UniLad Magazine

February 2, 2012

[Triggers: rape culture and men devoid of brain cells or humanity]

There used to be the Top Gear defence: ‘it’s only a joke!’. Now there’s the UniLad defence: ‘It’s just banter!’. I’m a bit late to this as usual, but in this case it’s because I try and keep UniLad and the kind of wankstains who read it as far away from me as I possibly can. But this time they went too far, a ‘writer’ suggested that, essentially, if a woman didn’t put out, then a ‘lad’ ought to rape her and hope that the victim would be one of the tragically high number of women who feel unable to report their ordeal.

Having made light of rape, as well as a culture of victim blaming, as well as police and judicial sexism that means that less than twenty percent of rapes get reported, and of those only around two percent are successfully charged and convicted, UniLad’s editors realised perhaps this time things had gone a bit far and issued an apology. Of sorts. They issued what will one day go down in history as the UniLad defence – ‘it was just banter’, though they may as well have added ‘coincidentally, it is what we also believe, and what the entire culture of our magazine is built around’. A joke doesn’t exist in a moral vacuum; what is funny is only palatable as long as the audience can tolerate the moral and political sentiments behind it – and that people find jokes about raping women funny, and cry ‘it’s only banter!’ tells us all we need to know: that those people don’t think rape is an issue.

They say that they’re cleaning up their act, and perhaps we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt for the next blissful ten days when their website is down, and chino wankers everywhere will have to do some work, rather than just wasting daddy’s money in the bars and posting comments on the internet that would surely move any decent human being to physical violence. Reading the comments on the UniLad Facebook page though, it’s clear that this is far from an isolated incident, and that belittling rape is nothing new to the readers of UniLad, and most of them seem utterly unrepentant. Instead, they rail against the politically correct lesbian wenches who ought to be in the kitchen rather than at the keyboard. It makes me wonder what on earth has happened to our education system – these stupid bastards got into universities; at a glance I see Warwick, Nottingham, even the odd Oxbridge-er – how did that happen? With the level of reasoning, imagination and wit these sores upon humanity possess, it’s a wonder they made it through GCSEs.

All of these cunts, it should be noted, are posting under their own names, with their own photos, universities and hometowns listed as well. I suppose you might think that stupid in the age where employers allegedly scour the internet for any trace of you before employing you – I quietly hope some university admissions tutors were forced to read this – but posting comments like “just a bit of rape banter” (four likes) “9/10 people enjoy gang rape, who ever complained needs to check statistics” (59 likes). Each of these fuckers, feeling no need for anonymity or shame whilst posting a wall of uninspired, unfunny comments belittling rape, that’s what I find really terrifying about this lad’s culture at universities.

The truth is, if UniLad were to be serious about cleaning up their act, about tackling rape culture, then they’d have to delete almost every post ever published on the site. Goodbye to every post telling the ‘Lads’ to seek out the ‘innocent fresher wenches’, and every nasty, demeaning, sexist reference to ‘wenches’ or the ‘place of a woman’. They’d have to kiss goodbye to the habit of responding to criticism by pretending it was all a joke (the tired old Top Gear defence), washed down with a bit of homophobia to boot. I doubt UniLad or its fanbase will change, but if you should ever meet anyone who posts on that site, then feel free to kick them in the bollocks (should I condone violence?).

Oh, if you read UniLad and you can’t quite stomach the things I’ve called you and your ilk in this post, then obviously you don’t love banter the way you purport to.

7:40pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZDZu3yFn951l

(Notes: 27)