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.

Thanks all :) My brain has reached overload now so I will have to stop. I'm glad we have this forum to debate

From what you're saying about your uni experience loops, I understand a lot more about where you're coming from.

The sense of conformity and being encouraged to laugh at "the old ways" is honestly kind of chilling. Someone said it above, and it's true for me - I genuinely have been a feminist longer than you have been alive, and I recall being encouraged to look at, to analyse, to understand, to contextualise and critique the decades of feminist analysis that went before. Not just to point and laugh and go "ah, they knew no better!".

Your assertion that your groups just happen to agree on anything makes me gawp, really. My uni discussion groups on these things went at it hammer and tongs. Because that's how you test theories! You pummel them about every which way and see what shakes out. You don't sit in a circle, where everyone is wondering if everyone else is thinking what they're thinking, but is too afraid to say it because it might "invalidate someone's identity". Honestly, love, it sounds totalitarian. Take it from an old gimmer, try not to dismiss out of hand what we're saying, just because you think we don't get it.

and please, please for the love of all that's holy, don't roll over about no-platforming. Fight it with every last fibre of your being even if you disagree with the speaker so hard you're having palpitations. Because you never know when something that you believe in might be deemed unsayable.

If a transwoman competes for an award or scholarship against other women and wins, I don't see it as taking that away from a woman because that transwoman is a woman
Is Andraya Yearwood a woman who deserves to take a scholarship place designated for a female, to support them in the male-dominated world of sport?

Andraya Yearwood can call herself a woman, for all I care, despite having made no adjustments to her life other than the declaration that she is a woman. She cannot call herself female and should not be allowed to compete against other females in a sporting arena.

Jesus - this thread is depressing. Whatever happened to critical thinking? MrsTerry ferrets Maid - you all speak so much sense.

pooch I honestly have never voted one way or the other about a speaker on campus, if I'm not interested I just don't go. But if others would be made to feel unsafe by the presence of a speaker, or if they feel that the university (their home) would be condoning an invalidation of their identity, or an attack on their existence and safety then they have the right to argue against that...just as people who support the speaker argue for it.

We're not 'encouraged' to laugh at the old ways, and we discuss them just as well even if the end result is that we think their argument is rubbish. Sometimes someone might make a joke, something like 'wouldn't want to upset a TERF' and we laugh because like I said, it would be like someone saying 'wouldn't want to upset a racist'.

Yeh, I just don't get being so forceful about things, we mostly discuss literature, the politics discussions get a bit more heated sometimes. But it's mostly just 'what did you think of this book' 'I thought this was interesting and highlights the issues in society at the time' 'they refer to trans people as trannies which is pretty offensive' 'the movie had a guy playing a trans woman, that sucks because representation' then we'd have a long discussion about the importance of having trans women cast in movies and tv shows. We're not like "a feminist would argue this" or "Marxism would say that"

Maid sports are not the same, biological differences in sports mean someone would have a clear advantage over another. Intelligence and achievement are not limited by your gender-identity, or by your biological sex.

It's appalling that students are having to pay for this. They are not being taught essential debating skills, critical thought and intellectual resilience (not to mention bread and butter background info by the sounds of it). Loops, I think that you are being shortchanged!

I'm finding this so informative in understanding where genderists might be coming from and why debate isn't taking place.

But if others would be made to feel unsafe by the presence of a speaker

Are you typing this with a straight face? I mean, really?

Jesus Christ on a bendy bus, SPEAKING DOES NOT MAKE PEOPLE UNSAFE.

And if your identity can be invalidated merely by someone else speaking and disagreeing with your viewpoint, then in all honesty, you need therapy. Your sense of self should not be that parlous. Not even when you're young and green and finding out who you are.

You do know TERF is an insult, right? It's a gendered insult that is used to shut women up. I know that you know this, because you've been told that on another thread, possibly on numerous other threads.

If this is how university education is happening today then I am terrified for the future. We're churning out young people too cowed to think for themselves. Fuck, I feel old

loops so biological sex is important (in sport) and you do recognise the biological differences between men and women?

I thought you said biology didnt matter? I'm so confused about your point of view because I can't follow your logic at all - it turns all known logic on its head.

Cognitive dissonance is right. I have a migraine

Hahahaha let me get this straight Loops, so students are allowed to feel unsafe because of a speaker (who they don't have to listen to), but females are not allowed to feel unsafe because of males in their private spaces? Fucking hell.

Intelligence and achievement are not limited by your gender-identity, or by your biological sex
Agree re: intelligence.

But achievement, honestly? Achievement is not limited by biological sex (and the societal application of gender roles onto that biological sex)? In the same way that achievement is not limited by the colour of your skin (clue: it is, it shouldn't be, but it is, by a variety of mechanisms)?

There are many reasons certain demographics underperform. Scholarships and awards are usually in pace to specifically support people from underperforming demographics. Just as Rachel Dolezal shouldn't be eligible to take up a scholarship or position designated for black people (no matter how hard she identifies as black), then a male should not be able to take up a scholarship designated for females.

Loops if this is true (and I agree it is): Intelligence and achievement are not limited by your gender-identity, or by your biological sex Can you think of any other reason there might be scholarships designed for women? And why it might not be appropriate for a transwoman (or a man who just says he identifies as a woman) to be awarded them?

I also agree with Pooch and stcklebricks about the paucity of your University experience.
Also Terf and racist are not even remotely similar terms.

What would happen if I was in that study group and was made to feel "unsafe" by a group of young people being slyly ageist, calling me a TERF and saying, as loops has, that my opinions were "gross"?

Would I get to do that? I'm interested. I suspect it doesn't work like that.

PS I would not feel unsafe. I would be having a lot of emotions, believe you me, but people saying stuff at me would not make me feel "unsafe".

slaigh has identified a real doublethink issue there. Anyone able to explain it. It's giving me a headache too, confoozed. I bet your username has never been so appropriate.

sleigh oops. Apologies for my illiterate iPad.

Yes cardbach. It is like this is the worlds most elaborate prank.... I'm nervously thinking what the f* and hoping Jeremy beadle will show up any minute (showing my age)

But turns out it is just gaslighting :(

@Camomila we were indeed same place (home of the Polar Bears of doom painting), same time (do you remember the college shop before it went purple and became the Store on Campus?).

I recall the one GN loo at the SU and remember it being unpopular and not lasting long, if you can remember more? Founders library also had hard to find loos, I think. They were a bit hidden.

I know it was just the one GN loo but was a little hazy on some

Of the details!

I'm not sure that reducing everything to name-calling is very useful (and that's exactly what 'wouldn't want to upset a TERF' is). It smacks of 'I can't actually refute their arguments'.

I'm also interested in the fact that it's OK to joke about upsetting a TERF or a racist or a gun enthusiast or anyone else you've morally categorised as 'bad', but it's not OK to do anything other than celebrate the proclaimed identity of people you've categorised as 'good'.

Perhaps it would be better to stop moralising the positions and the people that hold them and actually engage with the substance of their arguments. Because, even US gun enthusiasts may actually have some points of substance (and may, in fact, be nice people). You cannot actually counter any of their arguments unless you're willing to engage with them instead of caricaturing and dismissing them as morally inferior.

It's funny that you cannot recognise the problem with styles and modes of thinking where you can't even win an debate you think is a shoe in. And don't think that means you might need to change tactics.

Lots of nonbinary apparently but they largely conform to gender stereotypes... not sure how that works tbh.

Because it's a meaningless label for confused children or narcissists.

And no, most people don't have radical feminist views on gender but neither have they climbed aboard the "biology is a social construct" crazy train either, loops. Sorry to disappoint you. Mumsnet is representative of the views of normal people. Most don't give these issues much thought at all. They don't really understand the arguments. When they do they tend to have concerns.

Loops I can confirm that none of my daughters will be going to UEA after this thread. Not because it is any of my business what they do with their lives past the age of 18, but because they are all gender critical themselves (or as they call it basic common sense) and they were the ones who pointed this out to me after I began drinking the 'inclusion' kool aid. I've never even thought of myself as feminist, I stayed home with my kids and cooked and cleaned while wearing heels and make up, but I always installed in my daughters their rights and critical thought. They told me that young people were being groomed into pan sexual, gender fluid, non binary, queer theory etc on tumblr and the like. Having worked through it themselves they seem to largely be of the same opinion as the radical feminists on this board. At the very academic institution my eldest is currently at she tells me some students are starting to voraciously challenge these gender id politics from a scientific POV. Basically what I'm saying Loops is that I hope you realise that one day (and probably in the not too distant future) the youth will sit about laughing at your archaic views on gender and wonder why woman ever allowed themselves to be disadvantaged cisgendered without ever fighting back.

pooch Iit is quite offensive that you think the speaking doesn't have the power to make people unsafe. Speaking led to the election of Donald Trump and now his policies are actively harming almost everyone who isn't a rich white man. Speaking, and the platforming of certain speech, makes people with horrible ideas feel validated and then allows them more space to express those horrible ideas.

I absolutely don't feel shortchanged by my degree, although others may feel different, but clearly the people who go there are mostly pretty happy with their experience because we do pretty well in the league tables.

confoozed biology exists, there are biological differences between people with penises and people with vaginas. Anything that requires a physical skill will mean that people who are bigger, stronger, faster etc...have an advantage. That is quite often males, not sure at what 'point' in development that becomes a thing, primary school sports are often mixed (or at least were when I was in primary school), I would assume puberty.

But the fact that you have a penis, doesn't make you 'a man' because man and woman are gender designators not sex classifications. I would be a woman even if I didn't have a uterus, I would be a woman even if I had a penis, because my gender identity is woman.

To assume that all women have a shared experience just because we have female biology, is essentialism and also not at all intersectional.

I'm sure many of you would have a terrible time if you were to go to university now, because you would feel like you were being forced to conform. I'm sorry for that, but I don't feel 'forced' to conform, I have made up my own mind on the issue after actually listening to the trans people at my university who were campaigning on these issues, as well as my classmates and friends, just because we all agree doesn't mean we're all forced to. I can't imagine that you'd find that much of a difference at any modern university, both here and abroad.

What honestly, they will struggle to find a university in this country that does not support self ID and is not trans inclusive.

see, for me, my uni does seem progressive
You should have seen my university/SU inclusion policy back in the day.

It included clauses about hair colour and facial hair.