Woi oi lads, do you love banter? Of course you fucking do, you’re not a poofter are you!? Nothing you like more than necking a pint, smashing a bird and nailing a kebab.
If you do like all those things then you might like UniLad; a website for people that I thought only existed in WKD adverts. UniLad claims to be the number one lads mag for students in Britain, and if you have Facebook you will almost certainly have seen someone “like” or “share” one of their posts.
Recently UniLad ran into trouble with a group of feminists over an article where they advocated rape as a back-up plan.
If the girl you’ve taken for a drink… won’t spread for your head, think about this mathematical statistic, 85% of rape cases go unreported. That seems to be fairly good odds.
Ahahahahahaha! Sexual violence against women, how hilarious! Oooooh, those rum chaps at UniLad whatever will they think of next? Since America seems to be able to ride roughshed over various Geneva Conventions why not drop napalm in a nightclub, that’ll get them slags out of their clothes in no time. Maybe given the patchy record that we have on bringing people guilty of genocide to trial next date you’re on perhaps if she tries turning you down you can whisper in her ear that unless you get at least a blowjob you’ll have her entire village massacred.
Personally I think in concentrating solely on that one quote from UniLad feminists may be being a little short-sighted, the joke itself is offensive, as well as being cliché and – the worst thing you can say about a joke – unfunny. It is however just one joke, to overly concentrate on that would be to allow the people at UniLad to – as they have done – claim that that particular joke was a one off aberration. One mistake that has been rectified. It isn’t.
Hatred of women is hard-wired into the very DNA of UniLad. Its whole ethos is dripping with misogyny. For instance right now on the website of the supposedly more responsible UniLad we have the following articles.
Some are just unfunny.
Taking a brave stand against the universally loved figure of Justin Bieber UniLad writes that his very birth was worse than getting your “Wonka bar” stuck in your zipper. Do people call their penises “Wonka bars”? In what sense? Loved by children? Can women easily guess a man’s age by asking whether it was Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp who forged their phallus?
UniLad claims that they hate him for, “looking like a vagina”, which he doesn’t really. I think I’d be a bit shocked if I went down on a girl and her vagina looked like a Canadian pop icon.
What gets me is for a site that is so aggresively heterosexual and heteronormative there is a great deal of disgust at the notion of female sexual organs here. If I didn’t know better I’d say the writer doesn’t actually like vaginas at all.
In fact I’d maybe go so far as to suggest that the writer was struggling to reconcile a deep burning homophobia with a desire to get a blowjob off the teen sensation.
“That Justin Beiber’s got some great lips” he might have thought to himself, “bet they’d feel great wrapped around my cock… but wait, then the blokes down the boozer might call me a poofter… nah, wait! It’s ‘cos he looks like a vagina, yeah, it’s not gay to think about resting my balls on his chin, it’s his fault for his vagina-ey face.”
Some are not funny and slightly evil
Chubby Girls: They Need Loving Too
“Chubby girls. The ‘elephant in the room’ as it were – everyone knows them, everyone’s seen them (They’re hard to miss when they’re that big).”
Get it? They’re like elephants they’re so fat! No, they’re not exactly like our pachyderm friends, no they don’t have ivory tusks, that would be silly. Yes, they don’t look as much like elephants as they look like human beings that deserve basic human decency and compassion. But that’s not quite as banterous is it?
Some are not funny and are a lot evil
“She’s likely to be really insecure because she knows she could be much fitter, so she’ll appreciate your attention enough that you’ll definitely get a blowjob. And chubby insecure girls are REALLY good at blowjobs. They’ve spent ages being too shy to get out their vajayjays, resorting instead to the good old cock-sucking move of desperation. Also, all of them at some point have probably had a bit of a self-induced vom, so their gag reflex is probably shot. Hello deep throat!”
This is a paragraph that starts badly, but it’s that last line that really does it for me. Are we seriously at a point in our society where we can make gags about bulimic teenagers – and if you want to know why teenage girls are bulimic maybe jokes about them looking like elephants don’t help – being better at sucking cock then we can just give up all our claims to be decent and compassionate.
And to deal with the defence that all this stuff is “just a joke”, I’m sorry but it clearly isn’t. It seems eye-droppingly obvious to point out that reading such nastiness day in and day out is going to affect how young men view women and how they view themselves. And we have evidence to support this.
Anecdotally there are plenty of stories from young women about the normalisation of sexually aggressive culture, of how frequent and acceptable groping has become in student nightclubs. This is the behaviour and the culture that existed in the ‘70s and allowed the likes of Jimmy Savile (and it would be naïve right now to not imagine a lot more people) to assault teenage girls at the BBC. We had a campaign in the 80s and 90s to stop that sort of thing, to say it isn’t acceptable, the rise of “lad culture” seems to be a backlash against those battles that were won by women, homosexuals and other people that aren’t “lads”.
An even worse story came out that groups of men were waiting outside student nightclubs on Fresher’s week to pick up clearly inebriated women offering them a lift home, once their victims were inside the car they would drive in the opposite direction and bundle them out of the car. The name given by the perpetrators to this phenomenon? Slut-dropping.
The thing that worries me most about “UniLad” is the phrase “Uni”. These are – supposedly – educated, enlightened people who will run our society one day. We can only thank God that the people that awarded Marie Curie her Nobel prizes were not alumni of the “UniLad” school of thought. If they have been they wouldn’t have commended her for her discovery of radiation but would rather have said to her, “what are you like at blowies love? Phwoar, bet you suck right good cock, you slutty French chemists you!”
Helen Flanagan
Helen Flanagan is apparently in trouble for posting a picture of herself on Twitter holding a gun to her head during the public furore over the tragic events at Newton High School. This was “INSENSITIVE” and “BRAINLESS” according to the Sun – isn’t it funny how the very thing we hate in others is that which exists so abundantly in ourselves?
Personally it seems unlikely that what Helen was thinking was; “how could I best rub salt into the wounds of bereaved parents?” In fact, call me cynical, I might even be tempted to think that what the Sun was thinking when they came across the photo – calm down, this isn’t a Carry On Film – was “our readers would love to wank over that, how best can we fit that into a story?”
So there we have it, faux outrage to facilitate masturbation, and people say we need to defend our press.
nyebaron 
Fair play mate. Good addition to the blog, and you’re right in everything you’ve said. But I have criticisms too. Not everyone who reads or enjoys some of the posts on the website is a rapey pervert who rates women on their cock sucking and bacon cooking ability. Obviously you’ve pointed out a minority there. If the majority of “lads” were behaving like this with intent we’d have a fucking epidemic on our hands. I’d like to point out that women can be equally as bad. The minority of course. There are many similar groups aimed at a female audience such as slutty girl problems and UniLass that seem to promote behaviour that objectifies men, encourages “woi oi” attitudes and thrives on many points you’ve underlined in the blog. Just as men may go out with their mind fixed on the possibility of “slamming some minge” or groping and getting with some mystery girl, women are doing the same. Whether you like it or not. I’ve seen you be surrounded by three very attractive women, all who seemed far too eager to tease your penis, who fully knew they were out of the leagues of everyone in the room. If anything women have more power in this department than men do, and they’re more than willing to show it AND get away with it. With that said I’m not defending any of the examples you’ve used, I find them as equally disgusting. But as the saying goes, there’s two sides to every story.
Women most certainly do not have more power in this department. If you’re ‘surrounded by women’ at the very most you’ll be annoyed or embarrassed. You probably won’t feel threatened, and if you are then at least nobody will tell you you ought to take it as a compliment, attractive young man you are. ONE man can make a girl feel threatened because they hold the power.
Not everyone who reads it is a rapey pervert but those people shouldn’t stand for the vile bullshit that it spews just because it posts a few funny pictures. And that’s not least because the longer they keep posting this stuff, the more influence it’ll have on everyone and that’ll go on until we end up with more than a minority who hold those disgusting attitudes.
I also totally disagree with the comment from Tom Hallett. This is the kind of apparently reasonable objection that comes up a lot when people criticise websites like UniLad for encouraging and legitimating negative attitudes towards women and people who don’t conform to the ‘Lad’ stereotype. The idea that women have more ‘power’ in the situations Tom describes is undermined by the fact that women are also under threat of (often sexual) male violence in the event of refusal. I don’t go to clubs much now, partly because I can’t tolerate the behaviour of some men in these places, partly because I’m now a loser adult who cares about her hearing, but in a similar vein, the main reason I don’t respond to street harassment isn’t because it’s pointless, it’s because I know that men can respond violently when challenged about their harassment, and I’m not going to risk my personal safety. Obviously I’m not saying this is the case for all men (I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will, because it’s almost always the first thing someone writes in response to this point). Still, I really object to the idea that women have more power in these situations. It’s simply not true.
PS your comments about Uni Lass are way, way off the mark. Never seen a single ‘woi oi’ comment on there.
1. You’re right, not everyone joke on Uni Lad is sexist. I’ve just scrolled through for the first time in a while, and actually, there were a couple I laughed at (http://sphotos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/c0.0.403.403/p403x403/537334_534252569931140_2116723083_n.png), and some that even made me smile (http://sphotos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/66161_533399653349765_1643212619_n.jpg). However, you then get posts like this – http://sphotos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/482936_534585036564560_902635373_n.jpg, and this – http://sphotos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/14390_535642106458853_1361436834_n.png, hidden amongst them. Over 8,000 ‘Lads’ liked it, ‘Lads’ that are being told sexism is okay, sexism is funny, sexism will get you approval from fellow ‘Lads’. And y’know what the comments teach? When you disprove of such sexism you get called a slut, told to go back to the kitchen, asked if you’re on your period, etc etc etc, until you realise it’s much easier to just go along with this sexism, and accept it. Maybe this sexism is relatively small to other issues, but it contributes. It contributes to rape culture, domestic violence, the belief that women are second class citizens, and it’s okay to mock the horrible effects that patriarchy has upon them.
2. Could you point me in the direction of some of these widely used Facebook groups by “slutty” women please? Cause, as far as I can see, Slutty Girl Problems is a group liked by under 1,500 users, and after, admittedly a quick, look through their blogspot/twitter/facebook, nowhere can I see sexism, especially not that directed at men. And Uni Lass? Uni Lass is dedicated to feminism – y’know that thing that wants equality between men and women, freedom from gender stereotypes etc etc, really not comparable to Uni Lad
3. Please do not say that all women are dick teases, who love flaunting themselves in a nightclub. When I go out with my flat at uni, I’m the one getting groped, not my male flatmates, I have literally had boys walking up to me and putting their hands up my skirt, because hey, if you’re wearing a skirt it’s practically an invitation right! And for those that are “teasing your penis”, maybe it’s because society’s led them to believe their most important attribute is their appearance, and their subsequent ability to attract a man. But of course taking him home would automatically make you a slut, rather than a ‘Lad’
What is a ‘rapey pervert’? Some intrinsically evil man hiding in an alley ready to pounce on a girl walking home by herself? No – it is more likely a young man at university who does not realise that what he is doing – persuading a drunk girl to have sex, putting his hands up her skirt despite her protests, penetrating a sleeping women – is sexual harassment and rape. He does not fully realise these things, because he has been so overwhelmed with the casual ‘banter’ of sites like UniLad that act with poor standards of sex education to mean he no longer fully distinguishes, especially after a few drinks, between banter and abuse.
I think that Tom might be referring to “The LASS Bible”, a group on Facebook that seems to have popped up in retaliation to The Lad Bible. I think that The Lass Bible has been created in an attempt to even the scores between men and women, but unfortunately it just promotes the same sexism and objectification of the opposite gender that The Lad Bible does. It’s easy for men and women to get lost in the lad/lass culture that is so prominent now, people internalise these roles and therefore think that the only way to combat it is to give as good as you get. People of both genders need to be re-educated, which is why groups like Uni Lass are so refreshing. However, whilst “feminism” is considered such a dirty and radical word, there is still a long way to go until the playing field is levelled, and in all the right ways.