Tag: Gender segregation

  • Shohana Khan

    On the other hand there’s a post by Shohana Khan, Women’s Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir Britain. Her post is not a good post.

    Placard reading “we reject gender apartheid” waved at a winter evening protest. Fiery discussions about the imposition of medieval practices in Universities, unleashed in the media, as yet again another Muslim practice is in the firing line. The report issued by Universities UK which has allowed Islamic societies to practice voluntary gender separated seating in their events, has created uproar. Allowing this Islamic practice in UK Universities would be a travesty for women’s rights. Apparently.

    That’s a discouraging first paragraph. Demands for gender segregation at university public events is not “another Muslim practice.” It’s an Islamist practice. Islamists don’t represent all Muslims, nor do they speak for them. The report was not confined to events exclusive to Islamic societies; it was about public events; that’s exactly why there is outrage. (What the hell would Lawrence Krauss have been doing at an Islamic society event? He was at a UCL event.) The practice is not an Islamic practice, it’s an Islamist practice. That’s a lot of smokescreen for one paragraph. I’m starting to think maybe I shouldn’t trust anything she says.

    First let’s be clear that this voluntary gender separated seating, takes place in events that are specifically designed for Muslim students, for whom this practice is an integral part of their faith. If anything I remember from my days at university, is that the very purpose of these societies are to meet the extra curricular needs and interests of University students. Therefore if Muslim students attend Islamic society activities for this very reason, why on earth is this a problem?

    No. She’s flat wrong on that. The UCL event was organized by the iERA, but it was a public event. It was open to the public, not just to members.

    Why not ask the opinion of those Muslim women who organise and attend these events, rather than ask those hurling the accusations with no real standing in the Muslim community – Did they feel denied of an ability to participate? Did they feel stripped of respect and value in such events?

    Yes just ask the people who organized the event. That’s the way to sample opinions in “the Muslim community.”

    Then the fact that segregation is being facilitated between men and women, by men and women in Islamic societies, shows the commitment to cater for both genders. Discriminating against women would mean denying women entry, or any participation in the venue. Neither of these takes place. And what is forgotten is that women are also part of these societies, co-organising if not leading activities.  We are talking about separated seating, not patriarchy.

    And if they were all confined to a small dark room that would be ok too, because that wouldn’t be denying them entry. Absolutely. Nelson Mandela (whom she invokes) would be proud.

    She explains the excellent reasons for gender apartheid.

    Rather the concept of separating men and women in public spaces in Islam, is part of a wider objective. Islam has a societal view that the intimate relationship between a man and a woman is for the committed private sphere of marriage, and should not be allowed to spill outside of this sphere. This is because in society, men and women need to cooperate to achieve things in society whether in the work place, in education, in interactions across the public space. Islam firmly believes if the sexual instinct is let loose in this public sphere, it can taint and complicate these relationships. Therefore Islam promotes ideas such as honouring women which are upheld in society, but alongside such ideas specific rules and laws are implemented to help maintain the atmosphere of healthy interaction between the sexes. These rules aim to minimise the presence of this instinct in public life.  So minimising the mixing the interaction of the sexes in the public sphere unless necessary, the covering up of women and men through the Islamic dresscode, the prohibition of exploiting the sexuality of women in any profession, modelling to pornography, are all laws to help maintain an atmosphere in public life, where focus is not on the sexual element of women and men, but on the contributions they make.  The impact this has, and had in the history of the Islamic state, was that women were actually valued for their intellectual capability and what they could contribute regardless of gender, such as Fatima Al Fihri who founded the world’s first university in Morocco.

    Yes! And like Malala Yousafzai, and all the teachers and girls killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan for teaching or going to school. Like all the women beaten for not wearing hijab, or wearing it wrong. Like the women politicians and police chiefs in Afghanistan, killed for being…politicians and police chiefs. Yes, the Islamic loathing of “the sexual instinct” has been a beacon for women for centuries.

    Her bio at the end is…depressing.

    Shohana Khan is the Women’s Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir Britain. A graduate of English, she writes and blogs about issues affecting women in contemporary society and specialises in presenting Islam, as a societal alternative to them. She has written about issues affecting the Muslim community in the UK, including producing an open letter for MP Sarah Wollaston following her attack on the niqab (veil). She speaks at events and has debated feminism at a London University. She writes for the Huffington Post. She is married and has three children she homeschools. tweet her @ShohanaK

    She homeschools her children.

     

     

     

     

  • The assertion of religious political power

    The Telegraph reported on the gender segregation protest.

    Maryam Namazie, a researcher at the University of London and one of the organisers of the event, said that she has noticed a rise of Islamism across UK Universities that is not truly representing the views of most Muslims.   She said: “In the UUK’s efforts to be inclusive they are encouraging sexism and endorsing discrimination.

    “It’s about free speech and its about Islamists imposing their rules and projecting women as symbols of chaos in society.” 

    A whole host of speakers were at the protest that climaxed in the chanting of ‘shame on UUK’ directed at the organisation’s headquarters.

    There’s a picture of people at the protest above that passage, with Maryam in the foreground. (And trees overhead that look oddly leafy for December.)

    “Words cannot fully describe what I feel today,” said Pragna Patel, director of Southall Black Sisters, a feminist group. “Rage, indignation and sorrow are just some that spring to mind.” And she went on to say “that the assertion of religious political power obliterates the very ideas of liberty and equality that so many people lived for and died for”.

    ‘Separate but equal’ is not equal at all was the message being spread by protesters. And of course it isn’t. By pursuing the appeasement of these religious fundamentalists anyone is right to question where this might end?

    You would also be right to question why splitting people on race or sexuality would cause public outrage but splitting people on gender has received relatively little attention?

    Last night’s protest echoed much of what Nelson Mandela fought for. Ms Patel likened the two examples by saying that UUK’s justification for its actions was that it was “trying to uphold equalities law [but] this was the same defence they used for racial apartheid in South Africa”.

    Trying to uphold equalities law by throwing women overboard. Hmm.

    Two young women at the rally, from Oxbridge, were concerned about the progress of girls in higher education.

    Radha Bhatt, 19, a student at Cambridge University, said: “I am absolutely shocked and concerned that this segregation is still going on … the idea that Muslim leaders are uncomfortable with men and women sitting together and that UUK is appeasing them shows that they have a problem with co-education.”

    Geetanjali Normande, 20, from Oxford University, said: “It scares me that institutions like UUK which exist to represent universities and the student body find that it is acceptable to condone this. It sounds like they are so   far removed from what it is to be a student and to be told that you can’t sit where you want to in your lecture.

    “I grew up in a very religious background but my family are extremely supportive of me getting an education.”

    It’s only Universities UK that’s not so supportive.

     

     

  • Nicola Dandridge speaks

    I’ve just been listening to Today’s Today programme on UUK and gender segregation. I’ve got to run off so will post later but there it is for your listening pleasure fury. It starts just before 2 hrs 10.

    I find Dandridge simply astonishing. I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. Fortunately Justin Webb sounds almost as incredulous as I am, and he keeps pushing back.

    Jack Straw is very definite about what he thinks.

    The BBC and everyone really needs to stop saying UUK represents UK universities, because (if David Colqhoun is right, and I think he would know) it doesn’t, it represents the vice-chancellors, not the universities. That does make a difference.

    Dandridge actually seems to think that not acceding to an external speaker’s demand that the audience be segregated by gender is a violation of free speech. She certainly says that.

  • ‘Have the people who are likely to come to this event agreed to the segregation?’

    The BBC reports on UUK’s statement.

    Universities UK says it has today requested legal clarification from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

    In a letter, Universities UK which represents 132 institutions, has asked the Commission to consider having the issue clarified by the High Court, “or provide a clear and public statement about the law and the relevant policy considerations”.

    The row over the UUK guidance has sparked protests from students and some MPs.

    UUK actually doesn’t represent 132 institutions, it represents 132 vice-chancellors.

    Along with students and MPs the row has also sparked protests from journalists and activists and bystanders like me.

    Shadow business secretary Chukka Umunna told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme he was “horrified”.

    While former home secretary Jack Straw said it was “wrong” for universities “to indulge in such extraordinary behaviour”.

    That’s good. Jack Straw was terrible about the Danish Motoons; it’s good that he’s better on this subject.

    Ms Dandridge told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “We are not talking about universities enforcing segregation.

    “One of the questions that runs through our case study which illustrates this question is, ‘Is this segregation voluntary, have the people who are likely to come to this event agreed to the segregation?’

    “That is something that would be fundamentally important to the university in making a decision.

    She is so confused. Her question makes no sense. “‘Is this segregation voluntary, have the people who are likely to come to this event agreed to the segregation?’” She talks about “the people who are likely to come to this event” – in other words an unknown – and then talks about whether this unknown has agreed to the segregation or not. That does not work! This is not a set of people who have been asked for their agreement in advance. It’s an unknown set of people, and their “agreement” is simply being guessed at. She doesn’t even know what people are likely to come to the event! It could be a lot of curious secular people, or people who admire the opposition side in the debate. That whole claim is incoherent.

    “In practice if the people coming to this event said, ‘We do not want to segregate and separate out men and women,’ it is inconceivable that the university would impose it on them.

    Oh really? Because a lot of people going to the Krauss-Tzortzis debate did say exactly that, yet the segregation was imposed anyway. It was imposed by the organizers but the university did nothing to prevent it, or prevent it from being imposed.

    Ms Dandridge emphasised that the case study was about a very specific scenario: “We are not talking about teaching, lectures, the core business of universities.”

    She rejected comparisons to racial segregation.

    Well I reject her rejection.

    I am seriously tired of people cheerfully doing things to women that they wouldn’t in a million years do to Other Races.

    “It is not something which is so alien to our culture that it has to be regarded like race segregation.”

    Really? It’s not? People in the UK are quite accustomed to being told to sit with their own gender in public places? On buses, on the tube, in cinemas, at the theatre, in libraries, in restaurants?

    The hell they are. That kind of pious, squeamish, cootiephobic sorting is extremely alien to UK culture.

    Mr Umunna told Today a future Labour government would outlaw segregation on campus.

    “I was horrified by what I heard…

    “Let me be absolutely clear. A future Labour government would not allow or tolerate segregation in our universities.

    “It offends basic norms in our society.

    “Of course people should be free to practise their religion privately in places of worship and at religious events but universities are publicly funded places of research, learning and teaching and as such there is no place, in my view, for state-sponsored segregation.”

    See that, Minnow? Universities are publicly funded places. We didn’t make that up.

    Universities UK has today also published legal advice on its guidance from Fenella Morris QC which concludes that it “is lawful and provides an appropriate foundation for lawful decision-making by universities”.

    If Fenella Morris QC is correct then I hope Parliament changes that law quickly.

     

     

  • UUK speaks at last

    Universities UK has issued a press release on the gender segregation issue.

    Statement from Universities UK:

    Universities UK’s publication External speakers in higher education institutions aims to provide guidance to institutions in managing the process for inviting external speakers onto campus, both in terms of upholding principles of free speech, and also complying with the law. It was produced with significant input from a range of organisations and individuals (referenced in the full report) as well as extensive legal advice.

    The guidance is not prescriptive. It is intended to provide practical assistance to universities in making decisions about who they choose to invite to speak on campus, steering them through all the different considerations, legal and otherwise, that apply. Universities are independent institutions and will make decisions themselves on a case by case basis.

    The guidance includes a hypothetical case study (case study 2) involving an external speaker invited to talk about his orthodox religious faith, who had subsequently requested segregated seating areas for men and women. The case study considers the facts, the relevant law and the questions that the university should ask, and concludes that if neither women nor men were disadvantaged and a non-segregated seating area were also provided, it might in the specific circumstances of the case be appropriate for the university to agree to the request.

    Defensive. It’s guidance! There was extensive input! The guidance is not prescriptive! We were just trying to help! Universities are independent and they don’t have to listen to us anyway!

    And then they just recycle the same bullshit  – “and concludes that if neither women nor men were disadvantaged and a non-segregated seating area were also provided, it might in the specific circumstances of the case be appropriate for the university to agree to the request.” But the trouble with that of course is that UUK buys the ridiculous claim that formal pre-arranged gender segregation can possibly be anything other than disadvantageous to women. It ignores history, it ignores much of the world, it ignores reality. It ignores the obvious objection, which many many people raised: the objection that segregation of, say, Jews and non-Jews, or blacks and whites, or gay and straight, would not be “appropriate” even if there were a non-segregated seating area also provided. You may remember that Nick Cohen asked Nicola Dandridge about that point and her utterly dense reply was that Parliament had made racial segregation against the law. You may also remember that he asked her why is sex different then, and that she said “because it’s visible.” Yes really.

    The guidance does not promote gender segregation. When faced with requests for segregated seating, universities will consider all the circumstances: they will consider questions of disadvantage to men or women, and will inform themselves about the speaker’s views and the context of the event. Many, taking account of all factors, may legitimately refuse the request. It is for example very hard to see any university agreeing to a request for segregation that was not voluntary and did not have the broad support of those attending. But with different circumstances, as with the case study, the university may agree to it.

    No, UUK, it may not. Stop issuing “guidance” that says universities may accept discriminatory practices at the behest of external speakers who demand them on religious grounds. Just stop.

    The case study has generated considerable public concern and media coverage, some of which raised questions about our previous legal advice. In the light of that, we sought an opinion from senior counsel, Fenella Morris QC. We have now received her advice which confirms that the guidance is correct and provides an appropriate foundation for lawful decision-making. The advice is also clear that in adjudicating between conflicting priorities in relation to gender and religion, institutions have to balance a range of competing interests and strike a fair balance between them having regard to all the individual circumstances of each case. A copy of senior counsel’s advice is available at the link below (see notes).

    Given the continuing public concern we have also today written to the Equality and Human Rights Commission to request that they consider having the issue clarified by the High Court or provide a clear and public statement about the law and the relevant policy considerations in this area.

    That one sentence is…quite frightening.

    The advice is also clear that in adjudicating between conflicting priorities in relation to gender and religion, institutions have to balance a range of competing interests and strike a fair balance between them having regard to all the individual circumstances of each case.

    In other words universities have to “strike a fair balance” between theocracy and women’s rights. Jesus fucking christ.

     

  • Nick Cohen spurns the proffered compromise

    Nick Cohen has posted round 2 of his disagreement with Universities UK over its guidance on gender segregation.

    On the Today programme this morning Justin Webb covered the decision by Universities UK to allow fundamentalist speakers to segregate women from men at public meetings.

    With a characteristic disdain for accepted standards of behaviour, Universities UK refused to go on air and answer his questions. Webb had to ‘put the other side of the story’ himself. He told a Palestinian woman demonstrating outside Universities UK headquarters in central London, [1hr 36mins in] ‘What Universities UK say is, if non segregated seating is also provided it could be all right.’

    Put like that it can sound just about all right. Men and women who want to sit apart can do so. Meanwhile there will be mixed seating for students who find the notion of sexual apartheid as repellent as racial apartheid. A typically British compromise, you might say.

    I am not having a go at Webb. He delivered a fine report. Nor do I blame him for not understanding the Universities UK report on segregation – the academics write as if they learned English as a foreign language in an understaffed Brussels business school. But Webb, like many others, underestimates the extremism of the leaders of our institutes of “higher” learning.

    Hmm, I didn’t think Webb put that in a way sympathetic to UUK. He frankly sounded pretty repelled by the whole idea throughout the piece. I thought he was more feeding the Palestinian woman a line so that she could respond to it than arguing UUK’s case for them.

    To all of this Universities UK say: oh we’re just acting on legal advice. But as you can find lawyers who will say that black is white and 2 + 2 = 5, the question remains: is its legal advice any good? No one knows. Universities UK has not published its advice, and thus deprived feminist lawyers of the chance to examine it.

    It admitted to me, in the days when it was talking to journalists, that it was just acting on this mysterious advice. It accepted that no court had ruled on whether speakers can impose segregation. Even without judicial authority, however, it went ahead and upheld the supposed rights of speakers with a ‘genuinely held religious belief’.

    If you read the whole report, you discover a glaring double standard. When Universities UK moves on to discuss the rights of women, far more stringent criteria apply. It speculates that ‘feminism’ might be a ‘belief protected by the Equalities Act’. If it were, then maybe feminists could stop segregation. A terrible prospect, indeed. But Universities UK finds reassurance in the knowledge that no judge has ruled on the status of feminism.

    It’s so bizarre, isn’t it? The burden of proof isn’t on the people who want to stop segregation, it’s on the people who want to start it. Imagine some blowhard gets on a city bus and tells everyone, “men sit on the right, women on the left.” Would everyone jump to obey? Hardly! We don’t get to tell each other where to sit in public places, barring extreme situations such as someone who just fell into a pool of shit. People sitting wherever they damn well please is the default, and they don’t have to get a court ruling first. That’s not even feminism. It’s more just fuck off.

  • Channel 4 reported on the protest

    Channel 4 reported not just the protest but also the subject of the protest, and did it rather well, too.

    They talked to Maryam there. Meet Maryam!

    Chris Moos, a PhD student at the London School of Economics, who is attending the protest, told Channel 4 News: “What we want to achieve is for Universities UK to immediately rescind their guidelines condoning gender segregation, and issue guidelines that clearly lay out that any kind of segregation, whether under racist, cultural, religious, nationalistic or sexist pretences, is wrong and has no place in the public space.”

    Erin Marie Saltman, research project officer at Quilliam and PhD researcher at UCL (University College London), told Channel 4 News: “This is a bigger issue of racism of lower expectations, of avoidance.

    “There is a fear of offending the Muslim community but there are a lot of modern Muslims that would never allow gender segregation.”

    I was a little disappointed that the protest was fairly small, but channel 4′s reporting it makes up for that and then some. Well done Chris Moos and Maryam and all!

    In a statement, UUK said: “The guidance was approved by senior legal counsel as properly reflecting the law. It is not prescriptive. Universities are independent institutions and will make decisions on a case by case basis.

    “The guidance does not promote gender segregation. It includes a hypothetical case study involving an external speaker talking about his orthodox religious faith who had requested segregated seating areas for men and women.

    “The case study considered the facts, the relevant law and the questions that the university should ask, and concluded that if neither women nor men were disadvantaged and a non-segregated seating area also provided, a university could decide it is appropriate to agree to the request.”

    They just refuse to understand. Or pretend to. You can’t segregate women from men and then talk about that in terms of “if neither women nor men were disadvantaged” – being segregated is being disadvantaged. By itself. It doesn’t have to be in worse seats, or in the back, or farther away, or standing up, or hung upside down, or under a leak in the ceiling, or on broken glass. The segregation itself is disadvantageous. Separate is not equal. Get a fucking clue.

    Channel 4 talked to Saleem Chagtai of the iERA, and asked him quite assertively what gave him the right to demand segregation. Channel 4 was a lot tougher than the BBC would have been, I think.

     

     

  • What will they do if a Muslim female Mandela sits with the men?

    If you do go to that protest in Tavistock Square tomorrow, you might see Yasmin Alibhai-Brown there. She plans to go. She minces no words in her piece on the subject in the Independent.

    Sexist dress codes and other behaviours are being spread and pushed in British universities by retrograde Islamic societies and individuals, most of them men – though there are always willing maidens who say “yes, yes, yes” to such diktats. UUK upholds this apartheid and offers up nauseating justifications. It’s done in the name of free speech. Yes, really. “Concerns … [for the] beliefs of those opposed to segregation should not result in a religious group being prevented from having a debate in accordance with its belief systems.” Furthermore, staff should not worry unduly about the rights and wrongs of this small matter.

    Because it’s only women who are being shoved to the side. Women don’t count. Women don’t matter.

    What will they do if a Muslim female Mandela sits with the men? Will they carry her out and throw her down the steps? Some preachers on campus are today telling women to get back into the home, to get out of public life. Muslim women in jeans or with hair uncovered have been asked to leave lecture rooms by clothes vigilantes. Two Muslim LSE students harangued me for my unholy attire and views just a month back. Such guidelines, in effect, endorse the most offensive prejudices about women: that they are a social and moral peril and if they sit with men, pornographic fantasies or molestations will make it impossible for anyone to concentrate on lectures, say, on Plato or the Life of the Prophet.

    I’ve spent my entire life in jeans with my hair uncovered. I’m lucky that way.

    Throngs of students, academics, parents, politicians, and feminists should fill Tavistock Square and shout out loud. Not that they will, what with Christmas shopping and perhaps inchoate fears. Various student unions roll over, again and again, before Islamicists and their outrageous demands – backing full veils, speeches by Wahabis – and thus far, there has been no clear condemnation from the NUS of this disgraceful document penned by the deluded UUK. This latest capitulation is a disaster for feminism, for university life, for modernism, for progressive ideals and for Muslims  most of all.

    Muslim educational achievements are so abysmally low because our educators do not liberate them from dark age interpretations of Islam but rather encourage them. (Perhaps it’s a cunning plot to keep them down and out of mainstream life!) I know of female medical students – three Muslim and one Orthodox Jew – who will not touch male patients, of all-male religious professional networks and even worse examples.

    Backward backward backward into the darkness.

     

     

     

  • A revival in adherence to normative Islamic practices

    The iERA, the Islamic Education and Research Academy, has issued a press release agreeing (surprise surprise!) with UUK’s guidelines on girl cooties gender segregation. Tl; dr: it’s religious freedom, it’s great.

    The debate about separation came to the fore earlier this year at an iERA event entitled: “Islam or Atheism: Which Makes More Sense?” between Hamza Tzortzis and Professor Lawrence Krauss at the University College of London (UCL) on 9th March 2013. UCL subsequently refused to take any further bookings from iERA, accusing them of “forced segregation”.

    iERA later released its own findings of an externally supervised investigation into the accusation of forced gender segregation at the debate. The investigation concluded that there was no such policy or evidence that it occurred on the night. Rather, in line with its duties under the Equality Act 2010, iERA had attempted to provide for the needs of all attendees by providing separate areas of seating for men and women (for those that wished to adhere to their deeply-held religious beliefs) as well as a mixed seating area.

    Leaving aside the fact that it wasn’t just “providing,” it was enforcing, that is still a worthless attempt at justification. As many of us have pointed out ad nauseam in the last few days, you could just as easily talk of providing separate areas of seating for whites and blacks (for those that wished to adhere to their deeply-held religious beliefs), or for Jews and Gentiles (for those that wished to adhere to their deeply-held religious beliefs), or for straights and gays, or for those with university degrees and those without. You could, and it would be wrong in all cases. Citing “deeply-held religious beliefs” as an excuse is beside the point, and an unsubtle form of theocratic bullying.

    Abdurraheem Green, Chairman of iERA, stated: “With a growing number of Muslims countries seeing a revival in adherence to normative Islamic practices, the idea of being forced to sit with people of the opposite sex and observing the adoption of anti-Islamic policies by British Universities might well lead many to avoid choosing this country to further their education. Such behaviour is not in the economic interests of universities or indeed the country as a whole. iERA as an organisation is known and respected throughout the Muslim world for its work in inviting people to Islam. Hearing of iERA being banned from UCL and other universities certainly does not send a positive message about how welcome they will be to study in this country.”

    Ah yes, there you have it – a growing number of Muslim countries seeing a revival in adherence to normative Islamic practices, and a growing number of fans of that revival doing everything they can to foster and impose it everywhere else in the world.

    No thank you. No normative theistic practices of any kind, thank you, not in the public sphere. Revive in your living rooms and your mosques or churches all you want, but not in the shared public space.

  • And still no response from UUK

    The Universities UK blog continues to get strongly critical comments on Nicola Dandridge’s post defending its position on gender segregation. It also continues not to reply to any of them.

    The latest is by Chris Moos, summing up the state of play.

    43 comments, each and every one of them negative. And still no response from UUK.. Who is charge of PR again? or is everyone too busy writing reports that figure out how to [defend?] other kinds of segregation practices?

    There’s also one from a University of Manchester physicist.

    UUK: Perhaps you might like to take a look at the top of this page where you say:

    “We are the representative organisation for the UK’s universities”

    No you are not. You have just abdicated any right to be regarded as a respected organisation as a result of your astonishing Kristallnacht against women in UK, in 2013. Unbelievable!

    So take away that header please, and stop insulting us.

    Zing.

  • Swimming in Tukwila

    Jeez, even here in Seattle. Although this time it’s about women-only (and sometimes also men-only) times at municipal swimming pools. That’s a bit of a special case, in a way, since it requires being sparsely dressed. But…it’s also the thin end of the slippery nose under the tent. Wait, that’s not quite right…

    Earlier this month, a resident filed a gender-discrimination complaint with the state Human Rights Commission (HRC), challenging not the women’s swim time at the Tukwila pool but the men-only component, after she said she was unable to accompany and supervise her 11-year-old son there.

    Last Thursday, the HRC closed the complaint, saying that since the pool offers swim times for both women and men, no gender discrimination exists under state law. The pool also offers swim times for families.

    Although the ruling clears Tukwila, it raises a legal question for other cities and programs that offer women-only swims without a male-only option.

    Laura Lindstrand, policy analyst for the Human Rights Commission, said it’s possible such a facility  could be in violation of state law. “We would need to closely look at the facility’s reasoning for having such a policy,” she said.

    Because god, comes the reply.

    But such legal matters were far from the minds of the more than two dozen women — many dressed in the Islamic hijab — and a handful of men as they spoke emotionally to commissioners in Tukwila about how they and their families use the pool.

    “This isn’t just something I’m doing,” Farole said. “ It’s a commandment from God; men and women are not to mix together. That’s my religious belief.”

    Ah. Well in that case you’ll have to do your swimming at the mosque, because city governments don’t take commandments from God.

    Councilmember Dennis Robertson said while he understood the need for the single-gender swim times, city officials needed to be careful not to contribute to gender inequality. “It’s not what this country is about,” he said.

    The arguments being used to support single-gender swim times were used to justify racial segregation in the South, he said. “We are walking on dangerous grounds here,” he said.

    Carroll, who also spoke, echoed that position.

    Their comments worried Farole and the other women who at last week’s meeting submitted petitions bearing 132 signatures defending the program.

    “For the first time as a resident I felt unwelcome,” Farole said.

    But after listening to the women, Robertson appeared to be walking back his earlier position on the women-only swim times.

    While he pointed out that many business deals historically have been made in settings where women have been denied access, Robertson said it’s clear this is not one of those settings.

    “It’s easy to jump to conclusions, and I jumped to the conclusion about what this might mean,” he said.

    Carroll said her main concern is that young Muslim women feel they cannot be safe around men in a community where she lives.

    “If I was convinced we were initiating women-only swims to empower women, I would be very happy about it,” she said. “But I fear that we are just introducing the 21st-century version of more marginalization.”

    In the end, there appeared  to be reason for optimism, from all sides.

    Commissioners announced the single-gender swims would continue at the pool, and Carroll and some of the women and men discussed their differences.

    I dunno. I’m not crazy about it, but I don’t feel anything like as strongly as I do about gender segregation of public debates and other public functions at universities, as if women are so fragile they can’t ever be around men at all.

  • The gender segregation stipulated by Islam is not implemented

    This is an interesting example, from Germany in January 2012.

    A German man has created a new website to arrange shared car trips with a twist – it’s targeted toward Muslims, and drivers can only offer transport to members of the same sex.

    Called Muslimtaxi.de, the site is based on the same principle as other popular websites like mitfahrgelegenheit.de , which lets cost-conscious Germans arrange shared car rides.

    Those interested in offering rides specify their gender, asking price and how many passengers they can accommodate. Potential passengers contact the driver directly.

    …

    In operation since late last year, the website has attracted its share of criticism. People have accused Reid of trying to create a parallel society and supporting immigrants who don’t want to integrate in German culture.

    But Reid says the response from thousands of grateful riders has showed him he’s filling a niche.

    “Many Muslim brothers and sisters complained that they can’t use conventional offers because the gender segregation stipulated by Islam is not implemented,” he added.

    I do like to see the niches created by stupid bigotry filled by enterprising go-getters like that.

  • Universities once barred women altogether

    Polly Toynbee also objects to UUK’s separate-but-equal policy.

    Separate but equal; where have we heard that before? Apartheid South Africa is no metaphor for anything else, but women of my generation and all those before were told over and over again that the sexes are different “but equal”, as an excuse for excluding them from places they didn’t belong: they should be doing “separate but equal” in the kitchen, bedroom and nursery. Whatever is segregated by diktat is rarely equal.

    And not just our generation and older, but younger generations too; women are still told that. That is still official Vatican dogma – women are equal but “complementary” – women are equal but different, and they must not try to abandon their True Nature™.

    Universities once barred women altogether. Now they strive to be emblems of enlightenment, temples to reason, equality, free speech and freedom of thought. But it’s not easy to balance conflicting freedoms. Universities UK, their representative body, has just published 40 pages of guidelines on External Speakers in Higher Education Institutions, wriggling and writhing over competing freedoms for women versus not causing religious offence: it ends up with excruciating nonsense.

    Some students may want a “no platform” policy for speakers they find obnoxious – the BNP or members of unsavoury governments. Demonstrating opposition is a freedom, but banning or yelling down free expression within the law is a denial of freedom. However, Universities UK’s guidelines give the sexist eccentricities of some religions priority over women’s rights, by allowing religious speakers the right to demand women and men are segregated in the lecture hall.

    The right to demand and have their demand satisfied.

    The compromise is that women can’t be put at the back: “The room can be segregated left and right, rather than front and back.” Depressingly, the National Union of Students has endorsed this. What’s wrong with “side by side” segregation? Just ask how that would look if universities allowed speakers to demand separation by race.

    Muslim speakers demand segregation to make a very public point about their belief in women’s “separate” role in the universe, one step behind a man, even in a place of learning. After all, as Maryam Namazie, head of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, says, the speakers and the audience have all travelled there on trains and buses that are not segregated. Mosques and synagogues may hide women out of sight, but by agreeing not to “offend”, the universities condone what they should confront.

    And so far, at least, there’s no sign that they’re listening to the objections.

  • Rory Fenton condemns

    At the New Humanist, Rory Fenton says no thank you.

    It is astounding how quickly we forget or wilfully ignore that human rights are there to protect people – not beliefs. At the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, of which I’m president, we increasingly see this confused notion of rights being applied on UK campuses. Whether it’s our student groups intimidated for “blasphemy”, as at LSE and Reading, or religious societies refusing unmarried women permission to speak, as at Bristol, this trumping of individual rights by the supposed rights of “beliefs” is increasingly common.

    …

    …nestled in the report was a bizarre and backward recommendation; universities should be willing to enforce sex segregation between male and female audience members if a speaker requests it.

    The report’s peculiar logic ran as follows: speakers have the right to free speech but if their demands for sex segregation are not met they will refuse to speak. Therefore to not enforce sex segregation is to deny the speakers’ freedom of speech. The report is careful only to endorse the ‘nice’ kind of segregation with men and women split on the left and right hand sides of a lecture theatre rather than front and back, the logic here being that men and women are being treated ‘equally separately’, whatever that means.

    That it’s equally insulting to both of them?

    That wouldn’t be much of a recommendation if it were true, but it’s not true. So yeah, whatever does that mean?

    This logic has echoes of the old racially segregated Deep South of the United States; separate but equal. To argue that segregation is not inherently unequal is to fail to see just why men and women are being kept apart in the first place; this drive for segregation stems from ideologies that view women as very much inferior to men. To allow these ideologies power in UK universities is to betray hard-won individual rights and the principle that in public spaces all must be treated equally. Separate is never equal.

    That is correct. And it makes me very, very angry that UK university vice-chancellors are just flinging all that away.

    The report goes as far as to say that non-religious beliefs, such as feminism, should take second place to “sincerely held” religious beliefs. That’s right; the mere fact that they are religious makes some beliefs more important than others because, of course, Feminist can’t be sincere in their beliefs.

    Because those “beliefs” are secular, so they can’t be “sincerely held.” They can only be held, loosely and kind of sloppily, the way secular people do.

    The Universities UK report focuses on sex because it’s an issue that has come up before but there is no reason for its logic to stop there. If a racist is invited to speak – should he not have the audience forcibly segregated into whites and non-whites? What if his beliefs are really “sincerely held”? Could the EDL insist on all Muslim students sitting separately? Of course Universities UK would never support this.

    Just what I keep saying! I said it on their horrible blog post, too. I hope they (or rather, Nicola Dandridge) answer (answers).

  • BHA condemns

    The BHA condemns Universities UK’s guidelines on gender segregation.

    BHA Head of Public Affairs Pavan Dhaliwal commented that ‘Universities are secular institutions, not places of worship, and sex segregation should have no place in secular spaces in which we expect to find equality between men and women.  It would be completely unacceptable if a visiting speaker tried to segregate an audience along racial lines, so sex segregation should be equally unacceptable.  Universities UK have characterised this as a freedom of speech issue, but this is misleading.  A visiting speaker’s right to freedom of speech entitles them to express their political and religious views, but not to impose these views on the audience.’

    Damn right. If it’s obviously unacceptable on racial grounds, which it is, why is it acceptable on gender grounds?

    It isn’t.

     

  • They have to be separated in school

    Thurgood Marshall arguing Brown v Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1953.

    I got the feeling on hearing the discussion yesterday that when you put a white child in a school with a whole lot of colored children, the child would fall apart or something. Everybody knows that is not true.  Those same kids in Virginia and South Carolina – and I have seen them do it – they play in the streets together, they play on their farms together, they go down the road together, they separate to go to school, they come out of school and play ball together. They have to be separated in school. There is some magic to it. You can have them voting together, you can have them not restricted because of law in the houses they live in. You can have them going to the same state university and the same college, but if they go to elementary and high school, the world will fall apart.

    Cooties cooties cooties! Separate them or ew ew ew.

    They can’t take race out of this case. From the day this case was filed until this moment, nobody has in any form or fashion, despite the fact I made it clear in the opening argument that I was relying on it, done anything to distinguish this statute from the Black Codes, which they must admit, because nobody can dispute, say anything anybody wants to say, one way or the other, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to deprive the states of power to enforce Black Codes or anything else like it.

    We charge that they are Black Codes. They obviously are Black Codes if you read them. They haven’t denied that they are Black Codes, so if the Court wants to very narrowly decide this case, they can decide it on that point.

    And what are Black Codes? Post-Civil War laws passed to keep slavery in all but name.

    So whichever way it is done, the only way that this Court can decide this case in opposition to our position, is that there must be some reason which gives the state the right to make a classification that they can make in regard to nothing else in regard to Negroes, and we submit the only way to arrive at that decision is to find that for some reason Negroes are inferior to all other human beings.

    And that is why separate is not equal.

  • How to ensure that no one is unlawfully excluded

    Nicola Dandridge of Universities UK has written a blog post explaining that UUK is not promoting gender segregation. That’s nice, but I don’t know of anyone who said it was. The objection is that UUK is treating gender segregation as permissible, and that it said it’s not unequal.

    Since its publication, there has been some public debate on a small component of the guidance: a hypothetical case study (p.27) in which an external speaker on faith in the modern world requests that the audience is segregated according to gender. The case study reflects the challenges of accommodating everyone’s views, from those whose religious beliefs require them to sit separately with their own gender, to those who wish to sit with the opposite gender – hence the mixed seating alternative which is part of the solution in this case study. The issue is how to ensure that no one is unlawfully excluded from the event.

    Ah that’s sneaky. The case study reflects the challenges of accommodating everyone’s views, from those whose religious beliefs require them to sit separately with their own gender – no no no, it’s not that easy. The religious beliefs “require” that everyone sit with her or his own gender. It is not a matter just of what I am required to do, it’s a matter of what others are “required” to do, and of the right of the male speaker to “require” it of everyone who attends the lecture, including people who share his religion but not his reactionary version of it, and people who don’t share his religion. Dandridge frames it as a matter of allowing people to obey their own religious “requirements” but ignores the issue of forcing other people to obey “requirements” that 1) are not theirs and 2) are on the face of it obnoxiously and impertinently discriminatory.

    Suppose a white guest speaker says her religion “requires” white people to sit with white people and black people to sit with black people. I wonder if Dandridge would phrase that as “The case study reflects the challenges of accommodating everyone’s views, from those whose religious beliefs require them to sit separately with their own race, to those who wish to sit with the opposite race.” I wonder if she would feel more squeamish about that; I wonder if she would say it at all. My guess is that she would feel more squeamish and wouldn’t say it.

    And nobody is “unlawfully excluded from the event” on the basis that she describes. A racist is not unlawfully excluded from the event if the racist says her religion requires racial segregation and the university refuses to arrange any such segregation. The racist can still attend the event; she is not excluded; she is simply not granted an unreasonable and malevolent demand.

    Universities have a vital role to play in securing free speech and promoting debate. This practical guidance has been developed to ensure that as many debates as possible on sensitive and emotive issues can continue to take place. By promoting free speech and open debate the rights or wrongs of gender segregation can be challenged and discussed.

    Bollocks. We can perfectly well challenge and discuss the rights or wrongs of gender segregation, and racial and ethnic and religious segregation, without putting the actual segregation into effect. We can also, frankly, perfectly well treat some questions as settled and just fucking move on. We don’t need to challenge and discuss the rights and wrongs of genocide, and we really don’t need to challenge and discuss the rights and wrongs of gender versions of Jim Crow laws.

     

  • He “knew it was not appropriate to sit next to women”

    What a claustrophobic mind we see in this post claiming that Maryam’s petition against Universities UK’s guidelines that allow sexual segregation at the behest of guest speakers is “Islamophobic.”

    Petition site Avaaz are running asking people to condemn Universities UK’s statement on sex segregation in events held on campus. Please DON’T sign it. It might use intellectual language, but its both factually dubious and distinctly Islamphobic.

    First, its worth pointing out that the lectures and visiting lecturers being talked about are student-organised speaking events. They are not course lectures. Allowing such meetings to take place on campus is an important part of encouraging debate and widening participation in Higher Education. Furthermore, it allows Muslim women to meet and discuss their issues.

    Wait. How does allowing sexual segregation at the behest of guest speakers “[allow] Muslim women to meet and discuss their issues”? Are Muslim women otherwise not allowed to meet and discuss their issues? Do UK universities forbid Muslim women to meet and discuss their issues at debates and lectures where the audience is not segregated? Of course they don’t. Muslim women are allowed to meet and discuss their issues on the same terms that anyone else is. Universities are not in the business of making special rules and exclusions for particular groups.

    If Muslim women aren’t “allowed” to meet and discuss except when they are segregated from men then Muslim women also aren’t “allowed” to take buses or the tube, walk on the pavement, stroll through the park, shop at Waitrose or Boots, go to the pub or a café, go to concerts or plays or movies – have jobs, go to the hospital, have a bank account, have friends. On those terms they aren’t “allowed” to take part in contemporary life at all. They might as well be buried. Fortunately UK universities don’t impose such a regime.

    I’m a graduate of the University of Bradford – I have attended lectures that were segregated. It was done in a very simple and largely organic way – I knew it was not appropriate to sit next to women, so I sat on the side of the central aisle where the men were congregating. We didn’t actually have curtains or anything, and in a culture where people socialise amongst their own sex, its not surprising that friends sitting together looks pretty segregated right away.

    Way to internalize the viciously illiberal rules. It was not “appropriate” to sit next to women? A culture where people socialise amongst their own sex? Terrific: a world where women and men are strangers to each other, and women get less and worse of everything.

    In allowing its website to be used to petition against the right of Islamic Societies to determine the running of their own meetings, Avaaz is endorsing cultural imperialism and side-lining of an entire culture within our Universities.

    As I understand it the guidelines are not about meetings of societies but about public debates and lectures – debates and lectures that are open to anyone who wants to attend.

    You can call it “cultural imperialism” to have one set of rules for everyone if you want to, but it’s a perverse and reactionary move. The expectation of equality doesn’t have much in common with imperialism.

    The petition represents an attempt to force Western culture into the meetings and events of women and men who subscribe to another culture.

    That assumes that all Muslims subscribe to gender segregation, which is complete bullshit. Not all Muslims do, and plenty of Muslims find that assumption highly insulting. Plenty of non-”Western” people find it massively insulting when Westerners put all the good things under the sign “Western” and assume that everyone in the east and south shares a monolithically reactionary culture.

    Never underestimate the ability of White Men to use Women of Colour as a means to espouse racism and cultural superiority.

    That’s cute, when it’s Maryam who drew up the petition. Ignore her why doncha.

    Looking down the list of initial signatories, it is clear that this is an attempt at religion bashing by some of the most reactionary pupils of ‘Western Enlightenment’ thinking.

    Oh right, such as Deeyah Khan, Gita Sahgal, Harsh Kapoor, Mina Ahadi, Nahla Mahmoud, Pragna Patel…

    They are not the reactionaries here.

     

     

  • The confusion thickens

    The Independent seems to have a very bizarre understanding of the Universities UK guidance on how to manage guest speakers.

    The document comes out in the wake of a number of incidents where freedom of speech has been threatened – in particular an Egyptian speaker at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies was forced to abandon a speech largely because of protests from the Muslim Brotherhood.

    In addition, research by Student Rights, a pro-equality group, shows that there were 180 cases of radical preachers speaking at university events in the year up to March 2013. It shows some ways in which freedom of speech can be preserved even if the speaker is controversial – such as segregating different sections into different parts of the room as in the case of an ultra-right religious speaker arousing protests from feminists. (In a recent case, a speaker at University College London insisted the audience be segregated before he agreed to speak).

    What? The Independent thinks the issue is that segregation is a tool to preserve free speech from being prevented? But the speaker didn’t demand that protesters be segregated, he demanded that women be segregated. And how would segregating protesters help anyway? Unless you segregated them all the way out of the building and into a different one.

    The Student Rights research showed that in a quarter of the 180 cases segregated seating for men and women was promoted. It described the practice as “a widespread trend”.

    The document argues this could be acceptable – but organisers would have to be sure they did not breach equality laws by, say, putting the feminists at a disadvantage at the back of the room. “Segregation in the context of the facts outlined above would only be discriminatory on the grounds of sex if it amounts to ‘less favourable treatment’ of either the female or male attendees,” it concludes.

    Godalmighty – the author, Richard Garner, really is that confused – he seems to think it was the feminists who were segregated, and that they were segregated as a way to defuse their potential protest. Yeesh. It wasn’t the feminists, it was the women. The segregation wasn’t “feminists here, normal people there” – it was “women here, men there.” Men can be feminists, and women can be not feminists.

    Also…really? He thinks that would fly? “New university policy – segregate the feminists, to preserver order and free speech.” Even the deeply addled UK vice-chancellors would probably spot the problem with that idea.

  • Let’s relive Plessy v Ferguson, only Plessy’s a woman

    Helen Dale pointed out in a comment on my Facebook post that the UK Universities are paraphrasing Plessy v Ferguson, with sex switched in for race. Yeah. Plessy was decided in 1896. Brown v Board of Education overturned Plessy.

    Right, let’s have a bit of Plessy v Ferguson, courtesy of Cornell.

    The object of the [14th] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of States where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.

    So the vice-chancellors of UK universities take the same view of women, in 2013, that the majority on the Court took of race in 1896. How very impressive.