University of Leicester student union

[GratedExposure]

The women's officer this year is a transwoman. I have no reason to doubt this person's commitment to working with issues like sexual violence (for example), as they say, but surely their experience and understanding of this will be different from most women's? There is also a trans/non-binary officer, and an LGBT officer (who is, incidentally, also non-binary), and yet the women's officer is not a biological female who has grown up with all the complex trappings of femaleness.

www.leicesterunion.com/voice/yourofficers/part-timeofficers/womens/

@movingonup20

Dd voted in the election and voted for the trans woman. Contrary to what many believe here, younger people don't see the same distinctions as us older women. Lots of trans students, hundreds! Oh and dd has no hang ups on loos either unlike me

'Hang ups'.

Nice

CriminallyCharmed I feel for you

Yikes! - I got a deletion for agreeing with curious.

Is this what my mother meant when she warned me not to mix with troublemakers?

@Kit19

The things is I was insufferable know it all at university & would doubtless have come out with similar twattery around prisons

The difference was, my tutors, parents & other grown ups would call me out on my insufferable twattery & not pander to it

Why are so many adults pandering to this?

Some adults believe it though I'm afraid, I have friends with really woke views and i would bet they would wear a t-shirt similar to that even though they are in their mid 30's.

I felt their wrath when i dared to say that not all toilets should be gender neutral as everyone has the right to want female/male/gender neutral as an option, but we shouldn't be forced into gender neutral if we don't wish to. My goodness it was awkward.

@CriminallyCharged outwoke them re pronouns.

"Preferred pronouns" are ~problematic for almost any group you can name. For closeted trans-identified people and questioning people, they put them in the position of either having to come out or lie. For genderfree and gender-critical people, they put them in the position of being forced to lie. For any marginalised group, including women, they invoke the phenomenon of the "stereotype threat" and lead to worse outcomes for those margialised people. State that once you have seen a proper, independent, verified risk assessment on how being required to state preferred pronouns will impact on marginalise people in your university, you will be able to make an informed decision.

Bit what is it they believe Unicorn?

That sexism has been magically erased from the world? That Male bodied ppl are literally women if they say so? That women have no right to single sex spaces? That they have a gender identity that can be objectively measured?

I don’t know what it is people believe....

And yes unicorn that must have been verrry awkward!

Hi all. We've deleted some posts in this thread because they're personal attacks on a young named person and that's not really in the spirit of the site. We'll try to keep the thread for now but please do report anything that veers too much away from discussing the issues and strays into personal attack territory.

Were there other women standing though? Maybe only Dan wanted it.

I think the younger generation just see TW as their mates who are a bit unusual and get a hard time so they’re very protective towards them, whereas the older generation see the ‘other side’ - those who are manipulative or narcissistic or downright vicious mixed in with the true dysphoric people.
I doubt I would have a problem with Dan types or the true dysphoric types, but unfortunately you can’t pick and choose which ones can be accepted into women’s spaces.

@kit19 pretty much all of what you listed above! That male/female is a state of mind and therefore all spaces should be mixed (That's the jist anyway, i'm sure they would explain it in a more detailed way). I pointed out that surely it is a risk in schools where teenagers are going through so many bodily changes and girls have a right to want to change a tampon in an all girls area etc-But no, apparently not!

My husband and i just exchanged glances at that point.

My DS has gone off to university this month. He's very politically-aware, as are his mates, and he's planning to stay far, far away from Student Union politics as he already thinks they are a bunch of useless tossers.

Stuff like this just confirms it. Why should anyone give a shit what these playacting twits think about anything? They aren't the future of politics, as there's plenty of other young people doing far more interesting and important things out there to change the world.

Ha that is also true archery - when I was at uni must ppl steered well clear of the student politics crowd

Honestly unicorn you’re a better person than me that you remain friends with such people. I genuinely couldn’t

Is this person still in that role? I remember seeing Dan quite a while back and some threads about it at the time, so this isn't a new thing and it's possible Dan has moved on since then or a new officer soon to be elected.

Some of these people must have had a very sheltered upbringing to not understand that there are terrible people out there and many of them will gleefully take advantage of this ideology and the be kind attitude. Part of me envies that sort of upbringing but the other part is in despair at the lack of forethought.

Part of the problem that these students don’t realize or care about because they haven’t thought so far into the future, is that these women’s office holders then become women’s office holders on a national scale.

And there are those who keep telling us that the 50% male 50% transwomen discussion is a fallacy and will never happen. I say that even if it was 50% male and 25% transwomen and 25% women, that is not equal representation for females imo. And with the current trend of women’s officers I can see this happening easily.

In the spirit of equal representation, it should be an agreed % of representation if it is different from the population. This is where the harm comes to women’s rights.

And the conversation around the women’s fiction prize is a good example. It has become so much less relevant with all the discussion about who can enter. Now it may as well be disbanded as it is effectively open to everyone.

Is this person still in that role? I remember seeing Dan quite a while back and some threads about it at the time, so this isn't a new thing and it's possible Dan has moved on since then or a new officer soon to be elected.

@ahagwearsapointybonnet, I think the media coverage was when Dan was elected (last academic year). They have/has just started their post at the start of this academic year, so are/is now in role.

Women are hugely underrepresented in physics (I know, I am a physicist and did my PhD in it) and if you can just ID into womanhood, you'll be counted as such by woke organisations. Ergo, the problem of engaging girls in physics has magically gone away....I'd have been very unimpressed with this when I was at uni. I tended to stay away from the student politics crowd anyway as they were all insufferable middle class tossers.

@CriminallyCharmed

I started uni a few weeks ago, my university is full on woke. Pronouns after names in all presentations and emails. I carefully read the terms for the student pledge and basically you can get thrown out for being discriminatory towards vulnerable groups and hurting their feelings. I am a mature student and far more confident than I would have been at 18 though I am still quite young, in my early 20s. But I daren't speak up. I need this degree for my career progression and I'm scared to even challenge the need for pronouns after everything. I dont doubt that there are people who share my beliefs at uni but how are we ever going to be able to find each other if we're terrified to speak up about our beliefs.

This is awful. So angry on your behalf.

@BobbinThreadbare123, this is such a good point. If TWAW, then transitioning males will falsely elevate rates of female representation in physics. I have a good female friend who's a physicist, and she says her work is often treated well before people realise she's female, and then a lot more badly once they do realise (for instance because her name is obviously a woman's name).

Dan has, interestingly, retained a male sounding name.

I dont doubt that there are people who share my beliefs at uni but how are we ever going to be able to find each other if we're terrified to speak up about our beliefs.

This is very sad, @Antibles. It's presumably exactly why there's such a clampdown on people saying what they think - it removes the problem of groups of people getting together and challenging the status quo. How the fuck did we get HERE?

@GratedExposure aye, there's the thing - I experience that too and it's infuriating. We're honestly going backwards.

Dan claims that 'reproductive justice...affect[s] women students'

y i k e s, sounds terfy

Anyway. This stuff is relentless. I don't have the energy to be angry about everything when it's just so constant.

You can absolutely care about reproductive justice, sexual violence and so on without the experience of growing up and navigating the world in a female body, but you cannot fully understand it. Women's officers should be female.

Stuff like this just confirms it. Why should anyone give a shit what these playacting twits think about anything? They aren't the future of politics, as there's plenty of other young people doing far more interesting and important things out there to change the world.

@ArcheryAnnie, this is true in many ways. But in my experience the SU is also consulted on lots of things, for example when lecturers want student input/representation on committees. Sadly, it matters.