University staff given list of banned 'microinsults' they cannot say to trans people

[ChristinaXYZ]

From the Telegraph. the last para make you want to weep -

A Newcastle University spokesman said: "We want our campus to be a welcoming and safe place for everyone who studies, works or visits here, regardless of gender, race, class, age or disability."

But it would seem they are not bothered about making people feel welcome regardless of sex, as they don't even mention it.

@Angelil

This conflation between sex and gender is a serious problem. Cut any human cell down the middle and it will have evidence either XX or XY chromosomes; there is no in between.

Exactly.

'Nearly one in 10 female students who responded to a study of sexual violence in higher education said they had been raped. How did it get to this?'

‘The University of Cambridge admitted to “a significant problem” following the introduction of an anonymous reporting system that led to 173 complaints being made in nine months.’

Fri 2 Mar 2018 09.00 GMT The Guardian

The article I linked talks about the lack of support from Universities to those who report that they have been sexually assaulted. This is particularly chilling -

'Due, in part, to fears about privacy laws, complainants were treated only as witnesses, with no right to rebut counter-claims about their credibility made by the accused, she said.'

If I was currently a woman at University, I would have concerns at the level of this 'rape culture' and the failure by the University to address it while prioritising the limitation of staff's speech regarding microaggressions.

There's only one poster on this thread who continually tries to derail, (and wilfully misunderstands) and there's no prizes for guessing who it is.

I'm wondering if that poster is a woman who has been to university. 50,000 cases of sexual abuse across England and Wales per year seems like a very low estimate to me. That's in the hundreds per university. Given that most women have experienced sexual abuse or harassment by that age, and universities offer very little comeback or protection, and students away from home are more vulnerable than previously, and reporting of rape and sexual assault is very low - and certainly from what I remember of university myself - it is likely to be much higher.

recent research by jess taylor here

I'm wondering if that poster is a woman who has been to university
I'm guessing not.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/sexualoffencesvictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/march2020

Some alarming population-level statistics here.

"The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) year ending March 2020 estimated 2.9% of women (618,000) and 0.7% of men (155,000) aged 16 to 74 years experienced sexual assault (including attempts) in the last year."

It is not unreasonable to expect that 50,000 of these were experienced by women who are university students or staff and on or near campus and/or by fellow students or staff.

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

Women in Afghanistan didn't have lives that different to ours in 1996.

Ninety Ninety Six.

I'm nearly 50, '96 was yesterday. I often wonder how many Afghan women were muttering "this can't be right, this isn't fair, this is totally bonkers" in 1992.

These are scary times.

This haunts me it is never far from my mind.

We must really be vigilant, there is so much precedent for human societies becoming brutal totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.

I am genuinely fearful of the complacency of democracies. Well we seem to be moving towards more of an oligarchy don’t we, or a kind of theocracy?

These discussions - particularly where there are conflicting rights (eg women and transwomen) cannot be about individuals; they really have to be about structures & principles, because otherwise, we're bogged down in personal feelings. Never a good basis for laws or policies.

Well said, Solid

And all of this now-towing to this group is good for neither them (as they just behave like spoiled children who threaten to "thcream and thcream until they're thick" to misquote Violet Elizabeth Bott) nor other people who are forced against science and common sense to give in to their ridiculous demands, and from which everyone, particularly women and children, will suffer.

@GreyhoundG1rl

There's only one poster on this thread who continually tries to derail, (and wilfully misunderstands) and there's no prizes for guessing who it is.

You've got a lot to say for someone who was chinned for being on the wind up all day yesterday..

I'm not wilfully misunderstanding anything . I'm pointing out the lies.

And I have been to uni. Twice as it happens.

And there certainly wasn't an alarming number of rapes.

Who was talking to you Butwasitherdriveway? What is the matter with you?

It always terrifies me when women who draw attention to violence against women are called liars.

Again.

"The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) year ending March 2020 estimated 2.9% of women (618,000) and 0.7% of men (155,000) aged 16 to 74 years experienced sexual assault (including attempts) in the last year."

Horrible isn't it. The refusal to believe is really quite something. I don't know a single woman in real life who hasn't been subjected to some level of sexual assault. Both on and off campus.

The subject of this thread is "microinsults" towards trans people and how that controls women's speech, and what is happening at Edinburgh university. It's quite an interesting thread for the uninitiated.

@EdwinPootsLovesArchaeology

'Nearly one in 10 female students who responded to a study of sexual violence in higher education said they had been raped. How did it get to this?'

‘The University of Cambridge admitted to “a significant problem” following the introduction of an anonymous reporting system that led to 173 complaints being made in nine months.’

Fri 2 Mar 2018 09.00 GMT The Guardian

There are serious problems at Exeter in a similar vein. The issue where sickening threats of rape were made against a female student, and the perpetrator was the happily readmitted back on campus, was a case in point. And this did provoke a Twitterstorm in response: #shameonyouExeter I think was the hashtag. On that platform it's less usual to see an outpouring of support leaning in favour of women, so that alone is telling.

As to the question upthread about what happens to students who break these language-policing policies: likely nothing. As the above example illustrates, there is very little a student can do these days that will result in their being rusticated. I'm personally aware of a male student making an explicit rape threat against a female staff member. The result: he was offered support and counselling. She was expected to carry on teaching him as though nothing had happened.

This policy applies to staff alone. And I agree that the 'avoidant behaviour' caveat is coercive and extremely worrying.

Not only speech but actions as well, eg avoidance, so women are advised to speak and act in a certain way to satisfy the demands of a minority even though it may come as a cost to them (women). I note that there are no boundaries or expectations placed on the minority, ie there is no reciprocity.

As ever, women are supposed to give in.

So, what is the proposed new unit to replace the Newton then? I can imagine the exams saying "a force of 5 rainbows is applied....." And teaching people to "calculate velocity using the laws whose name we don't mention". Kind of like Voldemort. But that brings JK into it. Aargh. Maybe we need to leave long established things be while recognising what was wrong and be more careful about who we honour in the future? As for language policing, it hasn't reached my workplace yet but there's time. My brother works at one of the places mentioned on here and says it's really awful now trying not to say something that is deemed offensive.

I wonder when men are going wander around in hair shirts flagellating themselves for millennia's worth of crimes against women. All references to famous men will be eradicated from language ... and so on.

You've got a lot to say for someone who was chinned for being on the wind up all day yesterday..

I'm not wilfully misunderstanding anything . I'm pointing out the lies.

And I have been to uni. Twice as it happens.

And there certainly wasn't an alarming number of rapes.

What an odd post. Chinned? Eh?

How do you know how many women were raped during your time as a student? Do you at least accept that rape and sexual assault complaints rarely result in a conviction? Many incidents are never reported to the police and of those that are a substantial number never make it the courts. The %age that do proceed to trial and result in a conviction is very low indeed, especially for young men under 24.

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/23/revealed-less-than-a-third-of-young-men-prosecuted-for-are-convicted Some stats in this 2018 Guardian article.

... less than a third of prosecutions brought against young men result in a conviction.

According to statistics, men aged 18 to 24 in England and Wales are consistently less likely to be found guilty than older men on trial. Young men accounted for more than a quarter of defendants in rape-only cases in the five years to 2017-18...

Figures from the CPS show that just over half reports of rape resulted in a charge in 2016-17. Of the cases that were prosecuted, 42% did not result in a conviction.

According to figures published by the ONS in February, women counted for 88% of rape offences recorded by the police in the previous year.

“SmokedDuck
I find myself wondering, if we looked today at all the investments of the university, and all the investments and business connections of the governors and donors, and all the pension plans of the staff, how much dirty money might we find today? And to what extent could we avoid that kind of connection without completely cutting ourselves off from the worldwide economy? And to what extent do we think the university is morally culpable for that, or people in the university?

It's interesting to me that in this specific instance, and I think in many others where similar projects are going on, there is a lot less sense that we need to take responsibility and be culpable for the current stuff than the things that happened safely in the past.“

I agree. How can we b so smug as to not realise that in years to come we will be horrified by aspects of what is now considered normal behaviour.

"Chinned" is indeed an odd expression. As far as I know, it means an actual assault.

I've also never heard a woman use this expression. Ever.

@YetAnotherSpartacus

I've also never heard a woman use this expression. Ever.

How many Scottish women do you know?

It doesn't mean an actual assault. It means told.off, pulled.up, corrected.

Lots of leaping going on from people who don't actually know.