L-A-D

Just when I thought I was running out of things to complain about (never gonna happen, kids), my lovely boyfriend reminded me of something that pisses a hell of a lot of people off.

"Laddism" 

The 'new lad' is described by Tim Edwards, a sociologist at the University of Leicester as a "reaction to second-wave feminism". Their general lack of respect towards others, particularly women, is often featured in newspapers and causes controversy amongst men and women alike. 

One writer described lad culture as a practice in which "lads took up an anti-intellectual position, scorning sensitivity and caring in favour of drinking, violence, and a pre-feminist and racist attitude to women as both sex objects and creatures from another species".

Although most men's magazines refer to typically 'manly' interests - cars, booze and women (Kira Cochran said that "it's a dark world that 'Loaded' and the lad culture has bequeathed us.) -when will boys stop being boys? When do naïve teenagers become pervy men, and what's the barrier between harmless Jack the Lad-style behaviour and taking it too far? 

Lad culture seems to dominate social media nowadays, with twitter pages like the LADbible, and copy cat pages, having up to 880,000 followers each. Tweets containing jokes about rape, derogatory terms for women and general narcissism appear on people's timelines everyday, and yes, they may be 'innocent jokes' but they are offensive more often than not. 

Of course, it's fine to have a joke, but sometimes jokes aren't funny. Stop saying "boys will be boys" and teach those boys to respect other people, and themselves. 

I have a feeling this post will be continued, but until then....