Cambridge Event - Panel discussion 4 fab speakers

[LeftHandDown]

Cambridge Radical Feminist Network are putting on a discussion panel on 5th Dec, it should be a good evening

Speakers Rosa Freedman, Emma Hilton, Sophie Scott and Alice Sullivan chaired by Raquel Rosario Sanchez.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/panel-event-gender-critical-feminism-in-public-academic-discourse-tickets-79711755005

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Bumping

This sounds amazing. I wish I lived closer!

Certainly promises to be a amazing evening. It is frustrating when you can't get to talks due to distance, but Cambridge is accessible for those in London, East of England and parts of the Midlands

Bumping again

I wonder how @manicmagpie is doing. She is the young student who bravely protested each weekend in Cambridge. She shared on here.

Got a ticket for this, looking forward to a great evening of feminism with these fabulous speakers.

FYI Any local-ish to Cambridge people there's an exhibition, 'The Rising Tide' about women at Cambridge University at Cambridge uni library (not been myself yet) There is a virtual tour for people who can't make it in person.

"Cambridge University Library is sharing the unique stories of women who have studied, taught, worked and lived at the University in a new, free exhibition The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge, which runs from October 14, 2019-March 2020."
www.cam.ac.uk/TheRisingTide

@backinthecloset123
Manic magpie is fine, up to her ears with work/study so she's currently taking a break from consciousness raising in the city centre.

Event sold out. Looking forward to this later, topics up for discussion,
-The importance of understanding sex for women's liberation
-Anti-intellectualism & misogyny in public and academic debate
-The influence of fear and the importance of women's bravery

FYI, says on Facebook that event will be filmed for people who can't make it.

Did you all enjoy it?
I was sitting there wondering who was a mumsnetter

Sorry to have missed this.

Was excellent, great line up of speakers, it all seemed to go very quickly, too quickly. Lots of interesting nuggets of information such as first mention of sex in law was anti-discrimination legislation in 1919 and the sexuality of sheep, which illustrated the selective nature of research. Very lol.

There was an emphasis on the need for good science and how shameful it is that some universities do not support their staff who speak up on this issue. Demanding people blindly believe rather than critically draw conclusions for themselves is very poor practice.

Great to see famous faces off Twitter and
really good chatting in the pub after too, rad femmes are bloody awesome women.

I agree with Socrates that the speakers were very good especially Rosa Freedman.

But if I was going to be slightly critical I found it odd that the speakers were asking for good science but dismissed the work of the Simon Baron Cohen.

I still don't get why so many feminists need to hold on to the belief that there is no difference between male and female brains.

I think it's a shame that so much time was devoted to talking about free speech at the expense of talking about the actual topic.

I realise that free speech is and has been under threat, though, and that's why it's crucial to defend it.

Just wanted a bit less on that and a bit more of the rest.

S B-C is unpopular among many autistic women due to the "extreme male brain" terminology. It's like describing tall women as having "extreme male body".

Relatedly, I found it interesting last night that autism came up twice in the talks, unrelatedly. The rise in awareness of autism has been parallel to the rise in awareness of transgender issues; there are concerns about the role of autism in the presentation of large numbers of teenage girls as transgender; there are schisms in autism communities over the validity of self-identification as autistic; there are questions over how the ways of thinking characteristic of autism correlate with the ways of thinking identified as more common in males vs females… I've no idea where I'm going with this but it does seem to be intertwined at many levels. My feeling is that the high rates of autism and autism traits in female people who identify as transgender and non-binary is less about autistic female people "thinking like men" and more about them not picking up on or feeling a reason to stick to the socially-sanctioned behaviour norms for female people.

I really need to make better notes on the books I read Thingybob! I think it was in Angela Sani, Inferior, where neuroscientist Gina Rippon talks about every brain being different, a mosaic. No two brains are the same and differences apart from size (of which Sarah Scott showed great overlap, in one of her charts) cannot, as yet, categorically be associated with sex. More to do with how brains are used and the experiences they have than sex.

Scientists like to think they are being objective but cognitive bias can colour how experiments are set up and how results are viewed.

There have been 2 recent threads where the issue of autism and gender dysphoria have been discussed.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3759320-Research-shows-gender-dysphoria-caused-by-trauma-which-should-be-treated-rather-than-entrenched-through-transitioning

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3760077-economist-gender-clinics-article

And I think in the report back on the meeting to launch the Detransitioners Advocacy Network (cant find the link).

Thanks. It does seem odd to me that the links and similarities are in so many different places.

I think perhaps some of the self-identified autistics (though certainly not all) are doing so for similar reasons to some transitioners — wanting to be different and special, already feeling different and wanting to be different in a good way rather than a bad way, wanting an explanation for feeling different, wanting a name for their feelings of difference to help them find other people who feel they're different…

(But if we're such black-and-white thinkers, shouldn't we be more likely to be GC? )

Thank you for putting on this event camradfems. From talking to some of the organisers, it wasn't an easy ride, and some of you who are attached to the university are really having a tough time as a result.

Fantastic panel, but also fantastic organisers behind the scenes (you know who you are!)

Not being an academic, each event I go to like this helps me to think about things more, explore more reading, talk more and also remember how awesome women are.