Bahar Mustafa: Why all the fuss?

Fury erupted when Goldsmiths Student Union's diversity offer Bahar Mustafa claimed that women from ethnic minorities can't be accused of sexism or racism. Which prompted me to ask myself, why the massive overreaction?

A petition was started on Change.org, calling for her expulsion from the university and for her to be charged with hate crimes after she tried to exclude men and white women from a diversity event and using hashtags including #killallmen on Twitter.

Mustafa claimed the hashtags were "in-jokes and ways that many people in the queer feminist community express ourselves," which I have no difficulty believing. It seems obvious to me that the queer feminist community she belongs to would have evolved a distinctive sense of humour.

Critics have also scoffed at her claim that it was impossible for her to be racist or sexist to white men, because she was an ethnic minority woman.

Mustafa's understanding of racism and sexism is based on the concept of privilege, which means that some people are treated better by society as a whole as a result of being one sex, gender or race, and others treated worse because they are different. And although the extensive jargon that the advocates of this theory have developed is more often than not over-the-top, pretentious and offputting, I do buy the basic principle.

I find it hard to imagine how Mustafa could effectively be racist or sexist towards me, at least in this world, since that would involve turning the whole of society upside down so that I was at (or near) the bottom and she near the top.

If she was rude to me or wouldn't be my friend because of my maleness or whiteness, would that be sexist or racist? I don't think so, because personally, I wouldn't feel intimidated, belittled or oppressed. For me, it wouldn't be the latest in a fairly unbroken series of experiences I'd had throughout life which were as if designed to make me feel weak, sub-human or an object (see: everyday sexism).

Even if Mustafa #killed me purely because I am a white male, as her 'jokey' hashtag use suggests she would like, I would see that not as sexism but as political terrorism (except of course I wouldn't see it as anything, because I would be dead).

Now, I don't necessarily think she'd be entirely within her rights to murder me, but I do think it's worth distinguishing that crime from sexism, which actually does kill women. If a woman sees me as her oppressor and attacks me, that does not make me oppressed.

And being excluded from a diversity event for non-white, non-males is not something that I would expect to have much of an impact on white males. Does it have a detrimental everyday impact on their life, like sexism or racism does? The chances are, most wouldn't even notice that they had been excluded. I know I wouldn't. It really is in no way the same as being barred from every pub in town because you're Irish, black or a dog, as a commenter on Huffington Post's coverage suggested.

But it's interesting that Mustafa is attracting so much public anger and hatred, when she is clearly in some way the product of and the victim of very real racism and sexism herself. What do people feel threatened by, exactly?

The number of people who have signed the petition has risen from 10,861 to 11,068 since I started writing, but I will not be joining them, because I think Bahar Mustafa should continue to enjoy freedom of speech and the right to education.

Whether or not she should continue to be Goldsmiths' diversity officer is a matter for the Students' Union, and I'm not sure what the answer is, what's best for the students or for her, but I would say that it's the most radical students like Mustafa who make student politics so vibrant and interesting.