The Gender, Sexuality, and Race Room
The University of Bristol’s Students Union is working towards instigating a blanket ban on events organized by, or hosted by, feminists who question the notion that gender is innate and that believing yourself to be a girl or a woman makes a person female. In the recent past, liberal and left groups on Western college campuses have often sought to no-platform radical feminist speakers, but Bristol University appears to be among the first to consider a blanket ban on all such events. The motion to implement a complete ban was put forward by, of all sources, the university's feminist society, following an event held in early February in Bristol to discuss proposed changes to the UK's Gender Recognition Act of 2004.
The recently-proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act make it easier for people to change their official gender identification by doing away with rules that currently require people to undergo medical checks before being recognized as belonging to a gender other than what their birth certificate suggests. The Bristol event was held in response to this proposed liberalization of the law. It invited people to "come and have your say on this controversial proposal", asking: "Will this reform spell the end to single sex spaces and the provision of single sex services, such as those provided by rape crisis centres and women’s refuges? Will the changes make it harder to gather accurate data on the pay gap between men and women; on domestic violence against women; and on the health services women require?" The event was chaired by a Bristol University PhD student who specializes in the subject of violence against women and girls. The university's feminist society claims that this amounted to "hate speech" against transgender people. It is then ironic that the very name of the motion to ban all such events from campus in the future -- "Prevent Future Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (Terf) Groups from Holding Events at the University" -- itself uses what can only be described as a hate term; a term that's not just a slur, but specifically intended to promote and legitimize violence against a specific (in this case, entirely female) group of people.
Let's just take a moment to absorb the historic significance of this development. It was precisely this section of feminists, often alternatively known in the 1960s and '70s as the women's liberation movement, that bears principal responsibility for the modern allowance of women to attend college at all and for the launching of the campus women's movement in the first place. And now we have reached the point where this very group is being banned from holding campus events altogether...by self-proclaimed feminists! I would consider that a true milestone in the history of Western feminism; a marker of the degradation of its quality and seriousness. Why would one oppose debate around the question of transgender identity and its social implications unless one knew that they could not win?
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Originally Posted by nathanbforrest45
