Am furious with NUS Women's Campaign

[ArcheryAnnie]

...for their "Some delegates are requesting that we move to jazz hands rather than clapping, as it's triggering anxiety. Please be mindful!" tweet.

Safe spaces are important. Making accommodation for students with different needs is important. Performative bullshit like this is not important.

I understand accessibility. I have accessibility needs myself. This is not offering accessibility (even if you discount the needs of visually-impaired students), it's reinforcing that political activity should never, ever make you feel uncomfortable. Which is bullshit.

I just saw in Another Forum (not that one) someone positing the idea of a series of interviews with historical figures like the Pankhursts, Phoolan Devi and Mary Seacole, asking them about their safe spaces and their self-care practices and I thought: yes, exactly.

Do we want to change the world, or just do we want to make ourselves feel better?

[rivetingrosie]

agreed

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I'm worried too. I've just seen a suggestion that cross-dressing should be banned unless you identify as trans. Now, while I do think cross-dressing can be an unpleasant, misogynistic display and I'm uncomfortable with that aspect of it, I can't understand this. Does it mean if you're a butch lesbian, you're meant to start wearing skirts? Does it mean if you're a 19 year old lad who is thinking, hmm, maybe I am trans, you can't explore that without outing yourself? It just seems absurd.

I feel bad commenting on twitter, because they are students and they should have time and space to, basically, be a bit daft and maybe get things wrong. But I am really worried by the general direction of a lot of this.

The safe space thing is very strange. Where is the outrage that women are triggered in the first place? Or the plans to do something to change that?

This is (as ever) good on the subject: elegantgatheringofwhitesnows.com/

[almondcakes]

I don't understand why clapping is more triggering than jazz hands.

[MorrisZapp]

Clapping is triggering? Wtf? To whom?

[almondcakes]

And I don't understand why people shouldn't be allowed to cross dress.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I think they have widened the meaning 'triggering' (which properly refers to PTSD) to the point where it's useless. I've seen several people explain that some autistic people don't do well with the noise of clapping. That's true, I know, but it isn't what being triggered is (and, obviously, it gets you into a hierarchy-of-need situation where you might be avoiding problems for some autistic students, but you're going to cause problems for others, and also for people with sight problems).

What really bothers me here is that they've moved from using 'trigger' in a context where the focus is on helping a vulnerable person to be included as much as possible, to using it as a means to exclude people and police behaviour.

[MephistophelesApprentice]

Is it possible that it's a satirical joke?

[shitebag]

Am I being thick and not getting this at all or are you saying that people are now complaining about clapping and seriously suggesting jazz-hands as a suitable replacement?

If nothing else it would make all these political debates more amusing :o

[MorrisZapp]

It sounds like satire doesn't it. A gift to tabloid headline writers.

[BitOfFun]

I can understand that some students with sensory processing issues might find a room of people clapping overwhelming, but as per the Disability Act, the response to this should be "reasonable adjustment", ie the provision of ear defenders, or an opportunity to participate in political meetings via weblink etc. It is ridiculously overboard and restrictive to ban applause.

Where is the common sense?

[Pantone363]

I'm a mature student at a uni and I can assure you that pretty much everything is triggering to someone.

It's exhausting. We have banned certain food/music/newspapers/activities/words/events.

[Hakluyt]

If there are people there who would not be able to stay in the room if people applaud, what's the problem with asking people not to? Sounds like a perfectly reasonable adjustment to me. Is applauding a basic human right?

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

YY, BoF.

I would be interested to know whether the NUS actually got a complaint from autistic students, or from someone claiming to speak for them. That might sound very cynical.

[MorrisZapp]

Blimey. Can you give examples?

[BitOfFun]

It's a social norm, and a perfectly ordinary response to political speeches etc. I can't believe that anyone is defending this daft suggestion.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

hak, there's nothing inherently wrong with it, except (as I said upthread), that you then exclude blind people.

The concern is that this is represented as being to do with avoiding 'triggering' people, which is really problematic. For one thing, it doesn't appear to be about triggering in the usual sense of the word, and for another, this is part of a bigger situation in which increasingly, feminism seems to be able women talking about how to make accommodations and silence themselves, rather than talking about how to combat oppression.

[almondcakes]

It also reinforces a hierarchy where the only person who is allowed to make noise is the speaker.

[HopeClearwater]

The NUS have always been nuts, which is why it's good that no one listens to them. When I was a student they were pushing on-demand abortion up to nine months of gestation.

[BitOfFun]

How far do you go with that logic logic, Hakluyt? Would you expect nobody to laugh at a comedy night because somebody found it "triggering"?

I agree that this is part of a fragmentation of political movements into identity politics, where we are all so busy accommodating everybody else's individual circumstances that there will eventually be no cohesive movement of any kind which can effectively challenge ANYTHING more substantial.

[ArcheryAnnie]

Hakluyt as others have said, it is accommodating to one group and dis-accommodates another.

But there is also a wider problem in what it is telling everyone else there. I shall pinch some wording that I found elsewhere to explain it like this: it's telling a roomful of politically-minded women to be quieter, be politer, be nicer. It's "shush, ladies, be nice" except in a new form. I don't want politically-minded women to shut up, or to think that making a noise is wrong.

Would you have any problem in a conference that either provided ear-defenders, or set up a quiet side room with a weblink?

[ArcheryAnnie]

Oh, and JeanneDeMontbaston, the "crossdressing" thing makes me rage. Who gets to decide what is appropriate clothing for a man or a woman? Who gets to decide who is too "cis" to wear whatever the hell they like?

(And of course it only offers trans or cis as the options - if you are neither, as many people are, then presumably you are stuffed.)

The scary thing is that they don't seem to notice how bloody reactionary they are being.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

this is part of a fragmentation of political movements into identity politics, where we are all so busy accommodating everybody else's individual circumstances that there will eventually be no cohesive movement of any kind which can effectively challenge ANYTHING more substantial.

Yes. This.

archery - yes, me too.

It is an extremely conservative response, which is reifying binary gender roles. I'm stunned that they can't see that.

Ok, I get that men parading around in fake boobs, comedy wigs and lipstick during freshers week are parodying women in a nasty way. But you know what? You ban that (and, with it, all the other rather more important instances of 'crossdressing), and those same men will find other ways to be casually misogynistic. They won't understand why crossdressing has been banned, because they are (mostly) not consciously aware that what they're doing is misogynistic.

[Jackieharris]

Given how far down the postmodern rabbit hole lib fems have gone recently ridiculous stunts like this don't surprise me.

[almondcakes]

The cross dressing thing is reported in the New Statesman.

I particularly like the NUS saying that if a fancy dress costume is demonstrably not being worn for humour, it will be deemed acceptable. That is particularly absurd.

I just imagine all these women turning up at fancy dress parties dressed as spivs or something and insisting that humour is not part of a fancy dress party so it is acceptable.

[Pantone363]

Mostly issues around toilets.

Should we have female and male and safe space toilets? But what if a trans man wants to use the female toilets why should he use the safe space ones instead of the female? But what if a woman is triggered by a penis and she uses the female toilets? Should we just have non-gendered safe space toilets and do away with single sex toilets? But what about the Muslim women who don't want to share a toilet with a teams woman (no Muslim women actually consulted).....and on and on and on tying themselves up in knots.

The disabled lifts. Issues with non disabled students using them. Staff inforce use for disabled students only, but what about students with hidden disabilities? Should they carry a card/badge? But what about their right to not advertise their disabilities? What about students who are self diagnosed? What about we just do away with the disabled lifts and have open access lifts?

And on and on and on