Anyone else work at a Uni?

Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude @ThatPithySheep

Yes @ThatPithySheep , I was involved in some of the clear up after Extinction Rebellion protests and the amount of refuse had to be seen to be believed, including a lot of single use plastics and even things like tents and sleeping bags which seem to be treated as disposable items too. Join an environmental campaign and the world is your ashtray. Now I'm not disputing the overall sentiment. I'm all in favour of good environmental practices. I've toiled away on desolate hilsides in the horizontal sleet planting trees for example. But I'd have a lot more respect for some of these people if they a) did something useful with all that energy b) cleaned up after themselves.

God, I sound like a grumpy old crone, and I'm only 40!

One of the issues is that many of our students and staff come from very comfortable lives (not all!), and they just don't care about others.

We had some occupy a building to protest about climate change, and they cared not at all for the cleaners who had to go in when they'd left and clean up the dog shit (because yes they took dogs in with this); and the take away boxes; and other rubbish they left behind. What really upset me was hearing two of them walking out chatting about their skiing trip to the French Alps - I was tempted to ask how they got there? presumably it was a long bus journey

Oh I'm sorry @Unluckyjim of course that's fine, and I'm sorry you are having a tough time. I think we all are to be fair, enjoy your days in nature and relax

If anyone's interested in Catherine Liu, there's lots of stuff on Youtube where she talks about her ideas and that is a valuable lens through which to interrogate her longer written pieces. For someone like me, it's good to hear this sort of thing being said by someone with a lefty sort of background too.

Without wishing to sound like Trump and his acolytes, I can't help feeling that the DEI edifice has served the professional and managerial classes very well. They've had tons of meetings, produced millions of words of reports, policies and guidance, given each other awards and slapped one another on the back, all whilst enjoying middle class salaries. Yet have the underlying patterns of inequality genuinely shifted as a resulf of all this verbiage? Hmm. That's a little more debatable.

I feel very, very near the edge. I’ve taken a few days AL to get out of the environment and get into nature. I e tried and tried to get other jobs but I’m unemployable. My family listen to me but fundamentally don’t agree.

I’m going to try and read Catherine Liu as I don’t understand Foucault. Because I’m not the professional or managerial class. People who clean the toilets in unis know what sex people are.

This week I have been told to support staff and students affected by the Supreme Court ruling (the trans and NB ones presumably?)

On making the loos and changing rooms single sex again? 🦗🦗🦗

There's such a thing as being too clever in a university, I've come to conclude. A lot of thinking is not about discovering the truth (if we can call it that) but aligning ourselves with the right people, getting into the right clique or getting the next publication, the next grant or the next promotion. Sounds a bit Foucaldian - regimes of truth asserted through power and all that. However, I'm drawn these days not so much to Foucault, but to Catherine Liu's commentary on the professional and managerial classes. I've always felt uncomfortable being patronised and told off by people with letters after their names and she puts it into words very nicely for me!

I don’t feel able to tell you that pithy

Where was that @Unluckyjim I have a colleague who is a secret TERF, he talks a lot about how insane this all is but he will not speak publicly. Even though his voice would carry a lot of weight. He is in UCU and is always trying to persuade me to rejoin (no thanks, I give the money I'd spend on subs to charities now) i would like to be able to show him how mad they are

UCU have told us that turfs need to stand up and show who they are.

Do you think I need a swimming costume for the ducking stool, or some tin foil for the fire?

Same here.

If womanhood is not biological, how come we can trace a line back through the DNA in our oocytes to Mitochondrial Eve?

Earlier forms of feminism wanted to reject female biology and the body because they saw it ( and the roles that resulted from it) as the root of female oppression. Feminists wanted to say " women are not their biology"....which the trans movement has now taken to mean " being a woman has got nothing to do with biology".

There seems to be a lot of confusion between a woman being 'defined' by the nature of chromosomes and biology ( which they are), and women being entirely 'subservient' to or 'conditioned' by their chromosomes and biology (which they aren't).

The idea that biology is entirely one's destiny ( which they seem to want to reject) is in part true...because 'destiny' is the set of conditions one is born into or has inherited and which one has to deal with...but not everything about someone is conditioned by their sex. We are all human beings with unique personalities, histories, talents, skills, preferences regardless of our sex.

'Sex' is a condition one is born into, and 'Sex' interacts with one's culture and one's society. We cannot get around or away from the fact that we all have a sex...but we can shape our own response to that sex, and we can also attempt to negotiate or help to shape our society or culture's response to it.

We are mammals. Mammals are a two sex category of life on earth.

Oh, and of course, if "Woman" isn't a matter of "body, genes, chromosomes and reproductive capacity" what's the big issue with people who do share a commonality of "body, genes, chromosomes and reproductive capacity" having a name, social and political identity and necessary protections ad rights because of the needs that arise from that?

Why do female humans have to share everything - spaces, rights, history, name, political and cultural identity - with "women" when by this new definition of "woman" there's no reason to assume they have anything in common?

It's incoherent isn't it.

"For centuries, women have fought for the right to do, wear and be what they want to be"

And who were these "women"? What did they have in common? Why did Patriarchy single out this group of people? Was there a lottery? Was it an eye colour thing?

"It is essentialist and patriarchal to assert that body, genes, chromosomes and reproductive capacity make women (or men)”

Then what does make a woman different from a man? Why do those categories exist at all? What utility do they bring, what meaning do they have?

What connects these people who are definitely "women" but definitely not such because of their "body, genes, chromosomes and reproductive capacity" and the people who "For centuries, ... have fought for the right to do, wear and be what they want to be" such that they are the same group? What is the common thread that links them?

What is this thing "woman" that means the story of the people who "fought for the right to do, wear and be what they want to be" is the history of people who are definitely "women" but definitely not such because of their "body, genes, chromosomes and reproductive capacity"?

I think we misunderstand what leads people into academia. For some, of course, intellectual curiosity, the spirit of discovery, passion for a topic... but for others it's the culmination of having been a good boy or girl at school, getting high marks for knowing the right answer, locating their self-image and self-esteem in being told that they are correct and (therefore) good. Some never make the shift to intellectual independence.

I'm starting to notice 'intelligent' doesn't always group people as well as 'intellectually curious'. For example, in the thread about 'the guilty feminist' on triggernometry, there was some excellent analysis of what her analogies were intended to mean, what they actually conveyed, and where they lead if followed through. Perhaps people driven to questions like 'what does that mean?' 'how does that idea fit with others' ' why could it be right and why could it be wrong?' are likely to end up in a different position from otherwise intelligent people who accept things more at face value. Or am I being unfair - have the people that believe that thought deeply and with intellectual openness about it and all the ramifications of what they are saying and still come to that conclusion?

“We unequivocally reject the idea that women can be defined by their biology, a claim which is neither feminist nor scientific. For centuries, women have fought for the right to do, wear and be what they want to be. It is essentialist and patriarchal to assert that body, genes, chromosomes and reproductive capacity make women (or men)”

Im truly open-mouthed that this has been written by intelligent people!

The 1752 Group don't think that women need single-sex spaces to escape their campus rapists... https://1752group.com/2025/05/02/statement-in-solidarity-with-the-uk-trans-and-non-binary-community/

I'm going with some being stupid and some being duplicitous.

And some being cowardly and not willing to think about anything that might make them think they have a duty to rock the boat.

As @GCAcademic says, all this bollocks plays slap into the hands of Reform.

Yes. And I expect there are other staff/students with protected characteristics such as disabilities who need someone to advocate for their needs.

The sensible thing to do it seems to me, is to return/fold DEI as part of the overall HR responsibility as in a non-captured or deprogrammed organisation they should ensure the balance of policies to meet the needs for all staff.

It's that irritation I get then with non binary. While I accept people are free to define themselves as they wish, this idea of identity relies on putting other people into boxes. Without the norm or the orthodox, there is no queer. But the podcast's academic was saying queering is nothing to do with LGBTQ. To me, this is just putting a label on something that we could, alternatively, accept as part of humanity in all its' complexity. It seems to be claiming all sorts of things that have nothing to do with queer identity and are just being human.

These academics are either very stupid or very duplicitous.

I know and work with some of them (one a closeted lesbian ...). They vary between the #bekind and the full-on Butlerian "gender is a performance" and gender=sex

I increasingly say to students that a) Butler isn't a feminist in the political sense (you can theorise about "gender" without being a feminist; and b) there are other theorists of queer theory and also much more to feminist writing