Straight men can’t wear dresses #NUSWomen15

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I honestly thought that the Yesterdays article would be all I had to say about the NUS Womens conference – it’s certainly more than I really wanted to write. I’d actually stopped following the #NUSWomen15 tag, when as is the manner of these things this gem ambled across my gaze:
It's not about CIS-men
Which rather puzzled me as I had seen the motion in question yesterday and had mentioned it in my previous post, it was this one:
No cross-dressing
The motion was that ‘cross-dressing” for fancy dress was to be condemned and that unions should ban events that “permit or encourage” cisgender people to use cross-dressing as a mode of fancy dress. Really, I can quite see how @emilyhilton could get confused as to how “cis-men” might possibly see a motion banning them from cross dressing as being in any way about them. Puzzling isn’t it that people that would be affected by a ban would have the audacity to think it has anything to do with them – @emilyhilton obviously has a bright future ahead of her in public health. Now just to avoid any confusion, I am in fact what could be described as a cisman, in fact I’m a white cisman who identifies as none-of-your-damn-business-sexual, I also look damn good in a dress and own quite a few. To almost certainly misquote Eddie Izzard, “these aren’t women’s clothes, they’re my clothes – I bought them.”

I’m sure the caring, sensitive delegates at NUSWomen15 would be horrified if men suggested that they should have any say in what women should wear at fancy dress or elsewhere, but in their enlightenment they know to dictate to others what they can and can’t wear and when. However @emilyhilton did clarify that despite what the motion actually says it was really about “‘banter’ nights” (whatever they are) “where dressing as an alternative gender is a point of hilarity & ridicule”
Say no to banter nights
As other people pointed out as part of this thread, fancy dress events can be a great way to break down “gender norms” and can be “most empowering & enlightening event for both gay and straight Cis men and women”. I did ask @emilyhilton to clarify if she meant another motion and I’d got it wrong but answer came there none – so I’m assuming I got the correct thing. So it seems that the NUS Women are against breaking down gender stereotypes, and letting people discover even a little of what it’s like for the other sex (trust me, the first time you try to use the gents in a dress it’s a revelation). Also I’d go further and say that the NUS Women and @emilyhilton are being harmful to their own cause and to people who might not identify with traditional gender stereotypes (which is a shame as they claim to support them elsewhere). For a man wearing a dress out in public (at least at first) takes a lot of nerve, doing so in the context of fancy dress makes this a lot easier. Fortunately @emilyhilton and the NUS Women have super cis-vision that allows them to identify cisgender people and their motives for wearing particular clothes. They can tell who’s taking a tentative step to being more comfortable about themselves, who’s going to learn from the experience of getting to an event dressed as the other sex all of these things are laid bare to their all-knowing gaze.

What @emilyhilton and Nus Women are achieving so admirably is enforcing the stereotypes and attitudes that mean we have “boys” and “girls” toys and clothes, and gets people beaten up for “looking queer” – way to go sisters! People should be free to wear whatever they like and look however they feel comfortable (insert usual caveats about realms of decency) without having to worry about what other people think. Now instead of just worrying about random ignorant thugs, people not adhering strictly to gender stereotypes have also got to worry about the approbation of the likes of NUS Women. Thanks @emilyhilton for giving the thugs another excuse to beat up on people and tell people how they should live. I can’t help but suspect that they are the sort of people that will share uplifting pictures of a man wearing a dress to support their young child on social media and then the moment one of their male friends does the same thing will mutter “pass the mind bleach” – not caring who might overhear that comment or the impact it has.

So once more, well down @emilyhilton and #NusWomen15 you’re doing a great job of holding back equality and enforcing gender limits all round – I would give you a big round of applause but apparently that might cause you anxiety and we wouldn’t want that would we?

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The perils of jazz hands #nuswomen15

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The NUS Women’s Conference has caused a bit of a stir on twitter recently. The conference could well have gone unnoticed as many of these things do except they were using Twitter as though it were a private forum and made this rather ill-judged tweet:
Please use Jazz hands
Which is on the face of it a bit silly – to say the least. Giving the people who made the request every benefit of the doubt, some people do find large noisy crowds stressful and if someone is experiencing discomfort near you – you should probably check that they’re OK. That said if you find noisy crowds and clapping stressful, it’s probably something you could expect to experience at a conference and you might do well to prepare for it yourself and take responsibility for your own well-being and thus empower your self (as the cool kids say). Some people supportive of this request suggested that “Jazz hands” were BSL for clapping, Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case. According to Sign BSL the sign for applause is to clap silently. Now that said deaf people do sometimes indicate applause by putting their hands in the air and waving them:

As explained quite nicely over at Yahoo answers. However it doesn’t really look that much like “Jazz hands” does it? If you wanted people to use the BSL sign you could maybe say so, or say just wave your hands?

The issue was of course compounded by the fact that the same conference that was proposing that people use “Jazz hands” to applaud, a term and action not without racial connotations:Jazz hands
, were also decrying the cultural appropriation of the mannerisms of “Black Women” by “gay men”:
Don't be black
So ignoring the lumping of all Black Women and Gay men into just two groups, we have the horribly amusing spectacle of a conference that is very aware of the importance of what terms you use and cultural appropriation telling people to use “Jazz hands”. A bit of awareness on their part would have avoided the tweet and subsequent ridicule in the first place – but what really ensured that the ridicule didn’t go away were the responses made by delegates at and supporters of the conference. A quick “oops that was thick” drama over but that wasn’t how they reacted resulting in the #nuswomen15 hashtag becoming subject to ever more ridicule as they kept digging deeper:
No Whooping
Which of course meant more ridicule and people looking at what else they were proposing such as :

No working

and

No cross-dressing
. Even the BBC picked it up finding a NUS spokesperson to defend it, and continuing to ignore the racial connotations that would usually be jumped on if say someone like Mr Clarkson had done Jazz hands. Fortunately for our sanity BreitBart stepped in with a new lexicon of what various words now mean.

All joking aside, if you are an organisation that purports to reflect the views of a large body of people, in this case female students, and you make both your conference papers and discussions public you really do have to expect to engage with the greater public over what you’re saying. Especially when that greater public includes members of the group you want to represent but who aren’t at the conference – this is a good thing. Use the publicity to explain your position, that’s what you have press officers and such for, reach out to the people whose attention you now have – you never know there may be some points of common ground. Alternatively accuse everyone including your own members of misogyny and various “isms” and act like spoilt children putting your fingers in your ears and shouting “shut up, shut up, it’s not fair”. The choice is entirely yours but one is more likely than the other to be productive, once you’ve got the world’s attention you have to deal with it, make the most of it or invite further mockery entirely up to you.

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Things we won’t say about race

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I’ve just watched Channel 4’s Things we won’t say about race that are true. Personally I found it rather a good program, bits I liked bits I didn’t always a good sign in a social documentary (and twitter seems to have had the same problem). Whilst I’m sure it had an agenda (well at least one depending on who you listen to) one the whole it seemed reasonably fair, by which I mean it probably pissed off everyone. Outside of the statistics it was interesting to see how Trevor Phillips views have changed and developed. To be trite the program could probably be summarised as saying that stereotypes are generally based on some degree of truth but we shouldn’t treat individuals based on stereotypes. Mind you of course that could just be confirmation bias talking.

Some people on twitter complained that they couldn’t workout what the message of the program was and who it was aimed at, which again I take as a good sign. As a walk through a variety of the “unspeakable” truths behind the stereotypes it did a decent job. I thought the point of it was to give an over view of many of those truths aimed at a variety of targets – those that won’t speak the truths and those that won’t let them be spoken. Of course it didn’t spend much type looking at why those stereotypes arose, but that wasn’t the purpose of the program and would require an entire series.

Twitter though as ever was a gold mine. As one commentator observed the mental gymnastics going on could have graced the Olympics. Forinstance every time I’ve claimed that Islam is a religion not a race I’ve been told otherwise yet this program was dismissed for calling Islam a race not a religion. I guess it must be a quantum thing where it’s both race and religion depending on what’s convenient. People also tried to make the argument that because academic papers have looked at some of the issues they were being talked about and so the program had no point. Given it was a program looking at statistical analysis and the big picture it was also amusing to see the number of attempts to refute them by appeal to anecdote.

If you didn’t watch it do catch it on catch up and do read the twitter feed it’s terribly amusing on the whole, especially watching as the trend veers from supporting the stereotype to dismissing it as an artifact of statistics depending on who’s subject to the stereotype. Again I view this as a sign that the program got it about right.

So for me and I hope many people the message seems to have been:
Stereotypes generally have some basis of fact, but don’t let that be an excuse for being lazy or being a dick.
Not talking about things and preventing people talking honestly about what they think and feel is probably a bad idea and can make matter worse.
The fear of being branded racist has real world impacts that aren’t good, as it prevents real problems being tackled.
Oh and birds of a feather really do flock together and that may not be a bad thing as long as it’s birds from other flocks are welcome.

Or Something like that at any rate watch it for yourself, it may be the first hint of the mainstream media starting to grasp the nettle of UKIP’s “surprise” popularity – though I as ever disagree with the idea that UKIP are a negative party. Oh and Mr. Blair hasn’t improved with age and the program has the worst hashtag ever.

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