And then they discovered that it was a pattern. What a surprise.

The men’s rugby club at the London School of Economics, disbanded this week over a homophobic and misogynistic leaflet distributed to prospective members, had previously been involved in actions including “blacking up” and playing Nazi-themed drinking games, according to the university’s students’ union.

The revelations came as it emerged that another university rugby club, at London Business School (LBS), was dissolved for 12 months last year following complaints about racism and lewd sexism in a leaflet produced to mark a tour of France.

Oh gosh, it’s just lad culture, it’s just banter, what’s everyone getting so worked up about? [insert here reference to women’s underpants getting bunched … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Ok I’m curious about this “banter” nonsense that I was asking about yesterday, via the BBC Big Questions a week ago that started with a segment on “bloke culture.” I’m repulsed by many aspects of this, and one of the main repulsion-sources is the assumption that the natural state of men is loud emphatic unabashed loathing of women, and that rejecting or avoiding that state is an artificial and harmful kind of repression and discipline.

That relies on what Carol Tavris refers to as the hydraulic theory of psychology, in which people are seen as like boilers that need valves to release the pressure so that they don’t explode. But people aren’t like boilers, and raging at hated others … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)