Oxford Students Union servers ties with Oxford Union

[Apollo441]

For inviting 'notorious transphobe' Kathleen Stock to speak.

They are unable to debate her as their ideas are based on nothing so all they can do is throw their toys our of the pram. Utter imbeciles.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e027959a-ee80-11ed-87b0-716b9284a2b0?shareToken=1591551c2ac2d9a79c7ee4b39589f116

My DD was at Cambridge until recently and she knows quite a few of her friends were GC but would only admit it to a select few trusted friends.

One such friend got a bit drunk once and referred to DD as a TERF and she was mortified in case news got out - but they were mostly STEM students and so it's a bit difficult to deny reality for them.

Thanks for posting this - have now bought the book on Kindle (for 99p)… Just like the protests about Adult Human Female screenings encouraged me to watch the film.

Yes, the problem is nobody will break ranks. I expect that there will be students outside taking pictures of ( or filming ) those going in .
We have talked about the fact that there will surely be other people feeling the same. None of them voicing their feelings for fear of being totally ostracised. It feels so totalitarian. (She has reasons for not going that I can’t go into here, as too outing) .
What baffles me is that I assumed Oxford would be a place where the students would want to listen to a different point of view, that they would enjoy the cut and thrust of debate. I assumed, naively, that she would be able to go and listen as all sorts of people would be there.
I think I am still so stunned that this ideology has taken such a tenacious hold in academia .

You're welcome. I bought my copy after hearing her talking on Woman's Hour about being forced out at Sussex: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0b3ch0k

Last time we were up to Oxford many of the colleges were flying Pride flags. It was February so nothing to do with Pride, unless Pride has not only taken over the whole month of June but the entire year.

I wasn't sure where to put this but I've seen an article, I think, from the Telegraph that Arif Ahmed, who iirc hosted Doc Stock at the Cambridge Union, has been appointed some kind of free speech panjandrum. I've lost the link and may have all the details wrong.

I stand with the Oxford Union. I'm still a member, wonder if I can send them a "thank-you for not cancelling" message?

It's been over 15 years since I left. I remember the glorious hours of debating, of meeting people I'd have never even heard of, thinking about things I'd never before considered.

Dinner with Howard Shore.

Making friends with people for such different backgrounds and incomes to mine school in a sink estate, in special measures

They were they best times of my life. I've never before, or after, felt so accepted for who I was.

How can a university fall so hard?

Found it

https://twitter.com/WeAreFairCop/status/1656178600066924545?s=20

Might have a bit of a crush

Thanks! Arif Ahmed is very sound - as well as joining Kathleen Stock at the Cambridge debate he also hosted a talk by Helen Joyce at Caius College.

The more working class you are, the more likely you've had a dodgy experience in a bus station toilet.

This is the problem with elite-driven ideas. The privileged are protected from the real world consequences by virtue of their economic, social and cultural position. And with this issue, that's where the sharpest dangers are: prisons, psychiatric and hospital wards, public toilets and changing rooms, refuges.

I realised how acute it was when listening to the Witch Trials. Half way through, I could not figure out why gender activists couldn't see the blatant problems with The Bathroom Issue. And then I realised why: we are talking about two different things.

When they talk of "bathrooms", they are thinking of facilities that have some level of policed or restricted access, like toilets in coffee shops or theatres because that's their experience from their socio-economic cultural position. When I think of them, I think of municipal facilities open to all the public: bus stations, train stations, town centre loos.

It's essentially two different world colliding, and what may work to some extent in one is never going to work in the other.

That is a really good point and something I had though but not with such clarity.
I think of the situations where I have been scared in a public loo, often due to the time of day. Early in the morning can be unnervingly quiet. My nearest M&S for instance, has separate loos but they have the same main entrance with cubicles for Men to one side, Women the other, off the same corridor . A central disabled loo. Normally a small queue in there, but first thing it is empty. The fitting rooms are often unstaffed.
Train and bus station loos can be frightening in the evening. My station used to have a women’s waiting room, with a Ladies loo off it, which at least felt safer than a mixed sex waiting room. I wonder what has happened to that now ? I haven’t been there for quite a while.

I think this is spot on. Especially the 'you won't get an answer'. Because they are unable to interrogate even their own beliefs, yet happy to proclaim what others believe without reading it or listening to it.

@AmuseBish yes exactly. They know not what they do. Caught up in the ecstasy of denouncement. The thrill of being part of something. The sense of belonging. The self righteousness. It’s intoxicating. Logic and reason cannot compete.

SirVixofVixHall - "My station used to have a women’s waiting room, with a Ladies loo off it, which at least felt safer than a mixed sex waiting room."

Those "Ladies Waiting Rooms" in train stations were a fantastic sanctuary when travelling alone, even for relatively short distances but especially when lumbered with luggage.

Going way back there were even carriages that were women-only.

Having been physically and sexually assaulted on trains and in rail stations several times when travelling alone I can testify that the presence of other supposedly "good men" in the vicinity made no difference at all as they didn't lift a finger to help.

It seems that there are still a handful of "Ladies Waiting Rooms" in existence.

Railforums thread from 10 years ago:
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/ladies-compartments-and-waiting-rooms.102401/

One of the posts links to Diss Station - and there is still a Ladies Waiting Room on the Station Plan (screenshot attached):
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations-and-destinations/stations-made-easy/diss-station-plan

Wow! Wish there were also photos of the inside of Shrub Hill too! Oh! Bugger. Not a Ladies Waiting Room any more:

Shrub Hill station's Victorian waiting rooms are back in use after being restored to their former glory
8th September 2015

The historic grand waiting rooms on platform 2b of the station were built between 1857 and 1868 with the south room originally used as a ladies waiting room and the north as a third class waiting room.

Now, one of the waiting rooms is open to passengers while the other has been turned into much-needed space for railway staff.
https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/13652877.shrub-hill-stations-victorian-waiting-rooms-are-back-in-use-after-being-restored-to-their-former-glory/

Should Scotland have women-only rail carriages?
15 February 2022

(Hollow laughter given ScotGov is more than happy for anyone to be a woman if they say so!)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60350664

Labour are right to consider women-only carriages. Here’s why
24 Aug 2017

(More hollow laughter!)
https://leftfootforward.org/2017/08/labour-are-right-to-consider-women-only-carriages-heres-why/

The era of 'ladies only' train compartments
26 Aug 2015
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34061094

Why we shouldn’t dismiss the idea of women-only carriages
1 Sept 2015
(Labour again, when it apparently knew what a woman is)
https://theconversation.com/why-we-shouldnt-dismiss-the-idea-of-women-only-carriages-46829

Sorry for the diversion into carriages. SIngle-sex Waiting Rooms and Toilets would be a start, instead of the vile trend for mixed-sex toilets and "Ladies" anything that any man so inclined feels free to enter.

Me too

Feckedupbundle · Yesterday 13:15
Ugh. Dd1's college were trying to point her in the direction of Oxford,but she said that she thought that 'it wasn't her sort of place' and didn't apply. Reading this nonsense reinforces that she was spot on.

Kathleen Stock had to leave Sussex. It is certainly not just Oxford which is like this by any means. Wherever your daughter goes could well be as bad.

The RG university in the city where I live is a Stonewall place and full of ‘assigned at birth’ type jargon. You should see the Association of University Teachers’

trans manifesto too.

It is just particularly shameful that within a university that is supposed to have many of the country’s brightest students, a group of them are behaving so confusedly and stupidly. And the colleges backing this are even worse.

Allies to their trans friends they are not if they are unable to go and debate against Kathleen Stock’s ideas which they are so sure are intended to harm them. And if they are trans themselves, why can’t they too go and knock down her points with arguments.

I think every year that goes will be less into this and more will speak up. By the time current yr8s get there I'd assume change. Also most teenagers do not buy any bs about changing sex they are being kind to their weird mate. If you point out the implications they are pretty much all gc even the rabid supporters who say they think twaw.

They think they are being inclusive by banning anyone who might hurt 'vulnerable' people. Oh, the irony!