Mick Hartley

Meanwhile, in Bristol:

A feminist student group at Bristol University is set to launch a legal challenge claiming discrimination after the student union sanctioned them for running women-only meetings.

The group, Women Talk Back, has launched a crowdfunding campaign in an attempt to sue the union after the group denied a transgender woman entry to a women-only event.

Union officials have demanded that the group’s chairwoman, Raquel Rosario Sánchez, resign and have barred her from joining the committee of any other affiliated group at the university for two years.

They have banned the group from conducting women-only events and have insisted that all members of Women Talk Back undergo “diversity and inclusivity training” that will focus on the importance of allowing men into previously women-only events.

Thought-reform, you might call it. As long as women persist in denying that men can be women any time they choose, this form of ideological training will be required.

Sánchez, a PhD student originally from the Dominican Republic, claimed last year that officials at the university had failed to protect her from bullying and harassment by other students over her feminist views.

The group said: “Our case could be the among the first brought by women who were directly prevented from or sanctioned for using the single-sex exemptions under the Equality Act 2010.” It argued that “the rights everyone has to single-sex spaces mean nothing if public bodies and institutions, such as the Bristol student union, can override and dictate which rights women should or should not have”.

The group’s broad aim is to provide “a space for women to engage in lively discussion and debate. We are in pursuit of global liberation from all forms of patriarchy.”

A spokeswoman for the university’s student union said it investigated the conduct of Women Talk Back and found that its actions had breached its code of conduct. She added: “The students involved in this case acted outside of those rules in their behaviour towards two other students. We will continue to work with the student group who, like all affiliated groups, have access to a range of support from Bristol student union.”

Except if they're women who won't allow men into their single-sex spaces. No support for them.