College imposes gender quotas on conference panels to prevent ‘sausage fests’

Article here. Excerpt:

'In an effort to enforce diversity and inclusion, George Washington University’s international affairs school will no longer permit any “multi-speaker event” that does not meet a female quota, even if attempts are made to ensure women participate.

“For any panel, symposium, or multi-speaker event (3 or more speakers) held at the Elliott School, there should be no single-gender discussion panels,” Elliott School Dean Reuben Brigety wrote in an email to faculty and staff.

“If a panel consists of a single-gender [sic], please ensure that the moderator is of a different gender,” said Brigety (below), adding: “Non-adherence to this policy could result in cancellation of the event.” Its stated effective date was July 1.'

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Any panel on topics like math and physics can be spiced up by plying the profs' old ladies with a couple pink ladies and then, hand them the mic! Nothing spices up a stale academic panel discussion like an SO half in the bag with the microphone.

Just sayin'.

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Is the college assuming the speakers' genders? What if they say they "identify" as female?

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... a mixed African-American/Latina/polynesian bi-pan-sexual woman the first time anyone asks me how "I identify" in terms of gender and/or sexuality. Then when they laugh or question it, I'll freak out about it and then sue them.

Fair's fair.

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Good point. I'm often amused at how the word "gender" has come to be used. Originally, of course, it was a grammatical term, and then it was adopted to refer to those aspects of sexual identity that are culturally constructed (and thus was of some use in social sciences like anthropology, where the distinction between "sex" and "gender" actually made some sense). Now its usage has become quite inconsistent. Even among conservatives, I often hear "gender" used as a sort of polite euphemism for "sex," and actually that's how it appears to be used by these university officials, when they say "single-gender" where they obviously mean "single-sex." In an age that idealizes such nonsense as "gender fluidity," how can they possibly determine such a thing? Five minutes before the panel meets, I could claim that my fluid gender has shifted.

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