Academics criticise traffic light 'safe space' badges at transgender conference

[stumbledin]

The conference title was "Thinking Beyond: Transversal Transfeminisms"

Delegates attending the one-day forum at Roehampton University, south west London, were invited to wear different coloured lanyards to ensure they did not feel emotionally overwhelmed by sharing ideas.

Those wearing red badges did not wish to engage with their fellow academics, while those in yellow did not want to be approached and would only communicate if they made the first move.

Green badges were worn by attendees open to conversations.

Academics could change the colour of their lanyard depending on how resilient they felt at different points of the conference.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/22/academics-criticise-traffic-light-safe-space-badges-transgender/

The original report was in the Times but because of paywall I have used this link. Think the Times had more detailed.

I am more upset by the idea that anyone should think this has anything to do with feminism.

Maybe not all of you obvs.

Oh im glad i read this...i was about to write a snotty comment

My friends son uses them...I don’t take the piss out of him, or laugh or ridicule

He doesn’t use a lanyard

But he does have cards he can use

Sparticus I mentioned earlier that I had been in workshops where autistic people could use a traffic light lanyard.

I should have said that I thought they were a great idea in that situation. However this wholesale appropriation of this accessible device is what I was finding ridiculous. I was making fun of that in my comments.

A conference with the confer removed is just an 'ence'.

I think/hope most people wouldn’t dream of laughing. However, when the organisers of a conference force all delegates to wear them so that mouthy idiots don’t get anyone challenging their weak arguments, it’s getting ridiculous. And you’re right, it hurts and ridicules those who genuinely need them.

That will work well for colourblind people.

Heavily sex linked trait, being colourblind, so I guess they just weren't expecting many Y chromosome enabled individuals?

Maybe I can get a red badge for events where I'd rather not be approached by randy men. I'm sure my wishes will be respected and complied with.

Spartacus please don’t feel that you couldn’t use something useful, just because some appropriative fuckwits took advantage of that thing for all the wrong reasons. Dick move on their part.

Spartacus 💐💐

Badges for people who actually need them are fine. People who're just too sensitive about their political opinions to be challenged don't need badges, they need a sense of perspective.

SpartacusAutisticus I think it’s important to look at the context in which these were used - they were not “I may need extra support to do X, Y or Z”; they were used to say “At an academic conference I don’t want to have my flimsy ideas challenged in any way shape or form”.

The people here recognise that difference and that is why the tone is so mocking. I assure you genuine supportive aids would never be ridiculed like this.

Yes - it would be terrible if the validity of the system of traffic light system for those for whom its designed was bought into disrepute because it has been misappropriated.

And this is what trans activists did with the very real issue for intersex people of being "assigned" a sex at birth (often through unnecessary surgery) as something they are campaigning against.

But people who are not intersex aren't assigned.

In a way it shows that they dont have their own oppressions so they adopt other peoples.

As it is now its not even as though many of them actually have gender disphoria.

Just to add I do think on some occassions things like jazz hands and not shouting support because someone is a friend in situations when those unused to speaking in public and / or its a sensitive issue are worth thinking about.

Giles Coren tried to talk about this but found his new kittens more interesting

Sorry, but I have kittens and nothing else matters

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sorry-but-i-have-kittens-and-nothing-else-matters-8v6tmq3lc?shareToken=587b35668ad2bfb326df935a81ee6120

how do I now use those aids when this has happened? No way will I ever use them now.

I have every sympathy.

The 'spoon theory' has its issues, but was a useful way for people who were chronically ill to get people to understand their crippling fatigue, disability and varied mobility/functional skills day to day. Guess which community appropriated this too, call themselves 'spoonies' and do a lot of playing with the image and identity of being chronically ill? There's another accessibility tool spat on in order to entertain the insensitive and self centred. It honestly reminds me of Victorian times where people used to make themselves look pale and enact the TB type behaviours as a fashion.

Giles Coren is just unshakeably, bafflingly smug. It’s actually uncanny. Come the post apocalyptic winter, when the rest of us are scrabbling about like extras from The Road, he’ll still be chortling self-satisfiedly about the witty asides he once gave forth in the organic aisle in his local North London Waitrose with his kids’ teacher.

What hasn't been misappropriated ffs!

Women, children, spaces, rights, pride, now the spoons concept, and autism aids...and on and on...

Giles Coren gets paid a hell of a lot if he's £6000 down after missing 2 days' work. No wonder he's smug, ChattyLion. I would be too.

I’d be happy to be paid loads of cash too, but I like to think i’d be slightly more self aware than to publish jaunty articles about how I deliberately skipped doing 6K of work just for fun so I could go three times day to buy offal at the special organic butchers for my new kittens. But then I wouldn’t be doing any of that in the first place, because lots of reasons.

anyway nothing GC would love more than being talked about, and he’s unimportant, so I will 🤐

Pre-GDPR, some tech conferences used coloured badges or lanyards to indicate consent to being photographed: red means no photos, green means go for it, yellow means ask. Post-GDPR, it's all release forms.

I can see colour-coding one's approachability being useful for autistic people, but academics at a conference are there to talk to each other.

Maybe I can get a red badge for events where I'd rather not be approached by randy men. I'm sure my wishes will be respected and complied with

www.spreadshirt.com/danger+keep+out+death+sign+womens+premium+t-shirt-D12344024?sellable=12556584

I reckon we all sew stars onto our jumpers. They can be different colours depending on the 'type' of person we are.

oh, hang on: it's been done before...

encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/classification-system-in-nazi-concentration-camps

so I could go three times day to buy offal at the special organic butchers for my new kittens

Cats should be fed a properly-formulated cat food, not meat prepared for humans (except in small amounts as a treat). They would consume the bones of their prey. Meat prepared for humans lacks nutrients, e.g. taurine, that prey and cat food contain.