Women talk back
Bristol University’s Student Union is bullying a women’s group for being a women’s group. Mustn’t allow the witches to organize, you know.
The following is a copy of the letter that feminist student society Women Talk Back! has sent to the Minister of Education Gavin Williamson regarding sanctions imposed by the Bristol SU for being a single-sex feminist society. The Bristol SU also seeks to ban the president of our student society, PhD student Raquel Rosario Sanchez, from leadership roles for defending women’s right to privacy, dignity and safety during an incident that took place in March 2020. The students are seeking support in what they regard to be an attempt to erode their rights to free speech, freedom of assembly and to single-sex spaces.
Dear Mr Williamson,
Following your announcement of proposed legislation to protect academic freedom against “rising intolerance” within universities in February (‘Turning the tide on cancel culture will start with universities respecting free thought,’ The Telegraph), we would like to inform you of an on-going threat to student’s free speech and freedom of association, both inside the Bristol SU and the University of Bristol.
We are Women Talk Back!, a University of Bristol student society that holds regular female-only consciousness-raising meetings where we engage in lively discussion and debate, while centring our experiences as women living under patriarchy. We are open to all women, regardless of student status, age, income or background. The group was set up informally among students and affiliated with the Bristol Student Union in 2018, gathering weekly inside the University’s Multifaith Chaplaincy.
But of course by “all women” they mean all women, not all women and men who say they are women.
The issue of male violence and its impact on women and girls, is discussed in virtually in all our meetings. Our attendees have stressed how important it is that we protect their rights to privacy, safety and dignity when discussing such sensitive matters. Therefore, when affiliating to the Bristol SU, we consulted with discrimination lawyers to help us explain why we utilise the single-sex exceptions in the Equality Act 2010. As well as regular discussion groups, Women Talk Back! holds larger, public events, inviting feminist speakers to discuss topics such as sexual assault, prostitution and academic freedom.
We welcome the fact that there are hundreds of student societies open to everyone, including another feminism-themed one, but we proudly prioritise women’s lives and experiences in ours. After we became affiliated, the cornerstone of our student society being our women-only status, the Bristol SU changed its bylaws to modify its definition of ‘women’ to mean:
“All who self define as women, including (if they wish) those with complex gender identities that include ‘woman’, and those who experience oppression as women.”
But of course that’s not what the word means, or should mean or can mean. If everyone agreed that’s what the word means we would need a new word for what “woman” used to mean. We need a word for that. It’s not some minor or niche thing, like a word for a particular piece of machinery, it’s the word for half of humanity, the half without which there can be no humanity. We can’t just blithely say now it means something quite different and proceed as if nothing significant has been lost.
By the way the Bristol SU hasn’t provided a new definition of “men.”
On the evening of 1st March 2020, Women Talk Back! held a consciousness-raising meeting titled ‘Boundaries and Feminism’. We described this meeting as:
“One of the core foundations of human relationships comes out of boundaries. Where do I end and where does the other begin? My space. My will. My rights. All of these interact and are negotiated when we encounter others. Most often than not, women’s lives seem to be bounded by social conventions, laws, traditions, culture… rather than boundaries being the result of a balanced negotiation between a woman’s needs and desires, and other people that surround her.”
A couple of student trans activists, including a self-identifying transwoman, turned up to the session. All information regarding our society clearly state that our consciousness-raising meetings are women-only (as opposed to our larger events that are open to everyone). The male student stated being aware that Women Talk Back! operates under the single-sex exemptions of the Equality Act 2010, but said they thought that by showing up in person and “being nice” to us, they would be able to circumvent our boundaries. We recognised these student trans activists from their previous targeting of some of our larger events and protesting feminist events hosted by other student societies, including a time when they had to be removed by security (paid by students) after attempting to hijack the meeting.
Thus underlining how stereotypically male they are. Entitled, demanding, and entirely indifferent to the needs and wants of women.
Following the 1 March 2020 incident, the Bristol SU retroactively claimed that we were never single-sex to begin with, which is a curious assertion because our women-only status has been the most pressing bone of contention in our relationship with the Bristol SU during these past three years.
The Bristol SU opened up an investigation into this complaint and Women Talk Back! provided three witness statements (aside from our President’s separate account) from women who were present that night in which we detailed the intimidating nature of this incident and how we felt threatened into being forced to weaken our boundaries for fear of retaliation from student trans activists. The result of this investigation was the Bristol SU sanctioning our student society and banning our President from leadership roles. The Student Union ordered:
Mandatory diversity training so we accept males into our women-only space
Our President must step down from her role, and cannot run as a committee member on any other society’s committee for two years
The group is not allowed to be female-only, and we must make it clear on our social media pages and our page on the SU website that our group is ‘open to everyone’
It’s infuriating.
I was at university in the early ’80s. There was a women’s center on campus: a student organization focused on feminism and women’s issues. They had some use of building space, and they sponsored the usual range of activities for a student organization: meetings, speakers, etc. They also had some meetings that were women-only.
And there was perennially some male student contesting the right of the women’s center to hold women-only meetings. Trans wasn’t an issue back then. These men were just claiming that all functions of all student organization had to be open to all students, and therefore the women’s center had to admit men to their women-only meetings.
Plus ca change…
When we started a group for non-believing students on campus, our charter was required to state it was open to everyone, and that the officer positions were open to anyone who became a member and fulfilled certain qualities of time and attendance. I didn’t totally mind when Wicca joined us, though I do hesitate to believe that they belong in a freethought group, since their belief is as goofy as any other religion. I didn’t like the thought that Christians could join and turn the group into just another manifestation of Campus Crusade (now known as Cru, I presume because the younger generation only thinks in cutesy one-syllable terms).
In addition, I proposed a committee in our Faculty Senate to examine women’s issues on campus, where we deal with a lot of sexism, often blatant and severe. I wanted this to be a committee where women could meet and share their issues, but I was informed that I could not restrict membership to women, because…rules. I chose not to form the committee. Once you allow men into a group like that, your “findings” often resemble male ideas much more than female realities.
I’m all for not excluding people on the basis of race, color, creed, nationality, disability, or sexual orientation. But I do think there are arguments for exclusive memberships in some groups, such as those focused on women where men frequently derail the conversation and intimidate the women. Exclusive doesn’t have to mean nasty discrimination; it can mean safe spaces. Which trans want – safe spaces – but don’t want women to have.
From the open letter
The Simpsons’ Milhouse on Bart’s dog
There’s the problem in a nutshell. The trans don’t care about those societies that are open to them, they only care about getting into the one that rightfully excludes them. It’s similar to what I was saying recently about so-called trans lesbians: they don’t care that there are plenty of women of various sexualities who will potentially take them as sexual partners, they specifically demand inclusion in the one group that exclude them by definition.
I’m sure they will give many reasons as to why this is the case, but validation has to be one of the key factors. If they can bully their way into those areas that are exclusively and without exception female-only then they can point to their inclusion (while conveniently forgetting to mention how the came to be included) as proof positive that they are women.
A bonus for them will be the theft of a space that was for women only, something else taken from women just because men weren’t allowed in, but that will also be one of their ‘filed in the memory hole’ actions.
Validation, Spite and Fetish. A good name for a trans legal partnership.
Re #2
I’ve had similar misgivings about “open to all” policies; it is clear that some people do indeed join a group (or a blog commentariat or a discussion forum) with a clear purpose of disrupting the goals of whatever it is. (I used to participate in an atheist forum that was overrun by creationists; the same stupid arguments over and over, and no discussion of atheist issues.) It should be OK to have a purpose for a group, and to reject for membership people who are not really interested in pursuing that purpose, or whose presence is detrimental to that purpose. I don’t know why that’s such a problem.
Re Campus Crusade morphing to Cru: I’ve assumed it has two purposes. One, it removes the extremely Christian sounding word from the name. Two, it sounds like the word “crew”, which is collegial.
Couldn’t say, but it was Cru as far back as 2003 when I was in college… and still just as weird.
Really? I literally never heard of it until around 2010-2011, when our campus group became Cru. It was Campus Crusade for Christ there (and at the schools in Oklahoma and Texas that I attended). But then, some places do tend to lag behind…even though our school claims always to be on the “cutting edge”. Usually they are sliding down the safe side of the knife.
Wow, strong incel vibes from this guy. “I put on cologne, dressed sharp, and took her to a nice place… and she still didn’t want to have sex!”
I’m struck by how mature and thoughtful this group seems. I mean, look at this description of their meeting:
That’s not messing around, right? I was never much of a joiner but I don’t remember student groups having such thoughtful and interesting-sounding meetings even when I was a PhD student.
Which makes it all the more enraging (and, of course, ironic in the case of this meeting, presumably deliberately so) that self-indulgent idiots want to spoil it.