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.

Perhaps the reason we all get on so well at uni is because none of us think we are right and everyone else is wrong
This is the most ironic thing I've read in a debate that's quite heavy on the irony! You think we are all wrong! You use the slur Terf and laugh at gender critical theory!
My God, this post-fact world is fucking impossible to navigate. Sorry to swear in a thread which has been so thoughtful, but I'm getting to the end if my tether a bit.

Perhaps the reason we all get on so well at uni is because none of us think that we are right and everyone else is wrong.

OMG the irony

maid that's a shame, we have Union Council where students are represented (union council reps are elected) and their wishes then put forward for a vote, it's how the SU creates any policy. Including the transgender and non-binary policy and decides any contentious issues, they also vote on new societies, and various other matters regarding the SU and the university.

Of course student unions are different, but they also act as a lobby group to represent the rights of students to the University.

Essentially, you don't have to agree, you can try to stop your children from attending a university you don't like (it's a shame, we have one of the best creative writing programs, drama departments, and american studies schools in the country, always rank highly for student satisfaction, and have a lot of extra curricular opportunities) and live happily in your little mumsnet bubble. Unfortunately, my experience won't be unique, and the majority of universities will share these policies, it might be worth actually looking them up, I also think a lot of your children would probably just roll their eyes at you and pick a uni they like.

Don't forget gun enthusiasts. They're wrong and, with it, morally inferior.

but there are ways of disagreeing that don't actually invalidate people that do believe that and for whom it forms an integral part of their sense of self

So you would agree that an anorexic shouldn't eat, so as to not invalidate their sense of self?

Loops nowhere have I said that intelligent people would agree with me. I'm not even 100% sure exactly what my stance on all this is.

I do know that the moment your views/opinions become mainstream ideology (they're really, really not at the moment anywhere other than student unions) there will be a backlash and they will then be picked apart/overthrown/derided by the next generation because that's just what happens.

always rank highly for student satisfaction

IME, satisfied students are often unchallenged ones. Student satisfaction may be the preferred yardstick for the contemporary consumerist view of education, but it's certainly not the best way to tell if students were offered good learning experiences.

Echo chambers are nice and comfortable and can promote a lovely sense of satisfaction. Good learning experiences, on the other hand, are often quite uncomfortable.

Look, loops, I'll be honest, I think you're in a terrible muddle here, but I commend you for your resilience in sticking around to debate this. At least your education has enabled you to do that.

But to say that speaking led to Donald Trump being elected is a bit mad, really. You would rather he not have been allowed to speak? I...I just...well, if that's what you think, then I see how you have arrived at your conclusions, but your rush to censor every way of thinking but your own would make Mao blush, to be honest.

I know you've had a lot of questions, but I would be really grateful if you could answer about my hypothetical presence in your study group. I'm an older woman, I hold gender critical views and your study group has just told me I'm a TERF (an insult), instructed me that society has moved beyond my way of thinking (invalidated my identity as an older person?) let me know that my opinions are "gross" (invalidation again). I'm feeling quite unsafe in this environment.

What do you do?

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".

Well, I do feel unsafe when genderists tell me to die in a fire because I politely disagree with them.

I don't feel unsafe if female feminists tell me that my acknowledging biological facts is "problematic" to them, but that's only the rhetorics you get by the handmaidens who haven't yet understood just what they signed up for by becoming trans allies.

The trans - and that includes females who identify as non-binary or male - are a different thing. They screech "TERF!" and "Die in a fire".

I probably stand a fair chance in a fistfight against a female nonbinary who wants me dead, but I don't really feel safe when someone wants to physically attack me. And females who take testosterone, or males, are actually able to kill me without much risk to themselves, so them expressing intention to do so makes me feel unsafe.

"and live happily in your little mumsnet bubble."

For someone who doesn't think that they are right and everyone else is wrong, this is remarkably patronising. You are aware that everyone posting here also lives in the "real world"? Not necessarily the same circles that you frequent, but the real world nontheless.

My children won't be going to university for another 14 years plus, by which point I would imagine these things will have shifted and changed again, and you will be the old fogey my children are rolling their eyes at.

That's threats, though, vestal. I think threats are different than someone just calmly and politely holding a different viewpoint.

It holds for no-platforming as well - I am all for free speech, but I'm OK with the limits of that free speech being drawn at threats and incitement to violence.

... sorry, that should have been "feminists" there. I do not consider any woman who supports and condones death threats against women a feminist. (Saying "terf" is like saying "nigger", sorry, but that's how it is. It is a slur used by people who want to murder. You cannot claim it is a neutral description. Some people using it to describe themselves does not negate that.)

They're, well, self-identified "feminists", more like.

that's a shame, we have Union Council where students are represented (union council reps are elected) and their wishes then put forward for a vote, it's how the SU creates any policy. Including the transgender and non-binary policy and decides any contentious issues, they also vote on new societies, and various other matters regarding the SU and the university
And how an SU should run. It's the same here for most stuff. It's just that the no platforming of Julie Bindel was a executive decision.

Personally, I think the university should have offered an academic venue.

Yes to post-fact world! Astonishning.

I wish I were as articulate as you other smart cookies :)

I'm going to go as far as saying some views are wrong, not just different WRONG! Putting your bare hand in the fire will burn you. You can believe otherwise if you like but you are wrong. The burning you feel is the fire burning your hand, not the feeling of your invalidation.

Fact is fact and if we don't have reason then we have chaos!

loops people who think like you have simply appropriated the word woman, when it clearly is and always has been another word/name for a biological female.

cardi I agree TERF is not a nice thing to be called, and it's not a word I personally use against feminists I disagree with. But the reason it was funny when the person in class said that is because being a TERF is seen as being so bad, like being racist or homophobic, it's not like we sit around talking about how awful and funny feminists who exclude trans people are, we view gender criticism as 'funny' because it comes across as so offensive, not because it's actually funny? It just seems utterly ridiculous to use to exclude trans women. I would imagine most of my friends at uni would be shocked and upset if they knew it was still a commonly held way of thinking, and not something left in the past. Of course my trans friends probably already know because they live with that every single day.

What see I do think gender-critical feminism is wrong, but I also don't think I'm right. Not 'objectively' right anyway.

That's threats, though, vestal. I think threats are different than someone just calmly and politely holding a different viewpoint.

Sure, it is threats, but it is the way genderists argue - either explicitly, or implicitly, by using words like "terf", that anyone who has been on the receiving end of it knows implies a threat.

Of course, I would not feel threatened by them simply stating their ideas about biological sex not being real; if it was just a theory. I once attended a whole hour's talk about Judith Butler. (Who I am not sure is a genderist, but apparently did propose that sex allegedly is socially constructed. Hard to say because she's famous for her overly complicated writing style.)
I thought it was nonsense, but why would one feel threatened by someone else talking utter nonsense?

I can calmly listen to people arguing that the earth is flat, no problem.

But with genderists, there's always the underlying threat. They openly admit to being allies of those who want to murder me.

I don't feel safe being in a room with them. (But of course think they should be allowed to voice their opinions. I have to know who they are so I can get the hell away from them)

obviously I had not read Vestal's post when i worte and posted mine re fire. How horrid that anyone would say that vestal :(

With regard to student unions and representation, I imagine that Magdalen Bern's experience of being hounded out of being able to hold any position in EUSA (Edinburgh Uni) for being a gender critical lesbian is, what? Justified because she's a hateful TERF bigot? Fully representing a diverse set of views? Inclusive?

What effect might that have on future potential representatives who hold similar views? I wonder.

Loops, please can you tell me why 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?

I really don't mean to harass you but I'm just baffled as to what leap of logic justifies your argument here.

What see I do think gender-critical feminism is wrong, but I also don't think I'm right. Not 'objectively' right anyway.

But you do.

You spent the first couple of pages of the thread characterising your position as "progressive" and sounding rather self-satisfied about the alleged progressiveness.

Ok, gonna try and go through this one at a time, cause many questions and only one me.

I would imagine most of my friends at uni would be shocked and upset if they knew it was still a commonly held way of thinking, and not something left in the past

That simply shows how naive and coddled your friends are, inside their little bubble.

Unless, of course, they're lying. It's hard to believe everyone in your seminar groups has quite the herd mentality you're describing here.

we view gender criticism as 'funny' because it comes across as so offensive

This is exactly what we mean by avoiding engaging with the substance of an argument and simply dismissing it (often using an insult) and claiming that it's offensive. In doing so you moralise positions within the debate and cast those who think differently as both wrong and morally inferior.

It's deeply ironic that contemporary 'social justice' is built upon the othering of anyone who doesn't agree with the current fashion and orthodoxy.

Two questions. What is a woman?

I can define 'circle' without saying 'it's circular'. I can define 'cat' without talking about 'catness'. Define 'woman' without referring to itself. Otherwise it's like saying, "I'm a asdkbhiou". "What's a asdkbhiou?" "It's what I am." Completely meaningless.

Second question. When you laugh at TERFs think about this. For millennia, all over the world, in various different ways, women have been shamed and excluded for periods. Laughed at, lost education, even died. So a group of old-school radfems decide to organise a feminist fundraiser for menstrual supplies for girls in Africa who would otherwise miss school. They want to empoiwer girls and women and make the event women only. Nope, not OK because they are excluding transwomen. OK, transwomen are welcome. Transactivists (because the transwomen I know aren't idiots) say, "being a women isn't about biology so you can't centre periods in this event. It others transwomen." And everyone goes home.

TERFs would just say, "only those with uteri need attend" and the event would go ahead. With huge protests and no-platforming to follow.

What's your solution? Are periods a feminist issue? Childbirth? Forced birth? Planned Parenthood?

Not going to direct any more questions at loop for the time being as there is a lot going on.

But I do feel compelled to point out the irony of scolding other people for their intolerance while being subtly but thoroughly ageist. It's leaking out of every statement.

Motes in eyes and all that.

I do resent the idea that old people don't get it because we don't understand and we're past it. I was reading Judith Butler, Luce Irigiray (sp?) and Michel Foucauld in 1992. I thought it was gibberish then. I can't believe the wholesale adoption of some of their wackier ideas into what passes for academia these days. Sheesh.