No Platform by Evan Smith

Author:Evan Smith [Evan Smith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

‘No platform’ for sexists and homophobes

‘No platform’ for sexists

The history of the Women’s Liberation Movement and feminism at British universities has yet to be written, although Sarah Browne has explored the WLM at Scottish universities in the 1960s and 1970s, arguing that the universities became ‘a key site in the development of feminist thought and practice’.8 Since the late 1960s, there had been a concerted effort by feminists at British universities to combat sexism, misogyny and patriarchal attitudes on campus, as well as in the wider world. Coming at the same time as the emergence of women’s studies as an academic discipline in universities across the English-speaking world, primarily in Britain and the United States, universities and student politics became an important space for fostering feminist ideas and organising feminist activism. Like other social movements from the same period, the WLM possibly reached its radical peak in the early-to-mid-1970s, but did not disappear in the 1980s, and feminists continued to campaign on a number of fronts during the decade of Thatcherism, including at universities.

Concurrent with a wider campaign against sexism, sexual harassment and sexual violence on campus, there were efforts by some feminist activists at British universities to prevent sexists from publicly appearing or organising within these spaces. Possibly the most well-known of these efforts was at LSE in the early 1980s. In January 1981, a motion was proposed to the LSE student union on women’s safety, highlighting attacks on women students and arguing that ‘sexual attacks cannot be seen as an isolated phenomenon but rather as a brand of violence that is increased by an increasing wave of sexist ideas’.9 As well as calls for support for a women’s right to self defence (including self defence classes), adequate alarm systems in the halls of residence and NUS support for the Reclaim the Night demonstrations, the motion resolved that the union: ‘maintain a “no platform” policy for sexist ideas, literature of any kind, etc., as this obviously contributes to the socialisation process which breeds violence against women’.10

This motion followed an earlier debate in March 1980 over the sexist (and racist) nature of rag mags at LSE and a resolution to cease distribution of the rag mag for that year after it was found have included sexist and racist jokes.11 The protests against the distribution of rag mags occurred at several universities in the 1970s and 1980s due to their racist and sexist content.

Similar to the original introduction of the ‘no platform’ policy in a wider resolution on the discrimination and violence faced by international students in Britain, the ‘no platform’ for sexists needs to be seen in a wider context of a resolution explicitly addressing the sexual harassment and violence experienced by students, both on and off campus. Like the ‘no platform’ for fascists and racists line taken by the NUS, the LSE student union’s ‘no platform’ for sexists was not just an action to be taken against certain types of speech, but saw these forms of speech as precursors to acts of violence which required a pre-emptive response.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.