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

The rot has set in at big firms, and definitely public sector organisations.

A friend yesterday had compulsory “menopause recognition training”. He said he was thinking, “I bet I know what Irma would think of this” as he was trained to spot perimenopausal women....

Yeah, what I think is it’s crap. If I’m displeased with someone or unhappy with their work, it’s precisely that, not because I’m experiencing a hot flush, bless the old dear...

How do they square that with the ongoing campaigns to encourage more girls to study physics and engineering?

www.iop.org/what-were-doing-address-gender-imbalance-physics

This is rididulous and demonises discussing opinions and feelings regarding human differences. Yes, please do put in place a system of repercussions for those who are genuinely transphobic, racist, homophobic, etc but don't criminalise words!

How counterproductive to society's moves to make transgender people more comfortable and accepted.

Criminalising saying anything to trans people is exactly what they don't want- trans people are just normal people, treating them differently isn't equality! This isn't even snowflake behaviour, this is Newcastle Uni getting the wrong end of the stick and going to extreme lengths to make themselves look supportive and instead making them look like transphobes! Ridiculous.

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.

Another is engaging in "avoidant behaviour" around trans people
This is mind blowing. People avoid other people all the bloody time.

Boring people, smelly people, people they've previously argued with, people they've nothing in common with and don't find any particular reason to spend any time with.
THIS IS ALLOWED. 🤯🤯🤯

My parents said that about my university education - actually, it undid the sex/gender programming they had installed in me and taught me about second-wave feminism.

The universities have often been hotbeds of weirdness so not much change there. Luckily our children come out of left wing school and extreme university lecturer indoctrination into a real world where gradually the cult like programming can be undone from them.

Another is engaging in "avoidant behaviour" around trans people

Christ alive this is Orwellian. So I go to the loo, get a call or text as I open the door and decide to take my call elsewhere and I'm avoiding?
I say nothing in a group conversation cos I'm shy, but no I'm avoiding.
I stay away from people I don't like because I dont like them, ah no. See I'm avoiding but not because I don't like em.

Virtually everything you could do could well be called avoiding.

Forced friendship is that even legal?

it comes as several Russell Group universities are training scholars on "cisgender privilege",

Who is doing the training? It all sounds incredibly dodgy.

But the Free Speech law sounds interesting. I am hopeful the tide will turn

And they might be right in a particular instance but the effect of removing all chance of subtext is impossible and assuming every statement should be interpreted that way leads to a place of craziness.

I wish universities would do something about discrimination against people with disabilities. I think it would have a huge impact on access to higher education

Yes there are a lot more disabled people in the UK than there are trans-people, or gender-confused people. Far too much concentrating on the wrong priorities, in my view.

Hazel444 Why this incessant need for victimhood? And not just any victimhood, but the most victimy victimhood that there ever was..

Because victimhood confers moral superiority

This conflation between sex and gender is a serious problem. Cut any human cell down the middle and it will have evidence either XX or XY chromosomes; there is no in between.

"Educate the offender"

There was a time people went to uni to learn about the subject they want to graduate in. Now they sit and listen to the thoughts and politics of lecturers. British University system was envied around the world, now it seems to have become a joke.
It's going to get to the stage nobody will be looking or talking to each other in fear of offense being taken.

As one of the people whom they presume to so label and compartmentalise, I wish to put it on record that I find the term 'cis' when used about groups including me as offensive and consider it a microaggression towards me.

If members of one group of people are allowed to decide what they are and aren't willing to accept as a 'label' - and I'm absolutely not saying that they shouldn't, even if they do seem to change and volte-face a lot - then I will not accept them labelling me in a certain way and then slapping me down when I protest, by 'informing' me that it's supposedly just a neutral scientific term and that I have no reason or justification in rejecting it.

What a bunch of twats.

(Can't see that mentioned in the list of microinsults, so it must be ok).