PROCESO DE CORTADURA

Above I have considered risks and harm reduction, and it is clear that the experiences of these two things are highly gendered. The experiences of university drinking cultures amongst my participants have also been gendered. This section therefore goes on to consider the gendered elements of drinking cultures that literature has identified alongside those I have encountered in the process of this research. These include the recent proliferation of ‘lad culture’ (see: Jackson, 2010; Jackson et al, 2015; Lewis et al, 2016; Nichols, 2016; Phipps, 2016; Phipps et al, 2017; Phipps & Young, 2014; Phipps & Young, 2015), gendered forms of responsibility (see: Armstrong et al, 2014a; Armstrong et al, 2014b; Brooks, 2011; Laverty et al, 2015; Rúdólfsdóttir & Morgan, 2009) and how young women negotiate conflicting views of femininity and cultures of intoxication (see: Bailey et al, 2015; Griffin et al, 2012; Hutton et al, 2013; Hutton et al, 2015; Jackson & Tinkler, 2007; Lyons & Willott, 2008; Macneela & Bredin, 2010; Nicholls, 2016).

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For young women participation in drinking cultures appears to be full of contradictions (see Griffin et al, 2012) particularly as their consumption is ‘catching up with that of their male peers’ (Bailey et al, 2015: 747). Griffin et al, for example, suggest that:

Young women are called on to “have fun” as if they are “free” and “liberated” subjects, and as if pervasive sexual double standards have faded away. They are extorted to enjoy the pleasures of the post-feminist masquerade within the culture of intoxication as if the risks and dangers associated with being visibly drunk […] can be dealt with without recourse to feminist critique – or the presence of a boyfriend. More than this, young women are called on to operate as if they were unaware of the illusory and unstable nature of the promise of freedom, fun and empowered sexuality offered by hyper-sexual femininity and the culture of intoxication. Our work indicates that young women are

aware of the illusory nature of this promise, as well as the unstable character of respectable femininity and the continued existence of the sexual double standard. They

do manage to inhabit this impossible space in which pleasure and danger are locked in a dangerous and alluring embrace (Grffin et al, 2012: 198).

In related research Bailey et al found that young women are in an ‘impossible dilemma’ of being called upon to adopt positions of excess in relation to drinking and hyper-sexual femininity when they are ‘still constituted in derogatory ways’, serving to ‘render young women’s negotiation of contemporary femininity as fraught with anxieties and dilemmas’ (2015: 754). Jackson and Tinkler suggest that ‘an important dimension of young women’s hedonism is its public visibility. Both the modern girl and ladette are presented as occupying space outside the traditional feminine domestic space, and crucially, as taking space once regarded the principal or sole preserve of men’ (2007: 254). Ladettes, they suggest, are commonly portrayed in relation to alcohol and presented as ‘a cause for concern in relation to crime and social order [relating] to alcohol consumption and operate at two levels: that ladettes no longer act as caretakers of men, and that ladettes commit crime’ (Jackson & Tinkler, 2007: 260). Ladettes are

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seen as transgressing normative femininity (Jackson & Tinkler, 2007: 262). Women who are seen to transgress ‘feminine norms’ through alcohol consumption could therefore be seen to be ‘deviant’ in a Foucauldian sense, similar to young people being framed as ‘deviant’ for drinking associated behaviours (see Laverty et al, 2015).

A process of othering can therefore be perceived within drinking cultures (see Griffin et al, 2012; Lyons & Willott, 2008; Hutton et al, 2015; Nicholls, 2016). Griffin et al, for example, found that, amongst their participants, young women ‘distanced themselves from the troubling figure of unfeminine, irresponsible female drinkers through a process of classed othering’ (2012: 195) (see also Nicholls, 2012). Hutton et al refer to this as ‘positioned othering’ as young women ‘place themselves in opposition to these drunk, slutty and out of control others’ (2015: 75). They state that this ‘positioned othering’ is puzzling when young women describe their engagement in similar practices of drunken excess, ‘however, it could be argued that young women distance themselves from such “unfeminine” practices precisely because they engage in them themselves’ (Hutton et al, 2015: 81). However, they also suggest that ‘intoxication can give young women the courage to enact […] different kinds of drunken femininities’ helping young women to ‘transgress the boundaries of “respectable” femininities’ (Hutton et al, 2015: 84). Nicholls, however, suggests that it may be valuable to consider that ‘women might remain constrained in their ability to redefine femininities, particularly in the highly gendered and heterosexualised spaces of the [night-time economy], where they remain subject to a number of competing and contradictory scripts regarding “appropriate” dress and behaviour’ (2016: 79). She also argues that ‘imitating masculine drinking practices – particularly to enhance heterosexual desirability – is unlikely to be liberating for women and fails to challenge gender norms or assign more positive meanings to female drinking in its own right’ (Nicholls, 2016: 88).

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However, in terms of the risks of drinking cultures, as discussed above, young women are often represented, and construct themselves, as vulnerable. Nicholls posits that there is a contradiction in how the ‘night-time economy’ is conceptualised as both ‘a site of female pleasure, empowerment, sexual agency, independence and bonding […] and also as a key site of regulation in which women are expected to conform in appearance and behaviour to certain modes of heterosexual femininity […] and manage risk in spaces that carry the threat of male violence’ (2012: 17). Griffin et al found that one of the challenges young women face in the ‘culture of intoxication’ is ‘dealing with drunken men’ (2012: 191). They state that within this discursive frame of alcohol being constituted as responsible for men’s sexual approaches, young women are constituted as relatively passive and ‘saying a polite “no thank you” is likely to be ignored. This has wider implications in the light of recent research evidence on alcohol and rape indicating that some men target drunken women who are then held responsible for their own victimisation’ (2012: 193). This can also be seen in harm reduction information and campaigns that hold women personally responsible for preventing violence against them (see Brooks, 2011; Brown & Gregg, 2012; Rúdólfsdóttir & Morgan, 2009). Hutton et al relate this to the neo- liberalistic emphasis on individualism, responsibility and construction of ‘self’, stating that individuals are asked to ‘manage’ uncertainty and risk in late modernity and that ‘this ignores risk as being unevenly distributed throughout societies and that structural factors such as gender, race, and class still have enormous power to constrain and shape people’s social worlds’ (2013: 454). They also suggest that while raising awareness of potential serious harms from drinking is important, ‘harm discourses and images that proclaim that the inevitable end to a night’s drinking is assault, humiliation, and rape may not find points of resonance with young women when most drunken evenings end perfectly well and are experienced as good fun’ (Hutton, 2013: 473). Similar to assertions above that students engage in self-management techniques, ‘risk rituals’ and caregiving, Armstrong et al state that caregiving was ‘at the heart of women’s protective behaviours’ as ‘women frequently expressed a sense of safety derived from the knowledge that they would be taken care of by their friendship group’ preferring this to

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reducing their consumption levels (2014b, 755 - 759). They state that, as with my participants, the Australian women they spoke to were aware of risks that accompanied their alcohol use but that no risk seemed to dissuade their drinking as they preferred to drink and employ ‘a multitude of protective strategies to mitigate the negative effects of intoxication’ (Armstrong et al, 2014b: 759).

One element that has been particularly prolific in UK university contexts, and of recent academic and media interest, is that of lad culture (see Jackson et al, 2015; Lewis; 2016; Nichols, 2016; NUS, 2013; Phipps, 2016; Phipps & Young, 2014; Phipps & Young, 2015; Phipps et al, 2017) and laddism more broadly has also been of academic interest (Dempster, 2009; Dempster, 2011; Jackson, 2002; Jackson, 2010). Laddish behaviours have been linked to alcohol consumption, for example Dempster found that his participants ‘highlighted how alcohol consumption fuelled incidences of laddishness, and they also noted that levels of consumption were often used as a means of determining who was worthy of the title “lad”’ (2011: 638) (see also Dempster, 2009). However, he also noted that engagements with laddism were ‘fraught with tension’ and ‘although many drew upon facets of laddishness in gender performances, few chose to identify with the “lads” label’ (Dempster, 2011: 638) noting their ‘ability to “slip” into laddishness in predominantly or exclusively male groupings on nights out, recognising their laddishness as socially situated, fluid, and contextually bound’ (2011: 648). Jackson suggests that laddish behaviours start before university with ‘“laddish” anti-school cultures’ serving as potential ‘self-worth protection strategies’ (2002: 47). In later research Jackson identified that teachers commonly described laddish performances of masculinities in schools as ‘group behaviours; attention seeking; competition; (publicly) prioritising sport over academic work; avoidance of overt academic work; disruptive behaviours; and lack of respect for authority’ (2010: 509). Extending this to the university context, Jackson, Dempster and Pollard found that ‘lads’ were typically characterised as ‘loud and attention-seeking, confident, into sport, popular,

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jokers, often heavy drinkers and sexually promiscuous’ (2015: 303). Also, relating to the earlier section on transitioning to university, Warin and Dempster suggest that laddishness is ‘an easy, comfortable form of social currency in the early days of university where a key goal is to fit in and be accepted amongst a friendship group and where the biggest anxiety is to end up lonely’ although the transitional and temporary nature of this was also noted (2007: 901). Perhaps lad culture is a manifestation of the time-restricted ‘freedom’ of attending university that is a consideration throughout this thesis.

Phipps and Young further suggest that whilst laddism is only one of a variety of masculinities and whilst the ‘banter’, groping, sexism, and pressure that their female respondents reported were extreme there was still a ‘feeling that these dominated the social and sexual side of university life’ (2015a: 472). Phipps and Young also found that their participants described sexual harassment and violence as ‘a normal part of university life’ with sexism trivialised through the use of humour, irony and ‘banter’ (2015b: 311; see also NUS, 2013). Phipps therefore suggests that the types of sexist banter that ‘spills over into sexual harassment […] cannot and should not be interpreted using the same idea of alienation and resistance that are pertinent to discussions of classroom-based laddism’ (2016: 9). This laddish sexism of white, middle class men can be, she argues, ‘a reassertion of superiority in reaction to perceived or real lost privilege’ (Phipps, 2016: 11). Participants in my study have related experiencing incidents of lad culture and ‘banter’, and though they did not always name it thusly there was clearly a culture of awareness, protective strategies (Armstrong et al, 2014a, 2014b), and caregiving surrounding drinking spaces in particular. My participants have also indicated that banter is difficult to challenge because it is framed as humour (see also Nichols, 2016). However, there are recent advances that have challenged the generalisation and homogenisation of terms such as lad culture, rape culture, and everyday sexism (see Phipps et al, 2017). Nichols, for example, introduces the idea of ‘mischievous masculinities’ in an attempt to provide greater flexibility

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and acknowledge ‘the myriad ways in which men de/construct and re-negotiate laddish identities throughout the different stages of their lives’ and ‘account for life course perspectives’ and explores how men have agency, reflexivity and self-awareness which ‘laddism’ does not account for (2016: 8-10). There have also been suggestions that in response to lad culture there has been an increase of feminist activity (see Phipps & Young, 2015b; Lewis et al, 2016). Lewis et al found that ‘despite the dangers of campus lad cultures, as well as the wider environment of everyday sexism, women in our research demonstrated that universities are also places of feminist growth and activity’ (2016: 12). They found that against the ‘encroaching neo- liberalism’ in university environments, the women in their study demonstrated that they were able to ‘carve out “safe spaces” in universities, to engage in counter-hegemonic activities, politics and personal growth’ (Lewis et al, 2016: 12).