Sunday Times: "Extreme feminists" have used moderate feminism as a Trojan horse

"he mentioned an article about bat fellatio to another adult academic who squealed and freaked out"

No, he harrassed the woman on a constant basis - the hearing confirmed this, it UPHELD her complaint - and the bat thing was part of the harrassment.

Why are you ignoring this, Heroine?

oh dear - I think that you'll find that he didn't read an article about bat fellatio to a 13 year old, nor did he have his hand down his trousers or any other silly exaggeration you want to add to make it sound more 'creepy' he mentioned an article about bat fellatio to another adult academic who squealed and freaked out. There is a thing going around that I hate, that men aren't allowed to mention sex or even express sexual desire because male sexuality is supposed to be scary and weird, which I think is a very damaging message being given out to boys everywhere by an increasingly female media and I just don't see that as going about things in the right way. If we bring up boys who hate themselves from puberty onwards rather than seeing their desires as being perfectly nice natural and normal then we are building self-hating women hating monsters, and I don't really want to be part of that. Boys can and are lovely, but they are never ever told that these days and they are condemned for everything - I thing Dylan is right - if you think a women aiming to destroy a man's career at the first available opportunity is acceptable, then perhaps its no wonder yu see this as a joke. Personally I don't want to see men being frightened to be men in case a woman gets them fired

I love the way his her first line was "you silly people".

I bet he she had to re-write that from "you silly women".

This was Heroine's first and only post on Mumsnet. I imagine she is his friend or relation. Probably his mum.

Heroine, why are you ignoring the fact that this guy had been harrassing this woman for a while (an accusation which was UPHELD btw) and the bat paper happened in that context?

Do you not understand that harrassment can be a series of events, each of which in itself is insignificant, but when added all together, builds a picture of untoward behaviour?

Did you not spot my clear "this is a joke" sign in that post, Heroine? No?

He's not right. Would you think it appropriate if a male maths teacher went around reading out papers about bat fellatio to your 13 year old daughter and other students? After previous harrassment? Or would it seem a touch - I don't know, weird, pervy and intimidating?

You silly people - he is making a valid point, that you mostly seem to want to try to gain the moral high ground on by.. employing people to bully him!!

Its perfectly ridiculous that a comment about a biological paper about bat sex has been seen as an attempt to harass someone sexually - a bit like saying 'nice hat' is the same as rape, or that saying 'have you seen that article about suicides' means you are saying 'go ahead weirdo, kill yourself' its a bit of a stretch at best, embarrassingly knee jerk at worst. Whats frightening is that if a woman showed a man an article saying 'dormice need love' he would be laughed out of court for saying that she was obviously trying to marry him or intimidate him to marry her. Some women really need to grow out of the 'icky boys, lovely girls' paradigm that worked at infant school. I really hope we don't go back to the male-dominated prudity that meant women had to throw their hands up and faint if they saw two butterflies getting it on on a leaf. Really this [prudity is not feminism at all and this Dylan is right.

"Unless you think there are two classes of females, "women" and "feminists" and the big butch overprotective feminists want to protect the fainting women from harm, this argument makes no sense whatsoever."

Well the thing is, that's what he does think, so in his world, that argument makes total sense...

How dare he undermine and trivialise the importance of academic freedom in order to justify this?! Looking though his publications, wtf does fruit bat fellatio have to do with his research and wtf does it have to do with that of a dietician, and how can he find 12 people that that research is relevant to do in their academic work? Academic freedom is not about being able to say what they hell you like to anyone! If he wants to defend it, he should not abuse it!

And what you all said too

How big and scary are you, Unruly?

Worried he will like the penis talk. Think he needs to know how it feels to think that someone he can't escape is wondering about sex with him against his will. Maybe carrying a giant vibrator called "the manetrator" would help?

I will volunteer to follow him around making loud remarks about tiny penises? Will that work?

It will be very interesting to see what kind of coverage UCC's suit against him for leaking the documents receives.

Elephants your post was inspired haha!

I work at a university and Dylan Evans really seems to be endowed with the same sense of entitlement that a lot of academics I have come across have.

He argues "What sort of environment do we want adults to spend their working lives in? And is the kindergarten model, which treats us all as big babies in need of protection, compatible with a vigorous intellectual life?" when in fact it could be argued his behaviour was childish at best.

In fact Gene Kerrigan argues that very point: "I'm not saying I've never behaved in similar ways myself -- but I was around 14 at the time. Academic freedom my ass." which kind of sums it up succinctly really!

Well, I have to say, that reading that bloke's defence of himself, and what he has to say, he comes across as someone I would not really want to spend time with. He comes across as very creepy, and unpleasant.

Funny that he should manage to confirm what a lot of people thought, in an article supposed to show what a top bloke he is.

That Irish Independent article is great.

I also agree that these living marxism types are outrageously dodgy, I had never even heard of them before that other thread about the radio program.

"But the harm must be real and severe before we consider curtailing this basic right."

And no harm done to women in terms of creeping them the fuck out at work, can be considered real or severe. Because they are not people, like me, the great Dylan Evans.

Another case for the (it's a joke Dylan before you wet your pants - corresponding toughness please) hiring of a giant great man to follow the bloke around leering at him and making suggestive remarks about bumsex.

I have no idea who thinks the "feminists think that women are feeble and need protecting" argument is a goodun - er, dumbasses, most feminists are women? Unless you think there are two classes of females, "women" and "feminists" and the big butch overprotective feminists want to protect the fainting women from harm, this argument makes no sense whatsoever.

The Sunday Times loves to run antifeminist articles, even more so than the Mail and the Telegraph.
The thing he seems to gloss over is that (according to the Gene Kerrigan piece) this was the culmination of a series of incidents rather than a perfectly random one-off 'bloke innocently mentions fruitbat sex to random woman and turns out to have been unlucky enough to have hit upon loony feminist' occurrence.

As far as I understand it the situation is as follows:

A woman said Evans sexually harassed her.

The University upheld her complaint.

Evans disputed it and it went to court.

The court upheld her complaint.

The University instigated proceedings against Evans for breaching confidentiality as there is allegedly evidence that he supplied confidential documents related to the harassment incidents to the press and posted them on the internet. This disciplinary matter has not yet been completed.

I imagine the outcome of this will be that the woman receives some kind of compensation for the breach in confidentiality, and if found responsible for the confidentiality breach, Evans will lose his job and find it very hard to get employment at another institution. Even people who supported him initially have said that he uploaded documents to the internet.

Very few people are still supporting him, because regardless of what they think of the rights and wrongs of the individual complaint, his behaviour in breaching confidentiality is insupportable. The Times is behaving badly by allowing him to air his opinions and he is behaving ludicrously by still going on in the public sphere about what should have been an internal university matter.

I's all a bit "I can do whatever I like" isn't it? No apology to the woman who he upset so much that she felt she had to complain about it, no acknowledgment that he did anything wrong at all, or even that he was perceived to have done wrong. Most people who inadvertently cause offense are mortified.

I love the other article it's nicely worded especially: "(By the way, while fully accepting Dr Evans's claim not to have disclosed the confidential documents, I suggest he ask Mr Lukianoff to delete from the Huffington Post the claim that, "I just received the official documentation from Professor Evans". It doesn't look good.)"

So not only did he harass her (this was upheld) but now he appears to have disclose confidential papers so that the poor woman has been dragged through the media too. It doesn't seem very unreasonable to think that this chap is really quite unpleasant.

yes, he was very good wasn't he. Gene Kerrigan... I'm going to remember that name. Going on the list I'm compiling of feminist men (whether they like it or not )

Ugh this guy is such a scumbag.

Love that Gene Kerrigan article - didn't even realise it existed before now. The vast majority of coverage of the story has been 'hur, hur, hur' at best and 'fucking whiny women, thinking they have a right not to be harrassed at work' at worst.

I cannot believe that 'don't make creepy jokes about blow jobs at work' is so hard to fucking understand.

The woman in question was not only named and shamed in Irish newspapers - they published pictures of her HOUSE in the Independent.

All coverage has been of the fact that the court squashed his punishment because they felt it was too severe - BUT they UPHELD the finding that it was sexual harrassment. So all this talk of being 'vindicated' blah blah blah is garbage.