Men talk openly of my 'rape potential'... why are they so vile to clever women like me? Cambridge undergraduate tells of shocking abuse by male students at elite university



Rebecca Meredith heckled during debate at Glasgow University Union

She was subjected to cries of 'what does a woman know anyway'



The undergraduate says this behaviour is typical of today's educated elite



As an experienced speaker on the international debating circuit, I have fended off countless heckles from both men and women.



But I have never experienced anything like the misogynistic insults hurled at me by a group of male students during the finals of the Glasgow University Union (GUU) Ancients Debate last week.



I was booed and subjected to cries of ‘shame woman’ from the moment I stood up to discuss the motion, ‘This house regrets the centralisation of religion’, with my debate partner, Marlena Valles.

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Line of fire: Rebecca Meredith believes misogyny is on the rise among educated men

After the debate, we confronted both the individuals involved.



When Marlena approached one of the young men, he shouted: ‘Get that woman out of my union.’



Female audience members who came to our defence were shouted down with more demeaning abuse and the retort: ‘What does a woman know anyway.’ One was even called a ‘frigid bitch’.

We later discovered the gang had openly discussed our appearance and made lewd sexual comments about the size of our breasts and body shapes.

Sadly, this behaviour is not limited to one ugly debate with a renegade group of boorish students.



Indeed, what I have discovered is that this influence has spread across a generation of men – though, of course, not all of them.

Reaction to the incident from the wider world also indicates this is not an isolated incident and that this sort of behaviour is occurring regularly in a much wider arena.

Heckled: Rebecca Meredith (left) and Marlena Valles (right) who were booed by male students during the debate Glasgow University Union. Miss Meredith believes this behaviour is typical of the educated elite



It ranges from a columnist in The Spectator who said women simply were not cut out for ‘the rough and tumble of dialectic free-for-all’, to a repulsive internet forum where members discussed in graphic detail the ways in which they would rape me.

Marlena and I were so alarmed by this experience that we decided to see if other female debaters had suffered similar abuse.



So we created an anonymous survey, asking women for their experiences of misogyny on the debate circuit.



Within two days we had received 200 responses from women around the world who had endured various forms of misogyny.

We were building a picture indicating that, though many young men are hugely supportive of women, some display worrying misogyny.



Worse still, outside the world of debating there are those who think nothing of posting on the internet terrifying and often violent threats towards women they have never met, and happily discuss on forums how they will ‘bag the next honey’ on a Saturday night by plying her with alcohol.

How on earth did this happen? And why? Years ago such behaviour was regarded as not merely ungentlemanly but a symbol of the yob. How has it now become acceptable among some well-educated young men?

What has heralded this tide of fury and disregard for women? After all, these men must have mothers, sisters or girlfriends.



Yet they seem to find the topics of rape and abuse hilarious, or worse, typical ‘water-cooler conversation’.

A Google search brings up several forums and Facebook pages where members discuss ways in which they would rape various women in the news

I fear it may be a reaction to the way in which feminism is regarded today. It has become a dirty word among many people in my generation.

Has the constant bombardment of society with sexual imagery and the ready availability of online porn trivialised and demeaned sex to the extent that we are no longer revolted when individuals are openly graded on everything from their attractiveness to their rape potential?

Perhaps the worst moment of the past week for me was the discovery of an unofficial internet chat forum for British Forces members, where young men posted my picture before going on to discuss how they would rape me – in disturbingly graphic detail.

They wrote that I was a ‘debating f**k doll’ and ‘it would take grappling hooks and crowbars to get me off her’.



One threatened he would silence me using ‘a knife against her neck and my bony fingers scrabbling around inside her underwear’. The post has now been taken down.

In another post on the same forum, a picture of a larger woman carries the headline, ‘Would you rape this?’



One man responds: ‘Only if I had the right kit.’ These websites are not hard to find on the internet.

On another forum, one member chillingly asks advice on how to ‘properly rape a woman’ without leaving any evidence.



He adds he would ‘probably kill her’ if he did leave any trace on her body, musing that the ‘world doesn’t need so many women, so I’m probably helping out’.

There are pages and pages of responses to this post with suggestions ranging from ‘buy a taxi and modify it so she can’t get out’ to simply ‘smash her face in and then do your dirty deed’.

One member suggests that the user ‘checks out’ another thread on how to dispose of a body.



There is even a Wikipedia-style site with detailed instructions on ‘how to become a rapist’.



When quizzed about this behaviour, would the men argue, as some did after the GUU debate, that ‘they are only joking’?

It is a worrying trend. Hundreds of female students have been in touch with me in the past week, claiming to have experienced far worse treatment from their counterparts than me.

Several wrote to me from Glasgow saying they had been called whores when trying to speak in debates.



Others wrote about ‘Fat Girl Rodeos’ – a game played by male students in student unions around the country.



According to several blogs and posts on Facebook, male students ‘grab a girl, tell her they are going to rape her, and see how long they can hold on’.

Others said they had been told they won their debating competitions because judges wanted to have sex with them, or that they should wear a short skirt to get ahead.

One woman said she had decided to quit debating after being told that speakers wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what she said because they’d be too busy staring at her ample chest.



At the GUU debate, a female former committee member revealed she had adopted ‘battered wife syndrome’.



She had become so used to sexism she just put up with it to remain in her position at her union.



Terrifyingly, another claimed to have been told to ‘keep quiet’ after being sexually assaulted.



I have repeatedly been told by debaters that women should speak more quietly than men on the grounds that loud men sound more persuasive, while females who raise their voices merely sound hysterical. Either that or they are experiencing their ‘time of the month’.

After the debate, some men posted on Facebook that the culprits’ comments were just ‘banter’.



But how far do we let ‘banter’ go? Do we allow these young men, who are not uneducated thugs, but future leaders, lawyers and fathers, to call women ‘frigid bitches’?

Some commentators have tried to claim that Marlena and I are fighting ‘a feminist cause’.



But what on earth does this mean? All we want is the chance to be judged on what we have to say, rather than our gender.

There is obviously still a need for feminism. But that term is now toxic for many of my generation.



Some disaffected young men associate the word with ‘hairy lesbians’, ‘bra-burning lunatics’ and ‘man-haters’.

In truth, I would describe myself as a feminist. But if a man on the street asked me this question I would hesitate to say I was, unless there was time for further conversation where I could define what I mean.



Otherwise I would fear being misunderstood based on a stereotype.

Last week, a study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council revealed that the term feminism had provoked unease and even hostility from several groups of women interviewed in both Britain and Germany.

Researcher Dr Christina Scharff of King’s College, London, said the young women she had spoken to, from a variety of backgrounds, had been united in rejecting feminism.

‘Young women want to be treated equally and are aware of gender inequalities,’ she said.



‘Yet, even in countries that see themselves as being progressive on gender and sexuality, the term is often met with suspicion.’

Perhaps it is because today the term has come to be associated with ‘women’s rights gone too far’.



Yet it is clear from events over the past week that, on the contrary, we still have a very long way to go.

None of the young women I know are extreme. But we all wonder why, when someone is sexist, misogynist, or even threatens us with rape, that society can excuse it as a joke.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that many men face physical abuse from their female partners, but casual sexism remains most commonly directed at women.

There are no websites or forums for women to discuss how to rape young men they have never met.

The true tragedy is that women often stay silent when they come up against this sort of appalling abuse at work and at home, even when faced with the experience of the ‘Fat Girl Rodeo’.



This silence needs to be broken.

I hope the GUU enacts reform. It owes it to the young women who have given up debating because they have been booed down when men have not.

But it is not just the world of debating that needs to take a long, hard look at itself. We all do.



Because when we excuse the kind of sexist behaviour being experienced by hundreds of women around the world as ‘banter’, we have no way of moderating what is acceptable.

This experience won’t put me off debating. If anything it has made me more determined to hold a mirror up to those who degrade women.



So let’s have a debate about sexism, not just in debating, but in society – preferably without prioritising the size of someone’s breasts over their ideas.

