4 ms·

Quite. For example, recently a student's union refused to let Julie Bindel speak there because of her successful campaign to deny trans women access to rape and

by makomk 11y ago

Quite. For example, recently a student's union refused to let Julie Bindel speak there because of her successful campaign to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. How childish! Instead, they should have let the proposed debate about whether her evil opponents who just wanted to censor her for no reason were representative of feminism as a whole or not go ahead. Of course, the press didn't bother to mention these details, just like they never covered the very special exemption added to UK anti-discrimination law to allow this and how exactly it got there, but obviously it's the students who are pretending these issues don't exist. (This was, incidentally, one of the highest profile instances of UK students' supposed infantalisation and refusal to accept the real world exists.)

lucozade 11y ago
Disagreeing with her isn't infantile. Opposing her isn't infantile. It may even not be infantile to prevent her from speaking. YMMV. But, as you point out, the effect is that those who would have heard her are now relying on mainstream media for an interpretation of her views. All of a sudden she is a victim and a champion of the repressed. So maybe not infantile but, at the very least, naive.
- makomk 11y ago
  The students wrote an announcement explaining why she wasn't welcome. Didn't matter. Many of the people who were supposedly "silencing" her and all the rest actually linked to their views and encouraged people to read them; I know there was a copy of Bindel's articles kicking around the LGBT society when I was a student for that reason. Didn't stop the press from spinning it as an attempt to silence them and prevent people hearing their views whilst making sure not to inform readers what those views are. I fail to see how letting Bindel spin herself as a victim and a champion of the repressed in person, at an event set up with an opponent who was on the same side as her on this, would do anything to stop this. (I think someone did manage to debate Bindel on trans rights and trounce her a few years back, after which she went back to her Guardian column and penned an attack on them which reached a much broader audience than anything in the debate. Not a useful tactic.)
  - lucozade 11y ago
    > I fail to see how letting Bindel spin ... would do anything to stop this But that's the thing though. By not letting her speak this turned from an issue on trans-gender rights, for which Bindel is extreme in a way that doesn't endear her to anyone much, to an issue of freedom of expression. Now, not coincidentally, freedom of expression is a subject that an awful lot of media editors are going to give an awful lot of air time to. And they're all going to be on her side. And they're all going to avoid going into detail on what she was banned for because it detracts from their argument. Saying that they explained their reasoning is a bit like yelling over your shoulder why the goal should have been disallowed as you take your ball home. It might make you feel more justified but it'll hardly improve the perception of maturity.
DanBC 11y ago
> Julie Bindel speak there because of her successful campaign to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. [...] > just like they never covered the very special exemption added to UK anti-discrimination law to allow this and how exactly it got there, Rape and domestic violence centres have always been given exclusions in discrimination law, from the 1970s sex discrimination act through all the statutory instruments and duties (eg Gender Equality Duty). But that's not a blanket right to exclude trans-people - a SARC can not just say "no trans people". The exclusion has to be a proportionate response to achieve something reasonable. The Code of Practice for the act is very clear: >> “Service providers should be aware that where a transsexual person is visually and for all practical purposes indistinguishable from a non-transsexual person of that gender, they should normally be treated according to their acquired gender, unless there are strong reasons to the contrary. >> As stated at the beginning of this chapter, any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances.” But most SARCs do not exclude men or transpeople, many on this list specifically mention that men can be the victims of rape and sexual assault and that men are able to use the services. http://thesurvivorstrust.org/sarc/ http://thesurvivorstrust.org/sarc/ The real problem is the tiny number of SARCs available - if more were available some could specialise on services for transpeople, on services for men, and services for women.
- makomk 11y ago
  I'm not sure how legal it is to set up a service in the UK that only serves trans people - the legal exemption in question is at least partly one-way. It's definitely not legal to prefer to hire trans women on the basis that other trans women are more likely to be comfortable speaking to them, because the exemption allowing rape counseling services to only hire cis women for the same reason very definitely and specifically does not apply in the other direction. (Requiring that they at least think of trans women as women is probably legal and hopefully wouldn't fall foul of the indirect discrimination provision, maybe.) Also, that Code of Practice is the result of a change of government and a fairly intensive lobbying campaign by trans activists to reduce the damage done by the exemption. It was originally intended to be much broader in application. From the original explanatory notes: "A group counselling session is provided for female victims of sexual assault. The organisers do not allow transsexual people to attend as they judge that the clients who attend the group session are unlikely to do so if a male-to-female transsexual person was also there. This would be lawful." That is, originally it was intended to allow rape and domestic violence services to exclude all trans women as a class because they believe that some cis women wouldn't want to attend if they were there. This is a common belief amongst a certain group of vocal feminist activists who think trans women are men and run government-funded services. Note that there's no requirement that clients are actually unwilling to attend, just that the organizers think they would be. I think they also intended this to apply this to one-on-one counseling on the basis that women would have to share a waiting room. This was also a rollback in protection for some trans women, because the law on Gender Recognition Certificates didn't permit this. Any future Governemnt can trivially change the Code of Practice back too; don't think it'd even require a vote in Parliament. (The reason trans people got added to anti-discrimination law at all is because the European Court of Human Rights ruled they had to be. There was some pretty impressive foot-dragging on implementing that too.)

by makomk 11y ago

lucozade 11y ago

Disagreeing with her isn't infantile. Opposing her isn't infantile. It may even not be infantile to prevent her from speaking. YMMV. But, as you point out, the effect is that those who would have heard her are now relying on mainstream media for an interpretation of her views. All of a sudden she is a victim and a champion of the repressed. So maybe not infantile but, at the very least, naive.

makomk 11y ago
The students wrote an announcement explaining why she wasn't welcome. Didn't matter. Many of the people who were supposedly "silencing" her and all the rest actually linked to their views and encouraged people to read them; I know there was a copy of Bindel's articles kicking around the LGBT society when I was a student for that reason. Didn't stop the press from spinning it as an attempt to silence them and prevent people hearing their views whilst making sure not to inform readers what those views are. I fail to see how letting Bindel spin herself as a victim and a champion of the repressed in person, at an event set up with an opponent who was on the same side as her on this, would do anything to stop this. (I think someone did manage to debate Bindel on trans rights and trounce her a few years back, after which she went back to her Guardian column and penned an attack on them which reached a much broader audience than anything in the debate. Not a useful tactic.)
- lucozade 11y ago
  > I fail to see how letting Bindel spin ... would do anything to stop this But that's the thing though. By not letting her speak this turned from an issue on trans-gender rights, for which Bindel is extreme in a way that doesn't endear her to anyone much, to an issue of freedom of expression. Now, not coincidentally, freedom of expression is a subject that an awful lot of media editors are going to give an awful lot of air time to. And they're all going to be on her side. And they're all going to avoid going into detail on what she was banned for because it detracts from their argument. Saying that they explained their reasoning is a bit like yelling over your shoulder why the goal should have been disallowed as you take your ball home. It might make you feel more justified but it'll hardly improve the perception of maturity.

DanBC 11y ago

> Julie Bindel speak there because of her successful campaign to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. [...] > just like they never covered the very special exemption added to UK anti-discrimination law to allow this and how exactly it got there, Rape and domestic violence centres have always been given exclusions in discrimination law, from the 1970s sex discrimination act through all the statutory instruments and duties (eg Gender Equality Duty). But that's not a blanket right to exclude trans-people - a SARC can not just say "no trans people". The exclusion has to be a proportionate response to achieve something reasonable. The Code of Practice for the act is very clear: >> “Service providers should be aware that where a transsexual person is visually and for all practical purposes indistinguishable from a non-transsexual person of that gender, they should normally be treated according to their acquired gender, unless there are strong reasons to the contrary. >> As stated at the beginning of this chapter, any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances.” But most SARCs do not exclude men or transpeople, many on this list specifically mention that men can be the victims of rape and sexual assault and that men are able to use the services. http://thesurvivorstrust.org/sarc/ http://thesurvivorstrust.org/sarc/ The real problem is the tiny number of SARCs available - if more were available some could specialise on services for transpeople, on services for men, and services for women.

makomk 11y ago
I'm not sure how legal it is to set up a service in the UK that only serves trans people - the legal exemption in question is at least partly one-way. It's definitely not legal to prefer to hire trans women on the basis that other trans women are more likely to be comfortable speaking to them, because the exemption allowing rape counseling services to only hire cis women for the same reason very definitely and specifically does not apply in the other direction. (Requiring that they at least think of trans women as women is probably legal and hopefully wouldn't fall foul of the indirect discrimination provision, maybe.) Also, that Code of Practice is the result of a change of government and a fairly intensive lobbying campaign by trans activists to reduce the damage done by the exemption. It was originally intended to be much broader in application. From the original explanatory notes: "A group counselling session is provided for female victims of sexual assault. The organisers do not allow transsexual people to attend as they judge that the clients who attend the group session are unlikely to do so if a male-to-female transsexual person was also there. This would be lawful." That is, originally it was intended to allow rape and domestic violence services to exclude all trans women as a class because they believe that some cis women wouldn't want to attend if they were there. This is a common belief amongst a certain group of vocal feminist activists who think trans women are men and run government-funded services. Note that there's no requirement that clients are actually unwilling to attend, just that the organizers think they would be. I think they also intended this to apply this to one-on-one counseling on the basis that women would have to share a waiting room. This was also a rollback in protection for some trans women, because the law on Gender Recognition Certificates didn't permit this. Any future Governemnt can trivially change the Code of Practice back too; don't think it'd even require a vote in Parliament. (The reason trans people got added to anti-discrimination law at all is because the European Court of Human Rights ruled they had to be. There was some pretty impressive foot-dragging on implementing that too.)