Emma Neal discusses the link between university rugby culture and the casual disrespect towards women in hospitality, highlighting the normalisation of deep-seated misogyny.

Have you ever been booed at by a room full of men? I have. It happened during the first rugby game of the Six Nations, when I was working a shift at a pub. A Bristol University rugby society came in to watch the game, and were averagely loud and rowdy throughout the night, but for the most part harmless, even quite friendly. The situation shifted when I went up to collect their empty glasses. 

They had them stacked as high as they could – some kind of game to see who could build the biggest tower – and when I started dismantling them, I was met with a room full of drunk men booing and shouting at me. Simply for doing my job. All because I ‘ruined’ their fun. If that does not scream child, I do not know what does.

You can say that ‘boys will be boys’, that ‘I am taking this too seriously’, that ‘they meant no harm’. But while this may be true, and while I do not much care that they booed me, I do care about what this moment reveals. I believe it speaks to a bigger problem, one in which these boys believe the world is built for them, believe that they can be rude, and there will be no repercussions for this rudeness. 

Harm does not require malicious intent. 

These boys might not have wanted to humiliate me, but this is precisely the problem, that they simply do not think about their actions, only the joke. What gives these boys the ego to boo a stranger simply doing her job? The fact that they can throw a ball? Or the fact that they are surrounded by each other?

Rugby culture is generally strange to me. As a University of Bristol student, I have heard countless rumours of what rugby socials typically entail (and seen some of these first-hand while working). I have heard of rugby boys forcing each-other to do shots out of their assholes, set their hair on fire, chop pints, and re-drink them if they vomit. I have had to clean up plastic cups of piss that have been left in the men’s toilets. These rituals are not harmless fun; they are performances of masculinity, designed to assert dominance. And I don’t think any of these instances will be surprising to anyone who has encountered rugby culture (or any male university sport culture) in one way or another. 

When these boys are put in a room together, they egg each-other on. Each social must be more intense than the last. Each boy must be the loudest in the room. Attention becomes a currency, where the only way to get and retain it is to do things more and more drastically. You must always be “funnier”, more outrageous, more banterous than the boy beside you. Their collective confidence, and the ease with which they turn a woman’s work into a thing to mock, speaks to a deeper power structure, one which tells men that public spaces are theirs for the taking. 

Generally, there is little regard for the women they encounter on these socials; they barely register, each is viewed only as a conquest or an inconvenience. And when they leave this bubble, their behaviour does not change. I have heard rugby boys refer to women as ‘Jezzas’, short for ‘Jezebels’, a derogatory term loaded with slut-shaming, in their everyday life. Such language flattens women into types and justifies their disrespect. It is easy to ignore a woman’s voice when she is already reduced to a body. 

Their booing was not an isolated incident, but a reflection of their usual attitude. I am a 5’2 woman, serving drinks and clearing glasses, an easy target or punchline. I am easily dismissed and outnumbered. They might have still booed a male bartender, but the important thing is that it is disrespectful, irrespective of my identity. 

Playing sports, building camaraderie, and having male role models and companions is obviously not a bad thing. It can create discipline, loyalty, and genuine friendship, giving young men community. The issue is what kind of masculinity is rewarded within these cultures. Putting young men in environments together that reward aggression and dominance creates a culture of toxic masculinity, one which breeds both subtle and overt misogyny and rudeness. This only worsens as they seek to impress each-other in their endless dick-swinging competition. 

I am not trying to say that all rugby boys are like this. As individuals, they can be quite nice, but their group setting rewards bombastic behaviour which may not reflect their personal morals. When the crowd is booing, you must join in, because not joining risks you becoming the next target. The herd mentality created within these groups serves to ‘other’ anyone who does not follow this crowd, including the woman clearing the glasses.

Boys will be boys. Fine. But I would like to do my job in peace, sans boos.