Two things that are very, very important to the Irish student are nightclubbing and social media. No matter how big a wallflower you are, odds are at some point of your degree you'll find yourself in a darkened, sweaty box, knocking back rum and Coke and avoiding creepy boys. Social media drives the Dublin nightclub scene, giving away "guestlist" spots to fans and generally whipping up a bizz for a place.Clicking "attending", going out and cringing over the photos the next morning is something of a ritual for many Irish students, whether they like it or not. Nightclubs are blurring the lines between fun and scary, as proved by a CollegeTimes.ie article posted yesterday. The article itself - which I could write a thousand words condemning - not only showed rape culture and patriarchy at work, but also showed the deep-rooted problems with Ireland's ~club culture~. My feminist hackles are up, my lipstick (Smash The Patriarchy #2) is on, and I am ready to rant. What is wrong with Irish nightclubs - and more to the point, Irish students?
It's difficult to decipher what came first: sexist students or sexist promotional companies. Last year, we all discovered Midnight Promotions' dirty doings - as someone on Twitter put it, "degrading women as a marketing ploy". Midnight have been involved in a "knickers for liquor" debacle, the infamous "if you're not up for it, don't cum" posters and, most recently, a night called "TIT Thursdays." The night promised guestlist spots to women who posted their breasts on their (public) Facebook page - to be rated by other members. TIT was quickly taken down after it was picked up by Twitter this morning, but the shock waves remain. Furthermore, it transpired that CollegeTimes.ie was run by Midnight - more misogyny for money. The borderline-rape-how-to article has since been pulled by the site - and an apology issued - but you can still read what it's plagiarized from here and the apology seems half-assed at best. To paraphrase Amanda Palmer:
"It's 2013, it's supposed to be the future...what happened?"
Hate-filled articles and posters are one thing, but this doesn't turn 20something males into rapists. Just because an article uses phrases like "[a man's] target/prey" doesn't mean that he'll act on them. Surely I think better of men than that? Of course I do - I don't suspect every single guy I know of being a rapist. That is...a little extreme, at best. However, when we enter a nighclub, we enter a world of smoke and mirrors, where suddenly the language of misogyny translates into action. Our culture makes the black-and-white issue of consent into 50 Shades of Grey - and no matter how beingn these may seem, rape culture is rape culture. Over the past few years, I've been followed around clubs, insulted, yelled at, lied about having a boyfriend (numerous times - food for thought: the only thing that will prevent a man coveting a woman is the knowledge that another man has coveted them, not their consent), been felt up despite protest and - perhaps most memorably - being hit with the amazing line "want to come back to mine and make me a sandwich?" It's these incidents that make me worry about articles like the CT one being published. The fact that women put up with this on a night out shows how deeply the problem runs. We almost expect to be mistreated in a nightclub, because that's How It's Always Been.The systematic slapping of arses, drunken shifts, one night stands and spiking of drinks are routine in nightclubs in Dublin City Centre - it's just part and parcel of a night out.
So what on earth are we to do about a way of having fun (YES. AT THE ROOT OF IT ALL, WOMEN ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE FUN AT A CLUB, REMEMBER?) that perpetuates "a system...which privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it" ? Particaurly when it's there, right in our faces, when we want to go out for a dance? It's often just not practical to scream "YOU'RE PERPETUATING THE PATRIARCHY" at some scumbag in Dicey's, though it often does the trick. The terrifying truth is that I'm not sure what we, as bra-burning, man-hating feminists, can do other than give out on Twitter. Because this goes so much deeper than a single article or even a promotional company - and it scares the living daylights out of me. So I'll keep shouting and writing and maybe, just maybe, we'll see a nightclub where women "shyly drinking their vodka cranberry" won't stand around waiting to pounced on by your local misogynistic scumbag.
sounds like youre just going to some cruddy nightclubs,dress right (as in don't go out in knickers expecting to be treated like a queen) n' hit somewhere thats focused on people enjoying good live music where people don't go just to try and get lucky, instead of some money-based hell hole like the palace or something.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with your perspective on this whole article, you touch on night clubs being a problem. I'd agree, but the problem doesn't solely lay there.
ReplyDeleteIt's the drink culture, the general world wide media, the way women dress and the way "lad" behaviour is encouraged (i.e Geordie Shore and all those reality tv shows)
I don't fully agree with this perspective nor does it apply to everyone.
With this Variable, politeness has become so rare that some people mistake it for flirtation...
Women, that just blank or shut out guys can be taken as "Oh she's playing hard to get" or "Get yelled out for just being an rude"[too wrongs don't make a right] But it's hard enough to know what women want ESPECIALLY when drinking.
Even the most intuitive guy in the world has trouble at times.
This doesn't apply for everyone obviously I'm generalising for argument sake.
But more to the point,
instead of just giving guys a completely hard time or even giving out to them you could just "breath, and just explain to the guy *not condescendingly/aggressive that you're not interested*"
Granted that won't work all the time, but alcohol + hormones clothing animalistic needs come out. You wouldn't poke a male Lion or any animal with a stick, when he want's to mate.. he'd just jump on you.
Guy's are the same to some degree.
In essence, the REAL PROBLEM is PEOPLES PERSPECTIVES of the whole "going out to have fun", which needs to be CHANGED.
First off, I'm glad you explicitly mention how this pertains to scumbags and not all men, because I have seen so many feminist articles about rape culture which are just plain misandry/sexism themselves.
ReplyDeleteThere are nasty/creepy people in nightclubs, it is undeniably true, I've had to pretend to be a boyfriend of friends of mine numerous times in the past, or to dance with them to stop some creep grinding up against them.
The problem is that the issue can seem on a much larger scale (in terms of percentage of perpetrators) than it actually is. Imagine you've got a nightclub with 500 lads, and there are 20 creeps who go around hitting on everyone. I imagine between them, 20 creepy scumbags could manage to disturb almost every girl in the nightclub, because all it takes a snide remark in passing, an inappropriate move on the dance floor or a sleazy chat-up line. That would give the exact same impression as if the nightclub was entirely full of these scumbags. I'm not saying that these numbers are in any way accurate, they're just an illustration of how few it takes to create that environment. What I'm saying is not to forget the figurative 480/500 of us who are equally disgusted by their behaviour, and to remember that the majority (not the minority) of young, intelligent men are on your side.