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 again, now that we know she was unaware of the December 10 protest.
For us, it is especially difficult to practise a commitment to gender equality and social change in a context so heavily shaped by an intolerant Western ‘liberalism’ passing itself off as ‘secular’, ‘enlightened’ and more knowing-than-thou.
I want to raise this because of the deft way in which Student Rights, an offshoot of the bullishly paternalist Euro-American think tank, the Henry Jackson Society, has managed to bring ‘gender segregation’ at some campus events to national attention despite evidence that events in which the audience is so segregated are not numerous.
See? The link in “to national attention” is to channel 4′s story on the protest – it even says that in the url. Yet Gopal apparently somehow managed to miss it, and didn’t watch the channel 4 story. That’s unfortunate for her, because the Henry Jackson Society and Student Rights had nothing to do with the protest. The protest was organized by LSESU ASH and Maryam Namazie.
So the major premise of Gopal’s article is flat wrong, and thus the juddering incoherence of the whole thing is explained.
Nick and LSESU ASH were both asking for an apology from Gopal, on Twitter. She accused Nick of “white boy muscular liberalism” by way of reply. Hmm.