When I started at university in Cambridge, there was a whole new language to learn, along with making new friends, attending tutorials, and figuring out where things were in a new city. There were DOSs (director of studies), quads (short for quadrangle, a kind of internal courtyard), pigeonholes (where students’ mail is left for them) and something called swaps.

A few weeks into term, about twelve other first-year girls and I received invites in our pidges to a swap with the boys’ drinking society at our college. It turned out that a swap (also called a ‘crew date’ at Oxford University) was a dinner that usually happens between drinking societies or with their invitees. I’d heard rumours of drinking societies before I went to Cambridge – they sometimes attract the attention of the national press after all – but I hadn’t realised that pretty much every college has them, many of them very old, complete with traditions and sometimes even a specific uniform like a tie.

If I’m honest with myself, it felt exciting and a little bit special to be invited. Only a select bunch of fresher girls were chosen, looking back mostly white, thin, privately educated girls, and we got ready together, going past the Porter’s Lodge in small groups to avoid suspicion. It was only at the swap itself that I began to feel uneasy.

We went to the dingy basement of a restaurant that I would later find out was infamous for hosting swaps – a few restaurants in Oxford and Cambridge were rumoured to make good money off drinking societies, tolerating raucous, sometimes downright anti-social behaviour that other establishments wouldn’t. It was too loud to hear anyone speak, and the boys were more focused on drinking games and chants of ‘chug!’. I mostly talked to the other girls, anyway – I couldn’t help but think we’d be better off hanging out in one of our rooms.

I went on a couple more swaps with boys from other colleges, but I never felt totally comfortable, and sometimes I was scared. One time, another fresher called me uptight because I was sitting with my arms crossed. I’d later go on to find out years later that he’d been convicted of sexually assaulting another student. More run-of-the-mill was just a general embarrassment at the entitled behaviour I saw and the gross boasting of the boys (including the claim from a pair of drinking society presidents that they’d recreated David Cameron’s rumoured performing of a sex act on a dead pig’s head – something the former PM strongly denies).

So when I was invited to the equivalent girls’ drinking society at my college, it initially seemed like a welcome alternative. Perhaps even an antidote to the toxic masculinity associated with men’s drinking societies and their traditions, like Caesarean Sunday (named after Jesus College’s men’s drinking society), where students get drunk and fight on Jesus Green.

When there’s a huge problem with sexual assault and harassment on British campuses, a group of young women supporting each other and not adhering to sexist ideas of how young women should behave is understandably appealing. As Cora, a former drinking society member who is now in her late twenties, says, “There’s something subversive and intoxicating about women behaving badly. It’s attractive; the idea of finding a sense of community and belonging.”

Most of the members of the girls’ drinking society lived in one big house in the college grounds, where they hosted our initiations. Although a lot less extreme than the boys’ initiations, where they supposedly had to have a ‘designated driver’ to look after them because they were expected to throw up from alcohol, I still didn’t like them. One of the two presidents tried to get me to do a shot of tequila with an insect in it. I said no because I’m a vegetarian, but she made it clear she found that lame.

I stayed as part of the drinking society for most of the rest of my time at uni, but I began to feel increasingly conflicted. I wanted to hang out with my friends, but as a bi woman, I began to find the whole setup overwhelmingly heterosexual. Cora, who realised she was queer after uni, says, “There were very strict gender norms and expectations based on gender.” On swaps, it is customary to sit boy/girl/boy/girl. Although the drinking society I was in was fairly casual and sometimes non-binary people came to our pre-drinks, it still felt like a very straight space with an implicit goal of same-sex hook-ups.