Posts Tagged ‘ Priyamvada Gopal ’

Gopal v liberals

Dec 23rd, 2013 11:19 am | By

Priyamvada Gopal is still throwing verbal bricks at liberals. I understand liberals here to mean people who defend universal human rights as opposed to people who carve out exceptions for “cultures” or “communities” or religions or, usually, all three. She threw her latest bricks while offering Laurie Penny support in her battle with “white” yaddayadda on Twitter.

Priyamvada Gopal @PriyamvadaGopal

@PennyRed Don’t be apologetic with liberal bullies who for all their protestations,don’t like to hear non-European feminists speak nuance

Far from being defenders of the rights of non-European/Muslim women, want them silenced uness they say the right things their way

Faced down astonishing abuse and footstamping liberal tantrums this past week which would be horrifying if it weren’t amusing.

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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Fons et origo

Dec 21st, 2013 9:45 am | By

I think I know where Pryiamvada Gopal got her distorted and ignorant idea of the people behind the protest against gender segregation. I think she read a repellent article at “Loonwatch” on the website “Islamophobia Today” titled UK: Islamophobes Manufacture “Gender Segregation” Controversy. It’s wrong in just the way her article is wrong, and it does it a few days earlier.

The author is billed as “Ilisha.”

An Islamic society wants to host a university event where–gasp!–men and women are seated separately. Suddenly this minor event is major news in the UK.

Yes, “gasp,” Ilisha. It’s not just routine and normal for university events to seat women and men separately.

People who apparently never planned to attend the event

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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Rupert Sutton clears up some things

Dec 18th, 2013 5:38 pm | By

Rupert Sutton of Student Rights has a reply to Priyamvada Gopal’s article at the Rationalist Association. It’s calm

Unfortunately, [Gopal's] attempt to persuade greater numbers of people to criticise reactionary religious practice was marred by a number of inaccurate attacks on my organisation, Student Rights, which seeks to highlight political and religious extremism on university campuses regardless of provenance. This included claims that we had brought the issue to national attention despite a lack of evidence for its occurrence, and presented the campaign as part of a running battle between white conservatives intent on imposing their views on others, and the beleaguered representatives of minority communities standing against this. This is simply not the case, and both misrepresents Student Rights

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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Concerns about the motivation

Dec 17th, 2013 3:48 pm | By

Daniel Trilling at the Rationalist Association blog offered their position on gender segregation today. He started with Gopal’s article.

The piece raised concerns about the motivation of the pressure group Student Rights, which has been campaigning on the topic, and the way in which the story had been picked up by the media, but argued that such concerns should not prevent people from criticising the policy.

No, not exactly. Gopal was exceedingly unclear that her concerns were only with Student Rights and the way the media picked up the story. Exceedingly unclear. It was not at all clear that she wasn’t talking about the people who organized and publicized the December 10 protest that triggered the media coverage. If that’s … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



That’s not how it happened

Dec 16th, 2013 5:04 pm | By

Amazingly enough, it appears that Gopal wrote that article in complete ignorance of the December 10 protest that got major media coverage and thus the attention of politicians who then firmly rejected gender segregation.

            Priyamvada Gopal @PriyamvadaGopal

@dandelionscrews @CEMB_forum @NickCohen4

I have no idea why they are banging on about some demo when I was talking about SR campaign

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson 

“some demo”? Are you serious? you wrote that article w/o even knowing about the demo?

That sheds a somewhat new light on the article, but not in a good way. Apparently she simply had no idea what she was talking about, and made a complete dog’s breakfast as a result. Let’s look at a little bit of it … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Until the West comes along to teach us progress

Dec 16th, 2013 2:41 pm | By

I said I would continue my disagreement with what Priyamvada Gopal wrote, so here I am continuing.

The fact is that challenging traditions and questioning authority are practices common to all societies; changing in response to circumstances is a human capacity and not one limited to a particular culture.

Again – no kidding, and no one who is criticizing gender segregation said otherwise. It’s the other way around: Universities UK are treating authority (in the person of the external speaker who demands segregated seating) as if it is not to be challenged. It is the protesters who are challenging that authority, and the authority of UUK, from the standpoint of universal rights, which is to say, rights common Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)