There are now 81 comments on the Universities UK blog post “explaining” UUK’s policy on gender segregation. There is at last one that agrees with and praises the policy.
Abdullah Ali
says:
I see theres been a quite severe knee-jerk response form the white, Islam-ignorant reactionaries here. Men and women sitting in two equal groups isn’t in any way, shape or form comparable to apartheid in Soth-africa, and as a Muslim I find the comparison insulting and, quite frankly, racist. This may make some of you’re liberal feminist heads explode, but the separation is actually mosstly for the benefit and protection of women! Bet you didnt see THAT coming!
It allows women to feel more safe, it keeps them from having to interact with potential abuser’s, and it keeps a mea from being distracted by the shapely bottom sat in front of him
I think its great universities are finally allowing freedom of religion!
That seems to be UUK’s view, too – that it’s only “radical feminists” who object to gender segregation at public debates, and “normal” people are fine with it. (UUK didn’t say “radical” but it treated the view as radical and marginal.)
Still no response from Nicola Dandridge. There’s no law that says people have to respond to comments on their blogs, but for a public official defending a public policy on a blog, it seems high-handed to ignore the responses.
At least one grammar/spelling mistake per sentence. That seems almost too perfect. Are we sure he’s real?
Good grief, their religion must really mess with their minds. Time to give it up, eh? If Islam makes you go all slobbery within close proximity of a woman’s “shapely bottom”, it’s time to move on. Learn how to interact with half of the human race, rationally. Leave your sky monster out of it.
@ 1, no, of course there’s no way to know if he’s real. On the other hand mistakes could be simply a second (or third or more) language issue.
But the comment is entirely consistent with for instance what several iERA people are posting all over the Protest Against Universities UK page on Facebook today.
https://www.facebook.com/events/180254252180446/?source=1
This guy is so stupid he doesn’t realize he’s admitting that Islam gives men license to abuse women who aren’t kept separate.
Sooo, does that mean the proponent is constantly and disablingly distracted in his usual classes at university, where men and women aren’t segregated in their seating and many women aren’t even modest, demure hijabii in their costume?
How can any man be expected to learn in such overwhelming conditions??!?!? If a guest lecture is too dangerous for mixed seating, the daily university grind must be a horrific mental burden without the strict edicts of religious purity laws ensuring complete ‘safe spaces’ for men and their uncontrollable lusts.
Having total gender segregated campuses is the only way to go for complete religious freedom and security for m…uh, women. Even if a man could superhumanly force himself to look away from womanly pulchritude, he can still smell women in the same room, hear their feminine voices and even their breathing, and be forced to be aware of their existence at all times.
/snark
Why is it, that the same people who market the myth that men can’t be trusted not to PenisHulk Out on women in response to women existing in the same room, also argue women can’t be expected to do anything as well as men because men are so inherently rational and unemotional? No, I don’t really expect a defense founded on anything but cognitive dissonance.
If people want to hold campus events that are not promoted specifically as cultural or religious engagement sessions to demonstrate different societal mores, thus gaining the consent of participants to abide in a learning experience of restrictions, they can hold said events on private ground where organizer religious views can hold sway as pleases them.
Using secular entertainments as a stalking horse for religious imposition on secular attendance in a secular venue because *some* people feel squicky about secular indifference to one sect’s form of religious ‘respect’ is at best being a terrible host, uncaring of one’s guests so long as one’s own comfort is accommodated.
Oh, I saw that coming. It’s the most commonly used excuse.
Yeah, white, Islam ignorant people like Maryam Namazie need to understand that women are totally equal under segregation. Can’t wait for that lovely EDL meeting to demonstrate that segregation is so equal. Surely universities will love it.
[*From the information I have received, Maryam is also a white imperialist man]
Um, how is he seeing any shapely bottoms if everyone is sitting down?
Also I once had a quantum mechanics lecturer with the most beautiful backside a man has surely ever had. Somehow I still managed to pass that subject…
Why does this create an image of a guy shuffling around on his hands and knees during a talk, trying to see up through the bottom of a plastic chair? I mean, if he sat down normally, he might conceivably see the back of someone’s shapely head, right?!
Damn – I just noticed angharad beat me to it
You see, they are waiting to hear from their lawyers, who need to complete a 90-page ass-covering policy for answering blog comments. Which, understandably, can’t happen very quickly… 😉
The same line of “reasoning” is behind the Orthodox Jewish practice of sexual segregation in houses of worship, and sometimes (for some groups) elsewhere when they can get away with it. But I can’t see an Orthodox Jewish speaker at a major university making such a request, let alone the institution giving in to it.
Something to do with not being the sort who kill infidels these days?
It really is appeasement of (presumed) terrorism that is going on here, even though the speaker in question made no such threats. Call it preemptive appeasement in the face of no real threat by people afraid to admit they are afraid.
@angharad
You seem to be confused, angharad. Women are sexually attractive and distracting, men are not. This is a physical fact which underlies the reality that women need to be covered up and men clearly don’t. It is a well What kind of utter chaos would occur if we recognized anything as silly as the idea that women might enjoy sex and be attracted to people, exactly the same way men are. Oh, wait, I forgot, women have no power in society so what they’re attracted to doesn’t matter in the slightest. Okay, I guess you CAN be attracted to men’s butts, as long as you’re safely socially impotent and can’t do anything about it. See, the system works!
I think Poe’s law applies perfectly to that comment. Not saying it’s parody or not, but that you really can’t tell.
UUK didn’t say “radical” but it treated the view as radical and marginal.
From anybody else (except maybe John Wilkins), I’d let that one slide, but here if anywhere I would expect the differences between “radical” and “extreme” to be recognized…
Ergo: Harrumph!
Well, it was attribution not use. “Radical” is the word that’s in play, so that’s why I used it.
This may make some of you’re liberal feminist heads explode, but the separation is actually mosstly for the benefit and protection of women!
Somehow I think if a non-Muslim had made the same implication that Muslim men are all barely-restrained rapists women need protecting from there would be some offense taken.
So really, in order that no one be distracted by any shapely bottoms that they might find attractive, you’d have to seat all the gay men in the front row, then all the straight men behind them. Then the lesbians. But then you’d have to hope either that the row of lesbians was enough to shield the straight women from the view of enticing male bums in front of them, or somehow seat them along the sides, at such an angle that they couldn’t get a rear view of the front seats. And then there’s bisexual people…I’d be tempted to try and write some kind of optimisation routine to solve this, except I strongly suspect that there’s actually no solution to this one…well, you know, apart from the common sense one…
The common sense solution?
Even more common sense for these pervers, avert your eyes and stop leering. Sheesh.
It simply isn’t possible to have grown-up discussion with people who, by reason of their backward religious culture and complete lack of wish to learn anything different, are stuck in a permanent state of early pubertty.
And how long can the pretence be sustained, that the segrationists are ANYTHING but Muslims?
Not even a token Haredi?
@Trebuchet
I’m sure I don’t know WHAT you could be talking about. Me, post something sarcastic and Poe-worthy? NEVER! All of my posts are 100% straightforward and mean what they mean! Even the ones that mean other stuff that they didn’t mean at all.
Also, why does the Preview button never work for me?