Personal Tutors: Are they a help or a hindrance?

To continue: My turnitin account was handled so badly and suffering continual interference even beyond my college years that I've made sure it's cleared. There's nothing on it and neither should there be. No-one can claim that they can see something on it and make an issue out of it for me or anyone else, at any time.

As you can see in my previous post, everyone knows that my preferred name is Liba and it was displayed on both my Birkbeck and Turnitin profiles. Liba is the normal Czech shortened form of the name Libuse, after the Bohemian pagan princess Libuse. (Liba is even a village in the Karlovy Vary region, Czech Republic). However, it's also a Hebrew/Yiddish name for girls (לִיבָא) meaning loveable/loved one/heart ❤. Whatever people's issue is with my name, get over it, and use it properly. It's the name I have always been known by, respect that!

At uni, I had to suffer receiving emails from my male personal tutor in which he addresses me using an inappropriate name in place of my name. Below is the email evidence to prove it so there's no denying it. 

Once, only 2 months after I notified him about my bereavement by email, he misspelt Liba as Libba in an email dated 18 Jan 2011 (I have no idea why he suddenly did that. I did a Google search and apparently it's a Yemeni cheese and in Arabic, Libba means colostrum, ie. first breast milk in mammals/humans.) 

And he addresses me exactly the same way again, the next day! He seems to have an issue with the name Liba, as did the female head of department the following academic year. The things you have to put up with at uni while singlehandedly attempting to maintain a good working relationship! 

Not long after (28th January 2011), he managed to spell the longer, full version of my name correctly, although he managed a different typo when referring to the set essays I needed to write within weeks of my bereavement in November 2011 referring to them as "dog essays". Had I been able to switch personal tutor from him to Susan James when I asked the stand-in BA tutor, (Autumn 2010, which was shortly after 'coming out' at college and wearing LBGT+ jewellery) I wouldn't have had to put up with this and more. 

Two years later, the same male personal tutor randomly addressed me in an email (Feb 2013) as "Scarlett (???)" which is a most unpleasant twist on a word, which I found offensive because it is a character assassination by sexual insinuation. Now that's highly inappropriate. It's also psychological and emotional abuse!

How can one trust a person like this to write a reference? Even more so when I'm a non-binary lesbian.

And he writes this after knowing how distressing I found the internet harassment (porn dating site) episode, which first appeared under (my) Google search during the first term of my degree, Autumn 2009. 

Needless to say, I didn't attend the 2013 personal tutor meeting because of the way he addressed me. It was also, however, the day before Susan James was substituting for Garnett, on the Political Philosophy module lectures (but not my tutorials, they were nevertheless taken by Garnett). So is he insinuating something about my relationship with her? That's both offensive and unacceptable for him to imply something that's completely false about a colleague. Never mind me! Although what he thinks about me, I couldn't care less! And if he was trying to make me feel self-conscious about liking her and enjoying her company thereby putting me off her so I wouldn't want to have anything to do with her, he failed! We did and still do have a strong bond of which I'm proud! There's nothing odd about it. It's perfectly natural. It's just the way it is. 

Returning to my name: This misnaming is clearly deliberate because:

1: My student profile had 'Liba' entered as my preferred 'known as' name, alongside all my full names which were merely there for the degree exam/certificate purposes. 

2: He had used the same email address the previous year (8th June 2012) yet managed to address me without any such typos or errors, albeit using my longer name, Libuse, instead of my preferred option, Liba. 

3: He had already seen that another lecturer (the female Head, 11th January 2012) had used that same email address and had addressed me as Libuse. So if he was in any doubt, he could have done likewise and remained with Libuse, not Scarlett, whoever she is!

4: He was not so bold when replying to the email I had addressed to both him and Susan James! (2011). There he managed to write Liba! Funny that!

So what hope is there that people's pronouns will be respected, in particular trans and non-binary, when even my name used since birth is messed around with! 

There were 3 other philosophy lecturers that were down as my assigned personal tutors but I didn't have any personal tutor meetings with them. In fact, I never had occasion to speak to them. So effectively, I didn't have a personal tutor from the end of the Spring term 2011, which means for more than half my course, I didn't have a personal tutor I could use or discuss matters with, academic or otherwise. Furthermore, the Head of Pastoral was never involved to help with any of my security or personal problems including the bereavement (or even referred to by my personal tutor), throughout my course. This raises the question whether any of my serious problems were ever logged. It would seem not given the Head of Pastoral wasn't involved. Not sure why not. Surely the personal tutor should have brought him/her into the conversation. After all, it wouldn't be the only thing not logged properly there! 

Indeed, I had nothing to do with this personal tutor generally after Spring 2011 e.g. I didn't sit-in on any of his lectures, didn't see/chat to him in person, our paths didn't cross because he was never down to lecture. So he can't pretend to know me, he doesn't have the first clue about me or my time at college or since! Any data/information coming from him isn't worth the paper it's written on. What he has to say would be as unreliable and inappropriate as asking my father or his side of the family, all of whom I'm estranged from for over seven and a half years (for very good reasons, and something I didn't do lightly but should have done sooner). The other personal tutors never actually spoke to me or saw me for a tutor session.

It's odd, however, to have the same person as both an academic and personal tutor. My mother's personal tutor was from a different discipline/department, also male, but was always checking with her whether she was happy for him to remain her personal tutor, since he was a man, and if not he'd recommend alternatives. She was happy with him and they stayed in touch after college and she visited him in his home. The same was true of her academic tutor who was from her department. Again the same system applied. You could go to any lecturer you wanted if you needed to chat about anything. My mother was lucky. She thoroughly enjoyed studying at uni (and holds 3 degrees) which is ironic because surely women are better off this century. When she started studying for a degree women couldn't even have their own bank accounts. It's a sobering thought. 

Clearly little progress has been made and women should be making a noise about it. The same issues keep coming up. I should have been given the opportunity to study on an equal basis with others. It certainly wasn't fair that I had so much to deal with on top of the studying whereas other students didn't! Imagine if I had had a free run at the degree I would have the degree I deserved and more. We talk about fairness in sport, how about fairness in education. I should not have less opportunities than my mother had! Especially since I am very good at my subject and generally highly academic. I have a human right to further my education and not be denied a livelihood, especially when I have a mother to take care of as well.