Dear Editor,

I was at Reading Festival on Friday and saw they had a much greater focus on raising awareness around consent, which having just read your article on the high rates of sexual assault that have taken place at the festival, makes sense.

What didn't make sense, was the set delivered by Blink182, which completely undermined all of the signage that had been displayed during the day.

We were subjected to the lead singers encouraging festive goers to "finger girls in tents tonight", "ask your sister to stick a finger up your asshole", "**** your mum" with comments like "we love girls and we love girls' bodies". Notice the use of the word "girl" coming from men that must be pushing at least 50.

At one point, the camera panned across one of the singers literally squeezing and groping himself on stage.

It was so unbelievably vile. And whilst some say "that's just Blink", that's like saying "that's just men" to excuse sexual assault. It's not ok.

Particularly when Reading are supposedly making an effort to tackle the blatant issues it has faced with the treatment of women at the festival over recent years.

Needless to say, the set didn't go down well, and Blink182 failed to read the crowd- at one point even complaining that we "couldn't already be tired on day 1", rather than recognising their misogynistic "humour" doesn't land in 2024.

Would really like to see this covered in your news, as I think it's important R&L pick up on what a huge mistake it was to allow that behaviour from Blink in light of those shocking statistics.

Name supplied