Goldsmiths LGBT society says feminists should be sent to a gulag.

[DJLippy]

Goldsmiths, home of witch hunting transwoman Natasha Kennedy needs to sort itself out.

Last night they started harassing a load of 'T*rfs' on Twitter and then today they suggested they might like to spend some time in a gulag - before going on to write a rather long, propaganda piece in their defense.

twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039140880731521025.

I didn't think leftists like this actually existed.

Is this a real account?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3359116-The-Times-smear-campaign-by-trans-lecturer-at-Goldsmiths

I'll tell you who is a Goldsmiths graduate though: Tara "the terf slayer" Wood.

Also I think Ada Cable. Or Ada was lecturing there until Ada got kicked out "due to transphobic harassment" I assume post Speakers Corner.

The thing is that our children are now adults. It's not about "where we send our kids" once they get to University level. My son chose Goldsmiths based on the location near to his home, it's reputation for great musicians and the fact some of his musical heroes went there.

I had no say... It's his choice.

I can only hope that I have brought him up with a healthy dose of scepticism.

“Would this affect whether you wanted to send your kids to Goldsmiths or whether you would employ someone from Goldsmiths?”

I would be wary of encouraging a young person to go somewhere where theory and ideology are given credence without evidence and academic rigour.

Posing a theory is great. The point is that it should be tested and challenged before being launched as ‘fact’. The TAs seem to have missed that step.

Am I anti persecution of and discrimination against anyone who challenges gender boundaries or who lives as Trans? Absolutely.

Am I happy to be told that I must, without question, accept their definition of sex / biology? No.

They are allowed to question, so am I.

And without free speech there is no intellectual credibility at all.

So that would be a serious concern in the culture and establishment at GS.

Totally agree about it being the student's choice. The Music department has a strong reputation so I hope your son has a great time there.

Doubt very much whether Tara completed a degree course. Ada Cable was possibly a research associate but not I think a fully fledged academic. Doesn't have a Ph.D. but then as we've seen with Natacha Kennedy that isn't always an obstacle. However, I think in NK's case that had a lot to do with a long career as a primary school teacher leading to working in teacher training/education research (I know, I know) whereas I have no clue what Cable does to pay the bills but I doubt there's a professional qualification involved.

Deffo wouldn’t recommend the education department at present! 😳

Oh yes, and before I have to go off and do something to pay my own bills, let's not forget the Speaker's Corner incident. Venice Allan had booked the New Cross Learning Centre (aka library) for a meeting to debate changes to the GRA. When TRAs got wind of this they lobbied the NCLC to cancel the booking which is why it got relocated to central London, with a rendezvous point at Speaker's Corner. The TRAs who had tried to shut it down all then turned up at Speaker's Corner to protest.

Now, as it happens, NCLC is almost opposite Goldsmith's. I'd hazard a guess that at least some of the protestors were Goldsmith's students/ex-students/alums/staff.

Anne Applebaum commented on that thread. 😲

I think it clearly was seen by many beyond the feminist future-gulag-occupants.

This+sexual harassment+the failure to go public on their feminist-harassing lecturer = very, very poor public look for Goldsmiths.

Honestly, what's the point of paying out all that money in non-disclosure agreements when it all goes pear-shaped from a quarter you didn't have your eye on?

I don't think the issues are unconnected either. You have an institution - powerful: it's the gatekeeper to bestowing accreditation for a qualification that demands investments of time, money and self - and it is secretive, has a culture of arguing Black=white, boundaries are a fascist self-delusion, non-exposure to argument, and so on.

That is a culture that facilitates grooming. Invisible because prestige (and the age of the groomed) masks it.

I urge caution with that Spiked free speech ranking. Brendan O'Neill and co regard consent classes as anti-free speech...

I really, really hope the Twitter account was hacked by a GC feminist to draw attention to the Natacha Kennedy blacklisting scandal. Attacking free speech is as bad as it gets for an "academic".
Ps it's not unusual for lecturers in education departments to be experienced teachers who don't (yet) have a PhD.

A reasonable de-essentialising of science is to say that phrenology was bullshit.

Er, no. Phrenology fell to the scientific method.

I suppose might be some validity re 'decolonisation' as to which areas of science are funded in the first place, and by whom. It doesn't negate the science which has been done, more that areas may be overlooked. Medical research on issues specifically affecting women or 'ethnic minorities' (in quotes because globally not minorities which makes this worse).

So, 'decolonisation' of science should mean supporting greater participation by biological women and people of colour. Which is actually a matter understood by scientific institutions though not as easy to address as we might wish. What it absolutely doesn't need is participation by people who seem woefully scientifically ignorant and try to apply inappropriate concepts and who wilfully prioritise subjectivity over objectivity.

Imagine a group decided destroy an education system, but didn't want to come out into the open and use the Pol Pot/Mao method.
They could use a combination of austerity and this pomo bullshit. Its difficult to fight when there is no identifiable enemy, and your weapons are facts and common sense.

The account had been locked due to 'safeguarding'?

I have noticed this recently that TRAs are using words and phrases like 'safeguarding' and 'due dilligence' and similar but not quite in the correct context. I think it's all part of trying to appropriate the language used by GC feminists in their arguments, to make them sound like their arguments are equally as robust, but they just can't quite get it right. Bless them.

The account had been locked due to 'safeguarding'?

They had fun, fun, fun 'til teacher took the Twitter away.

I think that's one of the things I find so worrying about all this, Errol.

In the sense you outline, 'decolonising science' has a strong and important lineage. I remember the grass-roots women's movements to centre women's health and knowledge of our bodies. It was painfully obvious that health science and medicine had a male bias, with women's health under-resources, under-researched and lacking in prestige.

Changing that (in so much as it has changed) required a lot of pressure, by a lot of women, over decades.

There is something so dangerous and even cynical about appropriating the knowledge gained from that struggle (praxis) - that knowledge is not a non-political artefact, that it is embodied, expresses political and power biases, that it is not just knowledge as 'nous' but also practices and institutions - and putting it to service the already privileged, to unvoice and disempower the marginalised.

I don't dismiss post-modernism. It's a huge field. It has many tendencies. We do it a massive disservice if we forget that a lot of 'post-modern' thought arose as a description of what groups excluded from mainstream politics were already doing. (There's a whole other story about expropriation and re-writing history there.)

But there is something wildly awry about strategies that began as a crtique of power turning into a thoroughgoing nihilism as regards truth.

And I think it is not an accident that the ultimate effect is to silence further those who are most powerless (eg. Female prisoners).

They could use a combination of austerity and this pomo bullshit. Its difficult to fight when there is no identifiable enemy, and your weapons are facts and common sense.

I am much more pessimistic but hoping that I'm very wrong in sharing some of Applebaum's views on Washington but in a UK context. Since the collapse of 2008 and what happened after, my sense of being virtually occupied by an oligarchy is strengthening.

𝗪𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆
The mechanisms meant to protect the state from an incompetent or dictatorial president are not being used because people in power no longer believe in them, or are afraid to use them. Washington feels like the capital of a state where the legal order has collapsed because, in some ways, it is.

We saw the slurs being cast at FPFW, WPUK etc. with support from the news organisations who repeat that nonsense, or have high-ranking officers who make those slurs (Sue Pascoe). We see TELI - a bunch of people with lawyers, making those slurs with a sense of impunity.

All of the recent events. We see them. And still where are many people on this?
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Do you think we get caviar with our 140g of black bread?

I hope so, dahlink, as who eats carbs? We have to get our protein where we can. Who knows what the provenance of the caviar will be tho' - and I'm unsure if we'll be granted lemons.

The account had been locked due to 'safeguarding'?

'Due to safeguarding' is euphemism for 'avoiding reality'.

They've seen women here and on Twitter using the term "safeguarding" and have no idea what it means, but think it's probably a good way to prevent anyone from asking inconvenient questions.

Red

I see that as a very cynical attempt to change the meaning of 'safeguarding' whilst simultaneously emptying it of the power, meaning and force it has to 'speak' about the experience of the most marginalised and at risk.

The technique is the same one as you see with the more powerful aspects of 'post modernism' (though I think I hate having all those post-68 movements lumped together - I think that's part of the problem).

It's theft - appropriation of the conceptual and linguistic tools of those struggling against abuse of power, by power, and then displacement to another area - until those tools-of-those-resisting become a tool of those hammering down on those resisting.

It's no accident they're trying to empty 'safeguarding' of any meaning.

Their safe space was getting violated by facts n shit.

I agree.

'Safeguarding' is the series of practices, with reference to law emerging from institutional reports into various significant institutional failings - eg. The Victoria Climibie case - intended to avoid the repetition of those failings.

They are a significant institutional recognition of the vulnerability of certain groups (eg children) and the way they can be failed both by individuals and institutions, and an attempt to establish practice to mitigate those potential failures.

Safeguarding is grounded in actual, real failures and the actusl, real fact of the vulnerability of certain groups of people.

It is really, really important. It is a massive legal and institutional acknowledgment of the real danger of actual abusive power relations to real individuals and groups.

It is too important to have it stolen and misappropriated to cover for abusive, or potentially abusive, practices and individuals.

Honestly, it's too important to be stolen.

I looked up the named ‘social media officer’ in the published meeting minutes on Facebook last night.

It was a young, black male undergrad (presumably starting their second year). I decided not to share his personal info for informal safeguarding reasons - technically he’s an adult but my own son is only a year younger and he’s definitely not a proper grown up, in my eyes, yet!

Is G/S SU affiliated with NUS? Because you know who was out meeting/training LGBT societies last year, don’t you?

Jess Bradley.

This is a quote from an ex lecturer at Goldsmiths regarding the Gulag comments.

"I started the Liberal Society at Goldsmiths after realising there were far more people right of centre than I previously thought. I had never known some people in my classes believed in the same things
These people had never mentioned what they believed in before out of fear of social rejection.

With around 50 actual members signed up we started organising events. I found this to be extremely difficult as the you have to essentially proof your speaker will not offend people. This is at the discretion of the university who can reject anyone they want

I hosted an event with @bswud from @ASI at the time on bias in the labour market. This event was attended by our 30 lib members and 7 people from the Palestinian soc and feminist soc who branded the talk, our members and the speaker racist due to comments made by AS in 1700's.

After the talk they heckled my members at the pub (which I had to host it at because we couldn't get a university room) and said that I was a Nazi, calling me out on social media. These same girls went to all of my lecturers to demand I be prevent from speaking as it violated their safe space. Luckily I was surprised to be defended by some fantastic lecturers who were defenders of free speech. They pointed out that I merely held liberal values.

My society slowly died as young first years students, understandably, did not like being called Nazis and racists. For clarification, the society had people of all backgrounds, genders, faiths and ethnicity.

The news today is symptomatic the Goldsmiths SU being run by self declared communists for over 4 years. It's sad but also not limited to Goldsmiths. Its all across the UoL.

In sum, Goldsmiths students are rotten to the core. The student body is fashionably extremist and few have any real conviction in their beliefs. This is why I was not shocked by the news today. This is a genuine reflection of the opinions held by the wider student body"