“Gay men do not face oppression as gay men within the LGBT+ community”
From the NUS LGBT+ conference:
Conference Further Believes
5. Misogyny, transphobia, racism and biphobia are often present in LGBT+ societies. This is unfortunately more likely to occur when the society is dominated by white cis gay men.
6. The reps system exists to ensure that societies committees can always have a reserved place for groups which disproportionately face oppression within the LGBT+ community.
7. Gay men do not face oppression as gay men within the LGBT+ community and do not need a reserved place on society committees.
Conference Resolves
1. To work with other liberation campaigns to create an intersectional working group on building and maintaining safe(r) spaces, specifically liaising with liberation committees in CMs to provide advice on how safe(r) spaces can be maintained.
2. To loudly and vociferously defend the concept of the safe(r) space and no platforming.
3. To actively support SUs in implementing safe(r) spaces and no platforming policies.
4. To encourage LGBT+ Societies that have a gay men’s rep to drop the position.
So progressive.
The link to the PDF doesn’t appear to work for me. :(
Because it’s only “within the LGBT+ community” that matters. Activism? Social change? What’s that?
The infuriating thing is they are trying to address a real problem, but going about it 100% wrong. Feminism didn’t mean we weren’t going to allow men to have any power ever again. It meant demanding a share of it. Yes, GLBT groups are too dominated by gay men, but the solution isn’t to strip them of any representation– it’s to require proportionate representation, and promoting materials and resources for all the groups under the umbrella.
That’s weird, for some reason an earlier version posted.
David does it work now?
Soooooooooo because they are the largest / one of the largest subcategories of LGBT+, category ‘white gay men’ can be excluded from the LGBT+ committees. Never mind that they are still discriminated against in the wider world, they aren’t suffiiciently discriminated against to pass the Opression Olympics qualifiers.
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS NUS BUNCH OF FUCKWITS??
Just so long as they aren’t embarrassed to silence Peter Tatchell? No hoop is too narrow to preserve their blithe indifference to the state of BROWN LGBT+ people.
I have a question–are all the seats on the committees being discussed “allotted”, or are they a mix of pre-selected and open seats? The answer ~might~ make this thing a bit more reasonable.
If the normal committee has, say, 8 slots, and four are set-asides (one guaranteed lesbian, one guaranteed bisexual, one guaranteed to a trans rep, and one to a gay man), and the other four slots are filled by appointment or election, and invariably seem to be three white gay men and maybe one other person (or even four gay white men), it might seem to be a bit silly to keep the ‘allotted’ gay/male seat; gay men are not going to be losing their representation because of this change. If, OTOH, the seats are all allotted, then there’s obviously a huge issue that needs to be addressed.