Guest post: How inclusion works at NUS Scotland Women
Guest post by Magdalen Berns.
Since I wrote about my experience of being excluded from Edinburgh University Student Association (EUSA) Women’s Liberation, LGBT Liberation, and LGBT Society Facebook groups, I can now confirm that I have also been banned from the NUS Scotland Women’s Campaign Facebook group which represents around 0.2% of roughly 100,000 female Scottish higher education students. My latest thought crime was having the temerity to post a discussion between Chris Hedges, Lee Lakeman and Alice Lee and quoting the following remark from Alice Lee.
I think with neoliberalism it’s worse for women of colour, indigenous women, because now a sort of–they use an excuse of subjugating women and the exploitation of women of colour and indigenous women almost as if it was a viable option for women–that’s the only thing that we’re good for. So it really puts us to being not human, in a way that it dismisses us and all the contributions that women make in those countries.
Such a post must have disrupted the natural order of things by “offending” the self defining student “sex work” caucus again. Back in September last year, I posted an article which resulted in members attempting to get me banned for being a “SWERF”. The President of the NUS disagreed with the hostile way I had been spoken to and offered to take a formal complaint from me. I still had not heard back about that by October, so I shared another article which was deleted by the NUS Scotland Women’s Officer after complaints were made by the Edinburgh “sex worker” caucus who were harassing me all over social media at that point. The Women’s Officer vowed to “look into” how a conversation on prostitution could be facilitated without making student “sex workers” feel unsafe. I haven’t heard from either of the NUS Scotland Officers since, and I did not get any warning before being banned from NUS Scotland Women’s Campaign Facebook group. I can only assume representatives have allowed themselves to become too intimidated to be seen to be showing any sort of sympathy for the idea that women have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with the global sex trade in women and girls. The threat of a non-confidence smear campaign seems to be one tactic which keeps NUS Officers in line.
In the spirit of identity politics, I looked over who should be checking whose privilege according to NUS “intersectionality 101” publications. It turns out the documents don’t have anything on “sex workers” (yet). Although one part says, “listen to and support lesbian women, do not question their judgement”, the “intersectionality 101” presentation makes no mention of sexuality and none of the “intersectionality 101” publications have anything to say about heterosexual women. A comprehensive description of class oppression is also absent from the “intersectionality 101” toolkit which might explain why student reps find it difficult to appreciate that vast majority of prostituted women and girls don’t have access to higher education because they are underprivileged compared to the student “sex workers” we are are told to listen to.
NUS “feminism” is easily reconciled with the cognitively dissonant act of banning a sister for posting an article on how structural racism, imperialism and colonialism work to subordinate the world’s most marginalised women in prostitution, because the NUS essentially rejects the idea that women are a subordinated sex class. Having resolved that the word “sister” is too exclusionary to be allowed at conference last year, the NUS recently came up with a set of new ideas designed to undermine female students’ ability to unite against patriarchy. It is no wonder that NUS Women are now under the assumption that “inclusion” means women should speak of oppression only when this is being done to shut other women up.
Good grief. Is there scope for setting up a women’s group that would appeal to a wider range of female students and more accurately represent their views and attitudes? Or would such a group be banned from recognition by EUSA/NUS? Are most students just to apathetic to get involved, or are they so turned off by current student politics they refuse to be involved?
Why either/or? Why not both?
Indeed, one of the few times a double negative does not make a positive.
It is telling that they say do not question lesbians’ judgment. I can understand listening and supporting. But I guess you can’t criticize them. If we can’t question our own judgment, we can’t keep progressing
@Karmacat: Well I suppose it means they can talk all they want about the rapey “Cotton Ceiling” without being questioned.
It’s actually an interesting document; there’s really a lot of good stuff in there… but then again there’s also a metric ton of garbage. Also, what’s with their 4 “open spaces”? Do they mean these are council spaces that might sometimes be filled with those icky cis-women or what?
‘…do not question their judgement….’?
REALLY? Is anyone else’s judgement to be declared sacrosanct?
The ‘do not question’ thing stems from the utterly silly idea that the final word on whether something is e.g. homophobic is a gay person, the final word on whether something is whorephobic is a prostitute, the final word on whether something is islamophobic is a muslim etc. etc. espoused especially by Oolon. The extremely obvious flaw in this line is that it directly relies on all people from X demographic having one mind on a given topic. Not only is this incorrect, it is also insulting to people of every single demographic, i.e. everyone.
Oh and when it comes to the intersections of multiple demographics, e.g. black velocigender sex workers, obviously anyone that is an exact match to that intersection also has the final word, and others need to ‘shut up and listen’ which I hear is what makes a good ally these days.
An example of this is the commonly cited ‘evidence’ against Ophelia: did you know there are trans people that disagree with you???!!? No mention of the fact that there are also trans people, or parents of trans children, that agree with and support you… they either don’t exist as that would spoil the unanimity, or are dismissed with a hefty dose of No True Scotsmanning because they are… deluded or something I suppose.
Holms – great argument. It also assumes that every person who is in an oppressed group has a good grasp on why something is oppressive and when it is oppressive, and never overreacts or expects other people to treat them like a special snowflake rather than a fully functional adult human being.
To automatically make each person the arbiter of right and wrong is to go down the path of insanity, where you must hold several mutually incompatible ideas simultaneously if you are to follow that accurately. It also allows you to ignore the rights/issues of other groups by dismissing them as “less” persecuted.
It also leads to the question – why then do we not accept the word of Christians that they are oppressed and persecuted, and not question their judgement? Because they are not persecuted and oppressed. In other words, we have to choose which groups we never question. (I’m not saying LGBTQ people are wrong about their oppression and persecution; they absolutely are not, and there is evidence to support that, where the evidence that Christians are unable to practice their faith is, to say the least, minimal).
At this stage, I should probably mention that I’m a lesbian and reiterate that NUS “inclusion” means women should speak of oppression only when this is being done to shut other women up.