Students: Behaviourism

For generations gay men have faced harassment and discrimination for their sexual preferences. And although they are still a target for violent attacks in many places, the National Union of Students (NUS) has passed a motion calling for the abolition of representatives of gay men because “they don’t face oppression”.

Instead, the NUS has accused the traditionally-abused group of displaying “oppressive behaviour”.

The NUS lesbian,gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) conference has passed a resolution that says homosexual men were often the perpetrators of misogyny and other prejudice within gay and lesbian student.

The ban follows a trend in university campus to exclude any views or objects that may offend and the rise of “no-platforming” policies.

The motion, which defended safe spaces and no-platform policies, said: "Misogyny, transphobia, racism and biphobia are often present in LGBT+ societies. This is unfortunately more likely to occur when the society is dominated by white cis gaymen."

“Cis” relates to someone whose identity conforms with their biological gender and it seems to refer to masculine gay men.

The motion adds: “Gay men do not face oppression as gay men within the LGBT+ community and do not need a reserved place on society committees.”

The NUS motion said gay men should no longer be represented in gay and lesbian societies.

Jack Matthews, LGBT gay men's representative at the University of Manchester, slammed the motion for disregarding the struggles that gay men faced and called it "disgusting and extremely disrespectful".

He added: "The only way the LGBT community has been able to achieve their rights is by standing together as a community. We need to take the torch from our elders and carry this on. We shouldn't be starting internal conflicts and segregating ourselves."

Tom Slater, creator of a free speech ranking, said: "Campus sexual identity politics is disappearing up its own backside. We've had feminists banning other feminists for being the wrong kind of feminists.

"We've had gay rights campaigners smeared as racists and transphobes, purely for promoting free speech. Now the NUSLGBT campaign is calling for reps for gaymen to be abolished because they're effectively not oppressed enough." 

Daily Telegraph.

Fagburn's bored with silly middle class children imagining oppressions, but note how it's Britain's 'least gay-friendly broadsheet', the Daily Telegraph, feigning concern over this, which, as it's an NUS resolution, is an absolute irrelevancy.

The headline and framing of this is pretty mendacious.

Still, nice to see those cake toppers back.

NB The hyperlink above is to another Telegraph article, I'm Gay, But Given The Choice Would I Rather Be Straight?! Oh and Tom Slater is part of the Spiked/Telegraph continuum.