Oh, IESN Tilburg.
A photo from a student night out in Uppsala, Sweden, on International Women’s Day 2014
It has been brought to my attention (thanks, Lukas – see his thoughts here) that despite raising our voices about the disgusting gender-normativity of last semester’s “Ladies’ Night” and “Men’s Night” events, the same disappointments have been repeated (though with some improvements!) this semester.
I think it’s worth having a conversation about what went wrong last time, what’s been done better this time, and what could be done to make it EVEN better next time.
On the night of “Ladies’ Night” in Winter 2013, my friends and I behaved poorly. An event had been organised for us which we blatantly ridiculed (and in fact left in disgust).
However, we did so for a plethora of reasons.
1. On arrival we were expected to be in “cocktail dresses”. The men showed up in whatever they found comfortable.
2. We were then told that the main activity of the evening was to have the make-up that we had pain-stakingly applied to our faces, removed, and re-applied by someone unfamiliar with our own preferences.This seemed to be in order to ‘prettify’ us, for our reunification with the ‘men’ later that evening.
3. We were served chocolate penises, and (sickening) pink cocktails of pink Red Bull and vodka, while cooing our pleasure at waiting to have our nails painted. (At this point my friends and I marched out).
4. We returned later, hoping to give the event a second chance, to discover a drinking game in full flow. The game seemed to involve public shaming of whichever women were known to have been involved sexually with the most men during the semester. THIS IS APPALLING.
5. Standing outside, in horror, we were then offered a gift card by the establishment in which the event was taking place. He offered us a second card, suggesting we “give it to whichever of the boys you like” at the united event later that evening. One of my friends wittily quipped, “and what if I like women?” which was received with just as much awkwardness as you might expect from someone clearly crippled by their attachment to heteronomative expectations.
6. Then the male stripper arrived. But oh no, this wasn’t a (still awful) inversion of the usual power-dynamic in a strip show: where a majority of one gender oggle and objectify a single member of another in exchange for money. In this instance the male stripper chose to objectify us. That’s right: he held all of the power. We were supposed to be seduced/turned-on/I don’t know what by his apparent control of the room; and hence control of us. In a couple of decidedly memorable (though I’d rather forget) incidents, he grabbed one young woman by the waist, placed her hands on a chair in front and proceeded to wrap her legs around himself and thrust. It was disgusting. In another, he inexpertly poured oil over himself and forced his oiled nipple into my friend’s horrified face.
I can only be grateful that we weren’t subjected to the “Lesson in giving men hand-jobs” that was rumoured to have been gifted upon last year’s lucky ESN members. (Excuse me while I vomit at the thought of that).
I responded to the disgusting nature of “Ladies Night” last semester as a privileged cis-gender, straight woman. And I didn’t do enough to challenge the discrimination that didn’t directly affect me.
While I was aware at the time of horrific heteronormativity, I confess that I did not call out the cisnormativity that also oozed from the events.
I do know that several friends of mine (including an ESN mentor) who identify as gay men, felt so excluded from events that they actually chose not to sign up to them in the first place. That is not something that I would expect to see as aspirational for an organisation like ESN which seeks inclusivity. This is about as far from inclusivity as you could possibly get. Just about anyone who was not a straight, cis-gender man or woman who proscribes (whether consciously or not) to gender-normative standards, would have felt excluded from the events. I know I did.
I don’t necessarily have anything against organising events for “men” and events for “women” (though later on I will suggest that the separation is totally unnecessary!). What I do have a problem with is when the events themselves promulgate out-dated and damaging notions of what it means to have fun as a man, or fun as a woman, and when the boundaries between those two categories of persons are policed so tightly as to be extremely damaging and exclusionary, while others don’t even consider themselves as valid participants in the first place.
OK, now to talk about the event that took place last night.
My sources tell me that improvements were made – and for that I am very grateful.
As a Sex Positivist I fully support the inclusion of a “Sex Toy Party” style event as part of the evening, as I am told happened last night. This is great. Sex Positivism is really important. I think that probably the rumoured “How to Give a Man a Hand-Job” event of last year, however badly misjudged, sought to do a similar thing. I am really pleased to see that the sex positivism of an activity like this has been continued, albeit with the very necessary shift of power, to a focus on women’s sexuality for women, rather than women’s sexuality as a tool for pleasing men. Well done, ESN, I salute you.
I am told however that a similar male stripper event took place this time. While I absolutely recognise that as organisers you have no control over the specifics of the act that you book, you do have a choice as to who you book – and whether you book anyone at all. Given the consistent feedback that this particular person makes people feel quite uncomfortable in the bizarre gender politics of his act, I would suggest that it might be prudent to stay away from him and fill the entertainment slot with something slightly different next time.
So what could you do to make it EVEN BETTER?
I still struggle with the categories of “men” and “women” attached to the events. I actually think that you could do away with the labels (and the segregation) altogether by having something like “The IESN Big Night In” where you bring everyone together and organise different break-out slots that people can choose to go with. This would mean that everyone felt included – regardless of whether they are cissexual or trans*, or whatever their sexual orientation – and could choose to attend whichever breakout sessions appealed to them. This would also do away with the “getting the girls ready to please the boys” paradigm, and allow people to make as little or as much effort with their appearance as they chose. In addition, though as I have already said, I absolutely support the Sex Toy Party aspect of your event last night, I would suggest that the trans*-friendly “People with Vaginas” term might be useful for indicating who it might appeal to, rather than organising it as being “for women”, should you repeat it in future – which I would encourage you to do!
We came to Tilburg to have fun. And by and large, throughout the semester, you did a brilliant job of facilitating that. I really hope that this feedback will help you to make things even better, and more inclusive, for everyone in IESN
Thank you!
One Vision 