Now union comrades say complimenting a girl on her handwriting is SEXIST

Just when you thought the NUS couldn’t take any more offence, complementing girls on their good handwriting is now sexist.

Hot on the heels of “feminist jazz hands” as a more appropriate substitute for clapping, the latest diktat demands an end to saying “your handwriting is nice”.

The proud members of Bristol student union sent their motion “Research sexism in education environments” in to the national union conference extravaganza later this month.

It read: “There is a false assumption that with the access of women into Higher Education and with the majority of students being women that the classrooms or labs are not spaces where sexism is felt.

“Women are always asked to justify their claims of feeling uncomfortable or to ‘prove’ that a space is hostile.

“It is widely assumed that learning spaces can no longer be male dominated and that women can’t feel excluded given that they might outnumber men in the room.

“However we still hear things like ‘you are good at logic for a girl’, ‘your handwriting is nice’ said by a male lab demonstrator, we’re still not feeling confident to ask questions at a research seminar, women still speak less in seminars compared to men, and still experience sexual harassment at academic conferences – this is anecdotal evidence usually shared in safe spaces.

“But we know that in many subjects women student numbers drop from undergraduate, to postgraduate taught to then postgraduate research level because educational spaces and academic attitudes are patriarchal and unwelcoming.”

Another baffling motion at this year’s conference is the demand for a full-time NUS officer for Yorkshire.

Braying apparatchiks at Sheffield Hallam said: “The National Executive Council has yet to recognise Yorkshire and Humberside as an Area which could have autonomous existence.

“If Yorkshire was a country, it would be higher in the 2012 Olympic medal table than South Africa, Japan and Australia.

“Margaret Thatcher’s reign as Prime minister in the 1980s resulted in many parts of the North of England faces crippling levels of inequality.

“As a result Students in Yorkshire and Humberside face a reyt big range of unique and acute problems including appalling housing conditions, poverty, pit closers, oppression, threats to international students, no Yorkshire football teams in the English Premier League and unfair representation within NUS.”

Other favourites include:

• More LGBT characters in video games rated lower than “teen”

• No platform for journalist Julie Bindel (like they did with the BNP)

• No need to declare a criminal record on your UCAS form

• Scottish sabbatical offers to have more pay

• Continue to tackle lad culture