Is sanity finally being restored at UK universities?

[LadyBracknellsHandbagg]

https://thecritic.co.uk/gone-in-90-seconds/

This is excellent from Helen Joyce, the bit about the Irish young woman is hilarious whilst also being Orwellian, how must her parents feel?!

That's a great article. I always like the way she writes, she's so clear. This bit struck a chord with me:

This must be the most narcissistic movement in history. Women’s objections to trans-identifying men in their spaces can’t possibly be because we’re thinking of our own interests; we must be doing it to hurt trans people. My objections to reality-denialism can’t be because I think it’s dangerous to deny reality, it has to be because I hate the people trying to impose their fantasies on everyone. They genuinely seem to think that they are the stars not just in their own lives but in everyone else’s.

To answer the question in your thread title - no, I don't think it is being restored yet, sadly. Applause to this PhD student who organised the event and refused to be intimidated.

I can't speak for Oxford and Cambridge, they're different from the rest and I don't have any experience of them. I have links to a well-known, supposedly respected university and all I see is the madness continuing there. Universities are so strapped for cash and the HE funding model has failed. They're doing all they can to get bums on seats and that means not upsetting the youngsters.

I'm not an academic myself but I know a few very well - they're all firmly GC but cannot indicate that at work (although some do, carefully). It's a suffocating atmosphere and it doesn't benefit the students at all.

Excellent article, of course, making many serious points, but I've come away treasuring the delicious eye-rolling wit of this sentence, about the young woman who identified - unconvincingly, apparently - as a gay man:
If I’d had to guess I would have put her down as something ambiguous and low-effort, like non-binary demiboy.

Love HJ. I am so looking forward to seeing her at the Oxford Literary Festival in April.

I'm envious @MantleStatue !

I am really excited about it! I am staying the night as well and having a nice little break after a few stressful months.

You’ll have to report back for those of us unable to attend please 🙏

My experience of spending a lot of time hanging around Cambridge is that it will take a lot for them to track back.

Lots of university buildings have gender neutral toilets. Which are all disgusting.
You see a fair few young transmen on hormones. They are easily identified as they are 5ft 2 and all have ear stretchers.
Lots of young women dressed as butch lesbians from the 1930s, usually with pronoun preferences
Occasional young FTM always accompanied by a handmaiden (except the one in the bookshop who is lovely)
A lot of money has been spent on Queer Studies
If you raise feminism they need to check the person you are talking about is Sex Worker Positive
If you do a seminar on Judith Butler it will attract a massive audience of uncritical fans
Every college has a binder fund.

On an adjacent topic there's also a Palestine sit in.
You may also get lucky and see a march shouting from the river to the sea.

However I did see a Helen Lewis book in a window display so possibly there is progress.

God I really wanted to get that off my chest.

Also I filled out a museum survey that asked if I identified as disabled.

I left a rant about the question being offensive.

Good there's progress, but still, I'm not sure I'm bothered about sending DC to uni right now!

Naturally it depends on the course, but generally speaking your DC would be better off getting an apprenticeship with Pete the Plumber right now

@AnnaMagnani - I completely agree with everything you've said about the UoC. The loos in our building are all gender neutral now and they're so disgusting I only use them if I absolutely have to. Plus its obvious that some 'people' don't wash their hands after using them. Yuck.

I'm also concerned about the current review of gendered language in HR policies such as maternity leave etc. It sounds as though there may be plans to rewrite these policies using gender neutral language (pregnant person etc) just as sanity is slowly being restored at other UK universities.

I don't even work there! This is all picked up from going to the museums, going to some student events, experiences shopping and in coffee shops.

DH goes to some seminars and from a late start he is even more Terfy than I am as it drives him nuts.

What struck me as I wrote that is that all of these students have a lot of money to spend on their outfits.

When I was a student I was focused on having as small an overdraft as possible and getting a good job at the end.

These supposedly oppressed students are so privileged this doesn't concern them.

My old oxbridge college put on special safe space rooms where those traumatised by a debate happening at the Union could retreat if it was all too much for them. I think these might have been people who weren’t even in the audience but might have been devastated by the fact it was going on in the same city.

Bless.

I'm in the NHS and well, we know what that's like.

Never met a nurse who isn't already peaked or can't peak in under 5 minutes.

Managers and doctors though are another story. It's a class issue.

How are these precious babies going to cope when something genuinely awful or traumatic happens to them? 🤦‍♀️

They genuinely seem to think that they are the stars not just in their own lives but in everyone else’s.

My teen daughter calls it 'main character syndrome'

Apparently there is a group in her school consisting of people who all suffer from this. I said 'how does it work?' and she said, 'they're constantly arguing and there's a lot of drama, the rest of us avoid them'.

Encouraging this narcissistic and fragile approach to life is not really very kind because it tends to alienate others, but it's what transactivism does.

My DS1 says about someone in his class like this; '[Name] is the main character and he thinks the rest of us are the Paparazzi'.

He's autistic and has the most brilliant ability to cut through crap.

I live in a University town. My impression is that the sensible, bright students are busy studying and it's only the credulous idiots who make a lot of noise and buy into the Omnicause, including trans idiocy. I don't think the students protesting are representative of the majority.

Unfortunately in Cambridge they are bright enough to do well in their degrees and still have energy for this.

I was just going to cite the same sentence, along with the preceding one:

"Although she did have something of the look of an Alphabet person about her, she was unmistakably female. If I’d had to guess I would have put her down as something ambiguous and low-effort, like non-binary demiboy."

Reading this excellent piece, I'm also getting the sense of people feeling freer to say what they mean than they did five years ago. Back then, every opinion would be qualified by something solemn about "of course, trans people have rights" and "of course, we support the desire of trans people to live peaceful lives" etc. Now, it's more, "This is just a bunch of ridiculous nonsense, let's all stop giving it the time of day, shall we?"

In Nazi-occupied Poland, there was a secret network whereby the universities aimed to teach in Polish and issue degrees underground, after higher education was banned for Slavs. Students and academics attended these clandestine classes at the highest personal risk. I got interested in Polish history as my first job was in Warsaw, and the building next to my office had bullet holes from the 1944 uprising. I often think of this when I hear whiny, entitled students talk about safe spaces.

When we were on holiday in Krakow there was a student sit in for Palestine near our hotel.

Covered in Trans flags and the main player appeared to be a blue haired American young man with a changing cast of female helpers.

We thought it wasn't worth asking him about Hamas policy on LGBTQ rights.

When it was thrown open to questions from the floor, a young Irish woman stood up and explained that “presenting as a gay man” she experienced overt and vicious homophobia whenever she went out in her “flowery pants”.

For a cohort of people who wang on about cultural appropriation and similar, they aren't half quick to appropriate other people's oppression. Shades of The Fragrant Doctor, IIRC, saying he was a victim of patriarchy

Absolutely this. It's like when they twat on about fascism when it's clear they have absolutely no idea what living under fascism is like. They should be bloody grateful for that rather than almost fantasising that they are under some Stasi-esque oppression with real risks for their lives.

To be fair, anyone talking about rights for homosexuals in the Warsaw Ghetto would have been given short shrift too.
Ps what are 'ear stretchers' ?