Last weekend the Glasgow Ancients Final took place. A sexist incident happened where an all female team was discriminated against at the finals in which male Glasgow debaters in the audience were involved. Below, you can read the conversation and the moral outrages that evolved around this incident and were published mainly in social media channels. We, the Achte Minute, feel committed to offer you an overview of the published comments and posts from facebook, twitter and the Internet. We did not redact any of the material. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any updates, requests or further information. We will update this article in regular intervals.

We, the Achte Minute, will not comment on the events nor will we redact any of the material. What we want to do is to offer you all the information about the incident that happened that we get from our readers, or from Facebook, Twitter and the Internet. The picture for now may be incomplete, but please do not hesitate to contact us with any further information or requests, we will post updates on a regular basis.

Here is how the events unfolded:

On sunday, 3rd March 2013  Marlena Valles pulished the following text via facebook: 

This weekend was Glasgow University Union’s annual Ancients competition.  For those who don’t know what happened, during mine and my partner’s speeches, in opening government, we were “shame”-d and booed by members of the audience whenever we spoke about how the motion ‘This House Regrets the Centralization of Religion’ affected women (My partner spoke about Leila Ahmed and female clergy and I spoke about dogmatic opposition to contraception and Catholics who identified as pro-choice).  We both realised why we were being booed: it was because we were advocating for women’s rights, speaking in the GUU.    It was only when one of the men making the misogynistic comments and interruptions had the nerve to stand up in the floor debate and very sarcastically say, “The GUU has been proudly admitting women for thirty three years and we are committed to equality” when a member of the audience bravely stood up and responded in a rousing five-minute floor speech  telling the entire chamber  that the men who were booing us were whispering *women* after shouting “shame” at all of our points and making patronizing comments about our dresses.  Her brilliant speech called them out and received a standing ovation from a large majority of the chamber and is without a doubt, the most inspiring thing I have seen in debating.

I understand the way that the GUU “bear pit” chamber works, I have spoken in outrounds at Ancients since my first year and last year, was a guest speaker for the Facist party at one of the Union’s famous Parliamentaries.  I am fine with speaking to the gallery and having audience members clap when they like a point and even say “shame” when they don’t.  What I’m not okay with is people interrupting speeches to be misogynistic.  It is difficult to speak confidently to an audience that is booing you for the sole reason that you are a woman in a dress talking about women’s rights, especially when you are the only girls in the final (which is depressingly often the case on the Scottish debating circuit).   I realize that it was only a few men who don’t usually debate competitively that were involved with the heckling.  The problem was that it was the entire Union that seemed to be weirdly proud of its misogynistic roots throughout the competition.  The social Friday night was a pub quiz which included the question, “In 1980 the GUU had a vote to allow women into the Union.  There is an annual dinner to honour the men who voted against the motion– how many men were there?” and the two GUU teams participating in the quiz whooped and banged their hands on the table in support of the voters against.

After the final, I had six separate members of the GUU, many of whom I have been friends with for years, approach me and give the exact same apologist speech – “I’m sorry that they did that, but they aren’t bad guys and it’s just how it is here and how they are.  They are only joking”.  We were told that that was the GUU and that it was “part of the course” and our fault for calling ourselves QMU A. My partner and I were a composite team, as Ancients is an Open, and Ancients has a policy of only allowing serious sounding team names.  QMU was Glasgow University’s women’s union and as an all-female team (one of four at a twenty-eight team competition) the description fit.  Later, as I was getting a drink, one of the men who was booing us said quite audibly “Get that woman out of my chamber” as his GUU friends, who had minutes ago apologised for his behaviour, laughed along.

This is my question: Members of the GUU clearly knew that this was something that happened.  They knew that certain members would boo women if they spoke about women’s rights.  Why on earth were they allowed to come to observe the final and why were they not asked to leave after or at the very least, issue a genuine apology to the speakers that they had rudely interrupted with their misogyny?

The reason that I am writing this post is because at Ancients, nothing has changed over the last three years.  I remember when I was a first year, in 2011, the opening PowerPoint read “Proudly admitting women since 1980” with the word ‚proudly‘ crossed out.  I feel so sorry for the women that debate in that Union, especially because the reasoning for why none of them stand up against it as told to me by three senior GUU women was that that is just how things are done and “If you can’t beat them, join them” which is intolerable.  The sexism of the GUU isn’t quaint and it is not a tradition to be jokingly celebrated.  I appreciate the efforts of members within the GUU to make it better and maybe that incident needed to happen because we were told by many senior GUU female members that they couldn’t do anything about it without being laughed down.  Until this is genuinely dealt with, as the director of training for the Edinburgh University Debates Union, I would be incredibly wary of sending female first years to Ancients next year and will certainly not be attending in the future unless there is assurance that this won’t happen again.

This controversy has been more frustrating than anything I have ever encountered in debating. I have spoken on motions that I thought were beyond the pale and I’ve had people say quite rude things to me in debates but I have never seen such an abysmal response from a Union for something so clearly sexist.  I cannot imagine that if the same situation happened but audience members in a large final were shouting out racist or homophobic interjections the response from the hosting institution would be “That is just how it is done here” or “You provoked them with your team name”.

I would like to thank the CA’s Pam Cohn and John Beechnoir as well as the equity officer, John McKee, for making it exceptionally clear that these comments should not be tolerated.  If only the GUU would do the same.

Monday, 4 March 2013 at 13:47 Glasgow University Union (GUU) published the following text on Facebook:

Incident at Glasgow Ancients Final 2013

We would like to offer a full and unreserved apology for the incidents that took place at the Glasgow Ancients final on Saturday evening. We will be contacting the individuals concerned to apologise personally.  We would also urge anyone present on Saturday evening who wishes to pass on a complaint to please contact president [at] guu [dot] co [dot] uk so that we can fully address what took place. We are currently undertaking measures to investigate the incidents so that we can take actions to address these.

GUU believes in providing an experience for our members, and our visitors, that is based on inclusivity, fairness and respect. It is clear then that displays of behaviour that are misogynistic or sexist are entirely incompatible with these values. We are again very sorry, that the experience for many visitors to GUU Ancients appear to have fallen well short of those standards. In particular, we sincerely regret the offence caused to our friends from across the wider debating community.

Glasgow University Union

Monday, 4 March 2013 at 16:14  Pam Cohn published, on behalf of the CA-Team, a statement on Facebook:

Misogyny in Debating and the GUU Ancients Final 2013: The Chief Adjudicator’s Response

This is a joint response from John Beechinor and I on the final of GUU Ancients 2013 and broader Women’s issues in the debating community, and how to deal with them.

The Situation

At the final of the GUU Ancients debating competition this year, several members of the GUU (who were not part of the competition) were in attendance. Pam, Kitty Parker-Brooks and Stephanie Ross had the great displeasure of sitting behind them during the final and over-hearing (which wasn’t too difficult) the comments that they were making. During the final they made demeaning remarks about the dresses that the two female finalists were wearing, booed during their speeches and shouted “shame” every time a feminist point was brought up by them. What the audience didn’t hear was them muttering “shame woman” after each point they brought up and calling the female speakers “utter rubbish.” We would also add that their prejudice extends beyond “just sexism,” when they also spent time making fun of the religious (Jewish) clothing another speaker was wearing and made repeated anti-catholic comments wherever examples of the Vatican were used.

In response to this, Kitty and Pam audibly explained that they really disliked misogyny and felt that Rebecca was giving an incredible speech (hoping that that would make them stop). Unfortunately this only resulted in them loudly questioning what the qualification of the women behind them had anyway. Finding this unacceptable, Pam and Kitty motioned a member of GUU over to us and asked them who these people were, why they were here and if they could use their official capacity to get them to stop. The response was to “leave it alone”, “it is just how they are”, and “please please please do not say anything.” Not wanting to interrupt the final, and now with all the female speakers finished speaking (as there were only two, which is a problem in and of itself), Pam and Kitty decided to leave it until after the final to officially deal with the issue.

From the judges perspective, John and the rest of the panel did not pick up upon the misogynistic associations as they were focusing on the content of the speaker’s speeches. Furthermore, to the great credit of Rebecca and Marlena, the panel did not notice any waiver, hesitancy or indeed weakness in their speeches as a result of the heckling.

After the debate and during floor speeches, one of the individuals offered a point stating that “the GUU has been an equal institution for 32 years now.” Kitty promptly stood to offer a point in response. The GUU President chairing the debate was hesitant to accept her, until he had no choice in the matter as the entire chamber had erupted into chanting her name. Kitty promptly put them in their place and exposed their activity throughout the final and received strong applause from (most of) the audience.

After this, Pam went up to the Convenor and asked to make sure that these men would not be allowed into the yakka party and ceilidh, and was assured that they would not and would no longer be present at the competition. This however, was not true. They were allowed back in, making many of the female debaters feel uncomfortable, and said audibly around one of the female finalists “get out of my chamber, woman.”

Once the equity officer (John McKee) and John Beechinor were out of deliberation, Pam explained the situation to them and we all agreed that although we were limited in what we could do, we would make a public condemnation of the act, which we did during the results announcement.

Our Response

We are incredibly upset with what happened, and would like to thank Rebecca, Marlena and Kitty for standing up and breaking silence about these issues. As we said during the results announcements, this type of behaviour is beyond unacceptable. Although we cannot control GUU policy and what they do with these individuals, we would like to make it exceptionally clear that these individuals (who sometimes take part in competitive debating) are not welcome at any future competition either of us are part of the organising committee or Chief Adjudication panel for. This is one of the worst displays of sexism that either of us have seen on the debating circuit, and cannot express how upset it has made us.

We would like to give a personal apology to both Rebecca and Marlena, you are both exceptionally brilliant and talented debaters, and the way that those individuals made you feel is obviously not reflective of anything other than their own prejudice. Your bravery in continuing speaking and not being staying silent about it despite being asked to by certain member of the GUU is incredible. Both of us have many close friends in the GUU and greatly appreciated their help and hospitality at the competition. However, we now feel ashamed to have been associated with the event and our only response can be to condemn it whole-heartedly.

We certainly do not wish to tar all GUU members with the same brush and would like to extend our gratitude to the equity officer, John McKee, and to the other GUU members who have publicly condemned this.

Unless the GUU response is demonstrated to be substantively and meaningfully followed through upon, we along with many debaters will not be attending the competition in future.

Going forward

We hope that this shocking event is a catalyst for change within the debating community and to that effect we propose two things:

1) To create a website where women on IONA can anonymously post about their experiences of misogyny on the debating circuit. We can use this information to compile evidence and further understanding of the problems women face on the circuit to inform future policy. We understand that the experiences of each woman on the circuit is different, and believe that the only way to adequately understand what is impacting them as a group and leading to high drop-off rates and lower levels of success is to compile information on what they are and have faced.

We believe this forum is necessary because the enormous backlash to this event is partly due silence and lack of discussion of the pervasiveness and specifics of what happens to women. Many commenting on this event have expressed shock that this still goes on, and yet this does not come as a surprise to women who face these issues every day on the circuit. We believe this forum will raise awareness of the extent and frequency of misogynist sentiments in debating.

Moreover, we think it is very important to create a forum where women can express their experiences anonymously, as a lot of the problem is feeling disempowered to speak up about what has happened to them for fear of how people will respond. If nothing else comes of this, at least more women will have the capacity to share their experiences and have them validated as things that did truly happen and do very much matter.

2) That an IONA meeting on women’s issues be held ASAP (potentially best at EUDC) to discuss policies that the circuit can put in place to help address women’s issues. Although these policies are normally discussed at the Women’s Open, we think it is important to translate the proposals and discussions occurring there into policies that are understood and implemented by the entire circuit. Also, including men in the discussion is very important to understanding the causes and potential solutions to women’s issues.

Monday, 04 Mar 2013 at 15:55 the Issue was taken up by The Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/9907930/Cambridge-University-students-boycott-prestigious-debating-competition-over-sexist-heckling.html

Monday, 04 Mar 2013 at around 19:00 Rebecca Meredith started a survey about misagony and debating:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1P9q3YOEAQ4_w69U6120hs-0qOnXUoY4RRkUuYz-iTk4/viewform

Monday, 04 Mar 2013 at around 21:00 a Facebook-Paged started publishing reports:

https://www.facebook.com/SMEonIONA

Tuesday, 05. March 2013 at 10:53 the story was picked up by the Huffington Post UK:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/05/cambridge-students-boycott-debating-sexist-heckling_n_2809531.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Update: Tuesday, 05. March 2013 at 16:14 senior GUU members posted this statement on Facebook:

This is a statement relating to accounts of misogyny at GUU Ancients last Saturday. Further names can be added below. 

„Despite the significant progress that has been made in recent years to combat attitudes of sexism, misogyny and other forms of discrimination, the events of this weekend have served as a reminder that these attitudes still exist and all too frequently go unchallenged at the heart of the GUU. We are angry, saddened, but in all honesty, not completely surprised that visitors to our debating home and our student Union have been left to feel unwelcome by some members. That anger is only intensified by the fact that those who feel intimidated and hurt by this behaviour are our friends and people who have made our institution and others feel welcome and safe in their own student Unions and at their own competitions.

People like Marlena, Rebecca, Kitty and Pam showed spectacular courage to stand up to this treatment on the evening. We feel ashamed that they were let down not just by the individual actions of a few spectators, but collectively by the GUU officials and others present who we feel refused to take such complaints seriously.

We will be campaigning for the Union to use its disciplinary powers in a timely and transparent manner to hold to account those who fell well below the standard of behaviour expected of all GUU members. The GUU must send a clear message to its membership and to those beyond its doors that discrimination will not be tolerated. It must send a clear message to those of us who have fought in recent years to make GUU debating a more welcoming place, that our efforts have not been not wasted. Failing that, we cannot in good conscience continue to represent it.

That said, any concern for the Union’s reputation must be secondary to a concern for the victims of alleged sexism at the GUU. What Marlena, Rebecca, Kitty and Pam have brought to light is the horrible truth that people have been victimised, here, in our Union. Not just visitors but members. We feel that the Union’s response to this has so far been unsatisfactory. Our primary concern, therefore, is that the women who have been demeaned and derided simply for being female are apologised to and that meaningful steps are taken to provide them with redress.

We hope that we can work constructively with the GUU Board of Management, other student bodies on campus and the wider debating community to banish sexism once and for all from our Union and to provide a safe and welcoming space for all persons, regardless of gender, to gather and debate in peace.“

Signed (names alphabetical)

Thursday, 07. March 2013 The Spectator wrote about the story, taking a diffrent stand:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8857921/grow-up-girls/

To which the New Statesman responded: 

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/03/why-are-some-university-debating-societies-havens-misogyny

Thursday, 07. March 2013 The Huffington Post (GB) published the following article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/07/sexist-heckling-guu-students-cambridge-debate_n_2827070.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

We will post every new developement in this article. Feel free to send us further links and statements.

ms/fpu