Meet Athena Swan
This is how it’s done – make yourself part of the Diversity N Incloosion infrastructure and bam, you get to make your crank ideas mandatory for all people who are part of that infrastructure. Stonewall seem to be the best at it but they’re not the only ones.
Lawyers and campaigners say that a university training scheme on gender identity is “totalitarian and unlawful”.
Imagine having to attend university training on “gender identity” when you don’t believe that’s a meaningful concept.
The latest row centres on a scheme called Athena Swan that is offered by Advance HE, formerly the Higher Education Academy, a charity that advises education institutions.
How do people get to appoint themselves “charities that advise education institutions”? How do education institutions decide which charities to take advice from? How does any of this work?
One thing it seems to do is make it harder to dissent from whatever “advice” these lobbyists are handing out, because it’s an extra layer. “This isn’t our advice/dogma, it comes from Stonewall/Advance HE.” Well who put them in charge? And why?
The organisation has a pivotal role in financing academics because those bidding for funds from UK Research and Innovation must complete an equality and diversity statement that is likely to have been compiled under its advice.
So they’ve somehow woven themselves into the bureaucracy but it sounds as if they’re not accountable to anyone. Why is that?
In a letter to The Times on Wednesday, Selina Todd, a professor of modern history at Oxford University, said that Advance HE had “considerable clout” and said that it “promotes a controversial view of sex and gender”.
Why does it have any clout at all? What is the mechanism by which these organizations get to have clout?
Naomi Cunningham, a barrister who specialises in discrimination and gender claims, says that the Advance HE programme could be challenged in the courts. “I think this is pretty clearly unlawful,” adding that it constituted “direct discrimination on grounds of philosophical belief,” and therefore would breach equality legislation.
She said that it “represents a pretty totalitarian attempt to entrench gender identity beliefs at the heart of all academic endeavour”.
Which is all the more alarming given how fatuous those beliefs are.
I don’t have to imagine it. I’ve lived through it. I survived, but had to gag several times, especially when they used statistics from VAWA without managing to mention women at any point (other than the one time they identified VAWA).
Yes. If you hire a firm to perform a service like removing asbestos from your building, or cleaning up toxic waste, you expect them to have relevant training, skills, and expertise. Similarly, if you hire an outside company to train your staff in some new skill, technique, or piece of machinery, the success of the training can be measured by how well the staff takes up and uses this new information. Some firms will be better at traiing than others, and there will be ways to evaluate that. But “gender awareness” training is different. It’s more like hiring a firm to inculcate belief in astrology or chakras on the staff. For the “equalities” field, it seems that all one really needs is belief, and the resolve to impose that belief on others. In that way it is very much like a religion. The existence of “gender identity” is axiomatic. No proof is required. No useful skills or information is imparted. It’s simply proselytization for the Gender Soul.
And what actual knowledge or talent is needed to be such a trainer or spokesperson? Nothing I can see apart from belief in the “product,” and a talent for coercion and browbeating. Does someone like Chase Strangio evince any other skills and abilities than this? It’s all belief, assertion and obedience. If you say the magic words, enforce them upon others and squelch Disbelief, you get a gold star.
As for getting picked to consult and train, it might help to have a fellow “believer” on the inside to hire you in the first place, or at least someone who thinks it’s a useful thing to tick off those boxes on the performance evaluation. “Yes, we’re inclusive; we took The Course, we have The Certificate, our Pronouns are in our bios and signature lines.”
Shh. Don’t say that too loudly. My school might try it. They’ve bought into ever other dopey New Age thing. I’ve been subjected to my Meyers-Briggs type, what color am I, what type of shoe am I, what sort of whatever…it goes on and on and on in endless mindless loops.
You don’t need credentials to impress leadership to use you as a trainer. You need a sleek website and a glib style, and the ability to bullshit better than the next guy. If you contradict the guy they brought in last week, that doesn’t matter, because they won’t notice. They go to conferences, hear talks, believe the gobbledy gook and hire the person for the next inservice.
And if you ask for confirmation, for data, they say “its on my website”, knowing most won’t go there and hoping the few that do know little to nothing about data and what’s reliable. So you visit their website, and their “data” consists of “look at all these testimonials, people saying nice things about me!”
So, not much needed to become an “expert” trainer in a topic. Just the gift of gab.
iknklast: what kind of shoe you are? I can’t even…
Okay; what kind of shoe are you?
Unless this is too personal. Pardon my ignorance and rudeness; I am completely unschooled in the rules of Shoe Identity. Please don’t let my blundering clumsiness cause suicidal ideation! I really don’t know these things. Having recieved the training, you can set me right, so that moving forward, I can be a good ally.
Are we supposed to ask, about Shoe Identity or not? Do we go by the shoes someone is wearing currently, or are these just the shoes assigned at birth? Can the Cis-shod ever understand Trans-shoe identified? Can people change their Shoe Identity as easily as they change shoes, or is it fixed and immutible? What are the differences between lace-up, slip-on, or zippered? (We will not speak of Velcro. It is Abomination) Do sandals count? What about socks? Insoles? Orthotics? Heels? Lifts? Steel toes? So much to learn! Please help, so that in my privileged ignorance, I do not inadvertently step on anybody’s toes!
In fairness, of the dozens of university training courses I had to attend and actually did bother attending, none of them contained anything resembling a “meaningful concept”. I don’t think that’s the point of them at all.
Hence the dozens more university training courses I had to attend and didn’t bother attending.
YNnB, I am a business shoe. In short, I suspect that means I am boring, at least to the more trendy hipsters. Which is interesting, because my students frequently call me cool and tell me that I am the most interesting teacher they have had. I take that with a grain of salt when it’s close to grade time. I give it more credence when they come up to me at the gas station a year later to tell me.
And…we also learned how to deal with it if you had to work with a different kind of shoe. For instance, what if a business shoe has to deal with a loafer? What if a sneaker finds itself in the middle of high heeled pumps? And so forth.
It wasn’t even the worst part of that inservice. Even worse was the second rate Elvis imitator they hired who managed to hit on women during the performance (I suppose he wanted to be “authentic Elvis”? He was too into the performance to understand appropriate behavior? He was an asshole?)
Ah, so your shoes are simply a matter of fact, practical article of apparel, not an ostentatios signifier of your Inner Essence, to which you must bring everyone’s notice and admiration. They’re just shoes. For some, flashy shoes are all they think they have; without them, they are, in their own eyes, nothing.
WRONG SHOES!