Cambridge University ignoring the Supreme Court ruling?

[yoursweetpotatoesarebland]

Dd is going to the Cambridge open day coming up, I got an email through about the colleges and was having a read through. There’s a section about “gender identity” and how it impacts on what colleges you can apply to. There are two women’s colleges but both accept anyone who identifies as a woman!

This is from Murray Edwards:
“At the admissions level, we will consider any student who, at the point of application, identifies as a woman“

How can this still be allowed? It’s self ID too so has NEVER been legal for the purposes of the eqA.

Perhaps we are in furious agreement.

I was concerned with the concept that single-sex colleges should remain so for the benefit of observant Muslim woman who cannot be in an room with men. Specifically "it would be interesting to know how many young Muslim women don't attend university at all unless they are able to live at home, because they or their parents want them to avoid men."

I may be reading too much into that, however.

I treat all my students with respect regardless of their beliefs. When I was a student, I had a few tutors (a minority, happily) who were experts in making students feel small. Think shame-based pedagogy. I do everything I can to avoid making my own students feel like that. Teaching is about dialogue, not about ensuring ideological/epistemological/political conformity. Hell, my own DC don't agree with me on loads of issues, why should my students?

It's sad that many people on this thread (not all, but many) don't seem to share this ethos. If I disagree with them, it means I'm de facto Not a Feminist. OK then. 🙄 That's exactly the kind of move I would avoid at all costs with my own students.

I don't see feminism as a cult where everyone has to subscribe to exactly the same set of beliefs. Maybe that's why I don't feel very much at home on the MN feminism threads.

Anyway, have a good weekend everyone. May tolerance triumph. Am heading home now from my very fairly small room, where I have been busy indoctrinating students all day.

Incidentally, the vast majority of my students have no idea I'm a trans-inclusive feminist. It's not a secret, it just doesn't come up much. Unlike Michael Foran's students, who are presumably crystal-clear where he stands on these issues.

It's OK to be a tutor and have beliefs of your own. We are human after all. If you ask me what I think of Tommy Robinson, I'll tell you what I think of that too (he's an appalling person, and thick as two short planks). What isn't OK isn't trying to impose your own views on your students.

I dunno. I think Feminism can be very varied in its approach, priorities and analysis, but it does at heart need the core belief that female people exist, are fully human with as much to offer the world as men, and matter in our own right.

Whatever the belief system is that believes some men are pretty much women because of the way they think, it ain't Feminism.

Have a good weekend. May courage and honesty triumph.

What isn't OK isn't trying to impose your own views on your students.

Isn't an example of that when at your women's college, you find out that "woman" in the room next door with whom you share a shower room is actually a man?

I would be concerned about that too. These are not easy questions...

At some point young Muslim women have to be considered agents of their own I think, and if having to mix with men means that they can't attend university, that's very sad, but that's ultimately their decision.

I have Muslim women students and have made various accommodations for them at their request (it's no bother obviously), but none of them have ever complained about mixed sex tutorials. Not so far anyway!

Did any of you Cambridge people call them "supers" when you were there?

It’s very hard to believe that you’re at university:

1. ”cis” women is neither a scientifically or biologically recognised term.
2. -more disadvantaged than “myself”. The use of an emphatic personal pronoun is unnecessary and inappropriate.
3. You state incorrectly that there is NO evidence that trans identifying men are more likely to be dangerous. This is false. The prison statistics alone show that the majority of TIM in prison are there for violent crimes.

Your views are greatly lacking in any degree of critical thinking which is worrying. Women have the right to receive same-sex personal care, to be free from the male gaze in places where they are undressed, to be protected from men when in prisons, refuges or hospitals and to fair sport.

You may have been unconcerned about the presence of men in your college and you may still feel this way, but you have no right to sacrifice the dignity, safety and privacy of other women on your altar of misplaced righteousness.

So if a previous poster disagrees with you, they must not have gone to university. First-class analysis right there.

How many students and staff are at Cambridge? Over 30k I would say.

But by all means assume that everyone at an institution must think the same way, otherwise they wouldn't have been at university 🙄

To me, one of the most depressing things about trans-exclusionary feminism is the tendency (on the part of many of its adherents at least) to argue that if you don't agree with that point of view, you haven't done any critical thinking / haven't got a brain / etc etc.

It actually is possible for people to assess evidence carefully and come to different conclusions. It happens all the time.

Purity spirals are ugly.

Can you explain your critical thinking into how you became trans inclusive? I am genuinely interested to hear your thought process. I am not being goady.

Do you know who most feels “unable to be themselves in education for fear of discrimination or even abuse”? Gender atheists and Sex realists.

Maeve Halligan and the other brave women in the Cambridge University society of women are the only people at that travesty of an institution with a genuine claim to discrimination.

Hats of to them. Ovaries of steel.
cis off

Absolute nonsense. All of it.

Nope. But then in my day, we didn't call people "cis", either.

But that doesn’t happen. Many of the faculty providing supervisions are men. Of course it depends somewhat on the subject and how many staff the college has in the relevant field.

Some of my supervisions were in different colleges. Some of my supervisions were with male supervisors. Some of my supervisions were with a mixed group of students.

It's fascinating how the number of trans women (or people) per capita population fluctuates depending on what is being advocated or demanded.

If it's lots of special concessions and rights for all of them, why then they are a huge proportion of the population.

If on the other hand it's allowing some of them access to spaces or services which had hitherto been preserved (against all the odds) for natal women only, why then there are so few that you wouldn't even know they were there.

And of course they have existed and been requiring women to give way to them for many, many decades, not just the two or so during which there have

well, been however many of them there are, depending on the argument. But very noisy.

I'm sure I have seen the figure ten per cent, which has got to be based on the number of homosexuals – who on the whole were never transsexual in the first place, and ought not to be being brainwashed into trying to change their sex now either. And yet there are a mere 0.02% if they are on a women-only shortlist for some post.

Yes. I'd be interested too.

No. Never heard the term! But it was 26 years ago (sob)

I could not agree more.

have you ever looked inwards for the reason you’ve never met a student who disagreed with you @oxfordfeminist ? They obviously do exist - we wouldn’t have the UCWS if they didn’t.

I would, also.

Arrogance is also ugly.

Can you explain, as I don't think you have yet, whether you really believe the significant difference between men and women is ia difference in how we think rather than in our bodies? Do you really believe that if a man thinks or feels enough like "a woman" (whatever that means), he might as well be one? And if you do, what evidence did you carefully assess to come to that conclusion and what evidence would you need to see to change your mind?

Because honestly, I can dance on the head of a post-modern pin flirting with all sorts of deconstructions of things we take for granted, and I can write you no end of essays on different ways to reframe woman as a cultural moment, a subversive other, a void for filling, a performance, and all of them would have meaningful insights and valid aspects in their own right.

But none of them, none of them, for all the intellectual onanism, would undo the fact that female bodies exist and are different to male bodies, and that whether you think that division is instrinsicly meaningful or was just a fluke fluttering of a cultural butterfly's wings that could just have easily landed on hair colour or foot shape, that difference now has consequences that don't just evaporate away just because some clever student plays "what if" with language.

So, sure, I understand that many very clever people have talked themselves into believing it's more open minded, progressive, and just damn cleverer to believe men and women are far more nuanced and complicated than boring everyday sex that anyone can know about. I even thought it myself once. But then I thought even harder and realised I was just plain wrong.

This is exact the point.

Theres no evidence that trans people are exclud d from education or that there are any barriers at all. Quite the opposite. The numbers say that trans people are present at rates well above the average population rates.

At the time when the college was established it was to ensure women could access university in an extremely hostile environment. The story of the suffragists hiding inside Newnham as men outside tore apart the effigy of a woman is scary.

So the reason for the college existing is historic. It’s not for safety or privacy/dignity - more a symbol of “lest we forget” the second class status of women - which is ironic that the college seems to have forgotten this.

But if they can’t protect women’s history then they should just be honest and go mixed sex.

Somewhere along the line, the meaning of Simone de Beauvoir's statement about not being born but becoming a woman got twisted, from meaning something like " Society won't be satisfied with a diamond until it has been cut, polished and made to sparkle" to "If something has been cut, polished and made to sparkle, then it's a diamond."

👏👏👏

@Realfastfoodie
I wrote:
It may be very important to the students that they are both biological women.

You replied:
But that doesn’t happen. Many of the faculty providing supervisions are men. Of course it depends somewhat on the subject and how many staff the college has in the relevant field.

You’ll note that I didn’t mention the sex of supervisors, just students.
You’ll appreciate the difference between staff/student and student/student relationships. I’d think Newnham students might become friends with other Newnham students doing the same subject, among others.

@Mmmnotsure I have heard supervisions referred to as ‘supos’ rather than ‘supers’ but I, too, am generally out of touch.
I think I prefer ‘supers.’

I agree with you Flirts and Knotty

What bloody annoys me about most public institutions, universities, local authorities, NHS trusts, etc. is that when they drafted their policies, they seemed to look at discrimination law solely from the trans perspective and largely ignored the rights of women.

its seems that they cherrypicked bits of the Equality Act.

For example: one of the key provisions in the Equality Act is s.26. In broad terms, it states that harassment is unwanted conduct that violates a person's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. That's sensible law and provides important protection against bullying and genuinely unacceptable behaviour.

The difficulty comes with s.26(4), which states that, in deciding whether conduct amounts to harassment, the following must be taken into account:
(a) the perception of B (the person making the complaint);
(b) the other circumstances of the case; and
(c) whether it is reasonable for the conduct to have that effect.

Most institutions seem to have written their trans-inclusive policies with (a) in mind and forgotten about (b) and (c). The "other circumstances" in (b) include the rights of women in these situations, and (c) is, of course, the million-dollar question.

This is one reason why, in a number of recent cases, the courts have effectively pushed back against aspects of trans ideology. It is not the only reason, but the courts have generally taken a more objective approach, whereas many institutions have adopted a largely subjective one, focused on hurt feelings rather than balancing competing rights.

Part of the reason, I suspect, is that these institutions have been relentlessly lobbied and know they gain reputational kudos for being seen as "kind" and "inclusive". The cynic in me also wonders whether some have simply done a risk assessment based on who is most likely to sue them and concluded that women were the safer bet to ignore.