Pressure from trans students ‘gets lecturer sacked’
NewsFrom the Mail on Sunday:
A lecturer at a prominent music academy says she has been forced out of her job after she suggested drag acts could be viewed as sexist.
Cathy Boardman, a lecturer in cultural studies, had asked her class to reflect on ‘womanface’ – a critical term for female impersonation – and whether or not it was demeaning.
But bosses at the BIMM Institute , which has outposts around the country and links with Sussex University, told her this was a ‘deeply sensitive’ subject and that transgender students had been left upset…
Read on here.
It seems as though any form of critical assessment of anything that anyone might feel sensitive about is now out of bounds. And being asked to reflect on a subject that some might feel is sensitive, is going too far.
Madness.
Students today appear to be overcome by having to think about a subject that they don’t want to acknowledge.
I also should add that the use of the term “womanface” looks as if someone, or some syllabus, is also trying to create a controversy.
Actually, the term “womanface” has been around since the 70s in (radical) feminist discourse. There’s been lot of feminist writing and thought on this issue. I doubt that in the context of cultural studies, someone was purposefully trying to create a controversy.
P.S. Drag is of course misogynistic and is indeed, in my humble opinion, “womanface”.
As a woman, I have never heard ‘womanface’ in the 70s! Everyone knows what a drag artist is.
Um, I sure expect you to write the exact same thing when there’s news about racial discrimination, sexism, homophobia, and all these other sensitive issues that inflict the music industry
“A lecturer at a prominent music academy says she has been forced out of her job after she suggested drag acts could be viewed as sexist.”
Is this headline from the Babylon Bee? Oh, just the reality. It`s hard to tell, these days.
The SJW-revolution devouring its children. Who could have seen that coming?
I wonder what all the conservative students think about this? Oh, there are none. That`s liberal tolerance, I guess.
Sounds like America again.
“She”?
But if you are not a doctor, how could you define “a woman”?
And even if you are a physician, isn`t gender a social construct?
So, shouldn`t we ask, with what pronouns the individual indentifies?
I`m happy to comply ASAP. And you just call me “sir”. Happy days.
Sir? Why not American Maestro and be done with it? All very insulting and invariably by men on women as the world know women!
The western democracies are fully committed to economic and cultural suicide. Good luck to future generations
Her comment should be protected by academic freedom as its relevant to the content of her course. It’s just an idea thrown out, that can be discussed. I would say that school needs to do more to protect the integrity of the classroom.
Inmates running asylum example #5,295
Which way West?
@E Rand: Continuing the race to the bottom.
Policing concepts of femininity, even with trans women, oppresses all women.
That said, if presented and contextualized in a respectful and tolerant manner, the topic of womanface (i.e. the *imposition* of gender standards upon people) could be a useful discussion.
Will this insanity ever stop? I mean the kowtowing to this pathetic freak show.
yes, of course it will. But only after the Left has reduced Western Civ to ashes.
I fear you may be right. And that without ever getting elected.
I cannot wait to see the result of the trial, if it goes to such a length. I read the article and it definitely seems like there aren’t obvious reasons for being fired… but, something does make me question the quality of the teaching: drag. I mean it’s also a British woman saying that drag “started off as a liberating form of entertainment for gay men ostracised for being effeminate”… It is indeed a form of entertainment, but did she ever hear of Shakespeare? ALL Elizabethan theatre?
She’s totally in her right to not like drag, as much as her students and coworkers are in their right to not like her or her opinions.
But firing someone because they have an opinion you don’t like seems rather shocking.
To be continued…
“I mean it’s also a British woman saying that drag “started off as a liberating form of entertainment for gay men ostracised for being effeminate”… ”
I wondered about that. It sounds suspiciously like the sort of thing that gets accepted and propounded as a truth without being one. According to Wikipedia, the Corydon/Mopsa duet in Purcell’s The Fairy Queen “was originally performed by a soprano; however, a later revision by Purcell stated that it was to be performed by “Mr. Pate in woman’s habit”.”
It seems then to be anathema for a white person to ‘black up’ to play (or sing) Othello but it’s fine for a man to dress up and play at being a woman.
This pseudo-intellectual claptrap (woke, white privilege, micro-aggressions, cultural appropriation, unconscious recism etc) is all very well as Monty-Pythonesqe badinage but when it gets taken so seriously by mature and quasi-sane adults (rather than students in the
Utopian dreamscape of Academe) that it leads to people losing their jobs, then it’s ‘Welcome to the Third Reich’ (or ‘Welcome to the Soviet Union’ or ‘Welcome to China’, depending on your political orientation).
What worries me is that the victims are mostly supine and accept being abused or dimissed by these organisations, who are so frightened of the chatterati on Facebebook or Twitter that they willingly accede to their demands.
I have always looked forward to the time when a victim takes an employer to court for unfair dismissal and sues them for shedloads of money. It’s time to fight back. Now it looks like that will happen. It’s time too to look at the funding of BIMM and whether they receive funding from our taxes. It’s time to lobby our MPs to stop all funding of organisations who stifle reasonable freedom of speech. In Nazi Germany, the courts were all instruments of the Third Reich – here in the UK they are still supposedly (mostly) independent and exist, inter alia, to uphold human rights.
Time to caIt seems then to be anathema for a white person to ‘black up’ to play (or sing) Othello but it’s fine for a man to dress up and play at being a woman.
This pseudo-intellectual claptrap (woke, white privilege, micro-aggressions, cultural appropriation, unconscious recism etc) is all very well as Monty-Pythonesqe badinage but when it gets taken so seriously by mature and quasi-sane adults (rather than students in the Utopian dreamscape of Academe) that it leads to people losing their jobs, then it’s ‘Welcome to the Third Reich’ (or ‘Welcome to the Soviet Union’ or ‘Welcome to China’, depending on your political orientation).
What worries me is that the victims are mostly supine and accept being abused or dismissed by these organisations, who are so frightened of the chatterati on Facebebook or Twitter that they willingly accede to their demands.
I have always looked forward to the time when a victim takes the employing organisation to court for unfair dismissal and sues them for shedloads of money. It’s time to fight back. Now, it looks like that will happen. It’s time too to look at the funding of BIMM and whether they receive any from our taxes. It’s time to lobby our MPs to stop all funding of organisations who stifle reasonable freedom of speech. In Nazi Germany, the courts were all instruments of the Third Reich – here in the UK they are still supposedly (mostly) independent and exist, inter alia, to uphold human rights.
Time to cancel the cancellers!
The only saving grace is that Ms Boardman is a lesbian asserting her views on gender identity and that this case might turn out to be one wing of the LGBT+ movement fighting another! Roll it on.
ncel the cancellers!
The only saving grace is that Ms Boardman is a lesbian asserting her views on gender identity and that this case might turn out to be one wing of the LGBT+ movement fighting another! Roll it on.
Finally, what has all this b****cks to do with a music academy? If you now take a course on Gender Issues, will you be taught Invertible Counterpont?
but it’s fine for a man to dress up and play at being a woman.
…and then insist on being called one with dire consequences if you refuse.
“this case might turn out to be one wing of the LGBT+ movement fighting another”
Or perhaps: gay people fighting the LGBTQIA+ movement as swamping them. You will find plenty of gay people saying that the LGBTQIA+ movement sidelines them.
Sorry it got repeated when pasting it in! A lapsus digitus.
I wondered if I was going mad ! Thanks for the explanation.
So good, they named it twice.
First she needs to define the term “Woman”
I‘m pretty sensitive about some people and groups being so sensitive. And I’m gradually losing respect for those who disrespect my right to respectfully disagree.
Frankly, playing the victim seems to be the most effective way to get people to shut up, to get one’s way, or to mobilize mobs (Trump) – rather than to think, discuss, debate, air facts and points of view… The PC are quick to cave. Thus tyranny and mediocrity flourish.
As to vocabulary: Really? “Black face” (Cantor and Jolson; Aida. Otello=“brown-face?”) . Yes. “Yellow face”(recent turmoil re Madama Butterfly)?! Barely. But “womanface?”
The mind boggles at the possibilities on the horizon. Babyfaced crooks. Bald-faced liars. Po-faced sanctimonious people. Not to mention the poker faces of those hiding their true feelings.
Some of you will be “red-faced” at my words. But wouldn’t that be racist?
Why am I not surprised the comments here are sentimental old guys whinging about SJWs and the left?
As a middle-aged guy who actually became a virtuoso pianist through hard study rather than ripening into a cognac-swirling connoisseur, I’m thankful for trans discourse and am confident apparent contradictions between it and second-wave feminism will be resolved with time, because the young generation are impressive.
Downvote away, esteemed gentlemen.
Does Shuck’s comment actually have any meaning at all ?
“…transgender students had been left upset.” So? Life is filled with upsets. We survive them without destroying others’ lives. If I had hated all those in my life who told me they “hate Jews”, I could’ve had hundreds of people lose their jobs. This is pathetic; doubly so because transgender people know what it is like to be hated and hounded – and yet they seem perfectly happy to do it to someone else.
Why don’t she get redress through a court of law?
Thanks for this. Another lunatic place of woke indoctrination we must tell our kids to avoid. The government needs to withdraw all funding from these daft nutters.