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

Loads of people rocking the rainbow lanyards - not so much trans allies as suckers for a freebie and the standard ones are itchy as fuck around the neck.

It's OK. Gravity is a particle, a wave, and a vector space. It was intersectional before it was fashionable.

Racism. He’s supposed to have benefitted from the Slave Trade
Wish I’d heard the reaction when the Physics department was told!

Making Newton, his laws and newtons unmentionable would be tricky.

What crimes has Newton been accused of?

Newton’s first three laws are heteronormative. My physics will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.

This is both bonkers and chilling at the same time. You’re going to need Handmaid’s Tale-style phrases like ‘under his eye’ in order to communicate around trans people.

“ R0wantrees
Sheffield apparently has blackballed Isaac Newton.

What crimes has Newton been accused of?”

Racism. He’s supposed to have benefitted from the Slave Trade 🙄

Wish I’d heard the reaction when the Physics department was told!

At least trans people have a gender identity. Gender identity is obviously so crucial to humans and I don't even have one, nevermind cis or trans. Surely I am the most oppressed of them all.

Scholars should also not place "excess focus on anatomical sex markers"

If only they actually meant something useful by this, like encouraging young women not to tolerate ogling and groping.

They don’t though, do they?

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/disabled-students-five-years-of-sheer-hell-at-university/

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.

Yawn. As if. Whatever. Bzzzt.

Scholars should also not place "excess focus on anatomical sex markers".

I would like someone to explain what constitutes "excess focus" in pathology research, anatomy research, a fair amount of biomedical research, reproductive biology etc.

As for many of the other remarks - I can reflect on a fairly lengthy career, a portion of which has been in research depts. and I've never used those phrases. I can, however, provide an extensive list of incidents of sexual harassment for which I've been the recipient as well as working in a deeply unpleasant general culture - but, as YetAnotherSpartacus indicates, that doesn't seem to be relevant.

Colonialism- I'm just going out but try Spiked and Frank Furedi for more info.

As an autistic person I find it very hard to engage with pronouns. Not just personal pronouns. Any pronouns seem to be very ambiguous to me.
I often do refer to people by their name for this reason.
It seems very odd and possibly discriminatory to ban this as 'avoidant'

MissBarbary

Edinburgh University has drawn up phrases that staff cannot use, including saying "all women hate their periods" and "all people think about being the opposite gender sometimes"

In my own case both of those statements are untrue so I would not be particularly pleased at hearing them being put forward as a universal truth.

I read this as meaning that only women have periods and the complaint is the blanket assumption that all women hate their periods. After all, it’s exclusionary to the women who derive great relief at their period when they are worried that they have an unwanted pregnancy.

I suggest you make a formal complaint about this clear literal violence that only women have periods.

It is terrifying Sophoclesthefox. How is this not recognised as being authoritarian by academics of all people.

We must be forced to demonstrate our support and beliefs. As you say “you can’t even do a quiet act of conscientious objection by melting away from any confrontation”

Many are going to end up in a state of anxiety any time a trans individual is in the same room fearful of demonstrating “avoidant behaviour” let alone inadvertently saying the wrong thing or using the wrong pronoun.

It is a way of purging wrong thinkers from higher education by making interactions with others such high stakes, it enables bullying and the stress experienced by some could be unbearable.

Will this be extended to students I wonder who may be thrown of their courses?

Possibly besides the point but I really wish actual gays (tm) could keep hold of rainbow stuff. It's very disappointing thinking someone in your life might be gay and therefore understand a bit about your life/circumstances when in fact they are engaging in performative virtue signalling and unlikely to even be able to critically engage with a gaydom-related issue you might be having.

"Being cisgender comes with social privilege. That's even for people who are socially disadvantaged in other ways."

What the actual fuck? Why are they trying to position trans people as worse off than those generationally affected by systemic racism/ethnic cleansing etc.? Why this incessant need for victimhood? And not just any victimhood, but the most victimy victimhood that there ever was..

Sheffield apparently has blackballed Isaac Newton.

What crimes has Newton been accused of?

Back at the beginning of the century, I was given a scholarship for being a female Engineer. (£500 I think, so a lot for a student but not a lot... Then another for A level grades which all the UK students on my specialised course got). Would such a scholarship count as an aggression towards any potential Trans engineers?

Surely this is all totally counterproductive?

My behaviour towards trans people has changed because of this sort of nonsense. I don't want to say something that is clumsy, even if it is well meaning, and get accused of committing a hate crime. There is a trans person I know who is "trying out" names - so they are on about the 5th name, it is very difficult to remember which of the names are now dead names and I am cautious about getting it wrong and landing up on the receiving end of an upset rainbow.

So, I avoid that person now.

It is totally counterproductive to try and police people's behaviour and communication in this way. Adults should be able to manage people saying things which are a bit less than ideal. Christ knows I manage it every day.