And so it begins: Transwoman is running for women's officer of NUS

[PosieReturningParker]

Some of her aims:

Gender neutral sex ed
Women in leadership making room for transwomen (because you know how many women are in leadership roles)
BUS accepting transwomen to compete as women in sports

OneFlewOver I think "liberal" students are more likely to vote for a white transwoman than a brown woman with a Muslim-sounding name. I'm saying this as a brown woman who is often assumed to be Muslim - I think I would lose votes based on my appearance and foreign name rather than gain votes.

I've read through all the candidates' statements. I'm shocked by how badly written most of them are. Sentence construction is poor -the second half of a sentence frequently has no connection with the first part. They are littered with grammatical errors and non sequiturs.

I appreciate candidates might not have English as a first language -although the statements from the candidates for the post of overseas officer were better than most of the others.

If these were supporting statements in a CV for a job application I would not be interested in interviewing more than 4 of them at most. Hareem Ghani would be one of the 4.

That's disappointing Penguin - at least Hareem has the benefit of actually being the better candidate (aside from the obvious she seems eloquent and knowledgable) but I'm doubtful that this vote will be based on merit...

With regards to the misgendering thing and MNHQ, perhaps they think they get enough shit from the likes of MRAs already to risk making themselves a target for trans activist harassment by allowing it.

I agree with Roomba, she seems to be using the women's officer role to fight for Trans issues not women's issues. That in itself is wrong and shouldn't have been allowed. How do people vote? I'd be interested to know.

OneFlewOver Hopefully I'm wrong about who people will vote for. I'm about 10 years out of touch with the student world!

Perhaps that's it. I know they must be under pressure. It's politically a very hot potato at the moment.

I don't want to get the site shut down or anything but this feels almost menacing.

I mean the idea of having our opinions censored like this.

I do not like it at all, and I am not someone who often gets het up about what line MNHQ takes.

LassWiTheDelicateAir How many candidates did you find? I thought there was just Anna Lee and Hareem Ghani but from your post it sounds like you read more than two candidates' statements.

Penguin Sorry I meant all candidates for all posts. Hence saying the 2 candidates for the overseas officer's post were better than the generally poor standard.

Oh I see, thanks Lass.

Meanwhile

MamaMary I don't know if men are able to vote for the position of women's officer but if it is female voters only, i guess men just need to identify as female and then they can vote.

No one believes that transwomen are women, if they did no one would give a crap about their feelings

I think this is a very accurate observation, sadly (for women).

AFAIK all students can vote for all positions. That was the case ten years ago anyway.

Lots of interesting and insightful comments; really glad that there is some debate on this.

My main point would be to be specific - this is not liberalism, it is neoliberalism. Liberalism would certainly support individualism and autonomy; but one of the founding principles is that this should not be at the expense of harm to others. Liberal feminists in particular argued for women's political, legal, educational and employment equality. They did not challenge the biological category of woman - indeed, the arguments were the being a woman and all that entailed biologically should not preclude access to public spaces. They weren't arguing for the abolition of gentlemen's clubs; just access to political, educational and social space where they wished to bring women's issues to bear and provide equal opportunities for women.

Neoliberalism is about identity politics as a market value, which is a different thing. It is about proclaiming diversity, whilst dominant groups continue to obtain their economic and political goals and deny equality and social justice. Neoliberalism does not threaten social structures, it upholds them, particularly as these structures are free market, and not oriented to social justice. Anyone who talks about trans* advocacy as 'liberalism' should be clear that they mean neoliberal identity politics, which dilute and de-politicise gender issues, not bring them to the fore.

Liberal feminists argued for political representation precisely because they thought having the vote and a political voice would help improve maternity care'; access to contraception; access to abortion and so on. Liberals wanted access to power on an equal footing to address maternal mortality; female genital mutilation; gender based feticide; and so on. It is NOT liberal to want to silence women whose experiences are shaped by biology; it is NOT liberal to seek to no-platform biological women, either by disallowing them to speak or by taking the only place they have a representative voice when two LGBT ones are available; that is NOT liberal, it is neoliberal, it is driven by dominant relations of power, and it serves the market.

With apologies for the long ranting essay... if there was a hair-tearing emoticon, I would be using it

that this should not be at the expense of harm to others

sorry, either this should not be at the expense of others, or this should not harm others.

Excellent post RomiiRoo

Unfortunately there is every chance that she will get in . It's more than likely.

I don't see a strong students' feminist movement. They seem far more interested in environmentalism, trans issues, 'safe spaces' (which means the likes of Germaine Greer are not welcome ), anti-Islamophobia(or their interpretation of it) and pulling down statues of people who held imperialist views.

I myself was hardly a feminist as a student. In my university, there wasn't a strong feminist camp - in fact I barely remember the word being uttered. True this is 12 years ago. Partly it was because we felt, as female students, that the arguments had already been fought and won for us. We thought we were equal. We thought discrimination was over.

It was only when I was in my 30s that I started to realise how unequal the world is, how privileged men are; and I then identified as a feminist.

Would I have voted for Anna Lee? Probably not, but I may have felt I SHOULD have, and I definitely wouldn't have been able to articulate any reasons against voting for her; or my uneasiness around the whole trans-agenda.

Great post RomiiRoo! How can we get your points across to students that will be voting?

Yes MamaMary I would have been the same 12 years ago. Well actually I did identify as a feminist but I didn't really understand how much inequality there still is until I had my children. But with the wider media censoring women's concerns, it's so difficult to get our views across to younger generations.

that's a great post Romiiroo - really helpful :)

Lots of universities have or are in the process of putting together transgender guidelines. The standard is to something along the lines of: 'Transphobic propaganda, in the form of written materials, graffiti, music or speeches, will not be tolerated/will be removed.'

The University of Bath goes further:

'The curriculum will be checked to ensure that it does not rely on or reinforce stereotypical assumptions about trans people, and that it does not contain transphobic material.'

There is a creeping censorship and not nearly enough debate on so many of these issues.