The UK’s most controversial online safe space is under attack from feminists who say it perpetuates a toxic, intimidating culture.
Cuntry Living, an enormously influential group founded in Oxford, stands accused of harming the movement it claims to champion, and deluging would-be allies with abuse.
An article published last week in The Tab renewed the criticism together, describing the group as a “hellscape” ruled by a “feudalist” gang of 11 ban-happy administrators.
The criticisms back up those levelled at Cuntry Living on Heat Street by Oxford student Polly Lamming earlier this year.
Author Róisín Lanigan, a noted young feminist who helped established The Tab‘s popular women’s vertical, Babe, might seem an unlikely critic, but gives them both barrels.
She writes: “the 14,000-strong group has become so asphyxiated with its own impossible to uphold ideals and labyrinthian rules that it’s impossible to take it seriously.”
Lanigan concludes: “To me, feminism is about support, education and equality – none of those values are upheld in Cuntry Living’s aggressive forum. Though it seems to pride itself on being able to shout the loudest, ultimately it doesn’t really have anything to say. ”
She also cites a recent graduate who got banned for liking a post which was critical of the group. Lanigan also got banned for writing the story, and one Tab commenter said she got banned for posting the story on the group itself.
Their experiences of investigating the group chime with Heat Street‘s. Lamming was hounded out of the community for absurd criticisms levelled at her campaign against sexual violence in Oxford.
A common thread between the pieces is that none of the women running Cuntry Living are prepared to defend it.
A Tab survey found that most members of the group are so terrified of misunderstanding feminist dogma or the hierarchy of privileges that they would never actually post anything.
As more and more people are hounded out of the group, it seems condemned to increasingly shrill irrelevance.