New female single sex student society launched at Cambridge university

[WarriorN]

https://genderblog.net/cambridge-students-launch-single-sex-society-for-women/

this is fantastic news. The background to their story is however concerning. It should have never got this bad.

https://x.com/cusocofwomen/status/1982732118695215164?s=46&t=A2fpFNgDRyXF2d6ye97wEA

How heartening. Well done to these brave young women. I'm following them on Twitter. Great that Nick Wallis has written about this as well

Interestingly, Maeve says the CUSW will not be wholly trans-exclusionary.

This line in the article irritated me. Why would the writer assume that a female only club would exclude trans identified

Because they still dont grasp that the issue is about biological sex.

Quote:

“I want women who think they’re men to join this society because I’m a firm believer the words female and woman includes females who do not conform to traditional stereotypes and females who wish they were not female. I don’t think they actually wish they were men. I think it’s actually because they wish they weren’t women. And I think I would defy any woman to show me a woman who’s never felt that way. I think we all can relate to that. Just because somebody’s acted on that potentially irreversibly… makes no difference to me. I know what it feels like to resent my own womanhood because I think the way that society is at the moment. Female puberty alone – by God – does it make you frustrated. Being female and all that that means. So… I could not in good faith and consciously purport to be setting up a Society that was for all women if I didn’t wish to include women who want out of womanhood.”

Who could have guessed this ideology could take such a hold in Cambridge? Or that there could be such an extreme degree of bullying against anyone reading books the mesmerised majority disagrees with - no doubt not even necessarily having read them.

Someone in the ‘Comments’ section underneath the article wrote apt comments about that assertion by Rose.

It’s one of the oldest, laziest slurs in the book, isn’t it? Feminists/women who stand up for themselves are insufficiently feminine!

How often were suffragettes and suffragists depicted as ugly harridans for the crime of standing up for women?

A tales as old as the struggle for women’s rights.

I hope they see we support their efforts. I expect today will be challenging for them

posting that quote here:

For a supposedly clever individual the Newnham College Principal, Alison Rose, has made two very stupid statements.
Firstly, “It’s been clear that as a college we would strongly favour continuing our established practice of inclusivity so long as we could do so legally”.

Newnham very clearly, as set out in the ForWomen Scotland judgment by the Supreme Court, cannot legally provide access to education at the college to women and transwomen while excluding men. Any non-trans-identifying man refused admittance could sue on grounds of unlawful discrimination. Paragraphs 226 to 229 of the judgment set out the lawfulness of excluding trans-identifying men from higher education, the context of the Equality Act 2010 means that it is discriminatory to include trans-identifying men in what is ostensibly a women’s single sex college.

Secondly, “Rose made it clear from the outset Newnham College was not a single sex space and never has been, with the rationale: “I was a student here forty-five years ago and I can tell you my next-door neighbour seemed to have her boyfriend living next door pretty constantly, so sometimes Newnham is presented as if it’s a single sex space or a single sex higher-education institution. We’re not a single sex space.””

I would decribe this as sophistry if the definition of that word didn’t describe it as “a clever but false” argument: the argument is false (a boyfried in the dorm has not be admitted as a student) but it certainly is not clever.

I have been rueing the decline in student output at Oxford, evident in its admission and education of its last 5 Prime Ministers. It appears that the rot has also reached senior management at Cambridge.

For exactly the same reasons it is legitimate to have gatherings and opportunities that exclude white people, but it is not legitimate to have gatherings and opportunities that exclude non-white people.

It is not legitimate to exclude white people as it is not permitted to discriminate based on skin colour as this illegality is specifically called out in the Equality Act 2015. It is lawful to restrict membership based on national or ethnic origin but not skin colour.

And in depressingly predictable fashion, Lyndsay Watson is already making plans to harass them.Ladies and gentlemen, the right side of history.

These are courageous young women and we all need to have their backs against the tide of misogyny that being spewed all over them by the "be kind" bullies.

Evidence as those of us with young adult children and who work with children keep saying - so many young people now see this ideology for the aggressive bullying cult that it's become. Well done to them.

jfc how are this bloke’s antics legal

That is a wonderful INCLUSIVE statement.

I agree. It is one of the best, most logical and lucid statements ever made on the subject of real females’ senses of identity. It is memorable. It should be printed out.

Yes - it gives hope for the future.

Newnham's guest policy:

You can have an overnight guest (defined as from 12 midnight to 6am) in your room for not more than three nights in a “rolling seven-night period”. You must not accommodate a guest in your room if you are absent. All overnight guests must be signed in with the Porters’ Lodge whether the student lives on the main site or in a College house, in order to comply with the fire and safety regulations.

I very much doubt the rules were much laxer than that 45 years ago. (They may well have been much stricter.) Any boyfriend living "pretty constantly" in a student's room would be doing something explicitly not allowed. This is hardly a basis for a policy!

That man is pure scum. He should have been charged with criminal harassment a long time ago.

Didn’t the open university get taken to an employment tribunal over similar, where they lost? They are at the complete opposite of the prestige spectrum to Cambridge, so I’m not sure that it’s a problem specifically with the most prestigious institutions

I Hope they have locked the society to avoid being flooded with handmaidens trying to destroy their work from inside...

i really doubt that they will get the endorsement/ recognition of the SU, I don’t see anyway that will happen, but to see these young women actually stand up against the rhetoric is so heartening. I really hope they encourage other women to start to do the same. Being for women, doesn’t mean you are against trans women, or trans men, and I really hope that one day that really large point can be recognised.

They lost at tribunal for discrimination and a harassment campaign against Jo Phoenix for being gender critical and setting up a gender critical network. Their legal team should be aware of this.

Good luck to these brave young women. I am so proud of them.

That article is deeply troubling. I am quite shocked by some of it.

LW and the fox botherer can both do one. Nasty pathetic individuals. Be kind my arse.

There was a minor kerfuffle recently when one of the women's colleges excluded TW from applying for some grant or other.

Yes.