University staff given list of banned 'microinsults' they cannot say to trans people

It is clearly in the University EXTERNAL FACING web pages (and is marked to be removed)...and it is heavily biased that trans people should be prioritised and everyone else will need to accept the label cis just to make trans people happy...

Finding out more (to be removed)
Further resources for Trans and non-Binary people.

Trans and non-Binary people face challenges doing things that many simply take for granted – such as using a public toilet or changing room – fearing hostility and experiencing stress. Understanding this will help you in preventing and challenging discrimination. The environment can also be hostile to Trans and non-Binary people through visible Anti-Trans campaigns, such as stickers and posters, often in toilets, as well as on social media.

There are many resources available to help you find out more about being Trans or non-Binary, the discrimination and the hurdles they face in navigating the gendered environment (see resource list below).

To access the gym at King's Building you have to go through a changing room, which is either the female changing room or the male changing room so you can't physically get into the gym without dealing with these things and potentially people looking at you, potentially people asking you why you're there, people kicking you out it's so it's like there's so many situations where you are exposed to, like that, categorization that other people put on you. Just because you are the way you are, there's like no way for you to escape it really.

Some common terms you may come across

Transgender: some feel strongly that they are of the ‘opposite’ gender and for others, there is a sense of fluidity between genders or that the gender descriptions available do not match their gender identity at all. People experiencing this are defined as transgender.

Non-Binary: Non-binary people do not define their gender in a ‘binary’ (male/female; man/woman) way.

Gender Dysphoria: When this experience results in distressing feelings it is described as ‘gender dysphoria’. Not all trans people will experience dysphoria, but they may still identify as trans because their assigned sex does not match their gender identity and they are experiencing ‘gender incongruity’.

Transition: Some people feel the tension so strongly that they seek surgical remediation, others choose to express their gender without the need for surgery, but make use of hormone treatment, and some may not feel the need for medical intervention

Transphobia: Transphobia is the hatred, fear, mistrust of or prejudice against trans and gender non-conforming people. This leads to discrimination and exclusion.

Cisgender: 'Cisgender’ is a term which is used to describe people who do not experience gender incongruity. Not everyone likes being described as cisgendered, but it is increasingly being accepted as a useful distinguishing term to make writing and talking about trans people easier.

I used to work at Newcastle University - if this is the shape of their policy now I'm pleased I'm out of it.

Meanwhile, the glass ceiling for women academics lives on unchallenged, women do the bulk of the first year teaching whilst watching younger men shoot ahead with promotions, and there are multiple, daily, aggressions and microaggressions leveled at and experienced by women and no one gives a proverbial

Indeed, @YetAnotherSpartacus

And women, and particularly women from ethnic minorities, are routinely treated in sexist racist ways by students.

Some of the things we're apparently being told not to say to students are things I wouldn't dream of saying to any student anyway. I'm not really interested in them as people - I'm interested in my students as learners.

How they dress or what they look like is (almost) entirely irrelevant. The only time that dress is relevant is for matters of safety or ease of movement, if we're doing something which requires movement. So any student turning up in, for example, high heels or a top which doesn't cover shoulders & upper arms, would be inappropriate for some of my teaching sessions.

How they identify isn't really relevant either - that's their business.

Unless their behaviour makes it my business, by impinging on other students' learning, for example.

But the general trend is a bit sinister. The Equalities Act explicitly states there's no hierarchy of protected characteristics. But you'd have to be living under a rock not to know that women and disabled people are routinely and structurally discriminated against in our society, and universities reflect this.

So if you're interested in material reality, the only way you can see trans students as "the most oppressed" is if you routinely and deliberately overlook sexism and ableism in universities.

The current situation is the logical progression of the extremist feminist agenda, for decades women have turned a blind eye to the misandry.

For a good 20 years no white person (especially white men) has been able to question any aspect of the far left narrative. Because there has been little or no opposition it has just progressed further and further to the left.

Tony Blairs race/equality chief did a fantastic documentary on it a couple of years ago. In he admitted Labours aim was to stop people expressing any other view on race/gender/sexuality than multiculturalism etc being great, their though being if we stopped people talking about it they would stop thinking about it. The documentary is a very thought provoking view of how wrong they got it.

I am Edinburgh Uni faculty and have not heard of any of this. It's just the Telegraph being, well, the Telegraph

Are you saying they made it all up then?

Catherina, are you able to see the link I just posted?

Seriously? It's Edinburgh Uni's fault that Edinburgh, in Scotland, is colder than where the students come from?
That’s all you took from that post?

[quote Amrapaali]"Educate the offender"

I do believe in and care about microaggressions fwiw.
I work a lot with people who experience Islamophobia and racism, and I experience lesbophobia and ablism.
The way people treat you with a faint air of revulsion is something that grinds you down.
But you can't make 'turn your nose up at someone' against the rules.
It's about subconscious reactions to difference.
The best way to get rid of prejudice is surely to encourage lots of dialogue across difference.

There have always been students like this. When I worked for a university in the 80s it was all Boycott South Africa. One of my colleagues used to love trolling the SU bar. Said he was honing their debating skills
It’s the grown ups joining in that’s different now. I’m guessing it’s to do with funding and the fear of losing it if they aren’t seen as allies.

I work at Edinburgh University and have not heard anything about this. It's likely the usual trans hate hyperbole

Well you're in a perfect position to go and find the guidance for yourself then. Do you not believe this to be true? It's come from somewhere.

I wonder why this is marked 'to be removed'

www.ed.ac.uk/equality-diversity/students/microaggressions/lgbtq-microaggressions/trans-and-or-non-binary-microaggressions/finding-out-more

Growing a thicker skin might be more useful advice for students and for life

I agree with this. It's something I try to teach my own children.

When did ‘something i don’t like’ ‘boggle’ ‘oooo get her!’ become ‘micro aggression’. There is rarely any aggression if any type in the examples peope state.

When did higher education become a place where you couldn’t say things? It was a place of debate and mind expansion when I was younger.

Growing a thicker skin might be more useful advice for students and for life. None of us want trans people (or women or blacks or anyone) mocked or derided but at this least Government is trying to do something about woke /overly politically correct universities. It is the free speech I want to see even if students get upset.

www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2019/whats-a-little-throat-punch-among-friends/

Maybe rather than focusing on micro-aggressions such as saying that all women hate their periods, they should first address macro-aggressions such as physically assaulting or threatening to rape people who disagree with you?

You would think, wouldn't you?

https://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/feminist-speaker-julie-bindel-attacked-transgender-person-edinburgh-university-after-talk-545841

What this boils down to is that a simple refusal to discuss it isn't good enough for the fundamentalists. If you speak against The Ideology you'll be deplatformed, if you say nothing (i.e. refuse to engage with the pronoun bollocks or strut around wearing pretty rainbows) you'll be outed as a Non Believer and the same rules as above will apply. The only - default - option is to accept every word of it and go along with what they say. You're either with them, or you're against them.

As for:

In a crackdown on 'cancel culture', ministers are planning a new law under which academics could sue if they are silenced. A Free Speech Champion will be appointed to the Office for Students, the regulator.

You want to hear UCU on that particular subject.

Where, in all this, is the emphasis on academic standards: on designing materials and teaching your subject specialism to the highest possible level? I'm not interested in diluting my precious lecture time this with all this navel-gazing, self-involved, aggressive, reactionary 'identity' politics.

Budge over little women - do as the men tell you. As recently as 2000 my wonderful feminist academic mentors would have laughed it the very idea, believing it to be now stuck in the past alongside the dinosaurs and the flood.

Academia is fucked.

I've just realised another "avoidant behaviour" would be. A woman walks into the Ladies, clocks a transwoman there, and turns on her heel and leaves.

Time for the bad woman to get a warning. Next time she must grit her teeth and go into the occupied space.

YY. See this thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3520371-civil-service-trans-policy-what-can-i-do

But avoiding them will now be a 'micro aggression'

Thinking on from this, what about people like Gregor who, I believe, are transgender. If someone entered the women's toilets who presented in a similar way, all my instincts would tell me to leave immediately. It would be a natural response. So if I did that, it would be perceived as a micro aggression.

As someone who has experienced sexual assault (from men) this position leaves me with no means to protect myself from a perceived risk through leaving, if I was to adhere to this guidance.