college life
Whoneeds
Feminism? Lauren O’Neill English, 2012
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ately, there has been something especially progressive in the air around Mansfield. It’s not our newly acquired taste in sculpture, or our building modernisations; rather, you might call it an atmosphere – one that pervades dining hall conversations, JCR meetings, Freshers’ Week plans and even tutorials. Though our College has long been a place where diversity is accepted and welcomed, it’s now also becoming an active voice within the University at large, in favour of equality for all. But I have noticed that there’s one word in particular playing on Mansfield’s collective lips. That word (whisper it!) is ‘feminism’. It’s a complex term. The connotations of ‘the F word’ are different for everybody: for some it’s horribly outdated, whereas others feel that it is as vital in 2013 as it has ever been. However, regardless of personal taste, it’s an undeniable fact that over the past academic year, the unapologetic use of the word ‘feminism’ has experienced a major resurgence within university culture in
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the UK. The current mood at Mansfield is symptomatic of something I’m going to call feminism’s ‘comeback’ (even though by doing so I run the risk of making it sound like a 1980s pop star doing a tour of working men’s clubs). This is an exciting time to be at university, especially at Mansfield College, Oxford. Feminist organisations are springing up at universities all over the country, presumably in response to wider social phenomena. Some of these influencing factors – such as the Everyday Sexism project, which uses social media to raise awareness of day-to-day discrimination against women – are overwhelmingly positive; some are not so (the ‘Lad Culture’ trend, and the severity of its sometimes unwitting sexism, shows the need for an increased feminist presence within universities themselves), but they all add fuel to the spreading feminist fire. Oxford has a particularly active University-wide ‘Women’s Campaign’, which aims to put self-identifying women on the map within the University; its recent ‘I Need Feminism’ event, which
garnered attention from the national press, seemed to do exactly that – just by giving the women of Oxford an empowering and non-threatening place to speak up for themselves. The ‘I Need Feminism’ concept is very simple: an individual writes a sign stating why feminism is a necessary part of his or her life, and is photographed holding it. Later the photos are uploaded to a site like Facebook where others can see all of the different messages that have been written. The idea was later taken on by Cambridge University’s Women’s Campaign, and many university organisations elsewhere have also now carried out similar events. As I queued alongside other Mansfielders outside the Rad Cam on a drizzly Monday evening, waiting for my turn to scrawl a typically angry message (‘I need feminism because you wouldn’t make a racist or homophobic remark now, would you?’) on a dry-wipe board, I felt genuinely part of something important. This was something personal and something universal at the same time,
