Kelley Temple

NUS Women's Campaign statement on transmisogyny

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:49:00 Z

[Trigger warning for quoted transphobic language]

The NUS Women’s Campaign would like to express our disgust and dismay at the recent transphobic statements by self-identified feminists, particularly Julie Burchill’s Observer article ‘Transsexuals should cut it out’ (13 January 2013), which, in our view, employed a number of transphobic slurs ("shemales", "trannies", "dicks in chicks' clothing"), lazy and unfounded stereotypes (accusing trans women of being "old Etonians" with "big swinging PhDs", and "a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs"), and threatening language ("Trust me, you ain't seen nothing yet. You really won't like us when we're angry.")

The NUS Women’s Campaign stands against sexism in all its forms, and therefore denounces what we believe amounts to transphobia and misogyny. Trans women face prejudice and the risk of violence daily, and we consider that articles like this can only serve to make life more difficult and dangerous for trans women. It is in our view shocking that Burchill, who identifies as a feminist, considers it appropriate to use the privilege of a national platform to attack a group of women who are already marginalized.

Burchill’s ‘feminism’ is not our feminism. A feminism which does not recognise fighting the oppression of trans women as important to tackling patriarchy and sexism is not a feminism which we can support. A feminism without intersectionality is no feminism of ours.

Guest Blog: Armpits for August

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:31:00 Z

Written by Claire Males and Tasha Skerman-Gray

Armpits4August is a feminist charity event which challenges beauty standards whilst raising money for Verity[1], the charity for sufferers of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). In August 2012 we raised over £4,000 by asking women to stop shaving their armpits for one month and getting friends and family to sponsor them.

We think that society’s rejection of female body hair is impractical and oppressive, and promotes a harmful idea of ‘beauty’. Armpits4August provides women with a safe space to discuss these issues, and a reason to grow out their body hair and proudly display it in August. We want to normalise armpit hair with the message that it is natural and nothing we should be ashamed about.

PCOS affects 1 in 10 women and can cause hirsutism (excess body hair). Given that our current beauty culture labels female body hair as ugly, sufferers of PCOS can experience extra anxiety around this issue.

This year we held two days of action – an ‘arm-bush’ on statues of women around London[2], and a ‘pit-mobbing’ of the South Bank[3] – and held workshops with various women’s groups in the capital. It was great fun being asked to contribute guest blogs and vlogs to different feminist websites; we also got the opportunity to talk to Jenni Murray on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour!

We want Armpits4August to be as big as possible across campuses, and so we encourage students to hold their own body-hair-positive events in April under the name of Armpits4April. You could hold a Pit Pride party, put on a benefit gig, dye your underarm hair different colours, or even take to the streets and ‘arm-bush’ statues in your own city! Flyers and other resources are available on our website[4], and we are always happy to come and hold a workshop for student groups. Good luck!

LINKS

1. http://www.verity-pcos.org.uk/

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rK6SoE9neY

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY54dQIxkWU

4. http://www.armpitsforaugust.com/

We can also be contacted via Facebook https://www.facebook.com/armpits4august and Twitter https://twitter.com/Armpits4August

It’s Disabled History Month. I’m coming out as disabled

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 11:12:00 Z

I remember the day that I learned that I had a disability.

I was disagnosed as having an underactive thyroid when I was 19. My mum has an underactive thyroid and I knew as much as she took medication for it but nothing really about what it was or what it meant. In my first year at university my hair started to fall out, I started to gain weight that I don’t think beer could account for, and I was constantly exhausted. My mum ordered me to get a check ‘just in case so I got a blood test which confirmed that I did indeed have an underactive thyroid and that I would need to start taking Thyroxine daily. I didnt really understand what it meant except that I felt a sense of loss, like I had become deficient in some way. In fact my partner at the time’s mum made a joke about how he kept dating women with health problems. I remember actually feeling really embarrassed about it and that there was something wrong with me.

From then on ensued a battle of trying to remember to take the medication every day since I don’t really have a life with any sort of regular routine. Since every day is different and often in a different place I have always found it hard to remember to take my medication (another reason why the contraceptive pill is not an option I ever wish to take up) although it certainly has gotten easier as time goes on.

That day wasn’t the day I realised I was disabled though. The day that I learned I had a disability happened about three years later when in a discussion about the NUS Disabled Students' campaign I remember having a conversation with someone who had only just been diagnosed. I realised that it was indeed a disability in that I wasn’t able to ‘function’ the way most other people were able to when I hadn’t taken my medication. I remember being profoundly upset and crying about it yet there was a sense of relief amongst my sadness. As I learned more about the Disabled Students' campaign as NUS Scotland Women’s Officer and learned about the social model of disability, which helped me come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t broke, it exposed to me my own prejudices about what constituted a whole person and how society views disabled people as inherently flawed.

The NUS Disabled Students' Officer at the time Rupy Kaur was excellent and supportive about it when I discussed it with her. As a result of learning to accept my disability and developing my understanding of disability and education I can today proudly say that I feel in control of my disability and medication now, and that having different needs doesn’t make us wrong. Just different. Also, maybe a bit cool.

Aberdeen Reclaim the Night

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:55:00 Z

The below is a transcript of a speech by Kelley Temple, NUS Women's Officer's at Reclaim the Night in Aberdeen.

Sisters, the reason that I have marched on the streets with you tonight is because I am angry. I am angry at the fact that we live in a society which hates women. I am angry that we live in a society where women’s bodies have become public property and that their bodies are not their own. I am angry that we live in a society where women are blamed when someone else chooses to violate her body and her person. I am angry that we live in a society which blames women for men’s violence against women.

I am angry that women spend their entire lives negotiating the threat of sexual violence and I am angry that my sisters are being deprived of their right to live a full life. I am angry when the police and politicians refuse to speak out against the real cause of gender based violence. I am angry when our fellow students in our student’s associations think it is ok to trivialise rape and sexual assault and sexualise women’s inequality through events like pimps and ho’s nights. I am angry when misogynists on student councils tell women that sexual assault and objectification are just a celebration of the female form. I am angry when as an angry feminist; the fact that I am angry is used as a way to silence me. I am angry when people tell me that feminism has done its job and women have equality. When 92% of student presidents of University Student’s association Presidents in Scotland are men, When 67% of student sabbaticals in the UK are men and when 1 in 7 women students have been a victim of serious sexual or physical violence while studying, women do NOT have equality with men and feminism’s job is NOT finished.

I know a woman student from one of our colleges who suffered sexual assault in her institution, had the courage to report the assault and was told that she should take responsibility for the man’s assault because she had spoken to him in a friendly manner in a class. I know of another woman student who has left college without her qualifications because her attacker was never brought to justice and continued to torment her after the attack. I know of women students who have been threatened by their attacker into silence and sexually assaulted by their lecturers. I am angry that I am still fighting patriarchy and gender based violence with and for my sisters every single day.

I am angry when women are told we have no right to be on OUR streets, when as a woman we are most likely to be attacked by our partners in our own home. I am angry when people tell me we don’t need a women’s officer because its ‘patronising’ to empower women to tackle patriarchy. I am angry that people refer to women as girls to infantilise them and not accredit them with the power they deserve.

I have a lot of reasons to be angry, but I am also feeling very inspired. I am inspired that so many of you have turned out tonight to march on Aberdeen’s streets in defiance of gender based violence, I am inspired by the fight to smash patriarchy, and I am inspired that we are going to come together to continue the fight every single day.

NUS commissions research into lad culture on campus

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:33:00 Z

Every autumn as returning students come back to campus and new students arrive, we start to hear the sexist horror stories of the way that university and college social spaces demand specific types of behaviour from students in order to participate in student life. This year has been no exception. The Everyday Sexism Project uncovered the latest disturbing practices in Fresher’s Week, and of course the usual raft of news stories about initiations.

These stories are incredibly disturbing for me. This is not because I find a sexualised environment to be an inherently bad thing, but because participation specifically for women within this culture requires women to accept a weakened position in relation to their male counterparts. It’s demanded that women reinforce their own inequality to gain status within such a culture. It worries me when what is ‘masculine’ or male is seen as the default, and a womens’ value within such a culture can only come from their sexuality and how closely they mimic what is considered ‘ideal’. I worry about the way women students are impacted at such a formative time in their lives, but also because I wonder what responsibility we as members of the student movement have to stand up against the ‘lad culture’ that seems to have infiltrated our campuses.

What is the nature of this new culture on our campuses? What impact is it having on women students? How does lad culture even function on campus, in the midst of equality policies and values-driven students’ unions? We don’t know! We’ve seen the headlines, but we haven’t systematically examined what is going on and how women students feel about it.

With this in mind, NUS has commissioned a piece of independent research into lad culture on campus and the experiences of women students. Researchers at the University of Sussex are conducting a comprehensive literature review and will be holding focus groups and interviews across the UK. They will report their findings to us in the spring, after which we will get to work figuring out how we can seek to make improvements for any issues they uncover.

This is a project about considering how the whole student movement can respond positively to a culture that is at odds with our values, while ensuring that we aren’t creating false divides. We’ve asked the researchers to look specifically at women students, while knowing their findings may have implications for a whole range of students.

Although I know there’s a possibility that the findings of the research could reveal a dismal picture, I am a strong believer in identifying the real issues and taking an evidence led approach is the first step to empower student officers in tackling problems on campuses. Keep an eye out in the spring for the results!

To learn more or get involved with the research, visit the researcher’s website at http://ladcultureresearch.wordpress.com/.

Do you think it is Fair to Care?

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:54:00 +0100

Do you care? Should you care? Yes you should care?

The NUS Women’s Campaign has voted for the priority campaign this year to be on student carers and we will be working with the NUS Welfare Zone on this issue .

The Fair to Care campaign is about putting a specific group of predominantly women students and the injustice they face in trying to access education on the agenda, and making the education sector sit up and take notice of a group of students who have been consistently overlooked.

Student carers in this instance does not, as often mistakenly thought to be, simply mean student parents but refers to those students who provide unpaid and crucial care for someone who is their parent, friend, relative neighbour or a disabled child.

These students are considered separately from student parents in terms of funding as while student parents receive specific funding, student carers lose any right to financial support when they become a full time student.

The NUS Women's Campaign believes that student carers should be supported to access and stay in education.

We know that women continue to shoulder the majority of caring and responsibilities and that the nature of caring is still inherently a gendered one.

We also know that at the moment if you are a student and a carer then you have no entitlement to any carer’s support financially if you are in receipt of student support, i.e. bursary, student loan etc. In addition, these students are not able to top up their limited income with part-time work since many will have very little spare time to do much but study and their caring duties.

Due to the lack of support, being a student carer can have a negative impact on the student experience and leave students feeling isolated. Many carers give up an income, future employment prospects, and pension rights to become a carer.

As a result, student carers are at high risk of not entering education and if they do, dropping out of their course.

The Women's Campaign believes that student carers should be entitled to both regular student support, in the form of loans/bursaries, and specific funding to recognise the additional financial needs of student carers.

Government cuts are only going to increase the number of students with caring responsibilities. This is because care provision provided by local authorities is being shut down and the government’s tender to private company ATOS who receive higher profits for deciding that more disabled people are ‘not disabled enough’ to qualify for financial support from the government.

This means that disabled people will become more dependent on informal unpaid care from relatives and friends, some of whom will have to leave their course or not go into education as a result.

We believe that this group of students who are overwhelmingly women (nearly 70%) deserve to be provided with the right support both financially to give them independence and to balance competing priorities and supported emotionally and personally by colleges and universities.

One of the first steps colleges and universities need to take is identifying these students as this information is not collected by many institutions in the UK.

NUS is supporting the private members bill on carers by Barbara Keeley MP and Carers UK which is going through Parliament and has its second reading today.

You can read the Bill here: (on page 3)

If the bill gets passed it would place a duty on HE and FE institutions to take steps to identify student carers, which would be great progress in starting to gather data and start to in fill the gap of information on student carers’ experiences.

The NUS Women’s Campaign will be conducting the first ever specific research on the experiences of student carers on campuses across the UK, if you want to be involved in our focus groups and finding out what more you can do on your campus email Kelley Temple NUS Women’s Officer at kelley.temple@nus.org.uk.

It’s definitely not fair for student carers in further and higher education today, so let’s change it and make it fair to care!

Rape apology, and the misunderstanding of consent

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 21:05:00 +0100

The vast amount of coverage over the Julian Assange case in the past couple weeks have definitely opened up a rather depressing can of worms and some worrying attitudes about sexism towards women. Whilst Assange denies any wrongdoing, some of his supporters’ articulations are sheer rape apologism. What I find most unfortunate is how common this is it has exposed a gross misunderstanding of the concept of consent, both what it is and how it works and should work within sexual situations.

There isn’t a shortage of bloggers talking about the rise of rape apology in recent weeks. Here is a great one from Rhiannon Hedge the NUS Wales Women’s Officer http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/blogs/blog/rhiannonhedge/2012/08/18/Assange-the-hero-who-couldnt-rape-and-other-fairytales/

The point that needs to be made is that rape apology and misunderstanding of consent is incredibly relevant to the student movement. Many responses to our Zero Tolerance campaign deny that sexual harassment happens in their campus because they cannot possibly fathom a place they see as safe, as a place of anxiety and fear for others. Even though our Hidden Marks research found that 68% of our respondents experienced sexual harassment in or around their institutions, people still believe it doesn’t happen on their campus.

What many negative respondents to our campaign don’t realise is that often, the only way to realise something is there is to ask. This past year the Twitter hashtag #ididnotreport arose, in which victims of many types of sexual violence from harassment to rape describe their experiences and why they did not report, and in many cases, why they haven’t told anyone at all. If the demonization of the women who are accusing Assange is anything to go by, to understand why many victims of these sorts of crimes don’t report when they see how disrespectfully they are treated.

This entire premise of consenting sexual activity that two (or more) people share is that both (or more) partners consent to the sexual activity which takes place. Presuming an entitlement to do things to or say things about other people’s bodies without asking their consent is quite frankly one of the root problems of the endemic of sexual harassment that women have to suffer throughout their time as a student. Negotiating consent is core to engaging in sexual relations with other people and if you are not prepared to negotiate consent or ask your partner what they would like, or whether they want you to do something, then you have no business engaging in sexual relations with them. Women’s bodies are not just objects that you can buy a season ticket for and can turn up whenever you feel like it, to use for your pleasure alone. I would also ask the question, why on earth would anyone want to have sex with someone who didn’t want to have sex with them, unless they wanted to exert power over someone else without consent. The Hidden Marks research exposed the grim reality that women students face in their day to day lives in pursuit of their education. Here is a case study from the report which demonstrates a fundamental lack of concern or understanding of consent: “I was approached by a group of male students as I was walking out of my halls of residence and they were all shouting sexual things at me and then one of them approached me, grabbed me around the waist and then started to touch my breasts and bottom. He was saying things like ‘you know you want this’ and ‘you know you're up for this’.”

It doesn’t help the matter that sex education in schools, when it does exist, rarely even touches on understanding the issue of consent. In order to have a truly healthy sex life, the empowerment to say no, and the teaching that consent is not just the absence of a NO but the presence of an enthusiastic YES, is absolutely essential. However, unfortunately sex education (in particular for women) is often taught under the impression that we are always responding to other people’s desires instead of negotiating a healthy consensus about what people want in their sexual relations.

If the concept of negotiating consent is offending and upsetting some people so much, then this tells me that we have an urgent responsibility to educate people on this issue. It goes to the heart of rape victim blaming and the reason that sexual assault and violence is trivialised and women’s experiences not taken seriously.

It’s easy to get angry about this issue, but far more effective to get organised. As women we need to mobilise to start challenging and explaining the nuances of consent: what constitutes as consent, who can consent, and what to do if consent is not given.

Groups can start consent workshops, speak to student mentors about talking to their mentees, and having healthy reminders posted within campuses. Student officers can try to convince staff, especially at orientations and inductions, to take a proactive approach to informing incoming students about Zero Tolerance policies. Our Zero Tolerance campaign aims to challenge the culture which perpetuates sexism and violence against women to create a culture in students’ unions which is zero tolerance of sexual harassment and understands why.

Universities need to be a safe space for students to learn, and also to relax. Zero Tolerance policies explain to potential victims that they will be taken seriously, and says to potential harassers that what they are doing is not acceptable. But in order to make real change, widespread education on consent and respect is crucial.

The NUS Women’s Campaign will be creating a resource to help student’s unions educate students and develop a more healthy relationship with the issue of consent.

If we want equality, why do we need liberation?

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:07:00 Z

It has become apparent to me through the debates that I have with students and student officers on campuses that one of the biggest problems we have with liberation is actually a fundamental misunderstanding of what the relationship is between ‘liberation’ and ‘equality’.

During debate, a delve into the psyche of those who say we shouldn’t have a women’s officer, that liberation is discriminatory and that liberation is not important, and in fact irrelevant, has demonstrated one key factor: that those people assume equality already exists.

I understand that if you take legislation at face value and assume that people don’t break the law or when a law is made, all problems associated with that discrimination in society, that legislation sorts it all out, then it may be a reasonable assumption that we live in an equal society where your gender, sexual orientation, disabilities or race are irrelevant in determining the opportunities and experiences that you have. Hey presto!

We live in a society where women are still paid less than men, women are concentrated in low paid work, women are discriminated against in job recruitment and where women professors are expected to give up having a family if they want a career in academia. We live in a society where women still bear the majority of the burden of care and childrearing which continues to be undervalued.

We live in a society where women’s bodies are considered to be public property and fair game, especially if she is in a night club in her student’s association, but of course she must take responsibility if someone rapes her because she was obviously wearing her ‘asking for it’ outfit (haven’t been able to find mine recently) and maybe even drinking (drinking being the criminal offense here). We live in a society where women make up barely 20% of MPs despite being the majority of the population and where only 22% of student presidents in students unions of universities across the UK are women.

That could even be argued to be a good statistic when you compare it to the fact that only two women university presidents in the UK are black women. We live in a country where one of our nations, Northern Ireland, does not even recognise a woman’s right to control her own body and there are continual attacks on women’s rights to do so across the UK.

The difference between equality and liberation is that equality is the goal we are fighting to achieve and that liberation is our means of getting there.

That is why when people argue that if there is a women’s officer there needs to be a men’s officer they entirely miss the point. Men are not underrepresented; men do not face discrimination because they are men. They may face discrimination because they are disabled, LGBT or black and that is why we have the three other liberation campaigns, but not simply because they are men.

To live in a society where it is the feral rich and men who hold all the power is not a representative society. Women are the global majority and the same way the suffragettes fought for women’s rights to vote and stand for election, we need to continue the fight for women to be able to stand in and be successful in those elections. We need more women to be decision makers and for women to have a stake in society.

I am a feminist because I recognise the reality of the state of inequality and I am passionate about empowering women to fight our oppression through liberation and tackle the false consciousness that we have achieved equality, and that we can now put our feet up and have a cup of tea. As my sisters said before me, I am not here to make the tea; I am here to make policy and I am here to make change.

Staff room? More like the men's room

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:30:00 Z

The Herald newspaper has reported today that shamefully only 21% of professors at universities in Scotland are women, with the highest proportion being 31% at Glasgow Caledonian University.

It is clear that women’s underrepresentation is not just a problem within the political, business and even student union spheres but also at the basic level of who teaches our students and makes the decisions about the curriculum in our universities.

For women students who have ambitions to be a professor, or to lead in the field of academia, it can be extremely disheartening to peruse the landscape of professorship.

When the majority of students in our universities are women, we should be very concerned that only a few of them will be able to make the promotion to professorship.

If you think back to a time when you admired and were inspired by someone and thought, ‘I could do that’ or ‘that could be me’, whether you feel you could relate to or connect with that person is an important part of creating that aspiration.

When the professors of your university are made up of mostly white men, it becomes harder for women students to visualise themselves in the role.

Having more women professors won’t just encourage more women into academia, but will also change the shape of the curriculum for students. We all have a lived experience and bring that into the work that we do and the priorities we have. It is important that the curriculum is also the most informed and of high quality.

The problem with a lack of diversity is not just the unfairness on people who don’t fit the ‘norm’ of white, non disabled, straight man.

A lack of diversity also means that there will be aspects of the field missed out, a lack of different perspectives which then leads to the privileging of certain priorities and viewpoints which then become known as empirical truth, or ‘it just is’, thus ignoring (or simply being blind to) the real life experiences of the majority of the population (and student population).

We know that when more women are elected to parliament, parliament’s priorities change as women bring their own priorities from their experience as life as a woman and therefore parliament starts to reflect more of the electorate and their issues (although still no where near enough).

Women’s underrepresentation is not just bad for women students, it is bad for high quality teaching and learning.

You can’t be (well it is much more difficult) to be what you can’t see, so I hope Scottish universities start being proactive in increasing their representation of women in professorships and not just assuming that because an equality act exists, barriers don’t.

After all, the act of buying a gym membership in itself does not cause you to get fitter unless you actually go to the gym on a regular basis and do something about it.