Leicester renames Women's day

[BovaryX]

The Times reports Leicester has renamed it Womxn at the behest of their new women's officer. As usual, objections to this are muted because students are frightened about retribution or punishment from the university.

Leicester students’ renaming of the celebration as International Womxn’s Day follows their election of a trans woman to the post of women’s officer. Dan Orr will represent the views of women on campus, speaking out about sexism and misogyny. A female student at Leicester University told The Times that she was “very upset” by the election but feared speaking out publicly in case she was disciplined by the university.

It's a land grab on woman. It's about a certain group of males who want woman for themselves and to dominate it, relegating actual females out of sight, out of mind and very definitely as a subhuman subclass.

Anyone else see the parallel with colonialism?
Coming from a colony myself, I see the anger women feel at this as very similar to the anger colonised nations of black and brown people felt at being ruled over by pale people on a tiny island, who set themselves above us and defined us and told us who we were.

And the racism behind needing a new word so as to include black women and women of colour!!! WE ARE WOMEN and do not need to be included in your idiotic word inventions!

Not to mention disabled women, gay women, prostitutes! We are all women and do not need an "inclusive" new word.

DuLang I did today idly wonder about announcing that trans will henceforth be known as trynxx to make it more inclusive to female people, since including everyone and fuck the core mission is a thing, right?

And sit back and watch the heads explode.

It's honestly like arguing with a young child with social issues, who is absolutely outraged that the child that they have repeatedly hit and bitten day after day had the audacity to hit back during an attack. And they want that child punished and they'll be stalking that child for the rest of the day to work off their feelings of outrage.

I've felt for a long time there should be compulsory circle time for males in bank queues who don't get queuing; I wonder if this is an answer to other social group issues. We could read lovely social stories on 'other people have rights too'.

I’m just waiting for the ‘allies’, politicians and PR/marketing folk to get bored and find a shiny new bandwagon to jump on.

‘Wxmen’ seems more apt.

Anyone else see the parallel with colonialism?

Definitely Lama! I was particularly thinking of Ireland's history.

It seems that the comment section on the Times article is no more? There were some great comments on it earlier today but it's not loading at all now... is it?

They might’ve turned it off for admins fo knock off at 6?

Check and see if it’s back around 8/9am?

transdimensional educate yourself. Biology is just a social construct. hmm

transdimensional I realise I forgot to put the with my at the social construct shite. Sorry if I sounded like an xrse

As a Leicester grad and having worked there in the past I’m really disappointed with this and will be contacting them so thank you OP for drawing attention to it. (If anyone can write something eloquent sums up the argument properly that I can send that would be great as I’m new to all this and I’m worried I’d say the wrong thing and confirm that we’re all against them).

One of the things that annoys me about that event in particular is the patronising “Perfect for dipping your toes into a professional environment” and “It is very important to be confident and work the room, you never know what doors you may be opening!”

I really can’t imagine they’d write that in the description for an event not targeted at women.

Dulang, yes, comments are back.

Was probably a shift change over then!

That is very apparent by the fact that they elected a first year student

This was quite normal when I was in student politics for the non-sabbatical roles, as in the third year people would prioritise their degrees.

EverardDigby
Thanks for the clarification. I studied in Mexico and that was not how we did things here.

There were 3 candidates for Women's Officer. Out of the total student population of what ? several thousand? 183 people voted. Dan walked it out of the 183 people who voted.

I can't recall if there was a "Woman's Officer " at my university in the late 1970s/ early 1980s. If there was such a post I wouldn't have bothered voting as I can't really see what the point is. It looks as if the vast majority of the student population would agree with me.

There was when I was there (1990's) in fact I was very mildly involved with the Union too. It was fun and silly and both took itself very seriously and simultaneously, not at all.
To be honest, I can't get worked up about this. It's daft, but it's student politics. That's a feeble turn out to vote, so shows how little this actually matters to students busy, presumably studying.

Yes it is just student politics on one level but I think it’s about a much wider issue which is the normalisation of men taking roles that were meant to be for women.
Women’s officer roles were created because it was understood that the female experience of university was different from the Male. They were about highlighting issues that particularly affected women and ensuring that sexist attitudes in staff & students were tackled.

The more Dans there are that take roles meant for women the more the argument will be - will we don’t need anything that is women only anymore

As I said earlier, the chances that in 10 years time Dan will be self identifying as a woman are imo slim to nothing. He’ll be a basic bloke conforming with a job & a gf and the time dan was a woman’s officer at uni will be a funny story told down the pub

In the meantime thousands of young women at university will already find it normal that women’s officer roles are filled by men....

Then frankly, the young woman need to wake up and do something about this.
I think there has been a lot of 'be nice, be kind' that has led here, and I am personally doing what I can to open the eyes of my own DD (and thus her friends) to the not very well hidden mysogyny at the heart of this. But it's hard to challenge if you've grown up mired in believing this is what inclusivity looks like.

The more Dans there are that take roles meant for women the more the argument will be - will we don’t need anything that is women only anymore

I don't think a "women's officer is needed" Leicester University has a student population of 20,000. 183 people voted in the election for women's officer. 27 voted in the ballot for the trans and non binary officer.

1500 voted in the ballot for the Liberation officer (whatever that might) -that's still only 7.5% of the student population. 1607 (8%) voted in the ballot for wellbeing officer.

The vast majority of students is clearly not interested in any of these "officers"

Chattylion No problem, I knew what you meant

He’s a cheeky fucker standin* for women’s officer

We know it. He knows it

Just a cheeky fucker

To be honest, I can't get worked up about this. It's daft, but it's student politics

But as someone pointed out upthread, student politics is a training ground for MPs and other Government and political roles. These students can also be influential in capturing political parties, so they do have an influence wider than their student union.

There's the impact on the university too, we'll be starting open days next month and Leicester isn't on our list, but this sort of nonsense will be included as a factor when DD comes to choose.

This is tantamount to turning 'woman' into taboo language, as if we're some kind of dirty secret that shouldn't be mentioned in polite company. It's like calling a 'black' board a 'chalk' board, as if there is something to be ashamed of in being black.

We've all heard the party line '"nice" people don't say that'. And of course, it's all in the name of being 'nice'. Because it 'costs us nothing', don't you know?

Horrendous, offensive, and should be resisted at all costs.

This isn’t just happening in universities, it’s happening in trade unions and political parties too.

Women often struggle to be politically active because meetings are invariably in the evenings and many of us have child and elder care responsibilities. This leaves a vacuum and people like Dan step in. Women’s needs are no longer forefront of the discussion and the next thing you know we’ve been merged into a ‘Women’s and Equalities’ category. The next phase is to remove the word ‘Women’ and then our erasure is complete.

Like, I’m all for equalities in general, but the equality needs of women, compared to say, gay men, are hardly going to be resolved with the same inclusive policies.

Fuck Dan. Fuck the Patriarchy. Fuck the new tangled Patriciarchy.