Given that nearly every university student seems to believe TWAW, will sanity ever prevail?

I'm being a bit obtuse and un co operative these days about any personal information. I will nearly always tick prefer not to say about everything. Although I did fill in a consultation a few months ago (a rare paper one) which asked me to pick a gender, which I crossed out and wrote sex.

Well clearly 99.9% of straight Male students don’t believe that TWAW, because they are not dating them.

You can't draw any conclusions because on the one hand there could be gender critical feminists saying they are non binary and on the other, gender fluid males saying female and vice versa because that's how they woke up feeling that day.

We may know that, but The Powers That Be seem quite capable of drawing all manner of unwarranted conclusions from goodness knows what.

I’m sorry, I own a couple of students that think this. I came to this threat too late and didn’t realise my own children believed this nonsense. We’ve had many an argument since.
BUT
They are saying what they are saying to look woke and progressive. Kind and more Pomo than parents. When you actually talk, they say things like ‘well prison and sport should have different rules’ or ‘so and so changes their pronouns on a whim, it’s so attention seeking’.
So, I have hope that with a bit of reading, life experience and subliminal messages from me that they will see what we see.

Roomba he should publish his opinion. Get it on the paper. He can help. If he hasn't already.

Thanks for clarifying Errol

Yes to queering the stats. Saying ‘other’ with no qualification will give the impression of more non-binary people.

You can't draw any conclusions because on the one hand there could be gender critical feminists saying they are non binary and on the other, gender fluid males saying female and vice versa because that's how they woke up feeling that day.

I suspect that a LOT of people are going to tick the "other" box, rather in the way that a lot of people once declared their religion as "Jedi" on the census.

(Ahem. I may have done that.)

Errol was the figure only new students or the entire student population?

New, last years was somewhere under 400 iirc. As PP have said some of these could be gc people - queering the stats. That's one of my reservations about choosing 'other' if I ever get a bloody 'gender' question - would people like us using it give the impression that more people believe gender matters?

If I’m asked if my ‘gender’ is male female or other I tick ‘other’ so I can get to the comments box where I can type a mini lecture on sex v gender

Same. Apparently the senior management at my university were surprised when the last staff survey revealed a high number of employees declaring their gender to be “other”. I expect a lot of us are gender heretics.

My ex FIL is a senior university lecturer/professor (not sure of his current role title) who lectures on human rights, oppression and so on (trying not to out him here!). His university is frequently mentioned in articles about protests, no platforming and so on and he is the most woke, progressive, lefty liberal you're likely to encounter, to the point of Viz caricature. I recently asked him his thoughts on the subject and he was adamant that it is all a load of absolute crap, people should be able to live however they wish but the idea you can identify out of and therefore change your born sex is utter nonsense. He said it is an insult to science and to people who are actually oppressed! He also said he shouts about this long and loud at work as he is not far off retirement anyway. Pretty much all of his colleagues agree with him but don't want to lose their jobs because the uni cares more about a bunch of deluded students waving placards than it does about free speech and reality!

I was quite taken aback how forceful his opinions were expressed - I rather suspect he has been having this debate regularly with others! TBH I'd expected him to say that TWAW, we must respect pronouns, blah blah so I was very pleased I asked!

ErrolTheDragon

If I’m asked if my ‘gender’ is male female or other I tick ‘other’ so I can get to the comments box where I can type a mini lecture on sex v gender

Errol was the figure only new students or the entire student population?

I was thinking today that the female students declaring themselves non-binary will change their minds when they realise there is no word to describe their experience of maternity-based discrimination.

Very few students go along with it, but admitting that publicly is social and academic suicide.

But the fact it is social and academic suicide is a real problem. It means that people who research gender can't share their own opinions with their students, or challenge their students to think critically about this (see Kathleen Stock's first couple of medium essays for this in philosophy). Academics have left or been edged out because of this.

its very very much that people just can't really be arsed to argue with people who will claim persecution if someone breathes too quickly next to them, and says such types as just relentlessly mocked behind closed doors.

This is being replicated in the real world where policies are being set. The green party is an example (if the greens count as the real world!) And WEP obvs.

It's true that feminist and womens' group have been taken over by TRAs, but student feminism hasn't. We/they just meet in the pub instead do you mean like minded friends meet in the pub - or are they semi formal feminist meet ups? Just wondering how anyone could be introduced to feminism (ie the movement that centres females) if femsoc will not centre females.

It's good to hear that most are not convinced but it is affecting policy, local authorities, research etc.

Has it been mentioned yet on this thread that there was a report in the press recently on the number of students this year declaring themselves as 'other' rather than male or female. This doesn't tell us anything about those who might opt to put down the opposite of their actual sex but the sum total of these 'non binaries' was 830. This is out of approximately half a million new students each year. 0.17%, after rounding up.

My brother who is currently doing his 3rd year at uni assures me that those who believe this nonsense are extremely niche.He says, at least at Liverpool, its very very much that people just can't really be arsed to argue with people who will claim persecution if someone breathes too quickly next to them, and says such types as just relentlessly mocked behind closed doors.

Of course there are likely thousands of students there, so he obviously doesn't know everyone. And it might be very different in other Unis too. I went on a bit of a rant about how many people expect to have their safe spaces from different opinions and such these days and he was just very at me, before asking me why on earth I thought that it was common for Uni students to agree with such bollocks. That was me told.

I wondered what my 15 yr old thought about it all, i know there are some trans kids at their school. Luckily he and his friends came to the conclusion it was all attention seeking nonsense all on their own.

And that is what is so sad about all this. The kids drawn to it are just desperate for a peer group of their own, this just isolated them even further from their peer group. The adults who should be helping them are then too scared of the accusation of ‘transphobic’ to provide them with the help support and counselling they so desperately need.

I wondered what my 15 yr old thought about it all, i know there are some trans kids at their school. Luckily he and his friends came to the conclusion it was all attention seeking nonsense all on their own.

Personally I think the onus is on the writer to get their point across. If they’re unable to do that, the fault lies with them, not the reader.

Teachers used to all have degrees in their specialist subjects. They still have to be able to communicate their knowledge at a year 7 level. If they were only able to communicate at a degree/PhD level, they would be no good at their jobs.

If your ideas are so important that you need to communicate them to the rest of humanity, you need to work out how to do that.

The highly educated posters on these boards have managed to communicate their ideas to me while I had no idea what was going on. The TWAW brigade have not.

I've actually had someone (an academic) tell me that most people not understanding Butler just proves how profound and important her ideas are, and that's why she has to use such convoluted language to impart them.

My "or maybe she's just a bad writer" did not go down well.

Same here. Don't think it is my (or your) fault, though. There is a reason deliberately nonsensical articles have made it in peer reviewed journals in these fields.

It’s full on emperor’s new clothes/imposter syndrome isn’t it? People assuming they don’t understand because they’re not intelligent/educated enough when actually they reason they couldn’t get to grips with it, is because it was utter, utter bollocks.

I great example of word salad was the original ‘debate’ on the 2004 GRA. How many of other laws have been passed on this basis? Ffs.

What I am not able to understand (because it does not make sense) is Pomo bullshit word salad.

Same here. Don't think it is my (or your) fault, though. There is a reason deliberately nonsensical articles have made it in peer reviewed journals in these fields.

Again armed with GCSE’s I have still managed to read and understand articles in science journals.

What I am not able to understand (because it does not make sense) is Pomo bullshit word salad. People really need to be able to differentiate between what is not their area of expertise and what is emperors new clothes horseshit.

Although my degree is technically a science one I'm more of a politics and philosophy person, and yet I still find science journals a lot easier to read and comprehend than, say, Butler. Almost as if the people writing in the science journals actually want to communicate their ideas clearly, while others may not.

Tbf deepwatersolo I came to same conclusion as you, armed with my GCSE in ‘science’.

Yeah. What psses me off to no end is how they make it all sound like 'oh it is all so complicated, but you mere mortals just don't understand the cutting edge science presented in cutting edge journals you sadly cannot access and if you could, alas, you'd be too uneducated to understand them', which is nothing but a bald faced lie. Which I know for sure. 'Cause I have read the fing papers.