It's about time politically-correct students just shut up

“Have you heard about this campaign for disabled students?” My friend’s question seemed fairly straightforward. Was it about financial support? Was it something national? Was it about highlighting the support needs of disabled students? “Which one would that be?”
It turned out to be none of these things.
It was a campaign set up within my university on behalf of all disabled students – the Disabled Students Liberation Campaign. Its aim? Tackling the “systematic oppression” of disabled students. When I heard this and read the campaign’s angry, vitriolic constitution, I was aghast. For one thing, it offered no concrete proof for its assertion that the university served to perpetuate and reinforce the systematic oppression of the disabled. There were no case studies, no testimonies, and no examples of policies proving that the university was trying to keep disabled students subjugated, either actively or through inertia on disability issues.
Second, I simply did not feel oppressed. It felt all so very ungrateful to all manner of people. For one, the student access officers who would seek my opinions because, even where there were no dedicated disability positions, they wanted to make the needs of disabled students as central to their work as the concerns for women, ethnic minorities and LGBT students (oh sorry, it’s LGBT+ now). It also felt like a swipe at the staff and students who did everything they could to ensure I had every chance to live well and succeed in my work, from the librarians and student readers, to the IT team, undergraduate officer, porters, cleaners, caterers, nurse, chapel office, note takers and indeed friends, to name just a few of those who whom I owed an enormous thank you at the end of it. Faced with such kindness, not to mention a dedicated Disability Support Office that was also really helpful, I didn’t feel terribly oppressed.
But the third, and by far the greatest concern, was that it had set itself up in the name of all disabled students. There was no sign-up list and no opt-out. There wasn’t even an attempt at consultation. As a result, it was impossible to turn away with a ‘not in my name’ attitude. After our Howells of protest caused a social media stink, we were invited to a conciliatory dinner with some of the founders, who to their credit listened respectfully enough to our concerns. We wanted change, or the formal ability to be opted out of the campaign. In the end, I have absolutely no idea whether we got it or not. The problem with bitter and angry people is that they are far too busy being bitter and angry to have time to do anything practical. So the campaign may well still exist. I can’t be bothered to Google it and find out.
The point I am trying to make, though, is that from these people’s viewpoint, there would have been no need to sign us up, consult us or at least gather some names to present to the university, of people agreeing that they are indeed oppressed. The reason is that they are incapable of seeing people as individuals. They put people in to the binary categories that they come up with, determining exactly what their struggles are and what their position is, and exactly what they need. Their approach to diversity and to the legitimate challenge that they are overgeneralising, is simply to invent more and more categories to lump everyone in to. Then they rail furiously against straightforward institutions of society: the university, the workplace or whatever. They even tried, during the student fees protests of 2010, to equate their demand for taxpayer subsidies that were unaffordable, with the people of Egypt’s struggle for democracy. One told me “it’s all the struggle of the oppressed.”
You see, grand narratives are easy. But they can never be bothered to conduct the granular analysis that weeding out discrimination (often unintentional) requires: identifying which groups are suffering, why and how. They would never think that it might be that one policy, or that one lecturer, or that one department. Accordingly, when you actually need help and things are starting to unravel, they are powerless and clueless. Indeed, that is assuming you even ask: you might already be too put off by being told that you are wilfully and deliberately oppressed.

So it comes as no surprise to me, having lived through this nonsensical student political correctness, to read that there is now a fresh controversy over gays, or specifically “cis gay men.” To spare you a trip to Google, that means men whose gender identity is aligned to their sexual one. In other words, a ‘cis gay’ man is a man who feels that his gender is indeed male and who believes his sexual identity to be that of a gay male. Come on folks, keep up!
Apparently the National Union of Students, as explained in this article, now believes that LGBT+ societies (never forget the + guys, girls and hermaphrodites) should ditch the role of Gay Men’s Representative because cis gay men aren’t oppressed. How exactly that is determined is, of course anyone’s guess, but I am sure you must be so heartened that your taxes are funding the student loans of people who preoccupy themselves with matters of such profound importance.
It is in fact these pampered, politically-correct students that are perpetuating oppression of themselves. So far this year, they have labelled Peter Tatchell, the prominent gay rights activist as ‘transphobic’ and refused to share a platform with him. They have also turned viciously on Germaine Greer and made a massive fuss over a statue of a colonialist who, ironically, few of my ignorant and ill-educated generation (me included) had even heard of before their whining began.
Education is supposed to broaden the mind, equipping one with the tools to think critically, but ‘safe spaces’ and the practice of ‘no platforming’ are allowing the exact opposite to flourish: they allow the agenda to be dominated by those who don’t want to hear voices different to their own. They choose not to think outside their own comfortable bubbles. They choose to turn a blind eye to the complexities of identity and experience, seeing people through the prisms of narrow binaries. They are even turning on former darlings of their cause, like Tatchell. Where will it end? And yes, it’s okay to laugh at them. It’s okay to dismiss them as idiots who probably no nothing of the real world – a world where, in developing parts, disabled people really are oppressed and where, in the West today, there are plenty of men filled with anxiety, self-loathing or fear because they are gay. But the problem is that we’re talking about the National Union of Students. We’re talking, on a much bigger scale, about the same problem I had with our Disabled Students Liberation Campaign: this is done in the name of people who, quite possibly, don’t want it. Subscribers to this mentality, in effect, told me that the world is against me and that I should respond with anger. Even my beloved chapel was described by one of these nutters as a “symbol of oppression” on the basis that engineers 500 years ago didn’t think there’d be such things as lifts for people who can’t climb steps. What exactly are they now telling young gay men? They have effectively refused to recognise their concerns and worries as valid. It’s as black and white as that: gay men aren’t enough of an oppressed minority anymore to matter. Or perhaps it’s because they are cis gays that they don’t matter – they’re hated because they’re men. Who knows? For the young lad terrified of the reaction of his religious family, or distressed by aspects of gay life today, he’s on his own.
These silly students should just shut up and get on with their studying. If they’ve still got enough time left to obsess over such ridiculous matters, I would advise them that a part-time job would be a much better use of their time. Hey, as oppressed minimum-wagers, they might even learn something!