I’m amazed by this. Really amazed. A group of university vice-chancellors in the UK has “issued guidance” saying that it’s ok for students to be segregated during debates as long as they’re beside each other not in front and behind.
Are they out of their minds??
Universities can segregate students during debates as long as the women are not forced to sit behind the men, university leaders have said.
Segregation at the behest of a controversial speaker is an issue which arises “all the time” and banning men and women from sitting next to each during debates is a “big issue” facing universities, Universities UK has said.
As a result they have issued guidance which suggests that segregation is likely to be acceptable as long as men and women are seated side by side and one party is not at a disadvantage.
Really? Really, university vice-chancellors? “Likely to be acceptable” to whom?
Would the university vice-chancellors say that if the categories were not women and men but Jews and Gentiles? Blacks and whites? Muslims and Hindus? Dalits and everyone else? Workers and toffs?
This business about ‘Segregation at the behest of a controversial speaker is an issue which arises “all the time”’ – oh yes? Why does it? Because there are so many reactionary theocrats working hard to spread their reactionary theocratic rules? In other words, because there are so many Islamists wanting to speak and universities inviting them to speak because they are “controversial”? Yes. So imagine a UK university invites David Irving to debate his “controversial” views, and he demands that Jews be segregated. Would the VCs say that was likely to be acceptable provided the Jews didn’t have to sit in the back? Would they entertain the suggestion for an instant? I don’t think so.
In a new guidance on external speakers, vice-chancellors’ group Universities UK says that universities face a complex balance of promoting freedom of speech without breaking equality and discrimination laws.
No they don’t. Freedom of speech doesn’t depend on allowing “controversial” speakers to demand that women be segregated.
The report adds: “Assuming the side-by-side segregated seating arrangement is adopted, there does not appear to be any discrimination on gender grounds merely by imposing segregated seating. Both men and women are being treated equally, as they are both being segregated in the same way.”
Jesus fucking Christ. Apartheid? Jim Crow laws? Ghettos? “Whites Only” signs? Not to mention the fact that these “controversial” speakers will have views about women that are unmistakably and dramatically discriminatory: that’s the main thing that makes them “controversial”!
Apart from the controversies surrounding segregation, Universities UK say that academic institutions are facing a legal minefield when organising external speakers and their guidance aims to help them find the balance.
An example of the fine balance is illustrated when the report goes on to say that if side-by-side seating was enforced without offering an alternative non-segregated seating area, it could be deemed as discriminatory against men or women who hold feminist beliefs.
It adds: “Concerns to accommodate the wishes or beliefs of those opposed to segregation should not result in a religious group being prevented from having a debate in accordance with its belief system.”
Well that’s a handy way to dismiss the whole idea of universal human rights – just label the ones that cover half of humanity “feminist beliefs” and then label that a belief system on all fours with religious belief systems. Zip, job done, women relegated to second class status in the blink of an eye.
The report presents some hypothetical case studies which come up on campuses, including whether a speaker from an ultraorthodox religious group requests an audience is segregated by gender.
“These are issues that are arising all the time and these are really difficult issues,” said Universities UK chief executive Nicola Dandridge.
“What emerged from our work on this particular issue is that there is no clearly defined right or wrong here as to whether to allow or outlaw segregation. It is going to very much depend on the facts of the case.”
You made a mistake somewhere then. Go back and check your arithmetic. Find the mistake. Don’t come back until you have.
As a trans person, I would just like to point out that there may, in fact, on any campus of over 50 people these days, be a person who isn’t so easily segragatable.
But with your old-time wisdom, I’m sure you vice-chancellors can find a solution: perhaps you should simply cut the trannies in half – but cephalocaudally, with the parts laid side-by-side. That’s a policy that is
Which means of necessity that the speaker is allowed to define the audience. A public body like a university has no business holding “public” debates for a restricted audience. If the public is admitted at all then it must be without extraordinary preconditions. Otherwise, let the speaker go and rent a private hall or a mosque. A university’s job is not freedom of stipulation for miscellaneous speakers but freedom to learn for all its members.
“Assuming the side-by-side segregated seating arrangement is adopted, there does not appear to be any discrimination on gender grounds merely by imposing segregated seating. Both men and women are being treated equally, as they are both being segregated in the same way.”
Yeah, just like how there was no discrimination around when it was forbidden for people of colour to marry caucasians. It worked both ways, so no racism, MAGIC!
Something tells me that the vice-chancellors would all end up on the same side of the auditorium.
Possibly sequestered in their own little zone, assuming traditionalist Muslims agree with the Old Testament proscriptions against eunuchs.
I envy the Brits for their medical system, but not for their political “correctness” run amok. Guilt over past imperialism seems to distort the judgment of a lot on the left in the UK. Bertrand Russell once wrote an article on “the superior virtue of the oppressed.” No such thing, of course; he didn’t buy it.
Separate but equal has been shown to be de facto discriminatory.
Good point, Crip Dyke. There are plenty of nonbinary people trans* people, I presume we should either stand in the aisle, or better, just not exist.
“side-by-side” but equal…interesting.
Apart from the problem {to segregationists) raised by Crisp Dyke, there will be other diificulties. For example, what if I (6′ 3″ and bearded,, BUT still a woman- or so I say in circumstances like this) claim- demand, even- that as a woman I have the right-the duty, rather- to sit in the woman-only section? My maidenly modesty would forbid men checking my gender, while women who might exclude me from the ladies’ only department would be prevented from checking my claims by their own principles. Would CD and I find ourselves in the Odds and Sods Section? and where would that be?
As has already been noted, had the segregation been racial there’d have been outrage so loud the people suggesting it would’ve been deafened. That they are refusing to see it’s exactly as unjust when done along gender lines is significant.
It looks like Ghetto benches in Poland’s universities in 1930s, when Jewish students were forced to sit in left-hand side of lecture halls.
Of course they weren’t discriminated against, because they didn’t have to sit behind Polish students. /snark
Not altogether uptodate, so forgive my asking: What particular vice are they chancellors for, again? Any, or all?
I forgot to point out earlier:
Freedom of speech does depend on allowing “controversial” speakers to demand that women be segregated. It doesn’t depend on allowing them to demand it of a segregated audience.
That’s what I meant. “Demand” implied it – “demand as a condition of speaking.”
Whatever happened to “when in Rome”? If you want to speak in a non-segregated society, you have to speak to a non-segregated audience.
So, “controversial” (I read that as Bigoted, anyone else?) speakers demand things that are unreasonable so that a University can give them a platform for their unreasonable opinions.
So, since we are all about accommodating “controversial” speakers (and I can be both!), my precondition to speaking at one of these universities is that they punch each of the audience members in the gut as they enter. No bigotry, it is indiscriminate! Also, so that it is not assault either, we’ll have the ushers punch each other in the gut too. Equality! I am sure everyone will be punched equally hard.