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Equality and Diversity

November 21st, 2011

The week that was…

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Equality and Diversity

November 21st, 2011

The week that was…

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Since last week’s news could not be published due to a technical snag (apologies for that), this week’s news round up is slightly longer with items of interest from the last two weeks. Highlights include Anti-Bullying Week, Trans Remembrance Day, ‘Who’s the Daddy’ research at LSE and Sepp Blatter’s remarks on racism in football.

Starting with the most recent, last week was Anti-Bullying Week in the UK. This year’s campaign focussed on verbal bullying and its slogan was ‘Stop and think – words can hurt’.

On the violence that can be inflected by language and terminology, the Guardian has a challenge – to drop the medical and often hateful word ‘homosexual’ from its reporting and instead use the more neutral ‘gay people’.

Words do indeed need to be chosen carefully – FIFA President Sepp Blatter is under fire for claiming that football does not have a problem with racism and that such issues can be resolved by a ‘handshake’. After facing criticism from many quarters and calls for stepping down from his post, Blatter has apologised for causing offence.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was observed on 17 November. Laverne Cox, actress and transgender advocate, writes for the Huffington Post: “Though they said I was a boy when I was born, I never acted the way boys were allegedly supposed to. Those kids who chased me home from school every day during my elementary and junior high school years were trying to put me in my place.” She adds, “I believe we dishonor the memories of all those trans people before us who have lost the war with their lives if we don’t find our own ways to fight back.”

Lesbian, gay and transgender people are increasingly challenging heteronormative laws. The research carried out by Dr Julie McCandless, lecturer in medical and family law at LSE, asks ‘Who’s the Daddy?’ Dr McCandless observes that “…by framing parenthood provisions along traditional ‘biogenetic’ lines and ideas about what a family ‘should look like’, the new legislation has not grappled with the question of what parenthood should be grounded on.” An example given is that of Thomas Beattie who became the first legally recognised man to give birth. Beatie had been born female and undergone gender reassignment, but had retained his female reproductive capacity.

Meanwhile, the whole pensions dispute has had a positive impact – female academics find that ‘working to contract’ has given them an opportunity to find work-life balance. Sally Hunt, UCU’s general secretary said, “People are saying that for the first time in years they’ve been able to have some kind of normal life. It’s clear it has become very normalised for people to work 50-plus hours in a week, doing evening and weekend work.” She found that to be particularly true for young female academics and those with childcare responsibilities.

Finally, a colleague alerted me to this write up in the Guardian on how existing reactions to disabilities limit people’s lives. Matthew Harper argues that we find security in pigeonholing people into easily identifiable categories; hence, recognisable physical disabilities are ‘more acceptable’ than say, cerebral palsy. He writes: “So, how do we battle this segregation? It starts with acceptance of the stark reality we live in and what we actually think of disability, but are too ashamed to admit.”
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If you come across news of relevance to equality and diversity, please write to equality.and.diversity@lse.ac.uk

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Equality and Diversity

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