To ask what policy your Uni has on women's spaces?

[SerfTerf]

Those of you who have recent work or study experience.

Would you mind listing institution names and their policies?

NC if you need to of course.

Oh yes you're an hour ahead. Enjoy Italy.

missBax so sorry, I genuinely missed that post, wasn't ignoring you, thank you for the direction.

I think that gender dysphoria IS a mental health condition, but I don't think having it is a requirement for being trans or that all trans people have it. I think adults who cannot overcome their dysphoria with medication or therapy or non-surgical body modifications can choose to have surgery to lessen its effect. I do think that, like many mental health conditions, it probably also has a genetic component or a biological one (brain chemistry). Other conditions you mentioned probably fall into the same category.

I think children should not be given unknown medication to prevent puberty, and that children are being denied psychological support without them is horrific and cruel. I did not know that was a thing that happened, as my trans friends are adults. I am also aware that I'd get screamed at by the most vocal of trans activists for saying that.

Honestly, gender criticism hasn't come up in any of my class debates around feminism, LGBT, current events, self-identification or anything else. I hope that isn't because people were too scared to voice their opinions, but I obviously can't say that for sure

I guarantee it's because people are too scared. Of course they would be in a situation where saying transwomen and women is considered ttansphovic and liable to have you disciplined yet calling people out on using the term ciswoman would mean you had to "compromise". Because of course the rights of a tiny minority take precedence over women... you know those people that make up half the world's population.

I utterly respect trans people, I respect their right to exist and be counted and feel they belong. I feel utterly disgusted that what were once progressive institutions feel that those rights can only happen whilst stamping all over women's rights.

Thank you serf I will probably be back in the morning! confoozed yes you're probably right, I didn't notice the time until my laptop tried to shut itself down...should have taken that hint haha

2. Quite probably, like I said, not a biologist at anything past GCSE, I am quite happy to be proven wrong eventually, or even not, with regard to the gender ID thing. But I do think that it exists in a similar way to sexuality, part genes, part uterine environment, part luck of the draw.

3. yeh, I was struggling to find a word that expressed what the language would convey in the setting of my social groups.

It is incredible that saying plain 'woman' could be offensive. Not irght at all.

In my comment, I don't mean to say that you cannot be a trans woman if that is what anyone wants, just that you can't go so far as to be a biological woman and all that that entails - but an honorary woman maybe? I would find it acceptable to be an honorary Native American for example. I think its would be quite nice to be an honorary something. "Here, come and be one of us even though you are slightly different and came from a different place/ route." Lovely :) Maybe I am completely the odd one out.

Formerly I can understand your feelings, it's difficult because it's not something that has ever actually happened in a class I was in, so I can't tell you for definite how it would be dealt with.

We do have a very active feminist society on campus, and a women's caucus. Although again it's based on gender-identity (Fem soc is open to everyone, all our societies have to be I think, but I'd need to check that)

Yes loops i agree with formerly that the environment you have described is utterly oppresive and sends a terrible message to young women that they cannot actually be just women - that they have to be a sub class of woman.

And yet it isn't ok for a transwoman to be a sub-class or other prefix? Biological women have to have the prefix and if they don't like it they are the ones who have to speak out and claim discirimination in an environment that is hostile to their views?!!! Hypocrisy much?

Really is absolutely chilling as a PP said.

Bed now

Well the main thought I'm taking from this discussion is that mumsnet parents will be advising their children to steer clear of the University of East Anglia.

It's not the MN-adored, much-vaunted "RG" anyway mantle so it might as well not exist by education board standards

Seriously loops - does that policy of forcing you to conform to a certain way of thinking not concern you - does it not sound like brainwashing or coercion? And just for using the word "woman?"

THIS. Loops this is an echo chamber. This is 1984. This is not in the least progressive, it is horrible. You're ok with it, how do you think it is for women who aren't? Wake up FFS!

Well the main thought I'm taking from this discussion is that mumsnet parents will be advising their children to steer clear of the University of East Anglia.

Indeed!

Universities should encourage students to think for themselves. They are failing to do so.

am also aware that I'd get screamed at by the most vocal of trans activists for saying that.

You absolutely would. I can attest this from personal experience of doing it. It does feel extremely liberating though, maybe try it? ;)

How can you possibly study feminism without looking at gender critical thinking? It's one of the core themes of feminism, that gender is an oppressive concept applied by a patriarchal society to keep women in men serving positions. Or is your study of feminism devoid of any of the history of feminism and purely looks at current liberal feminist thought?

This approach seems just incredibly regressive and unthinking and should have no place at all in a university. I doubt very much that UEA is the only university that takes this type of approach. It seems like everywhere the wishes and desires of a tiny group is being used to take away the rights of women. What a huge diservice to young women who should find university a pathway to liberation of thought not to brainwashing.

• I am using women here in the dictionary sense referring to biology, not the brave new world of 'anyone who identifies as a woman'.

At my own university we were starting down the path of simply relabeling all washrooms (not in the UK) to be open to effectively all (with no change of design and so very flimsy cubical doors) until I pointed out that not only would it create security problems but we also have a very large cohort of international students many of whom would have a significant problem with no longer having single sex facilities. Now we are just looking to relabel all disabled access washrooms as all-gender (unisex is apparently not a permissible term anymore).

How can you possibly study feminism without looking at gender critical thinking? I would love to know this. I would also like to know how my utterly fabulous Marxist feminist lecturer would have reacted to this. Where are the radical, critical, bolshie women we idolised now? All no-platformed and sidelined? Mine died but I shudder to think what would have happened to her.

www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/news/local/students-vote-in-favour-of-gender-neutral-toilets-at-annual-general-meeting/
Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen's stance.
I attended the Garthdee campus (nursing and midwifery) in 2005 and there were male, female, and disabled toilets then.

Seeing as many posters asked: We can discuss gender-critical feminism, in a way that doesn't invalidate the gender identities of any of our classmates. For the most part it's laughed at, viewed as terribly old fashioned and outdated, and most people come to the conclusion that trans-inclusive feminism is the only logical thing to follow. I believe that the idea that biology is the only thing that makes you a woman is seen as very essentialist.

confoozed it doesn't send a message that any group of women, trans or otherwise, is any less than than the other...that's the point. Additionally, there are many areas for women to express if they feel victimised or not listened to in the form of caucuses and student officer representation.

mantle One would hope your adult, and likely more forward-thinking, DCs would make up their own minds. Also, I very much doubt they could go in to any university and argue that trans women/men are not women/men and find acceptance for their views.

Saying that, we're currently bursting at the seams with new students, might be nice to have a few less.

confoozed it doesn't send a message that any group of women, trans or otherwise, is any less than than the other...that's the point. Additionally, there are many areas for women to express if they feel victimised or not listened to in the form of caucuses and student officer representation

But it does send that message. If I can't refer to myself as woman because it upsets a very small minority of people then how am I not lesser? How am I equal if what i identify as isn't allowed? And the very fact that gender critical feminism is seen as old fashioned and something to be laughed at is terrifying and tells me that you and your fellow students/professors don't actually understand what it is and how damaging the idea of gender actually is.

But if it isn't biology that makes you a woman then what is it?

UoM. Regarding toilets, each building has its own arrangements. I've seen:

1. Standard sex-segregated loos. Females are all-cubicle with shared washing area. Males are urinals/cubicles with shared washing area. These tend to be in older buildings.
2. My building (and the last I worked in) has individual bathrooms scattered around. Each is sex-neutral, fully accessible for wheelchairs, lockable to the outside, and has a loo/low-level sink/shower/bars on wall etc. Buildings slightly newer.
3. Building next to me has a shiny new main toilet area. It's two rows of fully-enclosed cubicles facing each other, separated by a back-to-back row of sinks with a mirror barrier between the sinks. The entire area is open to the corridor on one side and full length windows on the other, so once you're out of a cubicle, you are not behind a closed door. It is sex-neutral.
4. Our SU converted their standard bathrooms (as in 1.) to 'gender-neutral), along with copious signs about inclusion. They no-platformed Julie Bindel though idiots

Except that it does send the message that transwomen are lesser. As has already been pointed out (by a transwomen no less!) that if you don't use the trans prefix and want to get rid of it then it's basically erasure of trans people. It is basically saying that there is something wrong with being trans so we need to get rid of it and pretend it doesn't exist.

What would happen if a trans student disagreed? Would they be disciplined too?

You don't wanna carry a mooncup to the sink in Toilet 3.

How did such a small minority of people get to dictate gender politics to this extent?
I just don't get it.

My mum works In a sixth form college and said their toilets have all gone gender neutral. Yet they actually only have 2 transgender students out of 600. Lots of nonbinary apparently but they largely conform to gender stereotypes... not sure how that works tbh.

formerly If being referred to with an equivalent prefix makes you feel lesser, you agree that the trans prefix implies some kind of strange hierarchy. With women, and then trans women. The trans people I have spoken to, my friends, want to keep their prefix, it is important to them, but they also don't want to feel like they're second class, so we use 'cis' to level the playing field. Nobody at UEA is going to force you to use the word cis, but many people do, and nobody views it as offensive.