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December 10: Protest Universities UK’s endorsement of Gender Apartheid at British Universities

December 10: Protest Universities UK’s endorsement of Gender Apartheid at British Universities

  • Posted by Maryam Namazie
  • On December 9, 2013
  • 17 Comments
  • sex apartheid, universities UK

CAMPAIGN-genderequaluk-Maha-Kamal DATE: Tuesday 10 December 2013

TIME: 5:00-6:30pm

AT: Universities UK, Woburn House, 20 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HQ (Closest Underground Stations: Euston or Russell Square)

Universities UK (UUK) guidance to universities on external speakers endorses gender apartheid by saying that segregation of the sexes at universities is not discriminatory as long as “both men and women are being treated equally, as they are both being segregated in the same way!”

Any form of segregation, whether by race, sex or otherwise is discriminatory. Separate is never equal and segregation is never applied to those who are considered equal.

Join Us on International Human Rights Day to unequivocally reject gender apartheid.

It’s 2013. Let’s not time travel.

Contacts: Maryam Namazie, maryamnamazie@gmail.com, 077 1916 6731 or Chris Moos, c.m.moos@lse.ac.uk, 074 2872 0599.

More information here.

 

17 Comments

Sex segregation in UK universities – a step forward for the Muslim religious-right » Maryam Namazie
[…] « December 10: Protest Universities UK’s endorsement of Gender Apartheid at British Universities […]
Sarah Lambert
Thank you Maryam, for all you are doing to defend our hard-won pluralist and secular society. I want to be at the demo and I hope many people who feel as we do will be there. There is no place for sexual or any other sort of segregation in Western societies, and our spineless politicians are presiding over a massive cultural cleansing exercise which may see a rolling back of all we have achieved since the enlightenment. This must not happen and we must oppose the creeping Islamisation of civil society. There is an in-depth analysis of the process by Douglas Murray in Standpoint magazine. http://standpointmag.co.uk/features-november-13-are-we-losing-the-battle-for-the-soul-of-islam-douglas-murray-anjem-choudary?page=1. Ironically it may be that mass migration (of mostly Catholic people) from Europe will be our best defense against the process.
    Maryam Namazie
    Your position equates Islamisation with immigration. Some immigrants and Muslims are the greatest defenders of enlightenment values and some Catholics are not. This is not about people's immigration status, or citizenship or background but about their politics and choices.
      Sarah Lambert
      Well that's telling me! Maybe I was too ready to express fulsome praise... Can I take it you think there is no correlation between newly arrived settlers originating from Islamic states and the increase in Islamist assertion within civil society throughout the West? I would have thought that the number of Islamists as a proportion of incoming Muslims, though tiny, would still increase in real terms if overall immigration from those communities increases, as a matter of simple mathematics. Am I wrong?
        Me
        Sarah, Don't be upset by Maryam's response. She has good intentions and an amazing level of courage and initiative in setting up the CEMB (and earlier campaigning). But with few exceptions we all have our faults, and in Maryam's case one of those is fanatically sharing in the popular (in pc circles) delusion that free migration is an entirely wonderful thing that should never be restrained. Goes with the romantic notion expressed in Beethoven's 9th symph Ode to Freedom (falsely called ode to joy to get past censors) "All men shall be brothers, Freedom's magic unites what custom forces apart.". Being a believer in Communism she is blind to various things. Governments are ruled by money and greed. Encouraging immigration lowers wages and raises rents, boosting unearned profits for lazy rich landlords. It damagingly de-skills the countries the immigrants are leaving but so what, it makes the rich richer and sod the lower classes who have to share their slums with the incomers,and suffer the higher rents and lower wages. Meanwhile it is extremely damaging for a society to lack a shared culture and values, but sod that the profits are more important.. Educational systems forget to mention that: The uk is a great place to live only because OUR ancestors (not Maryam's) worked their butts off to convert a hostile cold island into what it is today. But communists don't understand the concept of investing in the future, they only understand envy of those who have done that investing previously. And the Nazi regime was the direct result of an earlier century of enthusiastic promotion of immigration and multicliquery in Austria and Prussia (e.g. Beethoven above). (How else did all those Jews become so rich and famous there?) But why learn from the terrible mistakes of history when you can repeat them in all their horror (and worse) instead? The UK has had such a uniquely predominant role in history precisely because it has had exceptionally low immigration until the last 50 yrs, being a remote island on the edge of the known world (as was then).
          Maryam Namazie
          • Dec 10 2013
          I really think you are one of the last people to "defend" me. Thanks but no thanks.
          Me
          • Dec 10 2013
          Maryam, you often aren't very good at defending your positions yourself. This latest is an instance. Your reply does nothing by way of challenging my arguments and evidence, or defending your own. Please try to improve on that. For a start, recognise that it is less about "defending" thinker A or thinker B, but rather searching to find what ideas and beliefs are sound and which are false. All too often you just declare things as self-evident truths or evils when they aren't (to many others). You need to ask "Is this true, and if so why?". Cheers.
          Maryam Namazie
          • Dec 10 2013
          I don't need to prove it. It is self-evident in your writings. Plus I spend all my time refuting positions like yours. I don't have to repeat every single argument every single time. My position on those who use the fight against Sharia or Islamism to scapegoat immigrants and Muslims is clear. Islamism is a political movement like fascism. You have the target the movement not place collective blame on those who are often its first victims and opponents.
          Me
          • Dec 10 2013
          "Islamism is a political movement like fascism. You have the target the movement not place collective blame on those who are often its first victims and opponents." Indeed. I've always reckoned that. Where have I or Sarah said otherwise? "I don’t have to repeat every single argument every single time." Agreed. But you do need to state the argument at least once (and normally repeat it or at least point to where it is rather than employ the "you should have already read it" copout). "I don’t need to prove it. " I apologise for being thick, but prove what? "It is self-evident in your writings. " Again sorry to be thick but what is "self-evident" in my writings? Please quote the words on this page or alternatively recognise there is no such self-evidence. "Plus I spend all my time refuting positions like yours. " Yet again sorry to be thick, but please show me any place at which you have refuted my ideas rather than merely brushed them off as you have been doing today here. Please Maryam, less typing and more critical thinking and presentation thereof! Cheers
        Maryam Namazie
        Well I'm newly arrived so no. Plus there are plenty of Islamists who are British born! The point is you need to move away from scapegoating immigrants and Muslims and start targetting the Islamists who are doing these things. Islamism was brought to centre stage by US foreign policy. Plus the british government has close ties with some Islamist regimes like Saudi Arabia. Please see the whole picture and stop imposing collective blame on people just because of where they came from or their background. Just as I don't think all English as racists like the English Defence League. I deal with the EDL as a political trend that needs to be challenged, do that with Islamism too. It's not hard unless one wants to use the fight against Islamism to scapegoat individuals.
          Me
          • Dec 10 2013
          you need to move away from scapegoating immigrants and Muslims But I don't think Sarah or anyone was "scapegoating" anyone. I think you border on paranoia here. Critical discussion of the downsides of indiscriminate profit-driven immigration does not equate to a personal attack on your presence here. Few people can fail to recognise the fundamental difference between you being a refugee from the Islam-terrorised Iran and the many Muslims who have chosen to come here only to impose their cult on the natives. Your extreme hostility to any challenge to immigration does nothing to build the necessary bridge to understanding the very valid concerns of those whose ancestors lived here 100+ years ago, and thereby actually serves to make your position more risky rather than less so. What evidence that the EDL is racist or anti-immigrant. They have constantly explicitly stated exactly the opposite. I think you are just deluding yourself about these things, just as many people delude themselves there was a wonderful merchant in Arabia who was given an exclusive dealership by God and whose memory they must constantly be ruled by. You need to start answering questions and evidencing your case rather than just ideologically posturing and resting on laurels of supporting association with Islington clique celebs.
          Me
          • Dec 10 2013
          And I have to wonder how many working class (or benefits-dependent class) people you count in your circle. Perhaps you could enlighten us? Isn't communism supposed to be in support of lower class people rather than holding them in contempt? Maybe your background in Iran has confused you such that you assume the residents of uk council estates are not proper humans anyway?
      Me
      "Your position equates Islamisation with immigration." Maryam, you need to slow down, slow down a lot and think before you type rather than lashing out at stereotyped phantom enemies. Your reply there was absolute rubbish. Sarah's only reference there to immigration was:
      Ironically it may be that mass migration (of mostly Catholic people) from Europe will be our best defense against the process.
      Which is the exact opposite of what you ranted there. Sarah was actually stating a notion that immigration (from Poland etc) would reduce Islamisation, not promote it. I repeat:, you need to slow down, slow down a lot and think before you type. And instead of asking "what side is this person on", instead asking "what is the evidence and reasoning relating to this point a, that point b".
Protest against Universities UK’s endorsement of gender segregation | Lawyers' Secular Society
[…] and Chris Moos for raising the profile of this issue and for organising this protest (more details here). LSS Secretary Charlie Klendjian will be speaking at the […]
dickspringer
In 1895 in the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision the US Supreme Court said, with one dissenting vote,,that racial separation was just fine. We all know how that turned out. Do universities in the UK really want to go back to 1895?
David Ford
Is there any concerted campaign to lobby MPs and get them to protest? I have written to my local MP, Philip Davies, and he has promised to write to the Education Secretary and forward the reply. I have also written to Caroline Lucas MP but no reply as yet. I cant find any comments by any MP. Thanks
    Me
    As far as I'm aware no MP has ever stepped up on the subject of Islam other than in terms of "millions of peaceful Muslims", "religion of peace", "a handful of criminals justifying their deeds in terms of a perversion of a noble faith" and so on. (Not least the whopping lie mis-quote about "as if he had killed all of mankind blah blah" (actually a command to Jews)). Because of the "racism" tag and the prospect of losing the "Muslim vote". I suspect that Saeeda Varsi is a barely-disguising closet ex-Muslim but that's about it.
    Maryam Namazie
    That's a good idea. Email us any response you might get.
Me
I can't get there on the day but I suggest you demand their answers to the questions I sent them last week. Namely:
Dear UUK, In regard to the new UUK segregation policy, could you please tell me on what basis is determined whether a belief is a "genuinely held religious belief" rather than a "non-genuinely-held" religious belief or a belief that is not "religious" anyway. Could you please tell me who gets to make that determination and on what criteria, and what scope there is for challenge of such determinations. And on what basis do the assertions of those authorities have greater validity than those who assert the beliefs themselves.
Notably they have not replied.

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