Gender segregation, and a clash of ideologies

‘Segregation’ is quite an emotive word, especially now with thoughts of Nelson Mandela and apartheid fresh in our minds. But segregation in practice isn’t such a simple issue as many people make out.

A report from Universities UK offering guidance on how to deal with external speakers has ignited quite a storm over the issue of segregation, specifically over a hypothetical case study example of  a religious speaker wishing for his event to be segregated according to gender.

It’s probably worth quoting the scenario (not quite in full):

“A representative of an ultra-orthodox religious group has been invited to speak at an event to discuss faith in the modern world. The event is part of four different speeches taking place over the course of a month exploring different approaches to religion. The initial speaker request has been approved but the speaker has since made clear that he wishes for the event to be segregated according to gender. The event organiser has followed agreed processes and raised the issue with university management. The event has been widely advertised and interest levels are high.” 

The report goes on to consider the different legal and moral dilemmas involved (see p29-30) and the issues that university authorities need to bear in mind. One of its concluding remarks is: “In practice, a balance of interests is most likely to be achieved if it is possible to offer attendees both segregated and non-segregated seating areas, although if the speaker is unwilling to accept this, the institution will need to consider the speaker’s reasons under equalities legislation.”

This seems reasonable to me, as long as the speaker’s record of speaking and their explanations for wanting segregation get proper consideration.

However Nick Cohen among others has written about this in outrage, in his case in two articles for the Spectator. Cohen is a fine writer for whom I generally have a lot of time. His book ‘What’s Left? How the Left Lost Its Way’ is an excellent and much-welcome primer on leftist idiocies from a left-wing perspective.

He says of the report and its authors: “They insist that the wishes of the misogynist cleric must be paramount. If he wants sexual segregation, he must have it, regardless of the views of the audience. It would be an attack on his human rights to refuse him.”

In this case, Cohen falls right down into the sort of identity politics which he is often so good at attacking. He attacks sexual segregation for the fact of a ‘misogynist cleric’ wanting it, rather than for any specific inequality being practised by segregation of this sort. In other words, he is privileging the supposed identity of the speaker and their supposed misogyny rather than the actual practice of segregation.

The Universities UK report made the correct point that, in this case study example, “Both men and women are being treated equally, as they are both being segregated in the same way.” This is crucial, for we can see that inequality is not necessarily being practised. The report added that if for example women were seated at the back and men at the front, then there would be a problem, with women potentially being disadvantaged by being further away and thereby potentially less involved in debate and questions. This would be an example of discrimination being practised against women, rather than just simple discrimination between men and women.

I think we should pick our battles based on principles which do not discriminate against people for who they are (or, more accurately, who we perceive them to be – because we don’t have access to the real person), but rather for what they say and do. In that view, we should not exclude or reject from our universities an Islamist preacher for being an Islamist preacher. But we should reject someone who lambasts women’s equality as a crime and calls for the slaying of non-Muslims (or Muslims for that matter).

What people say and do should be paramount, rather than our assumptions and suppositions about what they think based on a practice which is strange to us and which we don’t like. Something may indicate misogyny to us, but if it is not itself misogyny, as is the case with males and females being divided into separate areas of a lecture theatre, we are practising prejudice.

Myself, I have already been subjected to strong criticism and abuse in expressing these views in the comment section of Nick Cohen’s second article, and also in Twitter exchanges.

As I see it, this is largely about the clash of different ideologies: in this case Islamism and the mainstream liberal-left’s ‘equalities agenda’ (with feminism at its forefront). These have been on a collision course for some time, but the classic liberal-left reluctance to engage with problematic issues has maintained an uneasy distance between the parties.

On the liberal-left side this often sees the effective ‘outlawing’ in discourse of certain forms of discrimination, calling them out as examples of inequality.

However, as a principle, opposition to discrimination falls apart upon even cursory examination, for we discriminate/make choices all the time in our lives, and so do our public authorities, without imposing any sort of inequality. We have gender separation in the provision of changing rooms, toilets, education through single-sex schools, on our sports teams and in organisations set up around ethnic and gender groupings (like different BAME groups and women’s networks). These are all forms of discrimination and segregation, but there is nothing necessarily wrong about them.

To take the point to its ultimate, absurdist, conclusion, we actually discriminate between men and women by calling them men and women. We discriminate between Muslims and non-Muslims by calling them Muslims and non-Muslims (something I was actually attacked as ‘racist’ for saying by one charming individual on the Cohen comment thread). However, if we called women inferior or non-Muslims ‘infidels’, that is a discrimination against those groupings – and that is wrong.

There are wider issues here about the clash of ideologies and the intensifying Culture Wars taking place in Britain (on the North American model). As a liberal-lefty myself (albeit not in the mainstream), I hold the conventional liberal-left ideology as vastly preferable to any Islamism or other religious ideology that seeks to separate men and women in lecture theatres and that has hostile and even violent attitudes to non-believers.

But in the closing off of avenues for conversation and reconciliation by condemning practices which we don’t like but could easily tolerate, I think we make a mistake and cause unnecessary antagonism.

We should condemn and ban people only when clear, real harm is being done. 

Otherwise we are simply asserting our own cultural dominance: which isn’t very liberal, or egalitarian.


Postscript: Universities UK released a further statement clarifying its position, but then withdrew its guidance after criticisms from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, from whom it is now seeking advice about how to proceed.

Postscript 2: A Muslim woman, Myriam Francois Cerrah has published this piece in the Independent giving some background to this issue in terms of concrete circumstances at University College London in March. She says she opposes segregation but also opposes banning it.