Universities will be the last bastion of gender ideology and the denial of women's rights

This is appalling.

I agree. There's a difference between education and training as well.

The 'non-producers' comment reminds me of 'useless mouths' 🙄

Practical skills are indeed important - though making people marketable sounds nasty to me. However, though we need plumbers we also need philosophers; civil engineers require maths and someone has to study pure and applied so that we can use the applied; health workers and historians...for without the academic subjects we cease to have a civilization. (We could maybe live without Banksy and some art critics but not without perspective and the art of drawing.)
Education cannot be left to the market btw. The market only promotes what makes monetary profit - there is more to our world than monetary profit - man cannot live by bread alone...(daresay you know the rest of that).

I’d also take issue with the suggestions upthread that higher education is pointless; but I’m absolutely behind the idea that HE isn’t suitable for everyone, some courses are rubbish, and proper apprenticeships should be supported and seen as an equally valuable route

I took dc to Bath open day, and was pleasantly surprised. The toilets are labelled female and male and a third ‘non-binary’ option was available (this is also true of Leeds btw). When you apply for accommodation you can choose mixed/women (inc trans) or men(inc trans)/actual single sex. Not really sure why they need the middle options (which are also obv mixed sex) but it did seem to offer a proper choice. The recognition that you could hold terfy views and still be a student was refreshing tbh

Michael Foran

@michaelpforan

Due to escalating disruptive protests, I have decided to cancel the remainder of these lectures. This is deeply lamentable, but the disruption has undermined the academic nature of this series. Students shouldn't face bullying or harassment when attending academic events.

It is unfortunate that these protesters have chosen disruption over genuine intellectual engagement grounded in academic charity and rigour. In attempting to shame students into deplatforming these lectures, they manifest the antithesis of what a university stands for.

People who inhabit the world of universities need to demonstrate their advanced intelligence to the rest of us and supporting trans ideology gives them the perfect opportunity to show their so called enhanced thinking.

They think that we are bogged down in mundane discussions about toilets and sports whereas they are looking at the concept of gender identity, the writings of Judith Butler etc, stuff we couldn't possibly understand. As the Harvard t-shirt says "So it works in practice but does it work in theory?"

I agree that the arts are captured too but they just follow the most progressive line to be seen as non conforming. They don't have the ideological attachment to it.

Just reading on twitter Michael Foran has had to cancel a series of public lectures he was giving in Oxford due to protest/harrasment of students attending.
The unqualified fuckery of all this!

It will be interesting to see whether universities that offer women only accommodation get in line with the law. If I’d signed a contract for single sex accommodation and found myself in a mixed sex ‘women’s’ flat I’d go after the university for my hall fees. The upper limit for a small claims court case is currently £10K, which is around a year’s hall fees depending on location and catering.

I think you're absolutely right about Universities being amongst the last public institutions to move back to sanity. Its really depressing.
I read a wonderful article that popped up on my twitter feed a week back opining how young women in particular prop the ideology up.

The wonderful Maeve Halligan said the same recently in an interview. I don't know how that gets changed in the short term tbh, women are empathetic & held to account by peers/society in ways men aren't - empathy at the risk of self negation & fear at reaction - what's to be done?

My DD (grades allowing) may go to Oxford this year, I mention it because I asked her if she'd be inclined start a Women's Society much like Maeve,Thea & Serena have at Cambridge - it was just a question not a suggestion on my part.

It was her physical reaction that 'upset' me more than her answer - she kind of coiled back & her eyes went rabbit in the headlight wide "fuck no Mum, have you read what they've been through & are still going through up there? I just want to get my degree & not end up a social pariah - if im asked what I believe, i'll be honest, so i might well end up cancelled anyway - but im not putting myself up against the wall !"

Everyone in her friendship group is a Terf. All would be terrified to rock the boat at Universities, they're all smart enough to know the first through the door gets shot & simultaneously know if someone doesn't go first nothing will change.

She was 7 when I first became aware of 'all this'. I've done all the things women here have done, public meetings, raised money, met & made many life long friends, wrote letters, just talked to people. Things are & have changed. But a dark corner of myself feels a guilt & dread at being asleep at the wheel for so long & now my daughter & her generation are left with the mess to try & navigate.

I dont have an answer, just thought i'd say how its looks in this house with a young woman about to start University. Grim.

Whoever wrote this has never worked in the entertainment industry/theatre/music. Universities are terfy in comparison.

Whist the government continue to peddle the lie that everyone should have a degree, the Uni's have a guaranteed pipeline of young people to educate in mickey mouse subjects.

What we need is a political party that recognizes practical skills are just as valuable, and arguably more necessary for the country to continue to prosper. One who will give serious thought too funding vocational colleges and apprenticeships that could provide future generations with marketable skills. Instead of a specialised degree which requires the government to create unnecessary public sector jobs to give to the people with them.

Ultimately it will be market forces that will sort it out, because this country is up to it's eyeballs in debt, and it can no longer continue to support an education system that is spitting out non-producers. Nor keep funding a public sector that as become moribund and stuff full of useless workers.

It's like the whole state establishment has been turned into a day care provider for kidadults.