It is trivial to call Cambridge a bubble, thoroughly isolated from the “world” out there. But what if we think of rowing in Cambridge as yet another bubble with its own traditions, values, and language, distinct from the university and the colleges? Does this make rowing in Cambridge a second-order bubble? And how are we to make sense of the multiple transitions between the “world” out there, Cambridge as a first-order bubble, and rowing as a further second-order bubble?
This video probes these questions from the perspective of a Cambridge newcomer and rowing novice with no prior exposure to elitist educational institutions and the etiquette of sports like rowing. It unites subjectivity and objectivity in their extreme form: It is utterly subjective as it is informed by my own male queer identity, making me both wary of, and complicit in, men’s rowing as it is practiced in Cambridge. It is painstakingly objective, as all the quotes used in the video have been picked up and noted down during my rowing activities here, thereby turning an unfiltered spotlight on rowing in Cambridge as a second-order bubble. By compiling phrases, banter, and commands recurrent in the world of rowing into a filmed arrangement of flashcards, I challenge the viewers to reflect on their own active or passive exposure to rowing in Cambridge. Hereby I echo the conceptual notecard poetry of the recently deceased Russian poet Lev Rubinstein (1947–2024), who explored the restrictions and deformations of Soviet society through the lens of everyday sayings and conversations.
But what constitutes rowing in Cambridge as a secluded second-order bubble calling for critical explorations of its restrictions and deformations? First, there is Aesopian language. Myriads of opaque terms and commands denote maneuvers, drills, boat parts, and rowing strategies. Rowers speaking to other rowers speak differently and take pride in it. If you stick to rowing long enough, you stand a chance of mastering the rowing jargon featuring more than a hundred expressions of technical and athletic significance—even mockery. Eventually, you will grow into a full-blown “boatie” identity that defines you in your own eyes and in the eyes of fellow students. Second, the gender segregation in rowing creates same-sex-dominated spaces, supposedly rare but in fact endemic in a university that pretends to have consigned the formal exclusion of women and the discrimination based on sex and gender to history books. These, in my case, male spaces encourage the performance of regressive notions of masculinity, where challenging experiences are ventilated in competitiveness, teasing, and aggression; where talking about feelings gives way to talking about rowing. A highbrow variant of “gym-bro” culture, Cambridge rowing comes with transgressions of psychological and physical boundaries, name-calling, shouting and yelling, and primordial tests of strength, stamina, and willpower. All that is rightly—albeit unevenly—prohibited, tabooed, and shamed in the University of Cambridge as a first-order bubble these days, finds safe shelter and refuge in the boathouses as secluded second-order bubbles.
Ironically, rowing holds ample space for emancipatory visions of soft and considerate forms of masculinity. What would Cambridge feel like if all rowers “read the room” as thoughtfully as they learned to “read their boat”? What if teamwork in male rowing were understood as a call for caretaking and mutual support instead of ruthless competition? Freed from the relics of an outdated imagery of masculinity and its second-order isolation, rowing, with the elegance of its rhythmic movements I learned to cherish over the last months, could offer much more than the dubious gym-bro mentality in elitist disguise it currently stands for.
Trigger Warning by the Editor: The following video contains content that is racist and sexist. Drafted with the vision of a liberatory sports culture that is not inhibited by male epistemic structures of dominance and subjugation which are distilled into generalised notions of success, pain, and failure, the content presented here aims to indict “locker room” banter and training vocabulary as a form of normative, verbal and embodied violence that needs addressal within and beyond the rowing community at Cambridge. By featuring this poem which cites racist and sexist remarks collated by an earwitness, we do not aim to give further space or in any way legitimate this content or reproduce harmful utterance and bring harm to readers. We only aim to shed light here on the lived reality and ongoing harm that is incumbent to the rowing community and that has not been acknowledged, addressed, or discussed.
The views expressed in this piece are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the Editorial Board, the Scholars’ Council, the Gates Cambridge Trust or the University of Cambridge.
To ensure scholar and team safety, this contributor has elected the use of a pseudonym.
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