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

• BSL and English Language

If that is the casefurrytoebean why are they moaning about the tutors being predominantly white and not from ethnic minorities? They clearly haven't understood that ethnic minority groups often are white.

Perhaps this is the fault of tutors more than students who aren't making it clear that 'white' does not equal 'all the same homogenous mass' and explaining the history of immigration and ethnic tensions in the area.

We did an entire module running over a year about disability access in theatre ran by a director of a theatre company ran by and for disabled people (he himself had cerable palsy)
It was all about the social model of disability and how to make work that is accessible to disabled people and how to collaborate with disabled people without patronising them. We were encouraged to make the disabled access part of the performance for everyone instead of othering them.

It's probably the least ableist degree course in history.

If that is the casefurrytoebean why are they moaning about the tutors being predominantly white and not from ethnic minorities?

No idea knickers. Maybe because the students think it's racist to imply that white people have anything but upmost privilege.
They ran screaming from the room when a tutor spoke about metoo without a trigger warning so I'm assuming any nuanced talk about race wouldn't go down well.

I do think it's the fault of the tutors, but more for creating this environment where identity trumps all and power lies in calling someone out. The tutors nurtured and encouraged it for years it was only a matter of time before they became victim to it.

' I didn't think I did perform that element of my identity I felt that it was something performed around me.'

So interesting, Furrytoebean. I think that is a crucial point about identity politics that people don't generally think about enough.

It just boggles my mind that these people can be studying and lecturing in Glasgow of all places and pretend no white groups have ever been oppressed.

I think this is another baby/bathwater situation, where a bunch of fairly privileged people being absolute bellends are making it really, really difficult for other people to raise legit issues of inclusion, and where subsequent discussions on this will lead to people unfairly dismissing it as "snowflakism" rather than addressing real problems.

Racism, sexism, abelism, homophobia, etc, are all issues in academia. Sessions in unconscious bias, led by a good tutor, and without the whiff of re-education, can be absolutely fantastic, eye-opening tools.

But this does look like it's been really misapplied, by a group of absolute melts, either because they are just narcissistic bellends, or - it looks more likely - so that they can cash in and get their money back.

On the specifics, I bow to no-one in my defence of any women to deal with having an abortion however she wants to, but in this case it seems like the student was approaching the art tutor as some kind of therapist, whereas the tutor was acting as, well, an art tutor. And I think the art tutor, from the available evidence, did the student a huge favour. If you can't cope with a private discussion with your tutor about your proposed performance art piece dealing with your abortion, then you are in now way ready to deal with the consequences of putting that art piece before an unfeeling public, who will not hold back with their opinions and have no duty of care towards you.

There's one ~ism that is noticeably absent from the students' discussion, and that's classism. They are fucking performance art students at a fucking conservatoire in fucking Glasgow. If they don't notice their privilege relative to a decent chunk of other Glaswegians, then they need to give their heads a wobble.

Are former students going to organise a letter of support, Furry?

There was a professor on my MA who would absolutely attract this kind of complaint and I would defend him to the hilt. He played me from the beginning but I only realised at the end. He’s an asshole but he made me a better artist and a more fully realised (possibly a better?) person.

I think it’s hard to see the benefit of this kind of teacher when you are in the midst of it, it’s only hindsight that gives you the understanding of why, how they were doing the ‘cruel to be kind’ thing

There's one ~ism that is noticeably absent from the students' discussion, and that's classism. They are fucking performance art students at a fucking conservatoire in fucking Glasgow. If they don't notice their privilege relative to a decent chunk of other Glaswegians, then they need to give their heads a wobble.

Absolutely.

The barriers to art for working class people are so much more complicated than just there isn't enough shows about mining or their communities.
I couldn't use a computer when I arrived, I'd never used a camera, I had a deep rooted shame of ever standing out or being different.
I couldn't afford to do all the extra curricular stuff like going for posh dinners with artists. I spoke funny and hadn't had any dance lessons.
I didn't share the language of how to speak about thing in the proper way.

I couldn't afford to take risks because I literally couldn't afford to fail.

The academy was actually really good at offering financial and practical support to students but the more social ones where definitely an issue.

The people from my course who are still making art and not working in a more supportive role after they've graduated are the people who's parents support them.

Are former students going to organise a letter of support, Furry?

I'm pretty sure any letter written will be dismissed as being written by cis people.

Worth a try though

Furry your experiences mirror an American journalist's research about what's happening in youth fiction. People from minority backgrounds are told they shouldn't be writing from the perspective of others, they must write from the perspective of their minority. I find the whole thing totally abhorrent. The logical endpoint is no art, no fiction.

I spoke funny

I very much doubt this. People have accents and dialects and entire languages which should be celebrated not sneered at. I, and quite possibly you, am old enough to have gone through school at a time when speaking Scots was frowned upon and resulted in being told to 'speak properly'.

I now work with Scots as a literacy tool and spend part of my time helping adults understand that their language is not wrong but rich and varied something to be proud of. That it is others ignorance that is the problem not their speech.

joyfullittlehippo I do understand your point here, and anyone who harms anyone else - and especially if they are in a position of power - should be held to account. Nobody is entitled to touch anyone else, and certainly not grab them by the neck, without their consent.

But this is the problem with the whole situation, isn't it? We are all really, really jaded by accusations from students (most - not all - coming from a fairly privileged position) of terrible, terrible acts of oppression, because we've seen that so often they aren't true at all. Almost all of us have been accused of "literal violence" and "killing trans people", etc etc. Most of us now don't take seriously accusations of transphobia, because it's been wholly overused, and can be set off by anything. (Once I'd read an article by a trans "comedian", complaining about the terrible, terrible transphobia of the women who had engaged in enthusiastic sex with them, but who didn't want PIV, well, that was it, really. Transphobia as a term is useless to describe any kind of oppression, because it's being wielded by people who are merely complaining that all their unreasonable demands aren't met.)

It's the baby/bathwater situation I talked about above. We do have to be really careful that we don't collectively or individually have a kneejerk response to accusations of bad behaviour of any sort, just because we've been so jaded in the past. But I understand how we've got here.

I also, incidentally, reject the idea that rejecting gender ideology and all the associated nonsense that comes with it is "anti-trans", because it isn't.

I love that they claim that their tutors are mostly “white, cis-gender, able-bodied and heterosexual”
So, er, just like the majority of the population of Scotland then.

If they ditch the 'cis-gender' bit, yes. I don't know any 'cis-gender' people.

I very much doubt this. People have accents and dialects and entire languages which should be celebrated not sneered at.

Yes absolutely, and I wasn't even aware that I did have an accent until I left my place of home, which is the way it works. I just spoke with my voice, but suddenly I was being asked to make work about my accent and actually I thought it was a really uninteresting thing because that's just my voice and everyone I know at home speaks the same. They don't want to watch work about the accent because it's not a thing, it's only a thing once you move out of your home context.

They did want to celebrate it, I never felt sneered at but I just felt it was a bit patronising, I didn't want to make work about being working class with an accent.

BUT it really did make me question about identity in general and I learnt so much about myself and how I see other people.
I think questioning the layers of what makes up our identity and where it comes from is actually really important, it's just gone a bit mad.

When your making art or theatre with your body anything that can be seen by the audience will affect how the audience reads the piece.
So a female body will be seen differently to a male body and a body with a visable disability or marking will be read through that lens, you can't change that. We aren't making art in a vacuum we bring our biases and our culture with us.
It's important to acknowledge this but where it's gone wrong is that people now think that's all there is. That it's not possible to move past it or be anything other than that. That those things are enough in themselves.
They're not.

Celebrate probably isn't the best word thinking about it. I just hate the weird idea that some accents are 'wrong' or 'common' and that people who speak perfectly clearly are often discriminated against and pressured to change.

I went to an English university and had the wonderful experience of having people physically take a step back from me, on numerous occasions, when they heard my accent despite ditching all the Scots words and putting on my best posh voice. Glaswegians are aggressive and scary you see, even when we're not actually Glaswegian and weigh all of 8 stone. All that telling me to 'speak properly' was for nothing

Glaswegians are aggressive and scary you see,

I definitely got told to stop being so aggressive a few times and I got pulled up for 'shouting' even though I am probably one of the least aggressive people in the world. My accent is just very gluteral and harsh and where I'm from people talk really passionately.
I got a real complex about it.

I think questioning the layers of what makes up our identity and where it comes from is actually really important, it's just gone a bit mad.

And I think the "it's just gone a bit mad" aspect arises largely from it finally being discussed by people (eg middle-class university students) who until very recently haven't needed to contemplate their own identity at all, and who have grown up largely surrounded by people exactly like themselves, and who don't really have any experience or understanding on how to do this.

In my family, we've talked about race our whole lives, mainly because it was inescapable - we are all different colours from one other (including white) across three generations, and how each of us has been perceived in the wider community has depended to a great deal on context. Discussions on race within the family are detailed, relaxed and we can be deadly serious and we can take the piss out of each other. We have similar conversations about class, and how the generations are different and also the same, and so on. And I am sure we get it wrong with one another a lot of the time, but nobody walks on eggshells. (It took much longer to talk about sexuality, and in some parts of the family being a bit bent is still very much The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, but even that is slowly changing.)

(And just to add, to be clear: having discussions about race within the family doesn't mean we don't get it horribly wrong outside the family, but at least we've all got a bit of practice in.)