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?

The people who requested consideration were doing exactly the same thing as you presumably did when fighting for your accommodation. But you don't want them to get what you got, you want them out in other room out of the way, or wearing funny headgear (but that's nice and inclusionary isn't it) just so you can clap.

No, they weren't, Gently. You didn't read my post properly, as I explicitly said that this accommodation means that sometimes I have to use different facilities to other people who don't have this particular condition (and it's clear that I am the only one doing this), but that it's fine for me to be doing something different, because it still gives me the tools to participate. If I was doing the same thing as the NUS are doing here, I'd be requiring everybody to do what I am having to do, so that I'm not "othered".

And you know what I find othering? Is circumstances where people pretend that different people don't have different needs from one another, and that those differing needs are OK. My using a different facility to other people is fine, and it should be SEEN to be fine.

If I start on your race analogy we will be here all day (and please don't ever race-splain to me again), but I'd like to try a different analogy. You mentioned taking away wheelchair ramps. Now, I don't use a wheelchair, but I do use ramps and lifts, because they don't cause me pain but stairs do. I push and campaign for places to have accessible ramps and lifts, not just because I need them, but because lots of other people do, too. I don't require them to remove the stairs while they are at it, so that people who use the ramps aren't othered by being viewed using them. People can use stairs in front of me that I can't use! And that's OK, as long as I have a different route I can use!

It's called "reasonable accommodation". Attitudes like yours actively make my life in campaigning for and getting reasonable inclusion more difficult.

I think this by Jeanne hits the nail on the head:

Women are increasingly being conditioned to think that they have ample time and energy to be accommodating. That's what it is. Doesn't matter if what they are trying to accommodate is something that should be accommodated or not - the problem is that they've internalized the idea they're naturally privileged and exclusionary and should be working all the hours god sends to change this. Even if they're not actually in a position to make useful changes (as is the case here, where there are mutually incompatible needs, neither of which can be perfectly served by the changes suggested).

Women! Shush! Be nice! And whatever happens, remember that you are in the wrong and it's your fault and your responsibility to set aside whatever else you want to do in order to focus on this!

Also if you think that ear-defenders counts as "funny headgear", then you don't get out much.

Jazz hands? Seriously?

Sorry NotCitrus did you mean to say that bisexuals had adopted Jazz hands instead of clapping or was that a typo?

The arguments about inclusivity always seem to stem from being a "decent" person. There is no political analysis. The underlying message is that a decent woman accommodates others, puts others first, downplays her own needs and those of other women, silences herself when it makes others uncomfortable. This is not good feminist action.

So the facts according to that article are that it is one (or more) of the people presenting who have generalised anxiety disorder and only feel they are able to speak if women listen to them in silence (no clapping, no whooping).

That is a speaker asking for the whole dynamics of a conference to change, to move things more away from a dialogue between speaker and audience, to one in which the speaker holds all the power.

It absolutely fits with Tumblr special snowflake style requests, which are effectively about silencing other people to amplify your own voice.

I would say it is a basic human right for everyone to be able to make noises to express their opinion at a democratic meeting.

I smell a wind up somewhere...

It isn't a wind up. This is student politics today.

I find myself unable to get working up about the clapping issue. I understand what posters are saying but to be honest, I think feminists do have a responsibility, not necessarily to be inclusionary, but not to be exclusionary if it can be avoided.

If someone points out that a behaviour causes difficulty, why not try and alleviate that difficulty ? I agree that adjustments should be reasonable and proportional but suggesting that people don't clap strikes me as neither unreasonable or disproportionate.

I don't have too much time for the notion that all feminist thought should be intersectional but when it doesn't cause harm to women to deal with a side issue that accommodates others, I'm okay with that.

What does piss me off more is that it's used as an excuse to attack liberal feminist thinking. We just can't get away from the idea that liberal feminism is a watered down theory that we all pass through on our way to radicalism. The small stuff matters as well and individuals matter - if my actions harm someone or cause them discomfort, it would be pretty dickish of me to dismiss it without at least considering the issue.

It is not 'inclusive' to hold a political meeting with decision making power over thousands of other people and declare that only a few people are going to be allowed to make noise to express their opinion.

It is an example of literal privilege for a speaker to be able to decide how an audience is allowed to respond to them.

Absolutely agree with that, Almond.

I understand what posters are saying but to be honest, I think feminists do have a responsibility, not necessarily to be inclusionary, but not to be exclusionary if it can be avoided.

blis, sorry, but if you think this then you do not understand.

This is not inclusionary.

It is excluding a different group of people, that's all. As such, it's a waste of time.

Jeanne, I do understand. I just disagree about where the greater harm lies for the clapping issue.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/louise-pennington/triggering-jazz-hands_b_6940116.html

Annie, your analogy re wheelchairs, ramps etc was exactly what I was thinking about earlier on, when reading through this debate (and trying to cook the tea...)

Asking people to wear ear defenders is not really any different from expecting me to wear specs so I can both see what's going on at the front and take notes. I have to wear 'funny face gear'. I don't expect everyone else to wear it so I can feel better about my fab combo of short sight, long sight and astigmatism. Why the hell should they?

There's 'reasonable accommodation' and 'unreasonable accommodation'.

blis - ok, fair enough, and 'greater harm' I can see. I disagree, but I think it's fair to argue. It is not fair to say this is purely 'inclusionary', because it clearly isn't. It's excluding some people who weren't excluded before.

Sorry, I know I came across rudely before. I'm just frustrated.

I think clapping hands is quite a natural human response as well as having a proud history as part of self expression.

Does anyone remember when the WI slow handclapped Tony Blair? That was powerful protest that could not have been achieved through the medium of jazz hands. Mind you, some of those women would have been through wars.

Women should be able to make a noise and be heard!

Jeanne, I think there's a fine line between excluding and including but for me, where something causes actual harm AND to refrain from doing it causes less harm, I know where the line is for me. I don't think there will or can ever be a perfect balance so there won't ever be consensus.

And I didn't see it as rude - I was more concerned about the sense of discomfort I had disagreeing with posters I largely respect on here and wondering why on earth I felt that.

That's an excellent piece in the Huff Post.

Yes, I agree with that, but I don't see how we can know this causes less harm. Blindness and physical disabilities are quite common.

Glad it didn't sound rude. I respect you hugely too.

I suppose what I feel is - and this may be wrong - that there is a certain tendency to think that once we've become used to accommodating certain disabilities/needs, the problem is 'solved'. And I think people feel that way about sight impairments and some physical disabilities: hey, come on, we're used to this, we've solved it. I have heard people say it would be good 'if invisible disabilities could get the same support' - which is valid, but which implies they think these well-known disabilities get perfect support. And they don't.

And this gets back to my unease with the term 'traumatized'. I have this sense (maybe unfairly) that people are imagining a person with ASD who is horribly and obviously upset, while someone blind? Well, they're just sitting quietly. The fact they might be wondering what is going on, unable to tell whether the talk has finished or whether the speaker is pausing, that doesn't seem to matter.

It matters but it becomes a circular argument when you take it to an individual level (which I accept liberalism does to an extent)

All anyone can do is try to achieve a balance and allow those affected to tell us how it affects them. In the same way that I accept that feminism, if it were to achieve it's aim, will require to cause discomfort to men but I accept that's necessary to end the harm otherwise done to women. Discomfort v harm ? Majority needs v minority ? Sometimes one but sometimes the other.

I don't think there is a perfect solution. Someone always loses and human nature is such that none of us want it to be us.

Yes, I agree that's the case - but that's why I think it's a waste of time getting into it when there's not an easy way to achieve a balance.

Aah but that's a different issue.

What boils my piss is that an innocent request is then retweeted and causes such a backlash and is cited as being the thin end of the wedge. It was simply intended as a respectful request.

But it's used as a stick to beat women - it's considered petty, PC, pointless, this is how mindless and inane feminism is etc etc and the blame is laid at the NUS Women's campaign. Why shouldn't they consider others ? They don't always get it right but they are trying.

And for me, doing nothing isn't a neutral action - if doing or saying nothing allows an imperfect status quo to continue, then doing nothing contributes to that.

I really do understand those who have posted about the bigger issue, about women being nice, about being quiet but that's not what the ridicule online is about - that's about women having the audacity to think about others. Why on earth shouldn't they ? Women can be loud, they can equally be quiet, they can also be nice. They can also get it wrong but they're not allowed not to be perfect. Why is anything that has women in the title held to such higher standards and mocked and vilified ?

Ah, ok, it was the issue I've been getting at all along. I have said, in my first post, that I'm not comfortable with the way things went on twitter. I've not seen any reason to retract that yet.

And I totally agree this sort of thing has been picked up - and mocked - as a stick to beat them with, and it's deeply unpleasant.