Since Maryam saved the original UUK guidance, I’m reading pages 27 and 28 again for the nostalgia. It read as if it had been written by a robot.
The segregation request is not yet in the public domain but the students’ union has an active feminist society which is likely to protest against the segregation request. Other societies are likely to express similar concerns. The event is also due to take place a few days after a number of campus-based activities to coincide with International Women’s Day.
See what I mean? A robot or an extra-terrestrial. There – might – be – some – groups – who – would – not – like – the – idea – of – segregations – by – sex – at – a – public – event – at – a – university. Ya think??? Only it wouldn’t be some groups, it would be everyone. You don’t have to be organized, you don’t even have to be political, to bristle at the suggestion that some reactionary external speaker gets to tell you where to sit and separate from whom.
Things to consider
Legal framework – points likely to be particularly relevant
Robot again, you see? As if everyone needed to sit down and think really hard and make a list of issues and decide which ones are paramount.
Some issues have been decided. There’s a ratchet, and where there’s not there should be. We don’t wake up every morning and re-decide what we think about slavery. That’s over. Slavery is out. Burning people for heresy is out, genocide is out, letting children work in factories and coal mines is out. We don’t need self-appointed university unions starting over from scratch; we already know what we think about gender segregation.
Granted there are people who go berserk and dynamite the ratchet, but that doesn’t mean university boffins should be following their lead. We don’t need robots here.
I “bristle” when classmates at a lecture or random audience members at some event tell me I can’t sit where I want because they’re saving a huge block of seats for some crowd that’s going to show up at the last minute. Being told where to sit for the sake of the sensibilities of some stupid fucker’s woman-hating imaginary friend? That’s rage time.
If you live in a Western nation with good unions that’s true.
For a lot of the rest of the world though – not so much, sadly.
There’s an awful lot of child labour going on in the Third world including – if they are still counted as such – China and India or so I gather.
Come to think of it ,outside of the shelter of the Western world there’s plenty of genocide and killing of “heretics” going on too. Look at what’s happening in Tibet, In West Papua, in much of Africa and the intentions of the pretty much all of the Islamic world against the 8 million people of Israel or as the Arabs and Persians prefer to inaccurately call it “The Zionist entity” which they’d like to wipe off the map.
Even in the UK there was the case of three women kept in slavery until they were freed a month or so ago.
Those living (like me) in the free democratic comfortable Western world probably don’t appreciate just how lucky we are.
That’s rich, coming from a genocidal thug who masturbates to images of dead muslims.
[meta]
The spam comment currently @5 is kinda amusing, given the post title.
All I’m seeing is a disgracefully cynical attempt by UUK to sanitise and promulgate an accommodationist policy which they knew to be both wrong and unacceptable. Boo. Hiss!
@ JohnM, meta: Lolling even harder.
StevoR
I shouldn’t have to explain this, but Ophelia was talking about moral decisions we’ve made, not whether people still do engage in those things. Do you think we don’t know that slavery, genocide, child labour, and segregation are going on? (Here’s a clue: this whole ruckus about gender segregation is happening because women are being segregated from men at events held by UK universities.) The point is, there are people who want to open the floor to debate whether women are people or rather objects to be owned or lesser creatures who will contaminate the actual human beings. That debate has been settled. A university vice-chancellors’ group shouldn’t be a party to opening that discussion up as though there’s still a question there that needs evaluation.
Yes, Ibis, that bridge should have been burned well and truly a long time ago.
Oh. Spam removal expunged the point of the little joke about ‘bot spam. Well, y’all get the pichur.
@4.dysomniak, darwinian socialist
You really so stupid and bigoted about me that you think that’s who I am and what I do and think and feel? Woe.
You are so totally wrong.
Typo – wow not woe.
Although woe pronounced “Whoah!” kinda works too..
You really don’t know who I am and have really offensively misrepresented me with your standard strawmonster here. Maybe you need to stop doing that huh?
@ 8. Ibis3, Let’s burn some bridges :
Yes. I get the point and even agree with it.
My point is that that’s what’s settled here (& in an ethical sense) but here is not everywhere and that sort of evil still goes on elsewhere in places round the globe that ain’t so lucky as we are. Wish the whole world was as ethically advanced as us. But wishing wont make it so, acting positively and speaking up for what we believe in might help make a difference, who knows?