After enduring the kind of year that can only be described as a dumpster fire making a slow and toxic traverse around the sun, what's the worst way you can imagine spending New Year's Eve?
If your answer was "themed frat party that invites its attendees to dress up in 'costume' and play beer pong," then congratulations! You are the winner, and your prize is a framed certificate acknowledging your taste.
If you thought "innocent homage to alcoholic American college tradition" was bad enough, your gag reflex is about to go into overdrive. Because for one pub in Perth, nothing spells Happy New Year better than the celebration of rape culture – specifically, the kind of rape culture that has seen countless women sexually assaulted in those same "frisky" frat houses and whose experiences are trivialised year in and year out through the use of mocking "jokes" and aggressively taunting statements.
The Brass Monkey Hotel rightfully earned the disgust of Perth patrons this week when it chose to advertise its upcoming frat weekend by hanging signs over its balconies declaring such things as, "You teach her morals, we'll teach her oral", "Our couch pulls out but we don't" and "Daughter Drop Off Point".
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As deplorable as this move seems from an outlet trying to position itself as a professional business, it's made worse by the fact such slogans have been highlighted in the news in the past as examples of the kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy towards sexual assault that has existed on US college campuses (and particularly within the Greek system in which fraternities are King).
Listen. If you doubt the veracity of evidence pointing to rape culture on campus (and plenty of people do, preferring as always to think of women as liars and teases who "should have known what to expect") then I've no doubt you'll dig your heels in and insist this is all just a big joke that's being blown way out of proportion.
After all, women can just choose not to go, right? Why stomp all over everyone else's fun just because the killjoy feminazi brigade don't like it (and we all know they've got nothing to worry about when it comes to sexual assault, am I right lads?) Also, there was one banner referring to "freshman sons" too, and that's proof that whatever sexual objectification might be taking place, it's equal.
No.
It isn't a clever jape to hint at groups of men preying on drunk young women. It's not edgy to mimic the actions of predatory, exploitative men's only groups, especially when those actions have been widely condemned as predatory and exploitative. The trope of the innocent young girl ("you teach her morals") deflowered and defiled by the sexually voracious hordes ("we'll teach her oral") is only funny for the people on one side of the joke.
I have to wonder how business with some semblance of a social media presence (and therefore daily access to the hot button issues of the day) keep making monstrously clumsy mistakes like this.
In what universe would a pub – and particularly one that was the site in which a 19-year-old woman was sexually assaulted by a patron in 2013 – possibly think it was funny and festive to replicate the kind of bawdy celebration that was first immortalised as a men's sexual free-for-all in pop culture through movies like Porky's and Revenge Of The Nerds, and later subjected to serious critique over the mishandling of sexual assault reports by college administrations?
As Jessica Valenti writes in the Guardian, "Numerous studies have found that men who join fraternities are three times more likely to rape, that women in sororities are 74 per cent more likely to experience rape than other college women, and that one in five women will be sexually assaulted in four years away at school." (The award winning documentary The Hunting Ground is also essential viewing in regard to this discussion.)
Is the Brass Monkey Hotel really so ignorant not to foresee the problem here, or is this the cumulative effect of the kind of grotesque social attitudes that sees an admitted sexual fondler (and accused sexual predator) grabbing America by the collective pussy and swinging his way into the White House?
Following protest from locals, the Brass Monkey Hotel issued a lukewarm "sorry if we offended you" apology and took the signs down. But the party itself is still slated to go ahead.
Whether or not anyone attends remains to be seen (although I'd kind of love for 150 women to turn up dressed as Columbia University's Mattress Girl), but my guess is it won't significantly alter punter numbers.
Because no matter how much time passes or what year marks the calendar, two things seem to remain perpetually true of humanity: we never learn from our mistakes, and we are predictably unoriginal.