Student William Pimlott on the phenomenon with a naughty name

The feminist group C**try Living is perhaps the most important and influential group among students at Oxford. And its success has provoked the following questions: How did a Facebook group made up almost entirely of Oxford students end up derided on the front page of The Spectator and in the tweets of a Vice staff writer?

Or, given the enormous influence that it has on so many undergraduates’ lives, why did it take so long for it to get there, given the media’s fascination with Oxford? And why did a feminist group dedicated to pursuing equality end up being portrayed as a gang of scary ghouls, the “Stepford students” in a front page cartoon?

C**try Living started off as a print feminist magazine. Its radical name reclaims the term ‘c**t”, used not as a negative, gendered insult but as a term to stand behind in the fight for gender equality.

In the magazine’s words “a ‘c**t‘ can be male, female, trans, any class, any ability, any sexual orientation. WE WELCOME YOU!!”.

But the group attained its current enormous level of exposure through a Facebook discussion group offshoot, now almost entirely separate from the magazine.

Almost everyone I know at Oxford is a member of this Facebook group. Its large membership alone, some 7,000 mostly Oxford students, many of whom are notified every time someone posts a new point for discussion, means that it has become arguably the most important political organisation.

Its size dwarfs any of the political societies’ memberships, and it has more members than the Union. And it performs a double role. Primarily it is for those retelling their own experiences in a supportive environment and debating the issues.

But it also plays a secondary and less important role. For the thousands that never comment, it is a constant insight and place to learn about questions of gender.

It is not without its controversies. In an environment which is deliberately intended to prioritise the voices of those who have been oppressed or traditionally silenced, there nonetheless tends to be a constant stream of men who come in with hostile comments and then self-indulgently bemoan the criticism they receive.

But of the several friends who left the group, citing its argumentative atmosphere, most went back for fear of not understanding the subject of conversation the next day.

At its most irresistible moments of tension, the group has seemed like a newspaper, mixed with a debating hall, crossed with an election. The hoary-voiced debater and the cavernous debating hall have been replaced by the keyboard, laptop and headphones combo.

The intrusion of the national media into the group’s space had much in common with the interruptions of hostile male students.

The success of the group is partly the result of an increase in Facebook use — virtually every student visits the site multiple times a day and uses it to organise their lives, both social and perhaps even political. But it is also the sign that the student body is massively more interested in questions of gender, and wants to be engaged in the debate.

This extends to activism in other causes: C**try Living is now accompanied by Skin Deep and No HeterOx, dedicated to race and sexuality respectively, and also counting thousands of members.