What is in Kelvin's Head?

How were my Predictions last year?

31/12/2024

Time to check out how I did with the predictions I made on New Year’s Day 2024.

1 General Election in UK – Labour landslide. PM – Sir Keir Starmer. (No great change in policies from the Tory government that Labour will replace).

Yes – fulfilled in every way.

2 US politics will continue to be dominated by Donald Trump

Yes

3 In the US Presidential election in November there will be victory for the Republican Party.

Yes

4 AI/Deepfakes have a significant effect in electoral politics.

Not really – AI/Deepfakes are present but there’s no real evidence that they swung any particular election

5 Conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine unresolved by end of 2024.

Alas Yes

6 No progress for those wanting marriage equality in the Church of England.

Alas Yes

7 Twitter goes bust or is sold or both.

Not quite. Twitter feels pretty wounded but still Xists.

8 The world will be warmer in 2024 than ever before.

Yes

9 Another country will join Nato.

Yes, Sweden in March.

A new agreement is reached between the UK and Greece on the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles that opens the door for at least some of them to be displayed in Athens.

Close but no cigar.

Not a bad year – 7 direct hits with a few misses.

7 responses to “Gender Segregation in Universities and Elsewhere”

Nick Brindley

13/12/2013

The issue that Universities UK was advising on wasn’t single sex meetings but segregated seating, which is significantly different. They were talking neither about organisations nor meetings that were closed to members of either sex but of segregation by sex within a single meeting open, on that basis, to all.

This isn’t to say that it isn’t important to think about the issues you raise, just that they are substantially and importantly different from the issues raised by the UUK advice, which in turn are different (as UUK say in this response http://blog.universitiesuk.ac.uk/2013/11/25/external-speakers-guidance-segregation/) from those raised in the subsequent debate)

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1. Kelvin
  
  13/12/2013
  
  I also remember about 15 years ago welcoming a straight couple into an Anglican congregation who told me that they had never sat together in church before, it being the custom where they came from in rural Wales for men and women to sit on opposite sides of the aisle in church.
  
  They also told me that it was the custom to put up on a board what everone had given the previous week.
  
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Kelvin

13/12/2013

Thanks Nick – I wasn’t aware that this was what had caused it. I don’t think my comments are irrelevant to that situation and some of the discussion I heard on Today was broader than simply over seating.

I am reminded of the performances of (I think) Oleana by David Mamet in which the audience was seated in gender segregated seating. It was an interesting experiment and one that made many uncomfortable.

I struggle to think of any situation where I would support gender segregated seating on the basis of the preference of the speaker.

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RevRuth

13/12/2013

In Homerton Hospital 10 years ago they had invested big bucks in a stunning multi-faith chaplaincy centre. Women Muslim patients still said their prayers in the stairwell.

I say No to segregation.

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Nick Brindley

14/12/2013

I certainly wouldn’t want to (try to) introduce segregated seating into my churches but that’s a slightly different question from telling others they’re not allowed to segregate, which is what’s in question in this case. The advice from UUK was that Universities should tolerate meetings being held in their premises where seating was segregated. The advice was not aimed at anyone who wanted to segregate but at the owners of buildings such people might want to use. From the point of view of the Church we’re more likely, I would think, to be in the position of the University than that of the meeting organisers, since segregated seating is more or less unknown in contemporary British Christian settings (as far as I know).

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1. Kelvin
  
  14/12/2013
  
  I’ve only encountered segregated seating in Coptic churches and in Synagogues.
  
  As I said above, I have met people who have lived their lives in the UK in a church which did practise segregated seating.
  
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Duncan

14/12/2013

Good points, well made.

The thing that does disturb me a little in this debate (refreshingly absent from your piece) is the shrillness of the liberal voices I have heard (particularly on Radio 4) about that fact that, on occasion, consenting adults might want to sit in separate groups.

Listening to them, it was as if one of the 10 commandments had been broken. (“Thou shalt not sit in a group comprised only of members of the same sex where there exists a group of the opposite sex in close proximity.”)

IF there is no coercion, overt or implicit, then surely people are free to sit ‘where the heck they like’ (to quote the University spokesperson speaking on this issue.)

What it did raise for me, however, is the fact that coercion is rarely absent from group gatherings of any sort – where the pressure to conform can be strong. And churches are as ‘bad’ at this as any other group. Group norms – whether voiced by the shrill cry of left-leaning liberals, or conservative Imams, or vicars on Sunday – are stubborn and powerful little blighters. I’m not sure that legislating them in – or out – really works.

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