25th February 2018

At the Baftas last week, the women wore black - part of the #metoo brigade. How mindsets have changed. In the ‘70s I worked in the education sector, a time when sexual exploitation of women was not only rife but girls colluded with it, not wanting to appear square. Jimmy Savile was on TV in everything from pop shows, Jim’ll fix it to government clunk-click ads and dance group Pan’s People heralded the new, no holds barred, era of lude dancing. One lecturer thought it hilarious to walk from one typist to another, running his thumb down our backs to unhook bras within. Also he invited 2 naive secretaries (yes, I was one) to the film show he showed to 3rd year undergrads of explicit porn, pausing and even reversing the reel at the most salacious moment. One girl student ran out of the lecture theatre in shock to ribald applause from her fellow students. It was common for professors to have affairs with their PhD students, and I never understood why this didn’t affect the credibility of their theses. TG mobile phones hadn’t then been invented. In today’s totally different mindset, all would be sued.
Want to read more about life in 70s/80s UK universities? 3rd Degree Murder. authl.it/4ia. You’ve been warned!authl.it/4ia