My university boyfriend’s ‘Friday night rule’ was the epitome of misogyny

“Stop it. It’s not funny. Put me down. Ouch. That hurts.”

I was 19, at Cambridge, one of the world’s most prestigious universities, and watching three drunken men from one of the institution’s oldest drinking societies manhandle a girl who’d refused to go from the campus bar to a local nightclub with them. She wriggled in their arms while they groped her, beat at their shoulders to resist and then, whether by accident or design, they dropped her. Onto the concrete. Hard. The reaction of the crowd was one of laughter; they all thought the boys had just had a few too many, meant no harm and that she should be flattered they’d showed her the attention.

It shouldn’t be unrealistic to imagine a world where no means no – and every man, and woman, accepts that.Credit: Stocksy

Their status as members of a drinking society that was ancient and distinguished enough to rival outgoing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Bullingdon Club meant that most of the people on the Cambridge University quad that night thought she should have been honoured to be singled out. I’m not sure that from her position on the ground, with grazed hands, knees beaded with blood and a ripped dress, she agreed.

Then there was my friend, whose boyfriend was part of another elite gentlemen’s club. They wrote down the names of all the pretty girls they wanted to party with on pieces of paper before an event. If a girl turned up who wasn’t as attractive as they remembered, her name was burned in the fire and she was asked to leave.

None of the members saw a problem with that – and none of the girls were brave enough to complain. They were too busy revelling in the fact that the drinking society’s headquarters were above a pizza place and they got free pizza served to them by a butler each time they visited. Although, was the pizza really free, if you had to endure being objectified and manhandled while you were there?

The girl who was dropped onto the quad went to the university authorities and complained about what had happened. But the men were still allowed to graduate without censure. Their only punishment was that they had to miss out on the balls and garden parties that marked the end of their university experience. She, on the other hand, was confined to her room and given a walkie-talkie for safety, because everybody at college hated her for spoiling their fun. Nobody seemed to care if she was okay.

“She, on the other hand, was confined to her room and given a walkie-talkie for safety, because everybody at college hated her for spoiling their fun.”

That was 20 years ago, and despite the huge support and publicity movements such as #MeToo and #LetHerSpeak have garnered, I think there remains a tacit “boys will be boys” attitude to consent.

That’s why the recent Netflix drama Anatomy of a Scandal struck such a chord. Glamorous fashion choices aside, (sadly) it was like holding a mirror up to my university experience and the divided society within it. The layers of elitism and entitlement running through the Oxbridge that it depicted and the way the usual rules don’t apply to the brightest, most glittering students, while the less privileged are forced to pay the price for their mistakes, were as accurate as a documentary.

Most compelling of all was not the way the effortlessly elegant Sienna Miller’s betrayed wife, Sophie Whitehouse, came to terms with the betrayal and the implications alongside it. It was that at no point does her over-privileged husband, rising star MP James, believe he’s done anything wrong. It might be fiction, but I could recall half a dozen “James’s” and “Sophies” from my college days without even exerting myself.

The Netflix show Anatomy of a Scandal was like holding a mirror up to Polly’s university experience and the divided society within it. Credit: Netflix

While dissecting the series and its amazing wardrobe department, I had countless conversations with other women who couldn’t comprehend why Oxford graduate Sophie agrees to stand by James after he’s accused of rape. Having existed within that world, I understand completely. From the moment she entered a relationship with him – turning a blind eye to the pack mentality he exhibited when he was with his drinking-society mates, and accepting she would always play second fiddle – she was implicitly agreeing to put up with whatever he threw at her. Whether she realised it or not.

When I was at Cambridge, I dated a drinking-society member, who wasn’t allowed to talk to me until after 10pm on a Friday because that was his drinking society night. A night which seemed to consist of going out to dinner with a bunch of girls from different colleges, downing large amounts of alcohol and then throwing his arms around his mates and caterwauling along to Robbie Williams’ Angels or The Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’ in the college bar. Not one of us girlfriends ever complained.

At a university where, on learning that it would have to accept girls as students, one college flew its flag at half-mast and students from another carried a coffin through the town, that was just the way it was. In Anatomy of a Scandal, Sophie and James Whitehouse create what initially looks like the perfect marriage, but their relationship’s unequal dynamic graduates alongside them.

While it’s embarrassing – and a little inconvenient – to go out with someone who won’t acknowledge you until after 10pm, it doesn’t even begin to touch on the grey area around consent that dramas like Anatomy of a Scandal and the 2020 film Promising Young Woman shine a light on. The men who get you too drunk to say no or get themselves so drunk they claim not to understand you when you do. Or try to.

That’s what I wanted to look at in my campus-based novel The Reunion, which tells the story of Emily, a girl who has her life maimed by the events of a night when she drinks too much and loses the ability to say no. Years later, in a new life, she goes back to settle old scores.

While, to an extent, she comes out on top, just as Anatomy of a Scandal’s Sophie and Promising Young Woman’s Cassie Thomas call their own oppressors to account, outside of fiction things are not often so clear-cut. I’m in no way saying that every student lothario is a predator, and it would be unrealistic to imagine a world where every vulnerable student is offered the chance to get their own back. But it shouldn’t be unrealistic to imagine a world where no means no – and every man, and woman, accepts that.

The Reunion (Simon & Schuster) by Polly Phillips is out now.

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