Dan will represent the views of women on campus
A university students’ union is under fire for rebranding International Women’s Day to include trans women.
Leicester students’ renaming of the celebration as International Womxn’s Day follows their election of a trans woman to the post of women’s officer. Dan Orr will represent the views of women on campus, speaking out about sexism and misogyny.
Which he doesn’t understand from the inside, on account of how he’s a man.
A female student at Leicester University told The Times that she was “very upset” by the election but feared speaking out publicly in case she was disciplined by the university.
“I am sure Dan Orr will try her best, but she has not grown up with the same prejudices that face girls and women [and] the stereotypes they have had to deal with that are related to the female body. I know she will have had her own prejudices to deal with but they are not the same,” she said. The Leicester students’ union has an LGBT+ officer and a trans and non-binary officer.
So trans people get two officers and women get zero. Women are half the population but…
The university will call the day by its traditional name. However, in a newsletter to students, it said: “We use the term ‘womxn’ as a more inclusive spelling of ‘women’ that includes any person who identifies as a womxn.”
But that’s the wrong kind of inclusive. I don’t get to go to a refugee camp and “identify as” a refugee and take up some of the scant resources there. Nobody does. Include me out.
Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at Sussex University, said: “Concepts aren’t ‘umbrellas’ or ‘shelters’ for whoever wants to come in — that’s not what concepts do. They’re cognitive tools,” adding that Ms Orr’s election was “a backwards step”.
Off a cliff of stupid.
Insulting, yes. Also, who is this Dan Orr person? How can someone be this clueless? How can someone fail to understand their own limitations this drastically? It’s not enough to be raised with male privilege. I’m a man, but I think I would have to try really hard to be this self-centered. Transwomen can think they’re women, want to be women, know they’re women, believe they’re women, whatever. But surely they know that their experiences are not the same as women’s experiences. Or I guess they don’t. It’s fascinating.
For who Dan Orr is see next post (once I post it).
Disciplined for thinking women are women, and wanting women to be represented by a woman. Grand.