University 'feminist' discussion group

and not get shot down in flames

I rather think that depends on the strength of your arguments. FWR unashamedly centres women and girls.

12frogs I have see threads that start pro-trans with arguments in support of their position which have been carefully and thoughtfully taken apart. Generally the poster either then slinks away or gradually realises their argument has no foundation. I have also seen rather more plopping on this board with no interest in discussion accusing women of all sorts, demanding explanations or telling them to do the work because they have no interest in looking up articles to support their own argument. Who cannot even define the principle terms of 'gender' or 'women' without using to the term being defined. Or who obviously have not read any threads on here before posting. Rightly women have no truck with that nonsense.

12frogsincoats

Do tell. What pro trans feminist things have you got to share?

12frogsincoats feel free to start a thread on whatever topic you care to discuss with a summary of your position and argument in support of that position. No one is stopping you

if so (assuming you go) you should give them plenty of positive reinforcement
'great that we are discussing stuff that has a real impact'
'fantastic that we are thinking about what matters to ordinary women'
'I really think women's safety is a central issue for feminists'
'of course, we can see clearly here how women's biology matters when we are thinking about oppression- employers are going to discriminate against people who might have babies, after all' (bit risky that last one)

The topic of the first session? The effects of the pandemic on women, trans rights and feminism

Wow, what a major set of topics one session. I doubt you will get past the first bit, i.e. the effect of the pandemic on women. Maybe there will be time to squeeze in five minutes the end on the transwomen and feminism aspects.

Don't fall into the trap of centering men instead of women. Don't let time be taken away from women's issues to talk about other issues. Keep asking questions that have bugger all to do with trans and everything to do with women in the pandemic.

You could even preempt the discussion by sending the organisers a set of subtopics you recommend for discussion. Include hard hitting ones like the rise in murders of women during the pandemic, the risk of women going into prostitution due to loss of livelihood, how this disproportionally affects the north at present, front line care workers and teachers who are predominantly female being at high risk of covid exposure, when redundancies are necessary should men be laid off preferentially and women kept for men's own protection seeing as men are more at risk of dying from covid.

Relentlessly bring it back to those topics and hopefully get the conversation directed there by the organisers in the first place.

I wonder if there are any good articles out there on these topics that you could suggest they circulate?

I do think there are some things that don't need to be debated over and over, and can understand why groups might not want to give their limited time to, e.g. arguing that the Holocaust did indeed happen, or that women as a class are oppressed by the patriarchy etc, before they can get on with their discussion. Certain basic understanding has to be there to build on.

But acting like accepting TWAW in all circumstances and for all reasons and sex is no longer a fundamental aspect of women's oppression is not the same thing - it's clearly still unresolved.

It's very depressing that universities have become places where the pursuit of greater knowledge and deeper understanding have been subordinated to being nice, a phrase which now expresses only the most facile and insincere of sentiments.

Tweebree

'It's like in The Walking Dead. These people have been bitten already, there's nothing you can do. Save your strength for another fight.'

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂👏👏👏👏👏👏

That young people cannot find a safe place to discuss ideas, which is what university is for.

University is for challenging assumptions, being presented with difficult ideas, learning from people with different perspectives to yourself, critically assessing your and other people’s ideas and ideologies. It used to be that university professors had life tenure and this was to given them the freedom to explore unpopular ideas eg. evolution, the place of man in the universe.

Being told you mustn’t raise contrary opinions because it is exclusionary or because it might hurt someone’s feelings, refusing to listen is the antithesis of what university should be for.

At my DS's university, many of the students are getting heartily sick of this kind of thing. These people really have shot themselves in the foot with their "no debate" nonsense

That's encouraging. Let's hope they're soon brave enough to speak out about this & start the necessary discussions.

That young people cannot find a safe place to discuss ideas, which is what university is for.

What does "safe" mean in this context?

Physically safe would surely be as much as a given as any university lecture, seminar or meeting.

Emotionally safe? No-one can say that something upsetting won't be said in a discussion group. Although I would expect anyone being simply verbally abusive to be thrown out.

Safe from repercussions? This is probably the most sensible meaning. In a discussion group I would think that people should be free to explore all kinds of ideas in order to test them. I wouldn't expect someone to be reported to bosses or course managers for doing such a thing. Again, the exception would be if someone in the group was doing something like trying to persuade people to take terrorist action or incite violence. That doesn't seem likely in a group like this.

I am just very wary when people talk about safe spaces. It seems to be a way to shut people down from expressing ideas.

I despair at how polarised this topic has become. Of course, trans rights are human rights - no one in their right mind will deny it but why is it anti-feminist and transphobic to state vulnerable women and girls have rights too ??? Anyone who says - go speak to a transperson before commenting, I would ask them if they have spoken to a truly vulnerable female needing the single sex space? I would have been one but I had the money and support to quickly take myself out of the vulnerable position I had found myself in so it didn't blow up into a therapy-needing trauma for me. But I am aware I am one of the lucky ones. On the other hand, I have also seen firsthand the prejudice trans and intersex people face especially lack of work opportunities and have always been supportive of equal rights for them and I still am, but I am sorry it is not trans-exclusionary to think that rights of vulnerable female persons must be upheld too. The world is big enough to accommodate every type of safe space - single sex, trans, non-sex based, non-binary etc etc. Also shouldn't the right solution be removing the stigma around being trans and gender non-conforming? i.e. trans people can be awesome and heroes too in their own right? why is being trans lesser than being a man or woman? Surely there must be transwomen who just want to be transwomen?

Apologies, I am rambling as I would at 4:30 AM. My interest in the trans topic was initially piqued when JKR got all that flak for the menstruators tweet and the blog she wrote in which she recalled her own trauma. And then it amplified this week from a personal perspective when the whole bit about pronoun preference, particularly the usage of 'they' for non-group usage, became a bit more mainstream (BBC/NHS ) because it felt it was so discriminatory towards my amazing 6 year old neuro-atypical language-challenged autistic child who would struggle so much to understand the concept and I don't think it's a fair or inclusive ask from orgs such as Stonewall to demand total acceptance to changes such as these without exceptions. Also I think any child who is prescribed puberty blockers and is allowed start transition as child deserves better evidence-based holistic healthcare.

Sadly, I don't think this 'debate' is going to go away anywhere soon - in fact I think this is going to go the same way as scottish independence / brexit if it continues in the current vein, and might end up in a "Referendum" allowing women voters only to decide what the 'legal' definition of woman should be i.e. 1. adult human female 2. adult human female or anyone who has had a SRS to female 3. a totally new definition - I just think this is a fundamental thing for humanity that I don't think a few organisations and a few people can claim to speak for all of the women.

And @FeministFatale - my advice for you (if you are still reading that is :) ) would be to attend the meeting. No point being outside of the conversation if you want change. One question which you could ask and probably get away with safely is 'What do you think of Rainbowsymbol being used to celebrate NHS and if they would agree with this article below which is about how rainbow pride flags represent safe space and sanctuary for LGBT community and how it's important it continues to be so because if has dual purpose (celebration of NHS and LGBT) then it loses it ability to be a symbol of safety.' Because if they understand this, then shouldn't they also be able to understand why it might be incongruous to conflate gender and sex when it comes to single sex safe spaces?
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/rainbow-flag-nhs-lgbtq-community-co-opting-rainbow-flag_uk_5f47a692c5b6cf66b2b40682?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHVlhzG76FywCuEu81sV3HeDyrX7AgF9SSYPG456isGK2MUZLFV7ReWk9hE6AhISX8hGYpGGaoMYWFK35ucmRai2mL797MYVSXQ7WDwpLW6Hjxom3gTB_Vb9wXTU70uA3VBC-f1sz6jORux6OVWNDAvLDhykvRDLRM1Cvcok4W_4

I was in a similar group once, and the majority were getting up in arms over a clearly discriminatory issue in relation to menstruation, framing it as gender discrimination.

I pointed out to them that since males also menstruate (which some bright spark had mentioned earlier) it wasn’t gender discrimination. Luckily though, the Equality Act lists sex, not gender, as protected characteristics, so the discrimination argument was still valid.

A couple of them thanked me for reminding them about the menstruating men, so clearly hadn’t joined the dots, but you never know about the ones who remain quiet.

I listened to this tonight, from 2017. It does sum up some of the issues for me.

Can you outdo them? If they refer to any person as he or she, start a long conversation about how disappointed you are that they assumed a gender?
Even today I've literally seen people on social media, who are very pro-TWAW, share links about pregnancy and asked their followers to share with "all women you know". You should butt in with 'and pregnant men, of course", or the equivalent.
If they talk about 'single-sex spaces' ask them what specifically they mean by sex or biological sex.

I’m in the same position op. I’m currently studying a masters in gender studies and no matter what we are discussing, women are not centred. I’m very happy to be working remotely as I don’t think I could cope face to face without being unmasked.

You have my sympathies.

Building on what @ChattyLion said, could you also ask them to define the different terms ‘for clarity and to make sure that we are not talking at cross purposes’ and see if they can define women because if they are saying twaw then they must know what w are to be able to say tw are a member of that class. And then you can ask them how they differentiate non-tw - for example if they wanted to draw attention of women to a poster about ovarian or cervical cancer symptoms and you know that as not all women know they have these you can’t just say ‘people with ovaries’ etc as many of the people it is targeting wont realise it applies to them so these words are having a deadly consequence on them. And point out that obviously as cis is found offensive by most women or is not known or understood by most others, that is not a solution to be used ‘in the real world’ unlike within limited communities where even îf it isn’t liked it is at least more likely to be understood.