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.

Why didn't they mention Super Straight?

@Iamanaubergine

How did we end up with this nonsense so quickly? How has gender identity tosh overtaken every other minority group to become the most disadvantaged group ever? Is there any pushback in universities anywhere?

What seems to have happened is that all the other oppressed and/or disadvantaged groups - BAME people, disabled people, gays & lesbians, women - all the disadvantages and prejudices, etc have been completely eradicated so all people in one (or more) of these groups not only no longer need any consideration, they're "c*s privileged".

I think that's it now.

Maybe rather than focusing on micro-aggressions such as saying that all women hate their periods, they should first address macro-aggressions such as physically assaulting or threatening to rape people who disagree with you?

@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.

So... "trans women are women" and universal truths....? A-OK?

This can't be real surely....people won't stand for being controlled like this.

Although I'm not all that surprised considering Newcastle University are Stonewall champions.

@R0wantrees

Sheffield apparently has blackballed Isaac Newton.

What crimes has Newton been accused of?

Owning shares in sugar I think. When someone of the current generations does something marvellous and one days gets buildings named after them will they get cancelled when people decide they are responsible for deaths in South American because of a minor student drug habit? Arguably they are in part and guilty of not knowing or caring where their dope etc comes from because they are participating in the norms of their age, but the point being can't people see how they may be judged one day for an action at several removes from their intentions? - they don't want drug lords to behave as they do but they don't think about it because of the norms of their (our) age - does that taint their scientific discoveries, works or fiction art or music? So people buy free range eggs or go vegan/veggie but never think about slave labour around the world when buying their jeans, trainers, make-up or technology. They do fuss about the norms of someone else's age though. Talk about displacement virtue. (and I am talking about Britain here not the USA which obviously has a much nearer slave history that they have never moved on from one way or another).

VickyEadieofThigh
What seems to have happened is that all the other oppressed and/or disadvantaged groups - BAME people, disabled people, gays & lesbians, women - all the disadvantages and prejudices, etc have been completely eradicated so all people in one (or more) of these groups not only no longer need any consideration, they're "cs privileged".*

Yes, it appears we are engaged in a game of victimhood top trumps... guess who is winning?

as he was trained to spot perimenopausal women

Um why would you need to do this?! I can’t help hearing David Attenborough - and there goes Irma, she’s opened a window, she’s probably feeling hot. Here Irma is pulling out yet another KitKat, this is absolutely characteristic and she’s just muttered the cry of the perimenopausal woman - “Christ I need the loo again.”

I appreciate women may need support but is this the best way?

@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.

🤣🤣🤣

Aaargh. They were pretty "woke" when i was a student there between 88 and 92. Wouldn't be recommending it to my uni age dc now!

as he was trained to spot perimenopausal women....
To what purpose? Are they a danger to society and need to be rounded up and corralled somewhere so nobody will have to be contaminated by them?
This shit is going far too far.

It comes as several Russell Group universities are training scholars on "cisgender privilege", where people whose birth sex aligns with their current gender identity are said to enjoy structural advantages in British society.

Oh god give me strength. The BLM lot want me to feel ashamed for being white. Am I now to feel ashamed for being born a woman?

This world is fucking mad.

Please add to 'menopause training' the following
"If you are (a male) under 70 and address a menopausal woman as 'dear', she will cut off your head with the sharp knife she carries for that purpose. The younger you are, the more you have to fear from the menopausal and post-menopausal woman. No fucking teenage boy on the till at Waitrose should address any woman as 'dear' ever, and certainly not a woman with white hair who no longer gives a fuck about the social convention of not punishing patronising little bastards. Young women should not address older women as 'hun'. It is slightly less dangerous but every bit as offensive."

Please note, this post is not intended to incite anyone to violence. I counsel my fellow older women to do as I do, and leave your knives at home.

According to last Monday's Times Sheffield Uni are working on a 'decolonisation plan' and students in the Engineering Faculty may be told about scientists, mathematicians etc who benefitted from colonialism. Newton's links to colonialism were not specified in the article other than the fact that he lost the equivalent of over £4m in today's money in the South Sea Bubble (so perhaps didn't benefit at all). This is quite interesting, particularly to history or economics students, but hardly relevant to understanding the science.

The concept of 'avoidant behaviour' is very similar to the idea that, not only can words be literal violence but silence can be violence also. It all seems to be about controlling the speech and the actions of other people and really should have no place in universities.

Edinburgh will be a veritable hotbed of spontaneous humour now

We used to be famous for saying “you’ll have had your tea?”

Now it will be “you’ll have had your fun?”

Neither will be on offer.

Maybe rather than focusing on micro-aggressions such as saying that all women hate their periods, they should first address macro-aggressions such as physically assaulting or threatening to rape people who disagree with you

You’d think, wouldn’t you? We don’t seem to be nearly done with ensuring that female students can get through their courses unraped.

“Being cisgender comes with social privilege.”

Does it though? If you’re a woman it doesn’t seem to some of the time. Even less now we’re even further down in the respect pecking order.

@YetAnotherSpartacus

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

@MNHQ I need a way to like this. Although DH is now going on and on about gravity sigh.

The trouble is that pretty much everyone in the UK who had money in the 18th and early 19th century invested in either the slave trade or the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. And further down the food chain anyone who worked the mills processing cotton or who lived in a town with a mill and provided a service to the mill workers or who worked in a mine sunk by the landowner who had made lots of money by investing in the slave trade/plantations. Britain is rich because we ran the Atlantic slave trade and we all benefit from that. But then we also stopped the legal global slave trade as well. I don't know how to change our history but I'm not sure expecting lecturers in the sciences to teach that is appropriate either. It probably requires an overhaul of the school history, geography, and english literature curriculums.

Does it though? If you’re a woman it doesn’t seem to some of the time. Even less now we’re even further down in the respect pecking order.

Well, you get the privilege of lists of banned "microinsults" that people can't say to women, lest they "negate or nullify the thoughts, feelings or lived reality of women".

Staff are already urged to wear special purple white and green lanyards as a visible sign that they are safe for women.

And the feminist guidance refers to a "patriarchal society", where women are offended that men are assumed to be the norm.

So all this stuff about trans is just restoring parity, really.

Bonkers

If a trans woman is a man who wants to be a woman, why not call her "she"?

Presumably the whole of the Scottish Enlightenment will soon be banned?

Although possibly that has already happened.

Staff are already urged to wear special purple white and green lanyards as a visible sign that they are safe for women.
and that will never, ever get abused, ever

Staff are already urged to wear special purple white and green lanyards as a visible sign that they are safe for women

Fgs- I've spent my entire working life assuming the people I work with are safe with women. I don't need them to signal that- they just need to be decent people.

"Displacement Virtue" is a very good phrase, OP. I think it's the same thing in the US, TBH. It isn't like they are looking at their modern connections to global capitalism, is it?