Royal Astronomical Society calls out TERFs

[FemaleAndLearning]

The diversity arm of the RAS is proudly saying it will not have TERFs giving opinions on its Twitter account.
I am truly shocked and upset that a scientific institution bloke this thinks this is acceptable.

Still so sad about this.

I went to look at who there at the event was being loud about this in the RAS Diversity twitter feed, and I found Dr Ashley Nova. Dr Nova has a twitter bio with a sexualised pose, and a pinned tweet advertising Dr Nova's patreon where the rewards are stickers of Dr Nova as a cartoon, and a photoshoot of Dr Nova wearing a bikini and posing, mouth open, stare to camera, holding a bottle of champagne. (I am not posting private information - this information and the photos are on the pinned tweet on Dr Nova's account.)

Can you think of any women scientists who would choose to have this as their internet presence? Can you think what would happen to women scientists who did this?

But this is apparently the person with the least privilege in STEM. Okay then.

ArcheryAnne That reminds me of the rock singer turned TW politician in the US who ran for Congress. Their campaign ad featured them in underwear putting make up on at a mirror. I remember thinking that no woman could do that and expect to be taken seriously.

Does anyone know what the comment was that was made at the lunch?

They've deleted the original tweets, but if you go down their twitter feed you can still see it, because they've RT'd someone who RT'd it!

I'd like to know what the dreadful hurtful thing was that that disgusting t**f said (seems to have been an elderly gent rather than a radfem 😂 )

This is so upsetting given the state of women in science.

How is this happening before our eyes?!

How is this actually happening and no one knows about it? It's not being debated in schools, on television and apart from the odd show, the radio either. The last phone in on the subject I heard was LBC with Maajid Nawaz and even then, I recall he shut down quite hard a feminist who said she would not accept a trans man as a biological woman in reality. Apart from that I've heard nothing. Nothing about producers of women's sanitary towels removing the word woman from their products, abortion clinics removing woman from their infomation leaflets etc etc....I mean it has even infiltrated the hard sciences now it seems.

Most women I know do not know about what is going on and seem to be sleep walking into a new dawn where women are erased. I those who are aware are just bending over backwards trying to accommodate everyone else to detriment of themselves. I guess sex will be erased soon.

I was thinking about this thread and I wondered about what the National Academies are saying- they seem to be thought leaders on lots of workforce and other policy issues that affect women in various sectors/academic disciplines.

We have the Royal Society as the UK’s National academy for the sciences, the British Academy for the social sciences and humanities, Royal Academy of Engineering for engineering, and there is the Academy of Medical Sciences for medicine.

You’d have thought that given their skill sets, the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences would be able to tell the difference between you know, actual biology and cultural stereotypes. But from looking at their websites, both of these influential organisations have embraced massive wokery using gender when it’s really clear that they should say sex.

This is so wrong when women working in science are underrepresented and (obviously) women still report experiences of harassment in the job, lack of career advancement opportunity relative to men, and so on and so on.

These national umbrella bodies each run well-resourced programmes including ones about increasing womens’ participation and representation which is a really good thing. They also each organise lots of great-looking initiatives to encourage other types of diversity of expertise to come to the forefront in science and medicine, which is all great.

But if anyone can be a woman, how can anyone know if the money being spent on all these initiatives IS actually helping women?

You know, the old-fashioned, ignorable type of woman.. the half of the population kind who gets penalised for having a female body in the workplace or having the temerity to take some time off her work to have kids and all that kind of stuff?

There are already blogs about how women’s participation is up- but what do these ‘gender-driven’ stats about women really mean? blogs.royalsociety.org/in-verba/2019/02/08/goodbye-diversity-committee/

Do we need to start FOIing institutions like these asking them to publish data based on sex to try to force them not to stop collecting their data based on sex?

Surely these kind of thought leaders have some responsibility to keep collecting accurate data and actually centring women in their work when they say they are working to support women’s inclusion in their sector?

And how do we get them to row back from this deliberately obscuring use of ‘gender’ when they should say (and mean) sex?
It’s appallingly sexist to just conflate these two very different things like they are doing.

Meanwhile in the US you have shocking reports like this one that show around half of women working in science report having experienced sexual harassment: sites.nationalacademies.org/shstudy/index.htm

I don’t understand why women’s interests are being so disregarded by institutions that in the same breath will say they are trying their hardest to help women. It’s very unsettling to see it.

Emailed them as follows
Hello
your diversity policy as stated on your website is incorrect. The Equality Act 2010 contains the protected category of gender reassignment, not gender. Please amend.

'The RAS is committed to creating an environment where diversity is celebrated and everyone is treated fairly, regardless of sex, gender, disability, ethnic origin, religion or belief, sexual orientation, marital status, age, or nationality.'

I was wondering how Athena Swan were doing on this, and came across their guide to supporting trans people. It recommends unisex toilets (because fuck women) and says quite plainly that a 'woman' is someone who conforms to the cultural standard of 'woman'. Nothing whatsoever about the conflict between trans people's rights and the rights of women. Appalling. What happened to Athene Donald?
www.ecu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Athena-SWAN-trans-questions-research-institutes-expanded-criteria.pdf

So women who are gender non conforming are not women?

Confirming to cultural standard of women means adheres to stereotypes. Doesnt it.

Yes that's all a woman is, high heels and makeup. Women who don't try to adhere to patriarchal strandards of femininity are not really women.

Yes that sounds very progressive and not at all like the views of musigynist men.

twitter.com/STILLTish/status/1149013887192379398

This week's Private Eye.

Here’s the Private Eye article for those who aren’t Twitterers

I was wondering how Athena Swan were doing on this, and came across their guide to supporting trans people. It recommends unisex toilets (because fuck women) and says quite plainly that a 'woman' is someone who conforms to the cultural standard of 'woman'.

This is giving me the rage. Don't they realise that if I and my female contemporaries at university had paid attention to what met the "cultural standard of being a woman" we wouldn't even have made it as far as A level physics, much less gone on to careers where several of us ended up as international experts in our field (one of my contemporaries is now a professor of particle physics, another heads an R&D group in a major multi national, I'm just back from a trip half way round the world to deliver lectures at an advanced summer school).

If I'd conformed to the cultural expectations on me, I'd have ended up doing book keeping (my school careers teacher's idea of a suitable career for a girl who could, shock horror, actually count.)

What happened to Athene Donald?

Why, what did happen? Were you taught by her? (That takes me back a bit!)

Lancelottie I thought she founded Athena Swan? No, I only came across her when she was interviewed on The Life Scientific, but I remember her talking about the sexism she encountered.

Did she? I didn't realise that (and have seen her being quite critical of it, partly because the work to get the institution's 'bronze award' etc seems to fall disproportionately on junior female academics, but the credit then goes to the departmental leads...)

Are you thinking of Jocelyn Bell Burnell?

Ah, ok, it was the Athena Forum (fore-runner to Athena Swan) that she chaired. I'm pretty sure she helped found it. I thought she was still directly involved with it which was why I was so surprised to read that guide.

a 'woman' is someone who conforms to the cultural standard of 'woman'.

By that definition, I'm not one.

Also, fuck Athena Swan. As PP said, the shitwork of earning it falls to mostly-female junior staff and having one:

• doesn't stop the male senior academics from openly flirting with female RAs and admin staff, to the point that someone has to interrupt and lure the male academic away so that the RA/admin can get back to work.
• doesn't stop male senior academics from being verbally abusive to (male and female) technical staff when a request is denied for safety reasons.

Source: I work in a Uni STEM dept with Athena Swan silver award, it's utter bullshit.

It recommends unisex toilets (because fuck women)

Athena Swan, meet UK law: "sanitary conveniences shall not be suitable unless... separate rooms containing conveniences are provided for men and women except where and so far as each convenience is in a separate room the door of which is capable of being secured from inside."