Am furious with NUS Women's Campaign

[ArcheryAnnie]

...for their "Some delegates are requesting that we move to jazz hands rather than clapping, as it's triggering anxiety. Please be mindful!" tweet.

Safe spaces are important. Making accommodation for students with different needs is important. Performative bullshit like this is not important.

I understand accessibility. I have accessibility needs myself. This is not offering accessibility (even if you discount the needs of visually-impaired students), it's reinforcing that political activity should never, ever make you feel uncomfortable. Which is bullshit.

I just saw in Another Forum (not that one) someone positing the idea of a series of interviews with historical figures like the Pankhursts, Phoolan Devi and Mary Seacole, asking them about their safe spaces and their self-care practices and I thought: yes, exactly.

Do we want to change the world, or just do we want to make ourselves feel better?

Has nobody come across these before? We used to use jazz hands and other similar signals at the feminist / womens groups I used to attend at uni. It was never about avoiding anxiety though, the hand signal system a name like collaborative communication or something. It was used as a way of gauging the views/opinions of the whole group without derailing the speaker before they had chance to finish and to be inclusive to the whole group. Although if you ended with the room making x-factor crosses with their arms at you then were in big trouble and your proposal was being very vehemently opposed!

Shame the nus have twisted it into a joke though. Another easy laugh at womens rights/groups expense.

I found a link to Occupy who seem to be using some of the same signals en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement_hand_signals but can't find where they actually originate from. Would probably help if I could remember their proper name!

It doesn't occur to a lot of people that drag might be mocking women. That's a normal response.

hir - why, are you not angry at either of them?

This has moved on a bit... I'm still confused about whether or not I am allowed to go to a fancy dress party as Oliver Cromwell.

Anyway, this: Because it is majorly, majorly problematic to reinforce the "nice girls are quiet" trope about sums it up for me. To which, of course, has been added, 'Women can't take nasty loud noises, poor delightful creatures'.

Still, jazz hands is when you hold your arms bent at the elbow, so your hands are up (sort of surprised-kangaroo-pose) and then waggle your hands like an over-excited toddler waving.

Actually, I find jazz hands triggering and also seriously racist. [straightface]

What are "jazz hands" ? Seriously. Never heard of them.

Me neither. This conversation is flying right over my head!

Imagine this with sort of 'glittery' shaking hands

Oh I think I've got it now you mean as in the Al Jolson film?

"Jazz hands" was making me think of The Fast Show's "Jazz Club" ; nice as

John Thompson would say.

I think adjustments go both ways. What seems to be proposed is a large number of people adapting a pretty normal polictical behaviour for the benefit of a very few. Same end effect can be achieved by the use of a web link or ear defenders by those few. It's perfectly reasonable therefore to feel that the small change by that small number is more likely to be sustainable than a large change by a large number.
Added to which I think the 'silencing' aspect is very concerning and the practical aspect is ridiculous 'Now before we start debating this evening's motion concerning supporting a woman's right to choose can I remind you all not to be abusive to the speakers, address the chair and DO NOT CLAP. Wave your hands like this ''''' ''''' instead'

"It's like watching hedgehogs crossing a motorway and discussing how many minutes of silence to accord to each fallen comrade."

awesome, Jeanne.

Ah this take me back! It's not just feminists who can't clap, I remember going to a People & Planet meeting circa 2009 at uni and the guest speaker telling us we couldn't clap/shout but had to use jazz hands. We all thought WTF? I don't think she explained why we weren't allowed to clap. There were only about 15 of us and we were all friends anyway so I think we could have handled a bit of clapping.

Hmm. Never heard of 'jazz hands' but it sounded so interesting I had to look it up. The origin is murky, its also known as 'spirit fingers' in US cheer-leading. It either dates to 1927 and Al Jolson 'The Jazz Singer' or its derived from hand movements performed in worship by pentecostals. I think I will go with the later on this one, as described it sounds like it has all the warm fuzzy feeling of a church group with the same disconnect of reality.

As someone who graduated not that long ago I think this really shows why so many students just can't be arsed with politics. You turn up at uni bright eyed and bushy tailed brining with ideas about how to make your space a better place. Only to be told by a man in a skirt you have to wave your jazz hands to ban everything under the sun, and no, you can't decide what is being discussed unless you stuck to their bonkers script.

Ah, ethelb, according to the same conference, the man can only now wear a skirt if he identifies as nonbinary or trans, and isn't wearing that skirt with any intention of "dressing up" or being amusing.

Oh my word. What utter nonsense!

If people can't cope with clapping then the onus is on THEM to find a way to deal with it.

I would clap AND whoop!

Triggered by clapping at a conference => must be accommodated

Triggered by penis at rape counselling => horrible bigot.

This is the natural consequence of routinely pandering to increasingly small minority interests in an effort to avoid offending anyone; a blizzard of Special Snowflakes trying to impose their uniqueness on each other, in a victimization arms race.

It's hilarious.

Jeanne there's nothing inherently wrong with it, except (as I said upthread), that you then exclude blind people

Hmm. I think there's a difference between being 'excluded' and being traumatized to the point that you physically cannot attend a meeting. I think that a blind person not seeing jazz hands is sad but it doesn't mean they can't attend a meeting. A person who is highly sensitive to noise (so, some with with ASD, some dyspraxic people, some people with other (diagnosed) reasons for sound sensitivity) may actually not be able to attend a rowdy meeting. That's exckusion. Not seeing jazz hands isn't exclusion. Some groups of people are habitually excluded from things and people with sound sensitivity or extreme anxiety are such people. Initially I thought this suggestion was daft but thinking about it it makes a lot of sense. And the reaction of people just underlines how some others are just routinely marginalized.

That response is hilarious. She has absolutely zero self-awareness. Anyone with a different opinion to her is a "troll"? Okay then!

And I wish she wouldn't equate her special-snowflake status with feminism. Stop being on my side!

Gently, how do you feel about the provision of ear defenders, and/or a breakout room with a web feed for people who need to escape the noise?

And can you not see the issue with telling political women to shush, make less noise, be more accommodating, and be nice?

That response completely fails to reflect who objected to the NUS tweet - as far as I could see it was mostly other feminists, but she's just cherry-picked the 2 more right-wing punters.

Patallic - Occupy did for a time at least try to be ultra-inclusionist. And copped some flack for it. I don't know why some posters think it's only women who can have sensory issues, many boys/men also have such issues. Why, actually, should they have to wear ear defenders or go and sit in a different room (FFS) to participate? Clapping HAS been a social norm but so was beating kids till we got a bit more civilized. Many theatrical productions (including Pantos) now have special performances for kids/adults with so sorry issues precisely because, belatedly, people are realising this is A Thing.

YY to the poster who talked about competing noise - I'm dyspraxic, personally I'm fine with clapping etc but competing noise can cause complete meltdown. I've never, actually, felt that society should change to accommodate me but I also don't think that switching to jazz hands if there are actual people who have requested this for genuine reasons is the worst thing in the world either.

As for the use of the phrase 'triggering anxiety' - I think you'll find that's a perfectly correct and acceptable useage. It's the useage of the word triggering without then specifying what has been triggered that is incorrect, it's another one of those modern parlance things where words and their useage is completely mangled. Feminists (I certainly consider myself to be one) have attempted to appropriate the word - well, fine, good even, it is serving a purpose - but that ceases to be valid if you then try and remove the word from its use in other contexts specifically in medical/psychological contexts. It is perfectly appropriate to talk about triggering anxiety or triggering a sensory meltdown. It's been accepted parlance for rather longer than the more modern useage.

Who was against the clapping? If I've read right.could its be an autistic person? Although with a ds with.asd idif he had this issue ...i would provide ear defenders to help with that.

Northern- what you are suggesting is completely 'othering' the people with sensory issues. Possibly even deporting them to a different room! If everyone uses jazz hands nobody is othered, nobody is labelled as a freak, some people get the opportunity to demonstrate that they are a bit considerate. Except it seems most people, as it turns out, aren't. Not even slightly.

Do you really think it's acceptable to make a group of people with what is after all a disability dress funny so that they can be able to participate in a political gathering? Really???? Blimey.