For those of us who bring awareness to and fight against rape culture, our 'work environment' can be an exhausting place. Not a day goes by that I don't read or hear about something vile being done to a woman, whether that be an act of physical violence or simply the aftermath of violence exerted when strangers gather round to determine what she did to deserve it. Of course, everyone wants to believe they oppose sexual violence and harassment. Many of them bend over backwards to protest conversations about rape culture, insisting that it's a myth created by angry, opportunistic feminists who are too stupid to understand that culture (particularly the 'enlightened' culture of the west) simply cannot and does not teach anyone that rape is okay. All this blather does is perpetuate feminism's supposed hateful desire to paint all men as rapists and criminalise their behaviour.

It's an argument fiercely upheld by large swathes of people, all of whom refuse to accept the fact that there is something deeply broken about the ways masculinity - and young white masculinity in particular - can give rise to intensely toxic behaviour. You don't need to look far to find stories of how 'normal' boys and men can be drawn into collusion with each other to degrade and dehumanise women as a path to male bonding.

Women are pushing back against the 'boys will be boys' culture. Credit:Stocksy

The latest local example of this emerged this week after Melbourne University student Eleanor Henry decided to expose a small group of her peers for engaging in vile and pathetic sexual bullying. The group of men (all fellow students at Melbourne Uni) were chatting on a private messaging thread on Facebook when talk turned to Henry. One of the men wanted to ask her out, and the others were offering him advice. The chat grew increasingly sordid, until the main offender suggested his friend "Bring her to Thailand. We need a bike."

As *hilarious* as jokes about a group of men passing a single woman around like a piece of property are (which is to say, not at all), Henry would have been none the wiser had one of the chat participants not decided to add her to the thread. (It's been reported that this was an accident, but it was likely a very deliberate move - not only is it very difficult to mistakenly add anyone to a chat thread via Facebook's settings, but this particular practice is becoming more commonplace as a form of online bullying.) Henry was quickly removed, but Facebook's message settings allowed her to retain all content posted up to that point. Understandably, she was horrified to discover that men she attended school with were either blithely making (or at least laughing along with) jokes about sourcing naked photographs of her and all 'having a ride' on her. She responded by doing what more and more women are being empowered to do now - she documented the conversation in images and shared them on her own Facebook page for their shared community to see.