Campus zealots hound student out of lectures and bars with shouts of 'rapist' after he dared to question the effectiveness of rape 'consent workshops'
- George Lawlor, 19, driven out of lectures and bars with shouts of ‘rapist’
- University student questioned the effectiveness of 'consent workshops'
- He now fears for his future at Warwick University after being ostracised
- Mr Lawlor fears the furore will affect his academic work and future career
Called a rapist: Second-year George Lawlor, 19, fears for his future at Warwick University after being ostracised and bullied for challenging a student union drive to hold rape awareness sessions
A student has been driven out of lectures and bars with shouts of ‘rapist’ after he dared to question the effectiveness of ‘consent workshops’.
Second-year George Lawlor, 19, fears for his future at Warwick University after being ostracised and bullied for challenging a student union drive to hold rape awareness sessions.
Writing in a blog, he argued that the overwhelming majority of people ‘don’t have to be taught to not be a rapist’ – and that men inclined to commit the crime would be unlikely to attend such a workshop.
He added that he found his invitation to one of the sessions ‘incredibly hurtful’.
But in the latest example of politically correct intolerance in universities, the student faced a fierce backlash from radical feminists. He was attacked on Twitter and Facebook by student activists branding him a ‘rapist’ and ‘misogynist’.
Mr Lawlor, who studies politics and sociology, fears the furore will affect his academic work – and his future career.
The abuse was so bad that he stopped going to lectures. He told the Daily Mail: ‘I was expecting a reaction, but I was not prepared for just how horrible it was. I remember putting it online and told a few people, who were … saying there would be a backlash.’
In the piece, ‘Why I don’t need consent lessons’, Mr Lawlor said he ‘loved consent’ but that organisers were ‘pointing out the obvious’ and ‘thinking they’ve saved the world’ by making men listen to lectures about rape.
He posed with a sign reading, ‘This is not what a rapist looks like’, to highlight that most right-thinking people know where the boundaries are. But he was called ‘classist’ and ‘racist’ by people who thought he was commenting on what the physical appearance of a ‘typical’ rapist was.
The article was covered on news sites in the US, all over Europe and in Australia.
Mr Lawlor said Warwick student paper The Boar ‘got all their writers together to gang up’ on him with two one-sided articles. Others deleted him as a Facebook contact and sent abusive messages.
He added: ‘In real life, the bus to university was the worst … I heard people talking to each other saying, “I really want to hit that kid”. Walking through campus, people would go silent as I walked past. It was really scary … it got really nasty.’
He said that when he ran in student union elections, someone wrote on his Facebook page, ‘I want to give this guy minus one vote’, followed by another user adding, ‘I want to give this guy minus 100 per cent oxygen’.
Writing in a blog, Mr Lawlor (pictured) argued that the overwhelming majority of people ‘don’t have to be taught to not be a rapist’ – and that men inclined to commit the crime would be unlikely to attend such a workshop
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