Floreat Ashburnia?

Let me take you back a few years. To the OP Bop and my first year, to be precise. A younger, fresher and (slightly) less cynical and opinionated version of myself is standing at the bar, absorbing that unmistakable aroma of lingering canteen food and flagrant binge-drinking, chatting to a friend of a friend of a friend of a course-mate. We’re getting along famously, it’s as if we’ve known each other – oh now let’s see – at least fifteen minutes (which is approximately five times how long we’ve actually known each other) when I commit social suicide.

“What halls you in?” my companion bellows. I pause for a second - all too aware of the risk what I am about to say entails - before biting the bullet. “Ashburne” I holler back. He looks confused. Silence reigns momentarily, thinking I’ve gotten away with my ill-advised admission. I casually add, “it’s behind Owen’s park…” and prepare to move the conversation on, all the while mentally congratulating myself for having sidestepped a potential disaster. However, to my despair he comes back with, “Oh hang on, not… (insert leering grin here)…the nunnery?” Needless to say, our friendship did not last much longer. In fact, as far as I can remember, I grabbed the nearest cheeky vimto and ran.

Regrettably, this was not an isolated incident (being stigmatised for living in an all-female hall of residence, that is, not cheeky vimto quaffing. Although that, too, was not an uncommon occurrence.) The nunnery, the convent, “virgin megastores,” you name it; I’d heard every nickname going. In fact it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that much of my first year was blighted by my reluctant status as a member/inmate of Ashburne Hall, one of the University of Manchester’s two all-female undergraduate residences (the other being St. Gabriel’s, Victoria Park).

Looking back now, quite how I ended up there is something of a mystery. Somewhere along the line my overactive imagination must have carved out a sort of Mallory-Towers inspired fantasy in which I become the forthright, maverick head-girl, playing lacrosse by day and hosting raucous midnight feasts by night. Sadly, this fantasy proved so alluring that, seemingly, I completely forgot that a) it would require a personality transplant on my part and b) I deeply disagree with single sex systems in principle.

(Insert soapbox here) It strikes me as singularly hypocritical that a university like Manchester, which prides itself on diversity, progress and all that, and whose website boasts that is has “an ambitious agenda for the future” still allows Ashburne, St. Gabs and St. Anselm’s (the male counterpart to the aforementioned female residences) to exist as they do currently. Of course, Manchester is not the only University to have clung to these positively antiquated systems. However, given that even Oxford and Durham have done away with their all-female colleges (St. Hilda’s and St. Mary’s respectively), opening their doors to men, shouldn’t the penny perhaps have dropped for Manchester?

If single-sex is no longer appropriate for this country’s more traditional and somewhat fustier universities, it surely cannot be appropriate for an institute that sets it’s sights on innovation and modernity? People who speak up in defense of single-sex schools/ colleges or halls of residence cite a variety of reasons, most of which are little more than illogical squeakings about “choice” and “freedom” and even “empowerment”. However once unraveled, these arguments are each as regressive and counter-productive as the last. Let’s consider them for a second shall we? (Gosh I just love to play devils’ advocate…)

Choice. Right, well, in this country - and in this University - you cannot (legally) choose to avoid another human being based on race, religion, age or class so why should a residential option that validates a right to discriminate based on sex or gender be permissible? And then there’s empowerment. First of all how any system that is born of a time when women were treated as second-class citizens at Universities could possibly be construed as empowering is ever so slightly beyond me. The notion that being segregated from men is somehow empowering is based on a number of worrying assumptions.

Firstly, it presumes some questionable sexual politics in that it positions women as being in need of protection from men who are thereby positioned as the sexual predator. This is, frankly, a dangerous train of thought in that it reduces supposedly educated male and female undergraduates to little more than potential rapists and potential victims. Likewise, the “empowering” nature of an all-female environment away from the supposed prying eyes and lustful interferences of men are further flawed in that they are completely one-dimensional, making no allowances for the pan-sexual society we live in today. Not to sound overly flippant, but what about the prying eyes of lesbians eh? Should they be banned from all-female halls too?

Lastly (and slightly tangentially) I certainly didn’t find my time in an all-female hall empowering. Such were the damning judgments of feckless Freshers I’d meet bar side, pre-going out (shamefully) I’d find myself scouring my wardrobe for a any ensemble that didn’t make me look like a virgin/lesbian/nymphomaniac. Not exactly something that had me glowing with feminist-pride.

To my mind, single-sex systems extending into adulthood can only ever be reductive. As anyone who’s ever read FHM and Cosmopolitan alongside each other as a comparative exercise will understand, we live in a time which - despite being lauded for its equality of opportunity and all that stuff - is increasingly polarizing the male and the female. In other words, women are from Venus, men are from Mars and Heat magazine killed feminism.

Considering this, how can the continuance of all-female/all-male halls possibly be a good thing? Segregation of the sexes sells everyone short and - worst of all - it does so under the guise of feminism, equality and liberalism. It would take a special sort of vulgar cynic to end this piece with a clumsy suggestion that it might be about time Manchester’s all female halls “lost their virginity.” Something for which, naturally, I feel I am infinitely qualified.

Disagree with Jennie? Think she’s hit the nail on the head? Tell her on letters@student-direct.co.uk