Academics criticise traffic light 'safe space' badges at transgender conference

so I could go three times day to buy offal at the special organic butchers for my new kittens

Cats should be fed a properly-formulated cat food, not meat prepared for humans (except in small amounts as a treat). They would consume the bones of their prey. Meat prepared for humans lacks nutrients, e.g. taurine, that prey and cat food contain.

I reckon we all sew stars onto our jumpers. They can be different colours depending on the 'type' of person we are.

oh, hang on: it's been done before...

encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/classification-system-in-nazi-concentration-camps

Maybe I can get a red badge for events where I'd rather not be approached by randy men. I'm sure my wishes will be respected and complied with

www.spreadshirt.com/danger+keep+out+death+sign+womens+premium+t-shirt-D12344024?sellable=12556584

Pre-GDPR, some tech conferences used coloured badges or lanyards to indicate consent to being photographed: red means no photos, green means go for it, yellow means ask. Post-GDPR, it's all release forms.

I can see colour-coding one's approachability being useful for autistic people, but academics at a conference are there to talk to each other.

I’d be happy to be paid loads of cash too, but I like to think i’d be slightly more self aware than to publish jaunty articles about how I deliberately skipped doing 6K of work just for fun so I could go three times day to buy offal at the special organic butchers for my new kittens. But then I wouldn’t be doing any of that in the first place, because lots of reasons.

anyway nothing GC would love more than being talked about, and he’s unimportant, so I will 🤐

Giles Coren gets paid a hell of a lot if he's £6000 down after missing 2 days' work. No wonder he's smug, ChattyLion. I would be too.

What hasn't been misappropriated ffs!

Women, children, spaces, rights, pride, now the spoons concept, and autism aids...and on and on...

Giles Coren is just unshakeably, bafflingly smug. It’s actually uncanny. Come the post apocalyptic winter, when the rest of us are scrabbling about like extras from The Road, he’ll still be chortling self-satisfiedly about the witty asides he once gave forth in the organic aisle in his local North London Waitrose with his kids’ teacher.

how do I now use those aids when this has happened? No way will I ever use them now.

I have every sympathy.

The 'spoon theory' has its issues, but was a useful way for people who were chronically ill to get people to understand their crippling fatigue, disability and varied mobility/functional skills day to day. Guess which community appropriated this too, call themselves 'spoonies' and do a lot of playing with the image and identity of being chronically ill? There's another accessibility tool spat on in order to entertain the insensitive and self centred. It honestly reminds me of Victorian times where people used to make themselves look pale and enact the TB type behaviours as a fashion.

Giles Coren tried to talk about this but found his new kittens more interesting

Sorry, but I have kittens and nothing else matters

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sorry-but-i-have-kittens-and-nothing-else-matters-8v6tmq3lc?shareToken=587b35668ad2bfb326df935a81ee6120

SpartacusAutisticus I think it’s important to look at the context in which these were used - they were not “I may need extra support to do X, Y or Z”; they were used to say “At an academic conference I don’t want to have my flimsy ideas challenged in any way shape or form”.

The people here recognise that difference and that is why the tone is so mocking. I assure you genuine supportive aids would never be ridiculed like this.

Badges for people who actually need them are fine. People who're just too sensitive about their political opinions to be challenged don't need badges, they need a sense of perspective.

Spartacus 💐💐

Spartacus please don’t feel that you couldn’t use something useful, just because some appropriative fuckwits took advantage of that thing for all the wrong reasons. Dick move on their part.

That will work well for colourblind people.

Heavily sex linked trait, being colourblind, so I guess they just weren't expecting many Y chromosome enabled individuals?

Maybe I can get a red badge for events where I'd rather not be approached by randy men. I'm sure my wishes will be respected and complied with.

I think/hope most people wouldn’t dream of laughing. However, when the organisers of a conference force all delegates to wear them so that mouthy idiots don’t get anyone challenging their weak arguments, it’s getting ridiculous. And you’re right, it hurts and ridicules those who genuinely need them.

Sparticus I mentioned earlier that I had been in workshops where autistic people could use a traffic light lanyard.

I should have said that I thought they were a great idea in that situation. However this wholesale appropriation of this accessible device is what I was finding ridiculous. I was making fun of that in my comments.

A conference with the confer removed is just an 'ence'.

He doesn’t use a lanyard

But he does have cards he can use

Maybe not all of you obvs.

Oh im glad i read this...i was about to write a snotty comment

My friends son uses them...I don’t take the piss out of him, or laugh or ridicule

Thanks SpartacusAutisticus and others who have highlighted that this is an actual tool required by people to make life less stressful.

I had no idea.

I despair of the sleight of hand, deceit, manipulation, whatever you want to call it, that takes this stuff and leverages it to actually enhance the power that is already there.

Fortunately, more are beginning to see through the subversion the manipulation, and are becoming less afraid to speak.

A definite plus to all this is what one learns, along the way. This tool, is one such thing.

A whole heap of stuff about feminism, is another. Safeguarding protocols, statistics, feminist history, politics, how to lie and get away with it, biology, facts and figures about intersex, how misogyny works, how prevalent sexism is, the different types of argument and how to detect them, narcissism, etc, The list is endless.

Women have often said that, on mumsnet, every day is a school day. It genuinely is.

And, more than anything, it totally brings it home as to why certain men do not, under any circumstances, like women talking together, en mass.

Spartacus I can see these being good for actual autistic people. I doubt all the conference delegates were autistic. I agree they are appropriating this and people were laughing at that, not the use of these for autistic people.

In academia there have been very prominent professors who refuse to debate and say there is no point and they feel unsafe. It’s ridiculous and totally contrary to what academia is about.