**UPDATE: Bahar Mustafa to remain in her role as Diversity Officer at Goldsmiths after only 1.9% of the union's 8,000 members (that's 165 people in all) signed the petition to vote for no confidence, reports The Independent. The university rules are that at least 3% of people have to sign a petition for there to be a referendum. The university union released this statement: 'The petition has therefore failed and so a vote will not take a place. **
'However, we recognise that some students and a large number of people outside of the organisation are unhappy with the work of our elected representatives. We are looking at how we can address those concerns in dialogue with our members and with our trustees, who oversee our work.'
Over 12,000 people have signed a petition calling for Bahar Mustafa, the 27-year-old diversity officer at Goldsmiths College, UCL, to be given the sack for ‘reverse racism’ after she said that white men weren't allowed access to a meeting about gender diversity and Tweeted things like ‘#killallwhitemen’. Here's your need to know...
Ok... so how did all this start?
Bahar Mustafa wanted to hold a meeting for women of colour to organise a 'cross-campus campaign that puts liberation at the heart of the movement'.
The Facebook event included this blurb: ‘Invite loads of BME [Black and Minority Ethnic] Women and non-binary people!! Also, if you’ve been invited and you’re a man and/or white PLEASE DON’T COME just cos i invited a bunch of people and hope you will be responsible enough to respect this is a BME Women and non-binary event only.’ (FYI non-binary means someone who doesn’t identify entirely as male or female)
She added: ‘Don’t worry,lads, we will give you and allies things to do. ;)’. Later, ‘ALLIES NOW WELCOME!!!’ was added to a notice about the initial event.
Ok… is there more to it?
A picture emerged of Bahar posing next to a piece of paper saying ‘NO white – cis – men pls’ along with a cartoon of male tears dripping into a mug.
Wait, what does ‘cis’ mean?
It’s the term someone who is born into the sex they identify as.
And the ‘male tears’ thing?
It’s what Bahar has since described as a ‘queer feminist in-joke.’ It’s all part of an ironic borrowing of the way ‘man-hater’ has been flung at feminists as an insult for decades. Instead of letting it be an insult, some feminists co-opt it and own it and say ‘well, women are treated pretty badly by men, we’ve got a lot of reasons to hate them, now why do men seem to hate women so much?’
Still, that can’t have gone so well
Right. It got picked up by websites like the MailOnline, who did an in-depth profile of Bahar (with an excuse to publish her pretty Facebook photos), which highlighted her parent’s wealth (the implication being this excluded her from talking about inequality). They also went to her family’s houses to ask them for quotes about her.
How far did they dig?
Someone went to the effort of scouring through all of her Tweets to look for something to use against her. They found Tweets calling someone ‘white trash’ and another including the hashtag ‘#killwhitemen’.
Um…what’s #killwhitemen if not racial hatred?
#killwhitemen is another in-joke. It used to be ‘#killallmen’ but following #blacklivesmatter it was deemed inappropriate to say that black men should suffer from this ironic man-hating (or misandry) when they’re suffering enough from e.g. police brutality.
Again, isn’t #killallmen racial hatred?
It’s hardly a compliment to white men, but unlike, say, the word ‘paki’ that has now been lobbed at Bahar, it’s an insult devoid of the context that makes racism so painful. Some might say reverse racism exists, but white men make up the majority of people who make decisions over the rest of us e.g. CEOs, politicians, journalists, music, TV and film executives, scientists, lecturers… So Bahar was punching up.
After apologising for the 'white trash' comments, she said: ‘I, an ethnic minority woman, cannot be racist or sexist towards white men, because racism and sexism describes structures of privilege based on race and gender.
‘And therefore women of colour and minority genders cannot be racist or sexist because we do not stand to benefit from such a system.’
Now what’s happening?
There's a petition to have Mustafa removed from her post at Goldsmiths and over 13,000 people (that’s a third more people than even attend Goldsmiths) have signed another petition calling for Bahar to be sacked.
In her defence, people tweeted using the hashtag #supportbaharmustafa:
But this hashtag, now trending worldwide has been taken over by people looking to either talk about Bahar’s ‘idiocy’, compare her to the KKK, post alien photos or say stuff like:
**How are we meant to feel about this?
**
Hey, it's not our job to tell you that. But while Bahar’s been unprofessional in the delivery of what she wants – safe spaces for minorities to discuss minority issues, the hate that Bahar's getting suggests there's a really good reason white men weren't allowed to the event in the first place. As Lindy West Tweeted in an unrelated matter:
White men do suffer in ways minorities don't e.g. there are higher suicide rates among young white men. But if you're only looking out for men's rights because it excuses calling a woman a 'paki' you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons. At its crux, what do you think, is it really racist and sexist to ask men to not come to an event that’s just not about them? Tell us @TheDebrief
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.