Open University invites your say on women

[Based]

An Open University professor is inviting people to a lecture on women and the law. "Join me to have your say," she says.

The event is on May 9 at 13:00, both online and in Milton Keynes.

I sense the potential for an awful lot of mischief-making - if the wrong kind of people attended, and asked the wrong kind of questions.

Questions about women and the law in the cases of Jo Phoenix, Pilgrim Tucker and Almut Gadow, for instance.

Some bigot might even ask what the professor thinks a woman is 😱

https://research.open.ac.uk/events/violence-women-and-law-unfinished-story

I agree, there'll be future opportunities to engage with the new Prof, as energetically and critically as merited.

'Sacrifice' might be an unfortunate choice of words here, considering how many GC women's careers and livelihoods have been sacrificed over the very topic that Professor Olga Jurasz has picked for her special day. Sacrificed by her employer and seemingly even by her department.

Did the vacancy for a professor that she now fills come up after another woman was sacrificed by any chance?

Still. Women must be kind, and not say anything when she invites them to "have your say'.

if they ever gave a thought to how actual women might react to some of the stuff they do we might have better outcomes

Every time in here I see a thread critiquing an academics work on women's rights .
si many posters come in to say be kind, don't disrupt they're young etc.

and hen you get Hilary cass warned not to go on public transport. One thing is not like the other.

It's an inaugural lecture, but she has invited people to have their say.

I don't see evidence that she's a TRA. Her view, that gender reassignment, gender, and sex are three distinct things, is a soft GC position (the hard TRA position is that gender and sex are one and the same). (Thinking all three characteristics need protecting is however evidence of muddled thinking.)

Online violence (=threats) against women is a thing, particularly for women in the public eye, and I don't see evidence she 'really' means correct-sexing transwomen.

I would like to ask her whether the massive volume of online threats towards JKR is motivated by misogyny.

She has an interest in developments in the law that might have a knock-on effect on VAWG, exemplified by abortion law changes.

I would like to ask her what she thinks about how lobbying in recent years has undermined the rights previously held by women as a derogation from the prohibition on sex discrimination. Attempts to interpret the EA2010 to be fair to all with PCs have resulted in injuries to women because of a lack of sex-segregation. More sexual assaults in mixed changing rooms. Sexual assaults in prisons. Injuries on the sporting field. This is something she ought to be interested in.

If I recall correctly, 12 out of the 20 witnesses against Jo Phoenix were females working for the Open University. That's not uncommon in GC cases. Many of the 20 OU witnesses against Almut Gadow may be women as well. Who knows, maybe Prof Jurasz will be one of them; they worked in the same department after all.

So I just don't share this idea that it's unsisterly to put a challenging question to an OU woman who built her career on talking about women - on the one and only occasion when we get to ask questions.

Love it - women asking questions - bad, mischief

However - men and their familiars turning up in masks, screaming and banging pots and pans, loud disco music, screaming insults and threats at women (and calling the police for hurty feelings) talking about, well anything these days.

fromthegecko

I'm afraid I have to take issue with this bit:
Her view, that gender reassignment, gender, and sex are three distinct things, is a soft GC position

I would say it's just the logic, rather than any political position. Gender reassignment is defined as taking steps in a process, or intending to take steps in a process of GR, while not having to actually take any steps. So clearly different type of thing from gender - whether gender identity or gender stereotypes - or sex. And if you don't think that gender identity or gender stereotypes are different from sex, you are a genderist anyway.

Do correct me if I've misunderstood you.

Maybe this persons work should be challenged but, as someone said upthread, an inaugural lecture is NOT the right place to do this.

write a blog post or an academic article challenging her work if you want, shout on twitter as much as you like, but it is rude to ask hostile questions at this particular event that is a celebration of her career so far.

Make sure they can't hear you.

Shout into a void. Scream into your pillow. But if an institution that has systematically eliminated GC voices publicly invites you to "have your say" on women, it would be rude to call their bluff and have your say.

Yes, I elided things for brevity. The key is in your words:

And if you don't think that gender identity or gender stereotypes are different from sex, you are a genderist anyway.

She does think they are different, so we can't tell if she's a soft genderist or soft GC.

GC people agree with the logic, but can differ on the practicalities. You could say, it's not possible to change sex, subjective sex is a psychological phenomenon only, and the GRA should be revoked/GR removed as a PC from the EA2010.

Or you could acknowledge subjective sex in law by at least protecting extremely GNC people from discrimination. So 'gender' would remain as a concept distinct from sex.