They are appalled
This isn’t the students, this is the adults – the academic staff. This is the adults talking silly childish jargon and pulling their hair out in clumps because someone says men are not women.
Tip Jar
This isn’t the students, this is the adults – the academic staff. This is the adults talking silly childish jargon and pulling their hair out in clumps because someone says men are not women.
I wonder if they’d respond the same way to an Atheist group hosting a film questioning the various beliefs of the worlds great religions. I’m sure there were a few instances of Atheist talks being cancelled to avoid offending religious sensibilities back in the mid to late noughties, but I don’t know if it happens much anymore. These organisations are making fools of themselves, it’s like they’ve moved on from protecting religious sensibilities to protecting trans sensibilities without realising how silly it makes them look privileging magical thinking over materialistic thinking.
where every individual, student or staff member can feel safe and appreciated
Including Julie Bindel?
VanitysFiend, I can’t imagine atheist talks being cancelled to avoid offending religious sensibilities in the UK though. The deference which is given to trans is something special.
Don’t know about the UK, but in the US this is still a thing.
As for universities being a safe place, I agree. They should be safe from rape, from exploitation, from violence. Alas and alack, universities are doing little more than lip service to the form of safety they should practice (except in science labs where the levels of safety exceed the ridiculous, like wearing goggles when you’re just having a paper exercise, but it happens to be in the lab room).
Trans “safety” however, is not like safety at all. Trans are kept safe from the things other protected groups are, which means only imperfectly. But trans activism isn’t paying attention to that. It is trying to protect students from hearing reality expressed.
If everyone is protected from hearing ideas they don’t like, then education is dead.
Iknklast, I’ve always had science teachers and lecturers decry that, because if you are taking the same safety precautions over sugar water and genuinely dangerous reagents, you’re going to get sloppy with the strong stuff.
Yes, and I agree in some ways. But telling students to pull their hair back and wear goggles when they are working a PAPER exercise just gets them to see the regulations as silly. They don’t take any of it seriously.
I just watched the film. It’s mostly just talking heads with a few sometimes awkward special effects thrown in, but still worth seeing. It’s worth seeing even if you believe TWAW, so you understand the concerns. I’ve read enough of the other side to guess what they’d object to, and why. You can find it here:
https://adulthumanfemale.info/
Sometimes hyperbole like this makes it harder to maintain my natural sympathy and respect for trans ppl because it diminishes their stature. Instead of ordinary human beings struggling with difficult problems and searching for meaning and happiness, they start to sound like emotional basket cases on the verge of a breakdown, incapable of coping with disagreement or thinking straight. They, on the other hand, seem to think this fragility ought to move our sympathy for what must surely be such a horrible situation it would break down even the strongest.
I’m reminded of a time when PZ announced he was going to desecrate a blessed communion wafer and this got picked up by some online Catholic groups. The devout started pouring into the comment section of Pharyngula in various stages of distress. One overwrought woman informed us that treating the Consecrated Host with disrespect caused her so much anguish that she’d rather her 6 year old daughter was raped, then for that to happen. That little revelation didn’t inspire pity. It inspired contempt for the system, yes — but also for her. She’d lost her perspective.
Thinking about this, I’m starting to wonder how the transgender-identified male would deal with this Sophie’s Choice. Would they rather 1) be socially thought of as men who believe they’re woman and consequently denied a right to enter at least some single-sex spaces or 2.) be raped, beaten, and left for dead? If they honestly think it’s the latter, well, I think they ought to sort out their priorities, as Ron would say.
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But there’s no such thing as cancel culture! It’s a right-wing myth!
When men’s feelings are at risk, the concern pours out in their favor, doesn’t it?
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.