Campus feminists censured for excluding trans students

A UNIVERSITY feminist society has been disciplined for excluding trans women from talks and debates about rape and sexual assault.

Women Talk Back hosted womenonly meetings at Bristol University to discuss male violence against females, and argued that the presence of men could make attendees fearful to speak out.

The students refused entry to maleborn transgender people who self-identify as women, classed as men under equality laws unless they have changed their legal sex.

Now Bristol students’ union has ordered the society’s president, Raquel Rosario-Sanchez, to stand down and banned her from union leadership posts for two years. Committee members must complete an “equality, diversity and inclusion” course.

The society’s 73 members have written to Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, urging him to take action under new free speech powers to combat “unacceptable silencing and censoring” on campuses.

A student filed a formal complaint against the society last year after a trans woman was shut out of a campus meeting on “women’s boundaries” in law, culture and society. Ms Rosario

Sanchez had cited the Equality Act 2010, which lists biological sex as a protected characteristic meriting singlesex spaces.

But students’ union officials ruled last month that the trans woman was discriminated against and the incident was “extremely harmful” to them.

Ms Rosario-Sanchez, 30, a PhD student, said: “Women have a right to sin

‘There is this climate where people think they have a right to censor and silence the free speech of others’

gle-sex spaces when we are talking about sensitive matters. We want to use that law so any woman can have a space to talk and be respected and believed.

“There is this climate where people think they have a right to censor and silence the free speech of others. It’s happening to us and so many students, but universities are becoming weaker and weaker.”

A spokesman for the students’ union said: “The [society’s] behaviour was found to be in breach of the Bristol students’ union code of conduct, and the complaints panel decided that it is appropriate to apply sanctions to the group.”