Aliya Yule is an undergraduate at Wadham College, and currently serves as OUSU’s Women’s Campaign Officer. A tweet sent by Yule at the NUS Women’s Conference this week, in which she asked for delegates to show their approval with jazz hands instead of applause, prompted a large Twitter backlash. Yule writes in response:
By now, many of you will have seen the #jazzhandsgate furore which took off on Day 1 of NUS Women’s Conference (which is like a national OUSU Council for feminists). During the day, I tweeted NUS Staff asking that they remind people to adhere to an earlier request not to clap during motions debates, but to instead use what are colloquially known as ‘feminist jazz hands’, also known as ‘consensus hands’, a signal from British Sign Language which means ‘applause’.
@nuswomcam please can we ask people to stop clapping but do feminist jazz hands? it's triggering some peoples' anxiety. thank you!
— OUSUWomen'sCampaign (@womcam) March 24, 2015
Some delegates are requesting that we move to jazz hands rather than clapping, as it's triggering anxiety. Please be mindful! #nuswomen15
— NUS Women's Campaign (@nuswomcam) March 24, 2015
Several people on my timeline had asked that the request be repeated, as it was triggering their anxiety and was also distracting from the discussion of the motions. Anyone who has been to a conference will know that tensions are running high with some of the most vibrant student activists in the UK in one room. Conference is charged with heated debate, there is a lot to get through, say and do, and for those with generalised anxiety disorder and other disabilities, this can be a difficult and exhausting space to navigate and participate in.
Making the conference floor as inclusive and accessible as possible for people who often do not get to speak because these requests are not taken seriously is of paramount importance. Women’s Conference is a space where people who find speaking – or even appearing – in public difficult can participate in feminist discussions. To ignore or demean this inclusive ethos is to detract from the seriousness of disabilities, including mental illnesses.
To ignore or demean this inclusive ethos is to detract from the seriousness of disabilities
Our jazz hands request enraged Twitter trolls and sparked a flurry of tweets, unfortunately fuelled by some of Oxford’s own (students and tutors!). Often, these tweets used the language of oppression to mock and belittle us, by ridiculing issues of cultural appropriation, ableism and racism (as well as the very mature “jizz hands” parody). Eventually, even the BBC reported on #jazzhandsgate – the same BBC which has repeatedly failed to report on numerous protests and occupations, including those about Palestine, climate change and student demonstrations.
I would like to meet one of these people whose “anxiety” is “triggered” by clapping.
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) March 24, 2015
This must blow some of the delegates' minds. Gloria Steinem clapping Hillary Clinton. #nuswomen15 pic.twitter.com/AGP3dFT49K
— Tim Stanley (@timothy_stanley) March 24, 2015
Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulous and Daily Telegraph journalist Tim Stanley mocked the request
This is indicative of the successful and all too common derailing of feminism and women’s activism. If you read all of @womcam’s tweets from conference, you will see the wide variety of issues which we were debating, challenging, and learning how to move forward on. By singling out this one tweet, it almost seems like the trolls were sitting at their computers waiting for something which they could jump on and ridicule.
By singling out this one tweet, it almost seems like the trolls were sitting at their computers waiting for something which they could jump on and ridicule.
Instead of writing this piece, I would much rather have written about the panel entitled ‘Educate, Agitate, Liberate: Fighting for Free Education’, where we had a discussion about how to move towards free education whilst not neglecting issues of the gender pay gap, and about how free education means much more than abolishing tuition fees. I would much rather have written about how the panel discussed that free education means education for liberation, which includes breaking the cycle of deprivation, it means including Further Education institutions as well as universities in the conversation, it means the liberation of Palestinian students who are unable to attend university due to the bombing of their homes and schools, and so much more.
I would also much rather have written about the conversations we had at Conference around intersectionality – about how it is so often used as a superficial buzzword, and its use in fact ends up marginalising women of colour who created the term in the first place. I would much rather have written about the workshops we had and motions we passed which aim to tackle the intersections of racism and sexism within Lad Culture, and about how sexual violence affects women of colour in specific ways due to fetishisation and sexualisation, and about the complications women of colour – particularly black women – face when deciding whether or not to report sexual violence. I would much rather have written about motions addressing oppression within liberation movements, such as within the LGBTQ movement, where white gay men often co-opt black women’s bodies, language and mannerisms, which itself sparked its own debate: assimilation or revolution?
I would much rather have written about the workshops we had and motions we passed which aim to tackle the intersections of racism and sexism within Lad Culture, and about how sexual violence affects women of colour in specific ways
I would much rather have written about how prison abolition is a feminist issue, about the #FreePeriods campaign and the necessity for the campaign to remain trans inclusive, about how little support there is for student parents and carers of all genders, about supporting the decriminalisation of sex work and the workshops held by Sex Workers Open University.
Instead, many of us at Women’s Conference have spent our time blocking, reporting and fending off the torrent of ableist, racist, misogynistic and transphobic abuse that is littering the @womcam Twitter account and the Women’s Conference hashtag. Instead of talking about what the conference has achieved, we’ve been inundated with requests to justify the request to replace clapping with ‘jazz hands’.
The tweet requesting consensus hands in place of applause was an important measure to establish an inclusive environment at Women’s Conference. I am not diminishing its value. But honing in on this detail and homogenising us as pedantic, petty, and ignorant of the ‘real’ issues ironically obfuscates the fact that this measure is just a tiny part of the work we are doing at Women’s Conference. The twitter trolls will not stop this work, and we will not let them derail our movement.
The inconvenient truth about this is that everyone feels anxiety when there is debate, it is a normal feeling. To complain about it and to ask for people to not clap just so you feel marginally better is nothing other than weak and pathetic. These people will never survive in the real world. Thank goodness.
The fact is: Saying that clapping triggers anxiety has led to widespread ridicule. Instead of displaying an image of strong independent feminist women, you have displayed an image of weak, frightened, timid creatures with a fear of applause that pander to LBGT homophobic issues over feminist sexism issues. @womcam and @nuswomcam should resign.
To be clear, feeling anxious and anxiety are two massively different things. General Anxiety Disorser is a legitimate medical condition – we wouldn’t be having all these “oh get over it” comments if it was a broken leg making things difficult rather than an anxiety disorder but when it’s a mental health problem people’s requests are dismissed as frivolous. Just speaks to the harmful level of stigma that still exists against mental health problems and is really sad to see.
To be fair, the jazz hands thing is fucking ableist. What are blind people supposed to do?
This is amazing!
Thank you Aliya, I was trying to think of a way to explain this to people!
(ignore trolls they suck, you rule!)
xxx
Why is there never discussion about Rotherham abuse or the many other examples of gang rape in the UK ?
“This is indicative of the successful and all too common derailing of feminism and women’s activism.”
No. This is indicative of people finding your (bizarre) proposal mad – and saying it. You can’t just slander people that disagree with you like that. What makes it all the more sad is that there are issues of real importance out there which are being neglected while you obsess about this…
Hey Aliya, so sorry that twitter trolls took over the conference in this way. Firstly would like to point out in response to previous comments that it is possible to be a strong, independent feminist and suffer from anxiety disorder. Different people’s anxiety is set off by different things, whether that may be a crowded place or being surrounded by a lot of noise when you are trying to speak. Even if you do not have anxiety disorder things like this can be stressful. It does not make you any less strong or independent for this to be the case. Secondly in response to other comments I think a wish to make a conference as inclusive as possible and to open the floor up to as many people as possible to speak is great- not bizarre or mad in any sense! I also think it’s great that the topics debated at the conference were all about issues of inclusivity and making sure that feminism is not restricted to a small group of people.
Yes, anyone who disagrees with you *must* be a troll.
Nice job cherrypicking the anti-SJ responses and ignoring all the feminists and disabled people who also think you’re an idiot.
No.
There is sensitivity, but there’s also the need of critical thought, and being reasonable.
Based on the headline, I could agree with some points of the conferences, but at the same time a lot of things seems either extremely optimistic or poorly thought out.
Yet reading this post I have the impression that if I confront it in someway, then that means I am a complete ass, ableist, transphobic, and as a bonus mysoginistic because I’m a male.
If you don’t see the extreme of your tweet or why it was mocked accross the country, then you can’t be helped.
And making people afraid of clapping, one of the HAPPIEST thing in the world, is not going to change minds.
…what’s the difference between “feminist” jazz hands and regular jazz hands?
And that’s the least ridicuolus thing about this. In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m a woman, I’m a feminist, and I actually do have anxiety.
This whole thing is making a mockery of social justice, and I read most of the article hoping desperately that it was a satirical piece, but you’re serious, aren’t you.
This, this is why a lot of people don’t take triggers seriously, and consider social justice a joke.
So, congratulations, you’re actually hurting your own cause.
Excellent comment Silvia
NUS have needlessly given ammunition to anti-feminists. Of course I want student politics to be accessible for people with disabilities, but the jazz hands proposal doesn’t help at all since it makes things more difficult for blind and partially sighted people. The use of the word “triggering” is so offensive as well – this was once a term used exclusively to describe the experiences of those with PTSD. It has been misappropriated and *trigger warnings* are now meaningless. I have become so use to seeing every darn thing prefaced with a *trigger warning*, that I recently stumbled across a very distressing account of child sexual abuse because I didn’t trust the warning given. I would never have clicked on that link if I had known how upsetting it would be.
And what’s more – jazz hands was not the only dodgy proposal to come out of this conference. Banning cross dressing??? Presumably this was to stop the rugby lads who dress up as school girls on sports night, but why be specific? Why ban all cross dressing, even women dressing as men? Just shows how poorly thought through the motions are. Perhaps only mature students should be permitted to go to NUS as delegates, the current batch seem to be too immature and don’t realise that they’re representing young feminists to the media. You’ve made us all look ridiculous.
I don’t know what sort of life any of you has had, but I know that I’m a whole lot tougher than most of your participants, if they are actually serious about this. I am 59. I live in Boston, MA, U.S. I have been an activist all my adult life. I deal with, and live with a number of mental and emotional ‘issues,’ and an audience of like-minded folks CLAPPING has never, ever–NOT ONCE–made me so uncomfortable that I asked for no clapping.
The people who are calling this idea idiotic are not the ones derailing the conference. It’s those of you who are acting like babies. You are, I presume, not babies. Grow up on the inside, too, find out what it’s like to be an adult. Sometimes you need to stop thinking about yourself, you see, and do what’s good for everyone.
You have made yourselves look like–honestly–nutters.
Good luck in the future. You will need it. I suggest you grow a slightly thicker skin.
Everyone here has had good responses to your stupidity, so I’ll just leave it at this: you’re a completely delusional moron.
An applause is an audible measurement of consensual agreement. A light applause in a large audience signifying a minor wave of agreement, a large applause signifying a large wave of agreement and a no applause… no agreement.
If you were debating and made a point and no one clapped, you’d feel anxious.
If you were debating and an opponent made a point, to which everyone applauded, you’d feel anxious.
Swap this with Jazz Hands: generally it’s a pretty non-threatening gesture and is widely associated with cabaret, so, in that, you’re dealing with something circling humorous connotations, a sense of farce.
Does this alleviate the worries of applause through its slightly more light-hearted undertones?
Or is this a sensory focus? A large applause can be pretty loud, is it this that causes a sense of angst?
Though setting aside social association and sensory experience, Jazz Hands are still being used as a measure of an audiences’ agreement/disagreement.
If you were debating and made a point and no one jazz handed, you’d feel anxious.
If you were debating and an opponent made a point, to which everyone jazz handed, you’d feel anxious.
These things regardless of whether the Jazz Hand is quieter and/or friendlier than clapping.
If the anxiety is triggered out of a general fear of the seriousness and critical motives of a situation then the Jazz Hand would seem a logical step. But what if generations down the Jazz Hand has assumed the same connotations of applause, where do we go from there? Do we up the soft/friendly? Do we go for simple smiles? Surely!? A smile is a natural endorphins releasing trigger, infectious and globally recognised as a human-specific signal of joy/pleasure. But a smile is a natural thing, what if we’re forcing the smile? What if the smiling ends the same Jazz Hand/Applause state?
If it’s noise then the Jazz Hands are a solution: reasonably silent. But what if, down the line, the visual significance of a tide of frantically wavering open palms ends up triggering feelings of anxiety in just the same way? There is no second step: smell, touch, taste…
You end up in the same arena as the previous paragraph, tailoring to the single sense, still altering a gesture.
The reality is that debates are heated situations and across the globe, those that partake are either confident or not. Of course there is vast middle-ground between the two extreme ends of “I can speak to the entire nation and I love nothing more so” and “If I even try to get out of bed today, I think I’m going to throw up.”
It is unfortunate that the fears of those less-confident in a debating situation may well lead to poorly explained points, perhaps disaster. And rightly so, that is not any fault of their own, it is the fault of the judicatures in their ignorance to the fallacy. To replace clapping with an, apparently, less-aggressive gesture is to replace all speed limits with 20 zones to adhere to the fears and anxieties of those less confident on the road. Because those in the full face of such heightened debate are those required to speak and engage, to inspire and to inform, if you are among those figures but without confidence and verbally expressive ability, then you are a small minority in a sea of crowd raising krakens.
Though, should we brush you aside, as a minority, and cater for the majority? No.
Should we replace clapping with Jazz Hands? Personally, I think not.
Should those involved in the organisation of such a debate actively seek those unsure and uncertain, those required to perform but lacking in the equipment and provide adequate assistance and support? Yes oh yes oh yes oh yes!
Simply requesting a switch on a globally renowned gesture of consensual agreement is one: a titanic request and secondly: only a temporary solution to an ever repeating problem. It is a complete oversight of the problem centric to this ridiculous debate.
A crowd will always need to express their generally approval within a debate. That’s what debates are for. No matter the gesture, the gesture will always be associated with either negative or positive response, and depending on the context, that response will ether have an individual elated with flooding confidence and joy or quaking in their trodden-down boots.
The issue is the lack of confidence that some individuals feel when faced with a debate. Of course this can be triggered by the roar of a hand-spanking crowd, but is it what the clapping is associated with: crowds of people, pressure, all-eyes-on-me etc. and NOT the clapping itself. If we had Jazz Handed since the dawn of time, sure, the light sound of wavering hands, as you stand at the side of the stage, might not even cross your ears, but what about that eerie silence? You can sense the motion, hands waving as they silently cheer those who would stand to oppose you. You walk on, a sea of individuals waves as you enter, a feeling of dread as they smile for you, they look as ridiculous as they do formidable… clapping or not.
And why is this feminist associated? Why is this not a global issue?
There are people standing up in front of crowds all over the world and it is our responsibility to teach, support and give them the tools to confidently work the podium, through practice, consultation, tutoring and positive reinforcement. Not by changing the hat on the classroom’s head.
How we go about sourcing these methods I don’t know, but negating the issue so conclusively with such a heated focus on the way in which an audience responds is somewhat misinformed.
Sure, a crowd of people screaming and throwing middle fingers around, cheering like howler monkeys and beating chairs is far more intimidating than a crowd of people pleasantly nodding their heads in agreement and shaking them when they feel something is wrong. But for someone with a general distaste for public speaking, a crowd is a crowd. In a debate with just an audience of two, a single smile could be as weight lifting or as questionable and suspicious, “Is it sympathy smiling? Is it to mock me?”, as could be a singular frown; Jazz Hands, Clapping or not.
Cause and effect – the progression of multiple actions, thoughts and processes over time – the logical paths that any should follow, backwards & forth, and analyse in great depth, to solve any single problem, large or small.
Did no one think for a second that this idea would be completely ridiculed and thus completely undermine the event? Just think for a second…. jazz hands… I mean come on.
Dear NUS15 Womens Conference delegate stop appropriating gay mens culture and give us back our jazz hands. I don’t know which I find more pathetic and ridiculous, it certainly wasn’t just the one motion or issue; the jazz hands, the throwing around words like “zero tolerance” while giving special dispensations in relation to the resoloution on cross dressing, the demands that there should be no cross dressing and the presumption you are the arbiters of what that is, or you complaining about “twitter trolls” homongenising you while suggesting black women all have the same bodies, mannerisms and language. Maybe you might do well to reflect on the genuine horror, ridicule and criticism instead of discounting it as trolling.
Every thing that’s wrong with student politics encapsulated in a single tweet. Congratulations.
You said and did something ridiculous, and got mocked for it. Take your lumps like anyone else, and it will blow over. Continue shrieking about oppression and trying to justify your insane directive, and it will not. Have no lessons been learned these last 8 months?
Women are strong. Stop acting weak.
Hi Aliya,
The people ridiculing you are not trolls. They are sensible and normal people who are astonished by your insanity.
The comment further up, signed by a “Zita Holbourne” is NOT Zita Holbourne.
Someone has set up various fake accounts in her name and she has been harassed.
To be honest, the image of a hall full of people doing jazz hands at me in silence flippin’ terrifies me.
Can we not just have them stare blankly at the opposite wall?… or clap, or something?
Keep on with the jizz hands, jizz hands are the best hands.
Sorry the patriarchy are keeping u down grrl.
http://garethsoye.blogspot.ie/2015/03/triggering-dose-of-clap.html
This guy has a serious response to the jazz hand foolishness.
Grow up.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/24/microaggressions-and-trigger-warnings-meet-real-trauma/
Generalised anxiety disorder is not a disability. And, as a sufferer, I know of no instance when GAD can be triggered by applause. And, if it is, people have the responsibility to look after themselves and not put themselves in environments which cause problems.
I like the section of what you would “rather” have written about in this article. As if modern feminists write about anything besides cherrypicked twitter comments these days.
As far as I can tell, modern feminism wants nothing other than to overdiagnose college women and teach others how to step around them.
Except, of course, there was no call to derail the conference. This “jazz hands” nonsense was called out for what it is: an insult to the audience, on par with handing out pacifiers to everyone as they walk in.
http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr03/2013/3/20/13/anigif_enhanced-buzz-6585-1363799856-7.gif
Yay! But can we use the w@nker sign when we disagree though, or is that too masculine?
I’m sorry, but it wasn’t only the right that mocked this foolishness. A lot of us on the left also found it equal parts hilarious and embarrassing, men, women and sentient bowls of spaghetti alike