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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Artist's talk cancelled for alleged 'transphobia'

64 replies

ScrimshawTheSecond · 19/11/2019 23:28

I'm pretty shocked by this. Artist who has dared to 'openly show[ed] support for the "LGB Alliance"' has had her talk at Oxford Brookes cancelled:

www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18045416.artists-talk-cancelled-student-outcry-transphobia/?fbclid=IwAR31hfootDZ_VQQ7gNPaYxqr4LyGuYGuc0XY9fGjqO4kEugFWF609A7OzyQ

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breakfastpizza · 19/11/2019 23:36

WTF is that account? Please report the tweets and the account for targeted harassment.

BlouseAndSkirt · 19/11/2019 23:59

TerfsOutOfArt is s very nasty account run by one man, it’s sole purpose is to name and target individuals and harass them out of their jobs.

stumbledin · 20/11/2019 00:08

Why does theopinion of the LGBTQ+++++++ whatever society take priority over everyone else.

And why is the pro chancellor who was written to not stood up for freedom of speech.

If there any one body that regulates Universities?

This is the biggest danger for all of us that future generations are being educated to think they are entitle to only have their view points upheld or spoken in public.

And if it is true the twitter account that started the complaint is just one man, on what groups should he be listened to.

Is there one women on twitter who would be given that much influence.

GCAcademic · 20/11/2019 02:58

Just re-posting this from the thread on the Edinburgh University event cancellation:

These institutions need to be held to account for failing to uphold their legal obligations to support free speech. Anyone who works or studies in a university which has no-platformed or cancelled speakers due to pressure from transactivists can follow the processes outlined by the Office for Students:

www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/student-wellbeing-and-protection/freedom-of-speech/

If filing a grievance and going to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator is not feasible (and I imagine it won’t be for most employees) then you can raise a notification with the Office for Students. I suspect managers won’t be so keen to instruct academics to cancel research events once they have to deal with the fines or deregulation that the OfS has the power to impose:

www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/student-wellbeing-and-protection/freedom-of-speech/raising-concerns-about-free-speech/

teawamutu · 20/11/2019 07:21

I've emailed the office for students with a link.

HandsOffMyRights · 20/11/2019 07:23

But it was fine to have Susie Green speak at the uni in February?

So let me get this right. A lesbian artist is deplatformed because? Well, because she is a supporter of women's rights.

Meanwhile, the head of a charity at the centre of huge controversy regarding the experimentation on children, is welcomed with open arms?

Shame on Oxford Brookes.

HandsOffMyRights · 20/11/2019 07:29

On the Susue Green event, the Chancellor is billed alongside Susie: www.brookes.ac.uk/about-brookes/events/lgbt-history-month----changing-tides--trans-journeys-together---as-parents--allies--advocates/

'Dame Katherine Grainger PhD became Oxford Brookes’ fourth Chancellor in March 2015. She is Britain’s most decorated female Olympic athlete and the first British woman to win medals at five successive games. Katherine is a passionate advocate for equality and human rights, and actively supports the University’s diversity agenda.'

I'd like to know if Katherine thinks its fair that men are competing alongside women in sport? How she would have felt if a man was Britains most 'decorated' female athlete?

ChattyLion · 20/11/2019 07:30

Who (..that doesn’t have an appallingly homophobic agenda..) would try to get an artist’s talk cancelled at a university with the ‘justification’ that they follow a lesbian, gay and bisexual rights organisation online, and (presumably.. I can only go on the name-calling that this woman is attracting...), also has been ‘justified’ because the woman has some legal, peaceful, reality-based opinions about defending same sex attraction, women’s rights and a child’s right to an open future and who also disagrees with enforcing gender stereotyping because it is harmful and unnecessary.

In what way, does a campus become any less ‘safe’ for anyone else, if they had allowed this invited talk by a woman artist who may hold such views? Hmm

Why on earth do these institutions indulge this?

Do the people that call for silencing invited women speakers, not realise that every day, several times a day, they will already be interacting with people, possibly including their own family and friends, who also share these peaceful, legal views?

That no feminist has ever attacked or hurt a trans person ever that we know of, whereas women who hold these views have been physically attacked recently in the UK purely on the basis of these views- google Maria Maclachlan at Speaker’s corner- and are threatened daily?

That women may even lose employment for holding such views, (google Maya Forstater), let alone be ‘no-platformed’ affecting their professional and personal freedom?

It’s a shameful slur about ‘safety’ when the entire risk to personal safety is borne by gender critical feminists who are open about their views and experiences as women.

Universities are also not supposed to cave to such unfounded assertions and authoritarian beliefs about who does not have the right to views:

The regulator of universities in England is the Office for students: www.officeforstudents.org.uk/

AFAIK I think the Office for Students should be able to formally assess universities’ plans to meet the freedom of speech requirements in the 1986 Education Act and is the place to report any potential failures to do so.

There’s also the body speaking for all Universities in the UK:

www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/our-work-in-parliament/Documents/freedom-of-speech-on-campus.pdf#search=freedom%20of%20speech

‘ Universities UK opposes no-platform policies, and universities are required to take action to prevent an invited speaker from being denied access to university premises.’

See also:
www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2011/freedom-of-speech-on-campus-executive-summary.pdf

‘ Freedom of speech and academic freedom

Universities play an important role in society
as places of debate and discussion where ideas can be tested without fear of control, where students learn to challenge ideas and think for themselves, and where rationality underpins the pursuit of knowledge.

This role is reinforced by legislation.
The Education Reform Act 1988 requires (pre-1992) universities to ensure ‘that academic staff have freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions, without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges they may have
at their institutions’.

The Education Act (No. 2) 1986 provides that ‘persons concerned in the government of any establishment... shall take such steps
as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured
for members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers
.’

The Act requires universities to maintain and update a code of practice covering the organisation of meetings where free speech is likely to be an issue, and requires them to ensure university premises are not denied to anyone on the grounds of their beliefs or views.

Both Acts require universities to promote academic freedom and free speech ‘within the law’. Determining what is and what is not ‘within the law’ may not be straightforward. It is the law that constrains the requirement to protect and promote academic freedom and free speech, not a university’s choices.’

And the relevant government Minister, currently Chris Skidmore: www.gov.uk/government/ministers/minister-of-state-for-universities-science-research-and-innovation

Please can everyone write to them and demand some action to protect women’s freedom of speech, and students’ right to hear their views?

This should not be happening. It is the systematic silencing of women from participation in public life, because they may hold perfectly rational, legal, peaceful views, which are widely shared by others.

It’s extremist, authoritarian, sex discrimination operating in plain sight.

About a hundred years ago universities saw riots about women’s participation in university education, are we heading back that way? What does this cancel culture say to female students, staff and artists about what it is safe for them to work on and speak about?

www.newn.cam.ac.uk/newnham-news/univesity-library-digitises-remains-of-1897-protests/

blog.oup.com/2019/07/gender-riots-rocked-cambridge-university-1920s/

HandsOffMyRights · 20/11/2019 07:31

The inverted commas should be around 'female' because one cannot change sex.

ChattyLion · 20/11/2019 07:41

Sorry about my bold fails above

X post GCAcademic

Thank you for the share token. I now see that the artist concerned is a lesbian herself and I feel appalled at how she’s been treated over her support of an organisation (LGB Alliance) that would support her rights to freedom of same-sex attraction.

I am happy this is being reported nationally in the Times although it is important to emphasise that this is a specifically misogynistic and homophobic banning of women, as well as a generalised free speech issue.

Have LGB Alliance commented? This is an example of when and why we need them to give public and visible support to lesbians to both name themselves and speak in public freely.

ChattyLion · 20/11/2019 07:48

Also if you are writing to people about freedom of speech on campus: Women academics’ experiences when accused of ‘transphobia’ are discussed here. The link to Kathleen Scott’s collection of students and teachers’ experiences in the OP is an essential and absolutely chilling read and to be shared widely.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3628474-Kathleen-Stock-on-academic-freedom?msgid=91714465#91714465

ScrimshawTheSecond · 20/11/2019 08:21

Thanks for all the useful links. Not an academic so had no idea. Is it just me or is everything ramping up lately?

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ChattyLion · 20/11/2019 09:04

Feels that way doesn’t it. Two major court cases today. I think it’s really good that these arguments are being tested in court as that seems to be the only way to reverse regulatory capture and to support individual women to speak freely.

It’s very sobering to know that thousands of women just voicing their evidenced views on this hasn’t been seen as significant enough to do that though, whatever the outcomes are in court.

lionheart · 23/11/2019 11:02

I'll just pop this down here if I may?

#WomensArt is fantastic

for anyone with a Twitter account who loves to see all kinds of women's art from across the globe and through the ages (including all manner of astonishing crafts). Star

I've followed this account for a while and it so often delivers something beautiful, or arresting, or new to my twitter feed.

Well worth a look and follow. Smile

#WomensArt@womensart1 has also been targeted by Terfsoutofart:

Some snippets from their rather lengthy 'statement of intent.'

'In order to achieve its objectives, the account focuses on preventing transphobia from shaping or contributing to cultural and critical discourse and the operations of the art world and beyond, as we believe that can only perpetuate the systemic marginalisation of trans people within the arts, which is a human rights violation. We aim to achieve this by thoroughly researching and exposing figures who promote and act on transphobia in the art world, and contacting those who may inadvertently provide them with an opportunity to do so in order to prevent it.'

I suspect some of the people who post on here might be in need of 'redemption' so this document will be particularly helpful to you.

'Often there are countless trans people telling us, with proof, that a person has abused them for being trans, and that this person has time and again had the opportunity to make things right and to learn and grow, and has refused it. There comes a point where one has to accept that a transphobe has had all of the good faith, all of the information, all of the opportunities to learn and grow and make right, and still has chosen to continue either consciously or unconsciously promoting transphobia. That is the point where the importance of acting on the potential danger to trans people that that person presents outweighs the importance of acting on the person’s potential capacity for redemption. That is the point at which a public call-out, for accountability and harm reduction, needs to come.'

ScrimshawTheSecond · 23/11/2019 12:16

Redemption, eh. Not at all like a quasi-religious cult that threatens non-believers and apostates.

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lionheart · 23/11/2019 15:28

The language in the statement is really something.

KatvonHostileExtremist · 23/11/2019 15:40

"Terfs out of art"
Nice
I wonder which cowardly bully is behind that disgusting account? Bet the Monitors would know!

NeurotrashWarrior · 23/11/2019 15:58

I agree women's art is great to follow.

This is appalling. I thought the new guidelines created for universities around freedom of speech expressly ruled against such actions?

"Terfs our of art," run by a man. Could there be any more misogyny there?

ScrimshawTheSecond · 23/11/2019 16:26

women's art was one of the few things I enjoyed on Twitter before sacking the whole endeavour.

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lionheart · 23/11/2019 17:12

More from the statement:

'In this statement, we want to explain who runs the TERFs Out of Art Twitter account, why we set it up, what its motives and purposes are, how it operates, and why. To get the simple questions out of the way, this account is overseen by a group of trans people and cis women, working together to further our mission. It was set up recently to tackle a burning issue in the art world and beyond - the toxic presence of transphobia, particularly, but not limited to, TERFs'

lionheart · 23/11/2019 17:14

It goes on:

'We are here to facilitate a rational, proportionate and sensible response to transphobia in the art world. If someone says something transphobic to someone, and then others get wind of this, think negatively of you and don’t want you to be in a position where you might spread transphobia or be able to have a further negative impact on trans people, that’s not that person being “cancelled”, that’s a rational, proportionate and sensible response. This does not preclude redemption or nuance, and it isn’t about punishment. The aim is not to destroy a person but to remove them from situations where they may adversely affect the lives and rights of trans people. It’s also important to note that this is not solely about pushing for transphobes to face immediate, concrete consequences, but also making trans people working or participating in the art world aware of who may pose a direct or indirect threat to themselves.'

Singlewhiteguineapig · 23/11/2019 17:25

What a load of utter shit

lionheart · 23/11/2019 18:03

Yes.

'If you’re concerned that someone we call out will struggle to find work as a result, this is partly why we call out transphobes: negative bias. The difference is that one - negative bias against someone who has been exposed as a transphobe - is valid, whereas negative bias against trans people because they are trans is not valid. If your concerns about potential loss of work do not apply to trans people as they do to transphobes then your view is either being compromised by transphobia or is purely cognitive dissonance springing from a personal affinity with the person who is being called out.'

ScrimshawTheSecond · 23/11/2019 18:22

What utter garbled shit.

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