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.

It is terrifying Sophoclesthefox. How is this not recognised as being authoritarian by academics of all people.

We must be forced to demonstrate our support and beliefs. As you say “you can’t even do a quiet act of conscientious objection by melting away from any confrontation”

Many are going to end up in a state of anxiety any time a trans individual is in the same room fearful of demonstrating “avoidant behaviour” let alone inadvertently saying the wrong thing or using the wrong pronoun.

It is a way of purging wrong thinkers from higher education by making interactions with others such high stakes, it enables bullying and the stress experienced by some could be unbearable.

Will this be extended to students I wonder who may be thrown of their courses?

MissBarbary

Edinburgh University has drawn up phrases that staff cannot use, including saying "all women hate their periods" and "all people think about being the opposite gender sometimes"

In my own case both of those statements are untrue so I would not be particularly pleased at hearing them being put forward as a universal truth.

I read this as meaning that only women have periods and the complaint is the blanket assumption that all women hate their periods. After all, it’s exclusionary to the women who derive great relief at their period when they are worried that they have an unwanted pregnancy.

I suggest you make a formal complaint about this clear literal violence that only women have periods.

As an autistic person I find it very hard to engage with pronouns. Not just personal pronouns. Any pronouns seem to be very ambiguous to me.
I often do refer to people by their name for this reason.
It seems very odd and possibly discriminatory to ban this as 'avoidant'

@R0wantrees

Sheffield apparently has blackballed Isaac Newton.

What crimes has Newton been accused of?

Gravity?

Colonialism- I'm just going out but try Spiked and Frank Furedi for more info.

@YetAnotherSpartacus

Meanwhile, the glass ceiling for women academics lives on unchallenged, women do the bulk of the first year teaching whilst watching younger men shoot ahead with promotions, and there are multiple, daily, aggressions and microaggressions leveled at and experienced by women and no one gives a proverbial.

Well, quite.

Scholars should also not place "excess focus on anatomical sex markers".

I would like someone to explain what constitutes "excess focus" in pathology research, anatomy research, a fair amount of biomedical research, reproductive biology etc.

As for many of the other remarks - I can reflect on a fairly lengthy career, a portion of which has been in research depts. and I've never used those phrases. I can, however, provide an extensive list of incidents of sexual harassment for which I've been the recipient as well as working in a deeply unpleasant general culture - but, as YetAnotherSpartacus indicates, that doesn't seem to be relevant.

Yawn. As if. Whatever. Bzzzt.

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/disabled-students-five-years-of-sheer-hell-at-university/

I wish universities would do something about discrimination against people with disabilities. I think it would have a huge impact on access to higher education.

@ArabellaScott

Edinburgh University has drawn up phrases that staff cannot use

Amazing.

Christ alive. 1984 is truly upon us.

Scholars should also not place "excess focus on anatomical sex markers"

If only they actually meant something useful by this, like encouraging young women not to tolerate ogling and groping.

They don’t though, do they?

At least trans people have a gender identity. Gender identity is obviously so crucial to humans and I don't even have one, nevermind cis or trans. Surely I am the most oppressed of them all.

“ R0wantrees
Sheffield apparently has blackballed Isaac Newton.

What crimes has Newton been accused of?”

Racism. He’s supposed to have benefitted from the Slave Trade 🙄

Wish I’d heard the reaction when the Physics department was told!

This is both bonkers and chilling at the same time. You’re going to need Handmaid’s Tale-style phrases like ‘under his eye’ in order to communicate around trans people.

@Tanith

“ R0wantrees Sheffield apparently has blackballed Isaac Newton.

What crimes has Newton been accused of?”

Racism. He’s supposed to have benefitted from the Slave Trade 🙄

Wish I’d heard the reaction when the Physics department was told!

These are university students... We are doomed.

What crimes has Newton been accused of?

Newton’s first three laws are heteronormative. My physics will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.

Racism. He’s supposed to have benefitted from the Slave Trade
Wish I’d heard the reaction when the Physics department was told!

Making Newton, his laws and newtons unmentionable would be tricky.

It's OK. Gravity is a particle, a wave, and a vector space. It was intersectional before it was fashionable.

@ARoombaOfOnesOwn

What crimes has Newton been accused of?

Newton’s first three laws are heteronormative. My physics will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.

😂

@R0wantrees

Sheffield apparently has blackballed Isaac Newton.

What crimes has Newton been accused of?

De Montfort Uni students union are trying to force a name change there as well for historical transgressions. Middle of a year of the worst fucking student experience ever and they're farting about with that.

Loads of people rocking the rainbow lanyards - not so much trans allies as suckers for a freebie and the standard ones are itchy as fuck around the neck.

@SuperLoudPoppingAction

www.disabilitynewsservice.com/disabled-students-five-years-of-sheer-hell-at-university/

I wish universities would do something about discrimination against people with disabilities. I think it would have a huge impact on access to higher education.

This. Where is the work being done in education from nursery to post grad to sort out disability discrimination?

What a bunch of twats.

(Can't see that mentioned in the list of microinsults, so it must be ok).

As one of the people whom they presume to so label and compartmentalise, I wish to put it on record that I find the term 'cis' when used about groups including me as offensive and consider it a microaggression towards me.

If members of one group of people are allowed to decide what they are and aren't willing to accept as a 'label' - and I'm absolutely not saying that they shouldn't, even if they do seem to change and volte-face a lot - then I will not accept them labelling me in a certain way and then slapping me down when I protest, by 'informing' me that it's supposedly just a neutral scientific term and that I have no reason or justification in rejecting it.

There was a time people went to uni to learn about the subject they want to graduate in. Now they sit and listen to the thoughts and politics of lecturers. British University system was envied around the world, now it seems to have become a joke.
It's going to get to the stage nobody will be looking or talking to each other in fear of offense being taken.

"Educate the offender"

@MoltenLasagne

Scholars should also not place "excess focus on anatomical sex markers".

Isn't one of the major issues with research that it treats male as the default human and doesn't look at varying impacts and effects for women? How can we start to address this if we're not supposed to focus on sex markers?

Quite. All these "woke" academics need to read "Invisible Women".