Unfortunately, none of the links transferred across when I copied and pasted it here just now. I hope you enjoy.

Forgive me for the interruption - I understand perfectly if, after having read the subject of this reply, you wish to curse my name and aggressively exhale whilst returning to whatever it was you were doing beforehand. However, seeing as the Women’s Officer’s “manifesto” called for a more open discussion regarding several issues, I thought perhaps this might be an effective way of getting the ball rolling. I was going make a start by asking a couple of questions, but the manifesto hit upon the nail, as it were. Why do we need a Women’s Officer? Is it the “pay gap”? Is it the “thigh gap”? Is it because of the range of other “very real issues”? Whilst the quotation marks and tone may suggest I’m being rhetorical, I am very seriously asking this question now: Why do we need a Women’s Officer?

I would like to digress from this particular issue for just a moment, as some may know I am wont to do, and quickly address some of the issues the Women’s Officer is looking to discuss. I actually believe this to be somewhat superfluous to most salient of my personal concerns, but hopefully it will make sense later on. If we as a student body are going to allow our institution to make appointments like this particular one, we may as well do it properly. So, what better way than to go through it chronologically? Firstly, the pay gap. I’m not looking to come across as a naïve revanchist, however difficult it is suddenly proving to be, but one can accept on face value the statement that the pay gap exists and, along with what many call a “glass ceiling”, causes women all over the world to suffer as a result. I also think it would not be too a prognostication to say that the Women’s Officer has a lexicon of studies to support this, along with every other issue they were suggesting we speak more freely about. However, were we to imagine some arcane universe in which this institution had a Men’s Officer, they could just as easily wax lyrical about how women account for 85% of all purchases and significantly higher purchasing power (Yankelovich Monitor), or show you a graph of current and projected rates of males vs. females conferring college degrees, or link you to a cached copy – captured by Google – of an actual Australian government website regarding the different options open to men and women in the event of domestic abuse. They could even give you a totally contradictory article to the NUS 2010 study, which even references a 378 page Human Rights Watch document on Male Rape, which could easily be corroborated by this report. For dessert, they could link the documentary that resulted in the cessation of all governmental funding for the Scandinavian Gender Studies Institute. However, as I said before, none of that really is the point. If anyone is still reading this, fear not – I have indeed gravitated to my main point. Why do we need a Women’s Officer, and what are they going to do? Seeing as our very own Women’s Officer was generous enough to furnish us with an abstract of their upcoming plans, why not start there? Primero punto: campaigning for gender neutral toilets. Seeing as we now live amongst – and are part of – a generation seemingly drowning in their own desperation to recognise the value of their existence increasingly through external loci, let’s turn to Facebook for our next arbitration. They recently updated their gender preferences to include over 50 different choices. Is one suggesting that we gentrify the apparently unacceptable current range of toilets to accommodate all of these choices? Of course not. Forgive me for my indulgence but I do not think it should take such demeaning use of reductio ad absurdum to make a point. If the idea of bathrooms somehow capable of being neutral in the eyes of over 50 different gender groups seems unreasonable, where does one draw the line? 5? 10? Even if that was managed, could it not still be argued that the initial intention was still not fulfilled?

Regardless, I repeat: why do we need a Women’s Officer to do this? Perhaps it’s simply another vapid manifestation of Parkinson’s Law, perhaps it’s to tick little boxes so lovingly forged from the reddest of tapes, I do not know. Nevertheless, what the creation and appointment (borderline incredulous in itself) smacks of is tantamount to an admission that we are all lacking in the inherent ability to create this “utopian” environment within the student body itself. Having gone to a high-school with 70 different nationalities of student (and possibly a similar number of genders according to Facebook), I may not see things the way others do. However, I know that environment to be pretty much the embodiment of equality and acceptance, and the only glaring omission from that picture was a Women’s Officer. What was the justification for not only conjuring so divisive a position but emblazoning it with so divisive a moniker? If it’s misleading, why does it remain? And if people feel annexed and ostracised because of issues like misogyny and sexism, what kind of a first step on the road to peace is to potentially annexe and ostracise even more people with such a title? Additionally, what comfort is to be found in having the appointed occupant of such a position reassure the student body they are “pro-gender A, not gender A only”? What kind of inbred dialogue (in the broadest possible definition of the word) does one realise they will cultivate like that? Lastly, how is it that this has all supposedly been ratified and approved with as though it was marked “Strictly Confidential”? Having heard nothing by way of a Women’s Officer last academic year, I’m assuming (dangerous, I know) that this positively monocratic appointment was made at some point this year, with no attention brought to it whatsoever. Was it deemed not to have concerned the wider student body? If so, how?

It may not have been the discussion that was initially intended, but I for one am very much interested in its continuation.