongly that a lot of the claims not to recall events are no more than claims: it's a way to distance themselves from embarrassment and give mates a chance to 'admiringly' diss them.

Of course, another aspect of the lad thing is sexual. But given that there have been bawdy songs, jokes and banter that imply that women are merely breathing sex dolls with no real agency, then it seems likely that those who are encountered by the lad pack who don't fulfil that role are likely to be treated that way anyhow. And not everyone has the ability to hold their own verbally and attitudinally.
So given those sorts of 'facts on the ground', it probably is about time that we looked at lad culture.

One in four students (26 per cent) - and 37 per cent of women - had also suffered unwelcome sexual advances such as groping and touching, it added. Two thirds of respondents said they had been aware of students putting up with unwanted sexual comments, with just under one third bearing witness to verbal harassment because of a student’s gender. From: Universities must unite to beat 'lad culture' sexism on campus, claims NUS - News - Student - The Independent

There is another side:

the NUS looks set to undermine one of the best things about campus life: the chance to engage with fellow students and, in doing so, to grow and become a more rounded adult. This means experimenting, talking openly, making friends, sometimes being hedonistic. In trying to straitjacket students by regulating their behaviour through ‘zero tolerance’ policies, the NUS is doing the students it claims to represent a great disservice. from Spiked-online.

Though personally, I find that 'conclusion' (for it is the last paragraph of the article) a little disingenuous given that it does earlier acknowledge that it could lead to taking more seriously certain behaviours: "misbehaving students who ‘catcall or grope women students or undress themselves’ potentially facing disciplinary action, or even expulsion." In context it could almost seem that they are condoning groping or creating unpleasant harrassful environments for others. While it's true that sometimes talking openly can make things awkward and it is right for that to be the case. Sometimes talking openly is just plain bullying or wanton harassment with no mitigating public goods. Sometimes being hedonistic can also be done without abusing others, but when it is making sport of other people, that's a different matter. I don't think those things really contribute to growing and becoming more adult -unless they are challenged effectively. They are actually continuances and reconfigurations of rather childish and adolescent behaviours. By all means discuss them and test them, but something does need to be there to protect and safeguard the vulnerable from bullying.

Are we seeing the start of a cultural shift in sexual mores?

I've been involved in a small group in my university of staff concerned about so-called 'lad culture'. I share the group with feminists and gay-rights activists. We talk a lot about issues of consent. It is recognised that sometimes women are the perpetrators of 'laddish' behaviour and men (hetero and homo) the victims. However, on that last point, we should note that it does seem that the biggest problem is men on women and where it goes in the other direction it is about an imitation of the worst behaviour and attitudes and as such is a cultural reflex; a kind of equality gone bad.

In a piece advocating a zero tolerance approach to sex with minors, an interesting further dimension arises, foregrounding issues of consent and wider cultural attitudes to sex which set a context for abusive actions:

It’s like drink-driving. Decades of relativism on that issue were probably fair to nice folk who were driving home after a glass or two and meant no harm. But a lot of people died. So now we have an absolutist approach and a lot of mildly tipsy drivers have been very harshly punished – perhaps unfairly in the immediate, individual sense – but far fewer people die. No, Adam Johnson, child abuse is not a grey area | Victoria Coren Mitchell | Opinion | The Guardian

For a while now I've ben wondering whether this is laying foundations for a very different sort of social contract around sexual behaviour than has been around since the mid 20th century. Here's why I'm wondering that.

It seems to me that a great deal of the 'sexual revolution' has been on terms formed by patriarchy: presumed female compliance and male rights (often grounded in a 'might is right' sensibility) with an ethic rooted in a walk-away attitude which recognises very little emotional entail. This background, I suggest, meant that the sexual revolution was conducted largely on patriarchal terms in many ways. And Christian ethics on the matter were caught in a double bind of having been associated with a quasi-Gnostic attitude towards matter and body and so simply pleasure-denying -and hypocritically so- on the one hand. And on the other hand, it had been stated and explained through a cultural lens inextricably bound up with patriarchal assumptions and attitudes albeit ones that forked from the more libertine versions of patriarchy.

But, what I think we may be seeing in the world outside of the the churches and other religious sub-cultures, is a problematising of presumed sexual liberties. What I mean by this is that the recognition of not just physical coercion but also psychological coercion and grooming begins to erode the presumption of consent until it is fairly obvious and explicit. In time this constructs a degree of hesitancy about the idea of sexual intercourse early in a relationship particularly where drink or drugs may have been involved.

And in another cultural strand, we have a recognition of the profound psychological impact of assault and particularly of unconsented sexual contacts of all kinds (verbal, touching or violent). Such recognition is partly related to issues of psycho-somatic unity drawn from the discoveries and implications of scientific research and treatment of the aftereffects of abuse and a growing realisation about the mechanisms of grooming, priming etc. In conjunction with a rightful concern for the vulnerable and more careful thinking at institutional levels (and thus in terms of training in workplaces etc) about rights, equality and diversity, there is a fuller cultural groundswell towards care and caution in matters of sexual expression, I think.

To be sure this is not the same as a former 'Christian' sensibility based in "sex only within marriage" (contaminated as it was by ideas of property and male supremacy /female incompetency). However, it is nevertheless an ethic based on consent, care and awareness of vulnerability and consequences.

Christian sexual ethics need to be rethought and restated against this background.  Much groundwork for this has actually been done (I think of the work of Jack Dominion, for example) but I think that Evangelicals probably need to re-examine the presumed interpretations rooted in Genesis 1 and 2 and a handful of NT texts.

That's as far as I've got with that, really at the moment. I would be interested in comments that help push the ideas above forward or at least engage with them constructively. I'm not so interested in restatements of the 'traditional' positions: I know them well, want to keep faith with the best intents and insights of them but I want also to tackle whether the cultural matrix for interpreting sexual mores is changing in the kind of way I'm trying to sketch above and whether Christian theology can engage the positive aspects of the changes in an open and yet critical manner.