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

Maybe the whole thing is a piece of art.

A piece of something, anyway.

I'm not exaggerating when I say some sessions were just one long check in with a check out at the end.

Welcome to my life!

Well, it is art school, after all. This stuff is beyond parody by now. All their letter of complaint was missing was reference to running dogs, capitalist roaders and bourgeois lackeys.

I wonder what their end-goal is? What kind of society do they envision? Even when everything heteronormative has been queered and the marginalised have been empowered and pronouns have become sacred text, what then?

There are more discrimination claims in an article today:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/conservatoire-hit-by-more-claims-of-discrimination-from-former-students-v3rkv7jm5?shareToken=9c62fb715745b686a503eda864049f63

What are check ins?

Colin Macfarlane, director of Stonewall Scotland, said: “Our 2018 research found more than a third of trans students have been the target of negative comments from staff.

That's a bit vague and could just be the normal robust criticism of one's creations.

It's ridiculous and sad that so many students are so self centred and lacking empathy for their tutors. Do they really think the colour and gender identity of their tutors is more important than the quality of their teaching?
The cuddling a block of ice thing sounds boring as performance art and isn't new, plus she had an abortion not a miscarriage.
If I had got pregnant as a student I would have had an abortion but would have probably felt a hypocrite then pretending to be a bereaved mother.

My name's Scottish, and no one can pronounce it. Glad to hear this gives me woke points.

I had a teacher in secondary school who once sent me out of the classroom. It was unfair. I DEMAND HER HEAD. SHE SHOULD BE SACKED. RE-EDUCATED. AND THE REST.

I recommend reading The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt. It explores why young people might be behaving like this in American Universities, very interesting and actually quite worrying.
Bret Weinstein of the Evergreen College debacle also has some interesting stuff to say on the subject, there are interviews with him on you tube.

Has anyone read the principles reply to the students that's attached to the students letter?

The 'Unconscious bias training' he's agreed to sounds a bit chilling.

Barack Obama challenges just this sort of nonsense:

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50239261

Every fucker in the country I live in now mispronounces my name (and spells it wrong too) unless I correct them 100 times. Could I have been filing complaints and extracting money for that this whole time?

Clearly I lack the entrepreneurial spirit of our I bet not a single one of them is Glaswegian comrades.

(Is this institution the Goldsmiths of Glasgow, in terms of the contrast between it's students and the people they live among? I can't imagine many born and bred Glaswegians having much patience with this sort of self indulgent bollocks.)

“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.“

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

What does "traditionally male characteristics" even mean in this context? Do they mean testicles or do they mean a beard?

It means a man with short hair and a beard would be my guess.

In my class about a quarter were from Glasgow, a quarter from the rest of Scotland, a quarter from England and a quarter international students.

In the music and dance schools there's a high percentage of international students. 1) they pay much higher fees and 2) they are positioning themselves as one of the leading places to study in Europe rather than just the uk. Hence the name change from academy to conservatoire.

I really struggled while I was there because I'm working class, and they always wanted me to make work about being working class when quite frankly I found it boring.
They are very keen for you to make performance about your 'identity' and how you perform it in the world, and I always had an issue with that because I didn't think I did perform that element of my identity I felt that it was something performed around me.
It created this weird thing where the straight white men on the course were able to make work about anything that took their interest, their favourite football team or a funny film or holiday.
Whereas everyone else had to make work about their 'thing' and obviously that work wasn't as likeable so the boys shoes would be commissioned more.

I don't think this was because they weren't sensitive enough to identities though, in fact it was the opposite.

I had left quite an impoverished background and some traumatic experiences thinking I could become someone else they basically said 'no, the only thing we want to see is the thing you're trying to move away from, that's you.'

It's also a bit of an open secret that they break you down in first year to build you back up in the rest of your time there. The difference in maturity from the first year to the fourth year is staggering.

It was hard.
But I learnt so so so so much about myself and how to create things, I have a totally different life to what I would have had if I didn't go. And actually I DID have to confront those things otherwise I'd have never been able to move past them. I look back at some of the things that upset me in first year and think 'ah that's why they did that'.

I had left quite an impoverished background and some traumatic experiences thinking I could become someone else they basically said 'no, the only thing we want to see is the thing you're trying to move away from, that's you.'

This is one of the many issues I have with that worldview. It's a trap. White men get to be actual fully realized humans and everyone else is only allowed to be a representative of their identity group, and we're all expected to pretend that's progressive.

A good example of the whole selling of identities thing I saw recently was that an American beauty products shop brought out a line of Frida Kahlo themed products (images are on Tumblr and probably Twitter too), with her unibrow disappeared and the most ridiculously crass attempt to cash in on what she represents to people in an identity sense. Which would be creepy and weird anyway, but it also ignores the fact that she was a communist, so probably wouldn't have been the greatest fan of being used as a marketing gimmick. Not a white man = you are your "identity" and aren't allowed to be anything else? Think you might want to be a person with your own individual politics and interests? Too bad, because your role is to be whatever you represent to well off white blokes.

Really good point, kittens.

I recommend reading The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt.

Second this recommendation.

Totally agree kittens

I would hate to be there now it must be unbearable. Because the weird thing is whether you actually are part of that identity is irrelevant. We had a guy on our course who used to make work about being poor and working class all the time, think wearing a dustmans hat and hamming up the accent, and the tutors lapped it up. It didn't matter that actually he came from a really nice suburb of the city he was from with a lovely family and lots and lots of money. It also meant his portrayal of poverty was really one dimensional. Poverty isn't fun knees ups in the pub and community spirit. It used to make me so angry.

It's really ironic that this is what might end them, they've been hoisted by their patart.

Also I am 100% certain I would be shunned as a swerf/terf if I went now. I got really bad marks for my (to be fair shit and badly written) dissertation about the performance of pornography in young women's sex lives. My tutor kept trying to sway me into more 'sex positive' territory but I just kept thinking they couldn't possibly be trying to say that because it was so OBVIOUS how damaging pornography was.
If you look at the unis feminist page, oh wait my bad there isn't one, it's just called a 'fem' page it's all sex work is work and them putting condoms and lube in the toilets.

This is what the feminist group Facebook page says now. The email is the woman's officer; so I'm assuming there's no actual women's officer anymore.

Is this institution the Goldsmiths of Glasgow, in terms of the contrast between it's students and the people they live among?

Don't most students live parallel lives in their own little bubble?

I really can't imagine many Conservatoire students seeking to understand Glasgow by say watching an Old Firm derby with fans in a Rangers or Celtic pub. I don't think many of them would hop on a bus out to Springburn so they can make art about the experiences of living up a high flat. For those not from the area I imagine their experience of Glasgow is only of a narrow, trendy side of Glasgow but I doubt this is unique, it is probably true of most students in most settings.

If everyone can identify with your "feminism" then that's because it's meaningless and challenges nothing. May as well just call it everything is fine as it is-ism.

I'm glad you were there before they hit their current level of up the own arse

I really can't imagine many Conservatoire students seeking to understand Glasgow by say watching an Old Firm derby with fans in a Rangers or Celtic pub. I don't think many of them would hop on a bus out to Springburn so they can make art about the experiences of living up a high flat. For those not from the area I imagine their experience of Glasgow is only of a narrow, trendy side of Glasgow but I doubt this is unique, it is probably true of most students in most settings.

That's not true, they spend an entire year doing 'art in the community' which actually does involve doing things like going to derby matches and making work with people who live in impoverished parts of Glasgow.

Now it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but they definitely know this is an issue and the tutors do their very best to resolve it.

There's also a theatre in prisons module in the fourth year.

So they are in a bubble but they try.

They also run a BA Performance Degree in BSL and Sign Language, and have weekly classes for Deaf 16+ young people and have stong links with Solar Bear theatre Company and the Deaf community.

I can't see why the students think the place is ableist.