Goldsmiths University Diversity officer facing sack

[co-op]

This question was out of order I think.

It was, of course a direct response to your post below, hence the phrasing.

So what if she changed it? She changed it so no one else can come along and make a fuss about nothing perhaps?
.

I don't think you've added anything to this discussion (at least those parts involving me) except snide comments of this type so from where I'm standing your sudden lunge for the moral high ground isn't very convincing.

 

[Pickman's model]

It was, of course a direct response to your post below, hence the phrasing.



I don't think you've added anything to this discussion (at least those parts involving me) except snide comments of this type so from where I'm standing your sudden lunge for the moral high ground isn't very convincing.

i'm no great mate of Rutita1 but you're talking bollocks

 

[newbie]

Yeah, at the same time though, there are many more active male users here day in day out, especially in the politics forum.

As I said before does anyone here have experience of trans women doing this (taking over) in women only spaces? If not I don't know why this is something automatically assumed as a potential problem. Especially since it makes no disctinction between the thoughts and behaviour of a man and those of a trans woman.

gradually catching up on this thread, so forgive the belated answer. In all the discussion of various spaces no-one has mentioned sport, which is odd because it seems to me that people identified as male at birth may have sufficient height/strength advantages to matter in competitive sport. Because sport is structured, and because even at the non-elite level, people put so much effort into it, it's likely this will be where many of these issues play out in future.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...omen-footballers-to-undergo-gender-tests.html

 

[kabbes]

I have more of a problem using the word cis to define myself than straight because I don't have any conflict with my heterosexuality whereas my identification with femininity is much more complicated, inseparable from my immediate family context, and the wider one of sexism and misogyny.

I remember some difficulties growing up, though not so much that it was ever debilitating, was much more consciously identified with my dad than with my right-wing 'female' hating mother. I wanted to be a boy when I was about 8, refused to wear a skirt for school, I remember pretending to be sick one day when the only pair of trousers that were clean were some horrible brown ones (1970s) and the alternative was a skirt, being the only girl in jeans on the end of a row of long-skirted girls in our class country dancing show, wrote my name as a boys name in my books. Obviously I wasn't as smart as a boy and of course I was crap at maths and I thought being a girl was a bit shit really. But I don't think I ever felt that I was 'really' a boy I just really, really wanted to be one and tried to magic myself into being one by wanting it so much. It didn't work and after a while I accepted that I was a girl, but not without some feeling of being a fake, a feeling that has got less as I age, especially since pregnancy and birthing and feeding my children, but hasn't totally disappeared.

I was going to post something more political than personal, about continuums rather than binaries, but it came out like this. I'm sure this kind of experience isn't uncommon.

Great post. And I agree, I think it's not uncommon at all, particularly so the more society attempts to rigidly define what it means to be a man or a woman.

Kids are enormous sticklers for social rules too, because they are trying to learn what it all means. Adults cope better with ambiguity. A 4 year old is likely to tell you far more precisely (and erroneously and old-fashionedly) what it means to be a woman. They can easily then not identify with that definition at that stage in their life.

The current trend to highly gendered toys for kids just exacerbates this, of course.

 

[co-op]

Great post. And I agree, I think it's not uncommon at all, particularly so the more society attempts to rigidly define what it means to be a man or a woman.

Kids are enormous sticklers for social rules too, because they are trying to learn what it all means. Adults cope better with ambiguity. A 4 year old is likely to be tell you far more precisely (and erroneously and old-fashionedly) what it means to be a woman. They can easily then not identify with that definition at that stage in their life.

The current trend to highly gendered toys for kids just exacerbates this, of course.

Adults cope better with ambiguity in some ways, but there are an awful lot of them who seem to me to be playing out really over-the-top performative gender roles, maybe on my mind at the moment because I have a 26 year old woman staying in my house who plays little-girl-woman almost incessantly. I think the psychological driver is that she desperately wants reassurance that she's ok, she's not in the way etc, but paradoxically of course she is driving me up the wall because I just want her to say what she thinks and develop (and project) a sense of her own right to exist and have opinions (that may be at odds with mine) and not constantly creep around and giggle and speak in the voice of a 12 year old. The reason I think of her particularly in the context of your post is that I have a 6 year old daughter who has started speaking in a baby voice since our (longish term) guest turned up, and it's depressing to see how infectious this stuff is - at least partly I assume because this behaviour is subtly endorsed by all sorts of wider social pressure.

But a row is brewing because in the end I can't tell my girl off for talking like a baby and not tell off the guest. A 6 year old has an excuse for copying this stuff, how does a 26 year old justify it? It probably won't go well.

 

[Buckaroo]

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crim...ersity-officers-race-hate-tweet-10268964.html

 

[co-op]

"Born" is an essentialist way of looking at things. Socialised is a different issue, but what on earth makes you think that the socialisation of cis men and trans women is the same?

It doesn't have to be the same but in my experience it can produce real overlaps. The only time I have been at the beginning of a mixed sex Q & A, and a sea of women's arms shot up and the first 20 minutes was dominated by them which only ended when the chair managed to coax a man into asking something (which he mumbled out rather hesitantly) was at a presentation at a conference for trans people.

 

[Nancy_Winks]

Why is she stopping in your house co-op ? She sounds irritating.

 

[co-op]

Why is she stopping in your house co-op ? She sounds irritating.

Friend of a friend, seemed ok, needed somewhere, you know. She's basically a perfectly fine person but with massive insecurity and hiding behind a juvenile persona and needs to start growing up. But - being a woman - I wonder if she'll be pushed to do this or whether she'll find people (probably men? or "a man"?) who will find it perfectly acceptable behaviour, even Great and then she'll end up like this for life (and venting her frustration about it in all sorts of weird passive-aggression).

Men become arseholes in all sorts of ways but rarely in this way.

 

[Nancy_Winks]

26 is old for that stuff. I'd been looking after myself and had a kid by that age, as did a lot of other women on here. You tend to grow up pretty fast then.

 

[cesare]

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crim...ersity-officers-race-hate-tweet-10268964.html

The police? Good grief. That's way over the top.

 

[killer b]

they haven't been 'called in' - someone reported her to the police on 7th May and they ignored it until the standard approached them for a comment. I expect they plan to ignore it until it blows over...

 

[TopCat]

Who is Harry Akram? Am I shallow for wanting to hit him several times?

 

[cesare]

they haven't been 'called in' - someone reported her to the police on 7th May and they ignored it until the standard approached them for a comment. I expect they plan to ignore it until it blows over...

The media love upping the ante, eh

 

[killer b]

The ante has been almost entirely created, maintained and then pushed by the media, in this case.

 

[killer b]

It's a little worrying tbh: finding an outspoken leftwing student politician and monstering her (it's always her) via loose words on twitter seems to be becoming an established pattern for the scum press.

 

[Pickman's model]

The ante has been almost entirely created, maintained and then pushed by the media, in this case.

well not "the media": very much a standard job, so one paper has kept this on the go.

 

[cesare]

The ante has been almost entirely created, maintained and then pushed by the media, in this case.

My sympathy for her increases in proportion to the increasing shitstorm the media are creating.

 

[killer b]

Could you imagine the field day the fuckers would have with our posting history here if any of us stuck our heads above the parapet?

 

[Geri]

Who is Harry Akram? Am I shallow for wanting to hit him several times?

He was on Meanwhile at the Bar...forget his username. He unfriended me on Facebook.

 

[cesare]

well not "the media": very much a standard job, so one paper has kept this on the go.

The Independent seems to be loving it too.

 

[brogdale]

My sympathy for her increases in proportion to the increasing shitstorm the media are creating.

Really? Is this not the sort of publicity that she sought?

 

[Pickman's model]

Could you imagine the field day the fuckers would have with our posting history here if any of us stuck our heads above the parapet?

your imagination better than mine perhaps

 

[cesare]

Could you imagine the field day the fuckers would have with our posting history here if any of us stuck our heads above the parapet?

Aye

 

[Pickman's model]

The Independent seems to be loving it too.

yeh but the standard i think vy much the motive force behind this.

 

[brogdale]

Could you imagine the field day the fuckers would have with our posting history here if any of us stuck our heads above the parapet?

If 'sticking our heads above the parapet' means taking a salaried position as a diversity officer and tweeting inflammatory shite...then, yeah...probably.

 

[cesare]

Really? Is this not the sort of publicity that she sought?

Not sure. I think the comments were probably naivety rather than some planned attempt at notoriety.

 

[cesare]

yeh but the standard i think vy much the motive force behind this.

Yes, I agree

 

[Pickman's model]

If 'sticking our heads above the parapet' means taking a salaried position as a diversity officer and tweeting inflammatory shite...then, yeah...probably.

this is a one-year elected position.

 

[TopCat]

I don't think she should be sacked. The students themselves can decide on if she is the person they want to elect.