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.

You can however be african american if one or both of your parents are african american but you LOOK white (for whatever reason). Which is more how I view being trans

I don't follow that part. Could you expand a bit?

you seem to have frightened off everyone else who might disagree with you.

Bit late now, but Loops are people really frightened by the calm, repeated statement of fact?

Why might that be? I suppose it might be frightening if inconvenient facts undermine a person's belief system. It might be frightening if somebody knew, somewhere at the back of their mind, that the briefest application of critical thought to gender indentity theory brings the whole house of cards tumbling down...

Come on Loops. You sound like someone who can apply critical thought. Give your head a wobble.

What offends me most about calling transwomen women is looking back on the uniquely female experiences of my life. The endless months of morning sickness, the pregnancy hypertension that sometimes kills. The births. Seven years of breastfeeding. The awful periods. The building site whistles. The assaults and intimidation. The tiring sexism. Recognising the cycle as it begins again in my daughters. Some of this makes us strong but it's hard earned and not for appropriation.

That's very transparent of them fanny. If only all institutions were the same.

bambam I would likely either be called out for transphobia, by a classmate or professor, in the first instance if I insisted on referring to 'women or transwomen' because the implication of that is that women are the norm/correct/real version of the thing, and then there's the 'lesser class of not-actual-women' known as trans women.

I don't think trans women are lesser than bio women, and wouldn't want anyone else to think I did, so we use qualifiers to level the playing field.

If someone felt you were being transphobic then they could complain to someone about that and you'd get talked to, and then you'd apologise and not do it again. If you were then continually transphobic it would be more of a problem because you would be contributing to a hostile environment.

assassinated Maybe? I haven't done many classes where it's come up, we talked about trans-exclusionary feminism in my feminism class, we all agreed it was pretty horrible and that intersectionality was a much better aim. I haven't the faintest about biology, I don't study it.

Can anyone explain why gender neutral is preferred to unisex?

I quite like having a unisex word and option - having grown up as a fairly tomboyish girl (cars rather than dolls) I didn't want to identify particularly with being 'a girl' because (I realise now) that I had picked up on the subtle messagess that a girl was restricted in what she could do and also not respected or liked by many men.

So as a younger person - see I even type person!! it just comes more naturally - I would have been cool with unisex toilets. Having had more unpleasant experiences since then with male strangers/ acquaintances, I'm more keen to have female only places.

I'd like to just be a person/ human being who happens to have a womans biology and btis, but can do and wear and be anything, without abuse or sexism or limitation, including being a woman.

Sometimes I don't know why anyone would want to be a woman!!

I don't think trans women are lesser than bio women,

Of course transwomen aren't lesser than women. Not being a woman doesn't make a person lesser than.

you would be contributing to a hostile environment.

Or expressing your opinion/refusing to pretend you adhere to a particular belief system?

I haven't the faintest about biology, I don't study it. (sorry, couldn't resist!)

serf sure, sometimes children with one black parent can be pale enough to 'pass' as white, or two black parents can actually have a white baby, that baby is white in appearance, but would still be of the heritage of their parents.

I view trans as a bit like that, you get the XY chromosomes but something in your genes gets coded for woman. It's not exactly the same, but I just think that as it's possible for DNA to act in an unusual way in other cases, it can(assuming you believe in a genetic cause of gender identity, which I do) do so with the sex/gender relationship.

Of course, I get that most gender critical people don't believe in a genetic cause for gender identity, so I don't expect you to believe or agree with that statement. One day one of us may be proved right, but I doubt it, there's not a lot of science research into LGBT issues.

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?"

Why the automatic assumption that a different type of person is lesser? Different, not lesser.

"I haven't the faintest about biology, I don't study it." That's a shame. It would be interesting to know if they need to use cis-women where once they would have used an unqualified "women". I wonder if they have to get rid of all their older text books that just say "men" and "women" and replace them with the corrected modern version?

Yes, that's probably the crux of the difference of opinion. The science.

Interesting to hear your thoughts, though. Thanks.

Stickle Haha I was sort of expecting it :P I did of course study it at school, and I did about a year of midwifery training so know a bit more about reproduction. I mean, I don't know how the current policies on gender self-ID impact the teaching of human biology at my uni lol

loop May I ask why you believe there's a genetic cause, as opposed to a psychology cause? What about other forms of body dysmorphia? For example people who undergo huge amounts of cosmetic surgery because they always see a fault in their appearance, or those people who want limbs removing for no reason other than they don't feel right with 4 limbs? Do you think they are also genetically linked ?

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?"

That's a very fair question, you know, loops.

It's such an alien idea to me that thought-conformity is a required part of a University education. The same is probably true of most people over 30. Universities have always been progressive places, but your description is jarring.

Sorry for the panel interview but this IS genuinely interesting.

bambam it's all about context, you can use the word woman, just not in a way that might suggest that you think trans women aren't women lol and it doesn't bother me, because it doesn't feel like it creates any problems for me and it makes life easier for our trans and non-binary students and staff. You'd have to ask someone at UEA who is hugely gender critical if they are bothered by it, although realistically there might not be many, like it was mentioned upthread you get a good idea of a place when you visit, likely people disturbed by that would not choose to attend.

assassinated I would imagine they use 'male' and 'female' when discussing sex, and if they needed to discuss gender then they'd use cis or trans where appropriate. I recently had a class on "gender, sexuality, and panic" in 20th century american film and literature, we had a week on trans specific film and lit, it was quite good (also, totally just showed the kind of not-biology that I do, I swear it's not all so political lol)

Our university recently had gender neutral toilets put in in the student union owned club. Seemed a stupid idea since a girl was raped around 3 years ago in the female toilets.

If someone felt you were being transphobic then they could complain to someone about that and you'd get talked to, and then you'd apologise and not do it again. If you were then continually transphobic it would be more of a problem because you would be contributing to a hostile environment.*

So what happens if I felt you were being whatever-phobic (I don't know if a word even exists) for continually referring to me as a ciswoman when I,and many others, do not identify this way? What if we feel you're creating a hostile environment fornfocring the "cis" prefix on us? I don't really need an answer because I know it's nothing, nothing would happen because we are the lesser... the other... and have been since the dawn of time.

Yes, the enforced thought-conformity shocks me too. And the lack of questioning. What happens if a students says, 'hang on a minute, ideas of 'gender' look different all over the world and throughout history, perhaps it's not as clear as I thought?' Would it be safe to express doubt?

All of the library toilets are also unisex. They're cubicles with full length doors off a corridor.

serf see, for me, my uni does seem progressive, because this way of thinking seems like it's relatively unheard of in society, among people I know the proposed changes to the gender recognition act are being seen as a huge victory for trans people, and minority-identified people in general.

But I do also see that for people who disagree, no-platforming and other such policies are seen as really limiting and quite dangerous.

I guess it could be a generation thing, although there are plenty of people on youtube of my age and younger who subscribe to the latter.

I don't mind answering questions, although I might have to go soon because it's 1:30am lol it's actually ok to discuss things, and disagree, when people listen to each other.

loop - what are your views on my previous post? In regards other body dysmorphic disorders and whether you believe them.to be genetic, rather than psychological? I'm genuinely curious to know your opinion on them.

So different to when I went to university. Not thinking for ourselves was looked down upon (early 90s RG).

Policing thoughts/beliefs, limiting discussion, no platforming is regressive not progressive. But I probably think that because I'm an old fogey, and not down with this new way of unthinking, lol.

formerly probably you'd have to come to some sort of compromise, or something else would happen so that you also didn't feel like you were in a hostile environment. It's never come up, in one of my classes, with the word 'cis' but I did have a class where a black student did not like me using POC, she asked me to stop, I apologised, I asked her what word would be acceptable, she said 'black/asian/indian etc..' and I changed my language and we continued the discussion.

If someone else in the class had objected to using black, we as a group would have figured out a way to continue to ensure that people were happy.

stickle we are allowed to have debates, and to question things, and to look at other societies and culture, but not to invalidate someone's identity while doing so. 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.

1. i'm pretty sure most people weren't scared of but just went to bed

2. if parents of african origin/ black parents have a child that looks white, then I am fairly sure that this indicates either albinism which is rare, or a mixed race background further back in the generations where an ancestor was white/ european or not black and the genes have become all mxed up and finally find expression. I think X and Y chromosomes are a bit more basic than that.

3. Real woman is a stupid term. To me real only means not imaginary. Being different is not less. It isn't necessary to appropriate other identities to be validated as a human being in your own right. I might admire another culture (part of me wishes I were Native American Indian for their philosophies on nature and natural living) or but I can't claim their heritage or experience just becasue I like their way of doing things, only seek to join in as best I can for the future if that were an option.