York U student’s refusal to work with women sparks rights debate

[SecularMotion]

A York University student who refused to do group work with women for religious reasons has sparked a human rights tug-of-war between a professor and campus administration.

While the professor wanted to deny the student’s request, a university dean ordered him to comply.

Professor Paul Grayson is now blowing the whistle on what he sees as a hierarchy of freedoms at York — religious rights trumping women’s rights.

“In order to meet an instance of a religious requirement we have tacitly accepted a negative definition of females,” Grayson told the Star. “That’s not acceptable.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/01/08/york_u_students_refusal_to_work_with_women_sparks_rights_debate.html

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I certainly agree with Professor Grayson.

[Squinch]

2. His assessment is right. Religious rights do not trump women's rights.

[kelly1mm]

10. I suppose the reverse could also be argued ie Women's rights do not trump religious rights

as both rights have the same constitutional test of intermediate scrutiny. So, in essence, at least as it is now, you have equally protected rights that are in conflict.

[cbayer]

3. These can be really tough cases.

I would be interested to know whether the student knew that there would be a required face-to-face portion of the class. He chooses on line courses so he doesn't have to ask for accommodation.

I don't agree that granting an exemption would be a tacit acceptance of a negative definition of females. It could be, but not necessarily.

[Warpy]

5. You can work with a woman without grabbing her ass

or even her hand. Any Muslim male who denies this is a perv and should never be respected on any level, especially the religious one. It turns out the Prophet had a lot of nasty things to say about men who kept women under their boots.

[cbayer]

7. Who said anything about grabbing her ass?

Since they don't reveal what religion this student is, it's very hard to assess the underlying reasons for his request.

At any rate, he made a request and when it was denied in the end, he agreed to participate.

[trotsky]

13. Not really.

Human rights trump religious rights, IMO. You are free to disagree, of course, as I'm sure you do.

[Warpy]

4. It's not just there

Years ago, in engineering school, there was one class taught by a Pakistani TA, a very necessary class with no other options open.

He dictated that all female students sit in the back of the auditorium, filling the back seats forward and leaving an ocean of empty seats between us and the males down front. I might have coped but he mumbled and I couldn't see what he was writing on the blackboard.

So I complained.

I was told to respect his culture, to which I replied "He is in MY country and needs to respect MY culture, not to mention the good money that is going down the rathole this semester because I am not getting what I paid for!"

Cue totally blank stares. They had not considered such a thing and had to reboot. I was shown out of the office. Nothing changed. And that is when I decided it wasn't worth it.

[cbayer]

6. What? That's ridiculous.

If he could have made some accommodation that didn't give one group an advantage, that would have been better, but still pretty outrageous.

Did this go any further? This seems like it was a clear violation of the civil rights of the female students.

[Warpy]

8. It was 1966. We didn't have any civil rights yet

Assholes like that guy were free to do whatever they wanted to us.

[cbayer]

9. Ah, that explains it.

I don't think anyone could possibly get by with that now.

[Squinch]

11. And if this guy is allowed to dictate that women don't come near him in this class, won't

that be a convenient tool for the use of the right wingers who are so valiantly trying to get women back to being barefoot and pregnant and not competing with the menfolk in the workforce. I wonder how long till this gives the "trans vaginal ultrasounders" ideas.

[cbayer]

12. From what I read, he never tried to dictate any such thing.

He asked that he be exempted from a particular assignment or given an alternative. He said he had take the on line course specifically to avoid this.

I can't find anything that would indicate that he was "dictating" that women not come near him.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. That's not the approach one of the colleges I taught at took

One year, we had an influx of male students from Saudi Arabia. When they went to their first ESL class and saw that all the instructors were women, they went to the international student adviser and said that they could not take a class from a woman.

The international student adviser sent them to one of the economics professors, an Egyptian man who had lived in the States for many years. He told the Saudi students emphatically (and in Arabic) that if they didn't want to take classes from a female instructor, they should turn around and go home where they could attend an all-male university with all-male faculty and staff.

When they saw that they weren't going to get any sympathy, not even from a fellow Muslim, they relented.

[Igel]

14. It doesn't hurt the women.

So apart from the fact that a possible inference by Grayson would be offensive to women, they're not affected. Heck, they may prefer that somebody who would treat them unpleasantly not be there.

The accommodation's already in place, so it doesn't necessarily hurt the faculty member. Grayson's "those in other countries" can't physically meet is an excuse. They choose an online option because it suited their needs.


Forcing him to meet wouldn't prevent harm to the women's interests or their "right" not to be avoided; forcing him to meet would tread on his rights, however unpleasant his observing his freedom to associate may be.


There's a clear distinction between this action and a lot of the others that have been drawn as analogical, in which both sides get hurt or just women's interests get hurt.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. The article said that both Orthodox Jewish and Islamic scholars at the university

had assured the professor that their religions did not forbid men from associating with women in public.

So unless the student is Saudi or otherwise a Wahhabi Muslim, he's talking out his ass.

And if he is a Wahhabi, does he really believe that he's going to be able to avoid interacting with women in CANADA?

[LeftishBrit]

18. Exactly!

I have taught plenty of Muslim and Orthodox Jewish students, and I have never met anyone who would have refused to work with people of the other sex.

[LeftishBrit]

17. I agree with Professor Grayson here...

a university should not be in the business of enabling gender segregation in the classroom. Especially not in a focus group for a sociology class, which would seem to me to necessarily involve trying to make such a group as representative as possible.