The National Union of Students’ LGBT Campaign has passed a motion calling for the abolition of representatives for gay men – because they “don’t face oppression” in the LGBT community.
The NUS LGBT+ Campaign discussed the issue at its annual conference, which took place in Sheffield this week.
At the event, delegates passed a motion that blames “cis gay men” for “misogyny, transphobia, racism and biphobia”.
It says: “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 gay men.”
The motion continues to call on LGBT societies at universities – many of whom have dedicated reps for lesbians, trans people, bi people and gay men – to abolish the role for gay men.
It continues: “The reps system exists to ensure that societies committees can always have a reserved place for groups which disproportionately face oppression within the LGBT+ community.
“Gay men do not face oppression as gay men within the LGBT+ community and do not need a reserved place on society committees.”
It goes on to “encourage LGBT+ Societies that have a gay men’s rep to drop the position”.
The motion was passed – despite other resolutions at the same conference highlighting that men who have sex with men are disproportionately at risk of HIV, and disproportionately at risk of violence.The NUS has recently been drawn into a row with gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who helped organise a rally outside NUS HQ last week to protest their ‘No Platform’ policy. The NUS denies no-platforming Mr Tatchell.
my heart is broken
great job on the discourse y'all! this is real justice am i right????
fuck this & fuck everyone who has anything to do with it
omg??
Calling for removing all gay men by citing the actions of white men?????
And like, yes offense, if we’re doing this based of who is in the community acting on transmisogyny, transphobia, misogyny, biphobia, and racism like alla y’all gotta go. From experience, cis (white) LB+ people are no better at that than cis (white) gay dudes. I can’t believe I’m actually fixing my mouth to say this but it actually sounds like they scapegoated gay men so they wouldn’t have to acknowledge their own bullshit.
okay having talked to some people who were at the conference, the motion passed was less straightforward than ‘ban the white gay cis men from everything’
BASICALLY lgbt societies usually have a few reserved slots on their council for the purposes of representation. so you have a trans rep, a disabled rep, a POC rep, that kinds thing. the purpose of this motion was therefore not to bar cis gay men from council positions, but to recognise that, generally speaking, white cis gay men don’t particularly need a slot just for them; their voices are already pretty dominant within the lgbt community, and that reserved council spaces should be reserved for people who have less of a voice.
tl;dr there will still be cis gay men on university lgbt councils, they just won’t be granted an -automatic council position- on the basis of being a cis gay man.
Thanks for clearing that up. Sometimes I really wish tumblr had a bit more chill. This way, it makes a lot more sense. You usually don’t need any reserved seats for cis white gay men since at least half of any lgbta+ council consists solely of them. I remember a sad little encounter with my own uni. They discussed for three days if they should not include the trans girl because then they’d be an even number and that would mean difficulties with voting. They did include her in the end because one of the gay guys offered to step down for her. (He didn’t get excluded…to my knowledge they just dealt with the even number then.)
When I saw the original article without commentary I was already about 99.9% sure that it was inaccurate because I have seen this happen so often: LGBT communities make a complex, well thought out decision to give minorities a stronger voice within their community and some insulted gay man writes a strawmen statement on it totally misrepresenting the case and then websites like pinknews and gaynews completely uncritically copy it.
It’s the gay white man equivalent of ‘social justice warriors want to make it illegal to be a white christian!’… like, you can take bets on how fake and misleading articles with that statement are going to be.
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WHAT IS EARTH
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Also bullshit things that get called homophobia: Intersectionality. Not always catering strictly to white cis gay men....
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