Oxford union official, Ellie Greaves, sorry for ‘hurting trans people’Oxford union official, Ellie Greaves, sorry for ‘hurting trans people’

[Igneococcus]

Bloody depressing read:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3a918a08-70d8-11ed-a188-d2cb771901d6?shareToken=aeb345cd0257014019db91fd84eccbda

Bio-essentialism is the philosophy that biology plays a larger role in determining human psychology or development than social, economic, or environmental factors.

Yup, well it does doesn't it? Because we are MAMMALS!!! Flippin heck.

this

When I read that, the thing that surprised me was that the President of the Oxford feminist society sounds like a feminist. I wonder how long she'll survive in post or if she'll be coerced into recanting?

This isn’t event an accurate description.

As soon as you’re talking about relative effects (larger and smaller roles), you’re way out of essentialist territory.

But ‘essentialism’ is a poorly understood concept easily thrown around as an insult. It’s used as a cover for what actually is an essentialist position that wants to deny the role of biology entirely.

It's because the prioritised group is men, I mean that's what it boils down to - you can't focus on women because the men feel left out and get angry, and it's always easier to dismiss angry women than angry men.

It's ironic that "bio-essentialist" is used as a dogwhistle slur by the Righteous types attacking female spaces, because to me there's nothing more bio-essentialist than always prioritising the desires of male people however they "identify" themselves.

Whenever you create a position with a title like this, it does not mean equality for all. It means one group is prioritised over everyone else, and woman lose their voice.

People will wake up. I only hope it happens sooner rather than later as its terrifying having a daughter who will head off to uni in a few years time.

Kucinghitam, that is a brilliant point I've not thought of it like that before.

No, this is where I would strongly disagree. Biology (specifically biological sex) does not determine a person's personality or IQ or their interests or the potential jobs they could hold.

A person's physical sex is a big contributor to their physical attributes (height / strength / weight) but not to their mental attributes (personality, IQ etc). And it is critical to make this distinction. We need sex-based protections for women because women have different physical bodies, not because women have weak-and-feeble lady-brains.

This is what it reminds me of

It’s interesting how people who would otherwise be all for equity suddenly want (superficial) equality when it suits their purposes.

Anyone would think it was an excellent example of how concepts can be employed to reinforce power structures. Yet, somehow, all these kids reading bloody Foucault at university seem to have completely missed that part of his arguments.

Anyone would think it was an excellent example of how concepts can be employed to reinforce power structures. Yet, somehow, all these kids reading bloody Foucault at university seem to have completely missed that part of his arguments.

Just like all the woke bros who read Orwell don't grasp the similarities with some of his most well known writing.

Unbelievable. 2022

rember there was a joke going around about women being put into gulags for wrong speech and thoughts

bet some of them people would actually love that

The year woman were told how to woman by those who know better.

www.oxfordstudent.com/2022/10/17/concerns-over-sus-women-and-non-binary-club-night/

The Oxford SU LGBTQ+ Campaign seems to have a lot of clout!

Remember Goldsmiths' LGBT group?

Goldsmiths LGBTQ+ society has been suspended and disaffiliated from the Students' Union after tweeting an extensive thread defending the use of gulags for "reeducation."

A member of the society with access to its Twitter account spent Monday September 10 attacking "T*rfs" (Trans-exclusionary radical feminists), before arguing that gulags have been mischaracterised as a result of CIA propaganda, sending bigots to them is "compassionate" and that the Soviet penal system was, in actual fact, "rehabillitary [sic]."

https://www.joe.co.uk/amp/news/lgbt-society-gulags-199146

Christ another trans story where a women is punished publicly and has to apologise for being a ......... A women !
I'm sick of this shit ,

I refuse to lose my voice
I will not let someone with a dick and pair of court shoes tell me they are a women with the same vulnerabilities as me.
I refuse to give up my safe spaces
I will not be called transphobic and a bigot because I am a women .
And I will wear a suffragette scarf anywhere I fucking choose to !

I wonder if someone could.reach out to her and tell her that her initial stamce was valid and that she should hold on to her beliefs.

@parietal I do agree that we need sex based protections for women based on our bodies. You will not hear me talk about weak and feeble lady brains. Sorry if I gave you that impression. My contention though is that we are embodied. There is no escaping that animal nature.

This one is just a ‘where to start’ clusterfuck, isn’t it?

But, it’s really just the extreme end of many assumptions and arguments that common among the often quite naive young people who make up the majority of the undergrad student population, and which are probably over represented in the subset of that population drawn to student politics and positions of responsibility in student societies.

They pick up a bunch of concepts that can be used as insults to shut down debate. Orientalism, essentialism, and so on are treated as if they are ‘mic drop’ moments that not only invalidate an argument, but those making it as well.

It’s even more bizarre when their own arguments so often are examples of exactly the crimes they accuse their opponents of.

The mission of higher education in the 21st century seems to be teaching people just enough so that they can be really, really dangerous. And certainly not enough that they might recognise any issues or problems, or the limits of what they know. What you get is weaponised out of context concepts and absolutely no desire to understand.

A person's physical sex is a big contributor to their physical attributes (height / strength / weight) but not to their mental attributes (personality, IQ etc). And it is critical to make this distinction. We need sex-based protections for women because women have different physical bodies, not because women have weak-and-feeble lady-brains.

I would say there are (on average) differences between the mental attributes of men and women though. Although I certainly wouldn't class the difference in terms of women being mentally "weaker and feebler" just different (on average)

In Victoria Smith's latest piece, she says:

It is not that no one understands what the word “woman” means any more, but rather that open understanding leads to extreme social censure. By contrast, ostentatious not-understanding has become a winning strategy for anyone wishing to appear more progressive than the common herd.

"Bio-essentialism" now just means "openly identifying sex", for example to try to protect women from men.

What you should be doing is implicitly recognising sex by preventing it being openly identified:

the linguistic trickery of trans ideology has eased the transfer of emotional identification from low-value females to higher-value males.

A person's physical sex is a big contributor to their physical attributes (height / strength / weight) but not to their mental attributes (personality, IQ etc). And it is critical to make this distinction. We need sex-based protections for women because women have different physical bodies, not because women have weak-and-feeble lady-brains.

Yes - but also because biological men oppress biological women, through practices such as female genital mutilation, forced child marriage, rape, banning abortion and contraception, denying the right to vote/have a bank account/have an education/do professional jobs, and so on and so forth. All these things either happen now, somewhere in the world, or have happened in our recent history. It is wilfully idiotic to pretend that a biological difference doesn't translate into a hierarchy of social advantage and disadvantage.

Let's put it another way. Men invented biological essentialism. They invented oppressing women on the basis of their biology. And when women organise together to fight that oppression, they have the sheer fucking audacity to accuse women of being biologically essentialist. How dare they. How fucking dare they.

ChateauMargaux I hope someone does that, and points her in this direction, or others to ensure the education she seeks is properly rounded. She’s a history graduate, she would understand the value in looking at all the arguments. I for one, would be delighted if more people would closely examine the arguments on all sides.

There is an email address on the Oxford Union website. It’s a role email though, not a personal one, so you’d need a burner email to stay safe. Don’t have time this morning, maybe someone does?