Glasgow Conservatoire accused of ableism and transphobia

[Igneococcus]

Can they not see how ludicrous this will appear to anybody outside their bubble?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/diversity-row-after-conservatoire-is-accused-of-ableism-and-transphobia-m77wr030m?shareToken=5de1751afcada56a85ddd52141df3ecf

This makes me so sad. Dragging the reputation of this fantastic institution through the mud for woke points. 🤬

Two kids I know are attending the school and are thriving, precisely because it is so accepting, and yes, bonkers. Bonkers is pretty much what any performing arts school feels like, no matter how old the students. The Conservatoire has truly dedicated teachers and excellent teaching programmes and none of the complaints seem justified to me.

The story about the student who had an abortion seems more like a budding performer who thought she had a ground-breaking idea and got some honest critique from a teacher. In a creative setting that's what you need. I know it hurts, and how much when your tutor tells you this idea you're so in love with has been done to death, is dull, indulgent or too self-absorbed to work. But the public is a lot less patient than any tutor and I wouldn't be surprised if the tutor merely sought to protect her from further harm.

As for mis-pronouncing that Cantonese greeting. I've lived in the UK for 25 years. No one pronounces my name right. I meet lots of people who think it's funny to make disparaging jokes about my nationality. Depending on the setting, I respond with a joke of my own or a calm request to keep it professional. Because I've also experienced deliberate and inadvertent xenophobia, it's never ocurred to me to complain about mispronounciation, especially when someone makes an effort to use my own language to reach out to me. I can't get my head around that sense of entitlement.

As for "most staff members fit a white, cis-gender, able-bodied and heterosexual mould", I am getting sick of this nonsense.

For starters, "cis" isn't just an insult when thrown at women, performing arts people are typically less gender-conforming than the general public and that is a massive assumption purely based on teachers' outward appearance.

Diversity or better the underrepresentation of minorities is of course often an issue. But Scotland is majority white (97%) and straight (95%). So if most staff are white and straight, this is perfectly normal in a country with such a homogenous population. The school does have a lot of foreign staff btw, possibly beyond the percentage that would be representative of the country as a whole.

As for sexuality, I would actually bet money on it that homosexuals are overrepresented here compared to the wider population as this is typical of the performing arts. And the "able-bodied" part of that complaint is insidious. They're not actually talking about an underrepresentation of physical disabilities, they are talking about mental health issues. And it's incredibly insulting as again, those are overrepresented in the performing arts (for various reasons) and will be among staff.

My son was lucky enough to be taught by one of the foreign instrumentalists teaching there and some of the other staff I know by reputation and from their work and honestly, I'd have been honoured to be taught by them (if I had any relevant talents).

I hope someone at some point tells these kids to get a grip and toughen up. Otherwise they're not going to last long in this business.

Never mind Torpenhow, Wemyss and Milngavie, Mockers

Also there is incredible support at the uni for mental health and people with learning difficulties.

In my first term there I was diagnosed with dyslexia and the support I received was amazing. I had a dedicated learning support person who I met up with three times a term. My dyslexia was picked up on immediately after a life time of it being missed and me thinking I was just lazy.

I remember my support person telling me 1/6 students at the conservatior had a learning difficulty.

It's the 'students as customers' bind again, isn't it? Demanding their money back

To be frank as someone who, bar three years at university, has lived in the general vicinity of Glasgow my whole life I'm pretty sick of the whole lumping white people together as a homogenous mass. This is American cultural imperialism that completely ignores our own patterns of immigration and the ensuing ethnic tensions that result from them.

We have a long standing problem with anti Irish bigotry that causes far more real world problems than any other ethnic divide. These pampered brats aren't even acknowledging that. They know nothing of the history of Italian immigration. They don't care about the issues around the Roma population in Govanhill. They're just hanging off the coat tails of a completely different countries particular racial history and issues.

Scapa even the locals can't agree how to pronounce Wemyss, outsiders have no hope.

I'm torn over the comment the tutor made about the student's abortion.

I think it depends on the context, in a conversation about how you could turn a personal experience into a piece of performance art and exploring ways to do it it could be a valid comment.

Also the difficulty of how long it takes for ice to melt, and how that would be different on a stage or if it was being performed outside in different weather.

They might have a point if they said all of the staff are XYZ, but to say the tutors are mostly “white, cis-gender, able-bodied and heterosexual” is exactly as you'd expect

"Saying this as a biracial, disabled lesbian (what does that make my acceptability score this week?)"

Sorry mate, but you're still at the bottom of the pile due to your boring old lesbian genital fetish and female privilege. Try harder.

That letter reads as a concerted witch-hunt against the woman who set up the course.

What hateful entitled little children these people are.

I know pussyhat , the female homosexuality bit cancels out everything above and means gulag status. I'll be in good company.

Of course it may be the case that this is a handful of attention-seeking whinyarses, and that the school in question has a good track record. I appreciate that some PP have personal experience of attending the place.
But I have some reservations about that article, having seen plenty of incidents of legitimate concerns being dismissed as 'woke snowflakes' or 'reverse discrimination'.
It at least looks like some of the complaints made by these students were to do with racism and general bullying, but emphasising ableism and transphobia in the headline is a little bit dog-whistly, suggesting 'spoilt brats with made-up problems'...

A non-passing trans woman — a biological male with traditionally male characteristics who identifies as a female — said the lecturer persistently referred to her as a man.

If this individual plans to work in the performing arts I do hope they don't expect to be cast in female roles. It'd be like me, fat and 60+, uauditioning for Juliet.

Auditions are going to be extremely traumatic for them unless they accept the truth about their appearance.

People both constantly misspell my first name and mispronounce my last name. It has never occurred to me that this is some form of oppression or an insult. It's just a product of having a very unusual name. I love my uncommon first name.

I have a very common first name that has two different spellings so people often jump the wrong way and a very common surname which is very similar to another even more common in this part of the world surname so people get it wrong all the time.

I'd have had a stroke decades back if I got worked up about these things.

And one complaint is that the Professor spoke out to students about her own experience of sexual harassment/assault in the arts as part of a conversation about #MeToo.

But that's wrong as it triggered the students and made one "cry hysterically on the street".

"The students complained that they had yet to receive an apology for the “unpaid emotional labour” they expended in the complaint"

If they're allowed to publicly flog the woman they're complaining about will they later complain that she didn't pay for the whip herself too?

Dear me.

On an allied topic, I saw a news report or a tweet yesterday that said trans actors shouldn't just be cast as trans people, they should be considered for the whole range of roles. I was a bit . Aren't they also demanding that only trans actors should play trans roles? What happened to acting - have I misunderstood all my life that acting is about pretending to be someone else, who might be radically different from you?

There was also a news report that narcissists are happier than average because they get so much attention. No shit, Sherlock!

I went to two prestigious art schools (fine art, rather than performing art) and harsh critique is what you sign up for. It’s not really personal but it feels personal because it’s about your art.

I would hope that legitimate complaints would be dealt with via the university’s systems for doing so, that this hasn’t happened leaves me thinking this is a case of aggrieved, entitled, brats.

I’d bet almost every arts lecturer has reduced a student to tears at some point, likely scores of students. It comes with the territory. I was already a single mum when I started my BA and spent a lot of time mopping up the tears of other students.

PS - here’s a handy calculator to see how oppressed you are: intersectionalityscore.com/

😂

It's odd as well because this course is one of the most twaw places ever.
I went to a lecture once about how biological sex was a social construct and thinking that I must just be misunderstanding what was being said because it's gender not sex that's the construct. But no I wasn't. And that was at least ten years ago.

There are definitely some issues with the course but it not being woke enough is not one of them.

As mentioned by PP upthread it’s very like the Evergreen College story. Students at liberal arts colleges are tilting at windmills, they are actively seeking out oppression and exaggerate or straw man events to prove it.
I did my BA at Goldsmiths (Fine Art Practice and Contemporary Critical Theory) which is another high-pressured environment, thoroughly steeped in PoMo bullshit and political wokeness, yet it is somehow still not woke enough to prevent students from occupying a building in protest against institutional racism: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2019/jun/19/goldsmiths-anti-racism-protest-marks-100th-day-with-rally

Racism/sexism/homophobia etc clearly do exist in the world, seemingly some people are motivated to invent situations to ‘prove’ it, which ultimately has the opposite effect.

See also, the staging of fake hate crimes, such as the Jussie Smollett story: m.youtube.com/watch?v=nmQJfFumYg0

I'm not sure about the abortion one either.
Context is everything. Mine is only doing GCSE Art but I know her teacher gives her alternative ideas when she is planning.
She could have said "another way to approach this would be to" etc.

The whole lot is just entitled twaddle, who raised these idiots.

To be fair to the students their article seems more nuanced than the Telegraph article, especially since 6 complaints were upheld. Physically manhandling a student is never ok, mocking students with mental illness is never ok.

I do appreciate a lot of their complaints are nonsense, and the fact they submitted 100s of pages of complaints shows that. I'm another one echoing the fact that the vast majority of the Scottish population is white, non trans, with no obvious disabilities so it sounds like their staff reflect this. We have no idea if they have initiatives to make sure they are recruiting fairly from available candidates, but I expect the do monitor their staff on protected characteristics.

I'm surprised art students do check ins though, I did these studying counselling but have never heard of them anywhere else.

Oh god we did tireless never ending check ins.

And you weren't allowed to interrupt anyone and they could talk about WHATEVER they wanted for as long as they wanted and it just took as long as it took.
I'm not exaggerating when I say some sessions were just one long check in with a check out at the end.

Imagine it, performance art students given the floor for however long they wanted. And how they wanted it.

There's a part of my soul still there.