NUS' Kelley Temple On The Struggle To Educate Misogynistic Students
"If men can't grope women in clubs, they're more likely to progress onto rape," Kelley Temple, the women's officer for students was once told - and that's just a snapshot of the battle she's facing against misogyny on campuses.
"Universities simply don't take sexism seriously enough," she tells The Huffington Post UK. "The problem is no-one really understands. Sometimes there is an attempt to tackle the symptom of the problem. Very rarely is there an attempt to tackle it from the root.
"Part of it comes from not really understanding the situation." Temple says this is the reason the NUS has commissioned Sussex University to conduct research into misogyny on campus and "lad cultures", which will be published in March. "We need to understand what the problems look like and decide how to tackle them," she continues.
"Women's officers spend a lot of time in their positions essentially battling the symptoms of lad culture and continuously having to tackle the issue of lad's mags objectifying women or sexist adverts in student unions. They spend so much time trying to tackle them but the same problems keep coming up.
"It's very difficult to make people understand the harm that this culture is creating."
One in seven female students have experienced a serious physical or sexual assault during their time at university, according to the NUS' Hidden Marks report, which was published in 2012. Kelley says there are problems embedded in a misogynistic culture which are simply laughed off as "banter", meaning sexual assault on women is not treated seriously enough.
"In the past, sexism was in a very overt way, quite acceptable and normalised. Because of the success of a lot of feminists, it's become a lot acceptable to become openly sexist. But it hasn't disappeared, it hasn't gone away, it just manifests itself so it becomes a lot more covert and it exists under different guises and forms.
"One of those forms is "banter". What that is, when you try and apply humour you can say 'Oh but it's just ironic, I don't really mean this'."
Kelley uses the infamous quote from self-proclaimed "lad magazine" Uni Lad, which joked:
"Universities simply don't take sexism seriously enough," she tells The Huffington Post UK. "The problem is no-one really understands. Sometimes there is an attempt to tackle the symptom of the problem. Very rarely is there an attempt to tackle it from the root.
"Part of it comes from not really understanding the situation." Temple says this is the reason the NUS has commissioned Sussex University to conduct research into misogyny on campus and "lad cultures", which will be published in March. "We need to understand what the problems look like and decide how to tackle them," she continues.
"Women's officers spend a lot of time in their positions essentially battling the symptoms of lad culture and continuously having to tackle the issue of lad's mags objectifying women or sexist adverts in student unions. They spend so much time trying to tackle them but the same problems keep coming up.
One in seven female students have experienced a serious physical or sexual assault during their time at university, according to the NUS' Hidden Marks report, which was published in 2012. Kelley says there are problems embedded in a misogynistic culture which are simply laughed off as "banter", meaning sexual assault on women is not treated seriously enough.
"In the past, sexism was in a very overt way, quite acceptable and normalised. Because of the success of a lot of feminists, it's become a lot acceptable to become openly sexist. But it hasn't disappeared, it hasn't gone away, it just manifests itself so it becomes a lot more covert and it exists under different guises and forms.
"One of those forms is "banter". What that is, when you try and apply humour you can say 'Oh but it's just ironic, I don't really mean this'."
Kelley uses the infamous quote from self-proclaimed "lad magazine" Uni Lad, which joked:
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