Gender studies professor defends giving student zero grade for using phrase 'biological women' (USA)

[IwantToRetire]

Melanie Rose Nipper, a 28 year-old adjunct professor of sexuality studies at the University of Cincinnati, vehemently stood by her grading practices Thursday.

She did so after student Olivia Krolczyk complained about being failed for using the previously uncontroversial term 'biological women', now branded offensive over claims it excludes trans women.

she continued to defend her decision - stating that while classrooms are sites where discourse should always be welcome, that ends when 'you are, intentionally or unintentionally, participating in a systemic harm of some kind.'

The term 'biological female,' she said, constitutes such an attack - as it exclusionary to people who are transgender.

When a student uses 'outdated terminology,' Nipper added, she will always take that opportunity to correct those mistakes.

'Not a zero for the course - a zero for an assignment.' Nipper said of her stringent, potentially illegal policy she said takes pleasure in administering.

The student's proposal sought explore milestones reached by female athletes in sports, such as the first women to compete at the Paris Olympics in 1900, and the current fight by female athletes to keep transgender women from women-only even.

To illustrate this point, she used the scientific phrase 'biological women' - solely to differentiate between athletes who are transgender, and the women who she claimed are being displaced by the recent advent of liberal elitism in US universities.

'I was told I was implementing TERF ideology, which is Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism,' Krolczyk recounted in another TikTok that has also gone viral - as officials have confirmed they are probing whether Nipper did any wrong.

NB these are just paragraphs I have picked out, not the whole story.

(Sorry for DM link - may be covered elsewhere https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12180019/Gender-studies-professor-BRAGS-failing-students-offend-woke-gender-beliefs.html )

I suspect given her age, that this "adjunct professor of sexuality studies", is merely stating what she herself was taught (sigh).

They look the same age!

I hoped this story was fake, universities are now places where you're sanctioned for truth-telling.

Wonder what Olivia was supposed to write when referencing ‘biological women’ since the whole essay needed to differentiate between transwomen and women in sports - or maybe the whole topic is taboo.

Based on other articles which refer to scientific papers in the US that no longer use this (factual) term that she should have written about a spectrum!

I think this may have happened a little while ago and the student didn't speak up because of wanting to finish her studies.

The paper was regraded by another professor and got an "A".

But good on her for going to the University authorities at the time.

But talk about chilling effect.

Many others would have just re-written as instructed.

This is a fundamental concern with all the current fronts of trans activism / so-called "trans rights", not just sports.

(I say so-called because there are many other ways trans people could be welcomed and supported in society, and many other shapes their rights could take, without taking away from other marginalised groups. The version that is being described and fought for as "trans rights" today is not the only way we could go, and IMO not even the best way forward for trans people, let alone women, children and homosexual people).

It's why I keep countering the claim that pronouns, TWAW etc "don't affect you but mean a lot to trans people".

If we have no words that mean "the group that used to be called women" which can be used acceptably in politics, research or science, how do we explain the challenges we as that group face in a structurally and culturally sexist society, and how do we describe and justify the rights we need to fight that?

If we have no words that mean "the group that used to be called women" which can be used acceptably in politics, research or science, how do we explain the challenges we as that group face in a structurally and culturally sexist society, and how do we describe and justify the rights we need to fight that?

Sums it up beautifully.

If we have no words that mean "the group that used to be called women" which can be used acceptably in politics, research or science, how do we explain the challenges we as that group face in a structurally and culturally sexist society, and how do we describe and justify the rights we need to fight that?

Cis-women? I know it's treated with loathing around here, but it's not true to say there is no terminology to express what you mean. It's just that both sides of the trench warfare have different words and would like to avoid using the other's!

The term "cis women", as well as being offensive also excludes transmen - so it's. It equivalent to "biological woman / biological female".

I think the gender-ideology-approved term is afab. Although that of course has its own problems.

It still seems weird when people frame woman-denying misogyny as "leftist" (the Mail refers to "leftist lessons"), but perhaps it has always been so on the self-identifying 'left'.

Also, the concept of something being wrong because it is supposedly "outdated" lacks any semblance of academic integrity.

No, that doesn't work. Cis-woman excludes trans men, a lot of NBs... it misses a whole bunch of the group that used to be called women. The closest we can get under their rules is Assigned Female At Birth.

But I promise you, if AFAB becomes a commonly used term for the group that used to be called women, if it starts being used to talk about what AFAB people experience, want and need separate to AMAB people, it will also become unsayable.

This is the point. This is what you have to see. There is no - can be no - word that encompasses all the group that used to be called women, and excludes all the group that used to be called men, which is acceptable to the current shape of trans activism, because that whole concept is something they do not accept has legitimcy. Any term (and this isn't conjecture, we have seen it happen) that can be used to name the group that used to be called women will very quickly be labelled "transphobic" and "dog whistle" because as far as they are concerned, the concept itself is transphobic so any reference to that concept, any word for it, is proof of transphobia and must be rooted out and made unsayable.

Are they handing out social 'science' degrees in cereal packets now?
That 'teacher' isn't academically fit to be serving play lunch in a mud kitchen & shouldn't be let near actual classrooms.

If there are no biological women or men, there can be no transpeople.

They aren't trying to pass as transpeople, so what are they supposed to be identifying as, if biological women or men don't exist?

This is one of the stupidest things I've read this week & I just saw Nicola Sturgeon might have to worry who she shares a cell with in the future.
Maybe her good mates Isla Bryson & Sophie Eastwood?
After all, she thought other women should be locked up with them, so why not her?

Transwoman and woman does it for me.

Yet another WTF moment 😑

make it stop, someone, please.

'biological women', now branded offensive over claims it excludes trans women.

Um, well ... yes.

Sorry, but if you enrol on a Gender Studies course in 2023, you must know this is the crap you'll expect.

Make yourself useful, and do a STEM subject, or get a proper job.

I was not only heartened by Olivia Krolczyk stand up to this attempt at indoctrination, but based her complaint on the right to free speech.

Sorry that she had to use Fox for publicity, but then that matches what happens in the UK.

Would be great to see some group of US based academics having the guts to sign a statement that says they dont believe teaching staff should use their position, to threaten a students future, whose understanding of the world they dont like.

Once again the Daily Mail are all over this. Whoever is going their research needs a huge payrise!
We have this, the British womens anglimg team Tra invasion & the guy with the beard who sued the "Women only nude spa" as he wasn't allowed access with his bits & balls.
Keep the spotlight shining Daily Mail!

Every exam board has set answers. If you don't meet that criteria you fail rightly or wrongly they will have been told what to do to pass

Cis-women? I know it's treated with loathing around here, but it's not true to say there is no terminology to express what you mean.

It is. I'm not a "cis woman" as I don't identify that way and nor are female people who don't identify as women or girls.

This is not true at university level.

So how come the assignment was regraded by another professor as an A?

That’s not true in my experience.

I’ve lectured at university level and marked GCSE papers. I also taught A levels for 20 years so I’m very familiar with mark schemes. Answers incorporating ideas not on the syllabus were fine if relevant and justified.

If only set answers were acceptable marking would be much easier, but that’s not the case - in England at least.

I dont know the US structure in colleges, but this wasn't a final exam. Dont they do additional studies (courses) in addition to their main subject?

Quote from the article:

'Not a zero for the course - a zero for an assignment.' Nipper said of her stringent, potentially illegal policy she said takes pleasure in administering.

Krolczyk said the grades related to this specific project were worth half of her total grade for the class, and when she emailed Nipper to question the mark, she was told the term was 'transphobic.'

(Also surely a final exam, unless say maths, there wont necessarily be a right and wrong. Even using historical "facts" students could present those facts in different ways?)

The Daily Mail Online has a surprisingly large US readership. At one time it was the most read online newspaper in the world or something.

I assume they know it does them no harm to cover US stories like this. A lot of US regional papers are just not very good, whilst others like the New York Times out-Guardian the Guardian.