Work/study at a university? Great collection of guidance (by Kathleen Stock)

Utter utter puffinwankery.

How can anyone write those words down and expect them to be taken seriously?

We need a Chris Morris type to come along and do a Brass Eye type job on this, but I suspect that we are now waaaaaay beyond parody.

Someone unplug the Internet please, I want to get off.

If there’s a more appropriate thread, please repost this and share, but the Office for Students are looking for several Advisory Board members at the moment in case anyone wants to apply:
publicappointments.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/appointment/non-executive-directors-at-the-office-for-students/
Closes 23 August, 9K a year.

"Try introducing your colleagues in such a way that makes their pronouns clear"
God I would find that really patronising.

“Any historical content or comparative content containing what is now recognised as transphobic material needs to be clearly labelled with a trigger warning.”
Hmm, yeah, good luck writing up archaeological finds where you've sexed the skeleton based on its actual anatomy, then.

"Denial of an individual’s gender identity – for example denying that a person is trans, nonbinary or intersex"
Because they can't go five minutes without dragging intersex individuals into this, despite repeatedly being asked not to.

This whole thing smacks of a desperate attempt to legitimize people who found out otherkin wasn't real and they weren't really an elf/fairy/dragon/whatever.

So. Much. Bollocks.

Ask about equalities policies and balancing competing rights, and viewpoint diversity.

Absolutely. It’s worth pointing out that this intolerance is not restricted to gender identity matters. In the last year at my university, there have also been attempts to get one academic disciplined for anti-semitism and another for racism (both lecturers did no more than read out excepts from historical or media texts in lectures, and were careful to frame the material and give content warnings), Jewish students trying to no-platform a pro-Palestinian speaker, Muslim students trying to shut down a Jewish society event, and Chinese students making some very nasty threats to students from Hong Kong who supported the pro-democracy activism. It’s pervasive, across many groups on campuses. I found it really illuminating to see the correspondences between the tactics of the authoritarian Chinese students and those of TRAs (both seem to involve threats of violence, following individuals on campus, singling out women, etc).

I think it’s really important that parents, prospective students and also students press institutions on this. Approach academics, not support staff in HR or admissions bureaucracies, because it’s us academics who need evidence that extreme gender identity orthodoxy (of the sort documented by Stock) is damaging recruitment. Ask about equalities policies and balancing competing rights, and viewpoint diversity.

Many academics are very uncomfortable about this, they are bright people who understand the logical consequences of TWAW. They have to be told that the issue won’t go away if everyone could be just a little bit nicer on twitter.

I wish someone (would probably have to be someone about to retire) would change their pronouns everyday and inform everyone else everyday and make everyone in every meeting they attended announce their pronouns and reprimand anyone who mis-zee/che/she-s them. Every single time. And then see if people still want to go ahead with it.

No one should apologise for doing the activism they can do, QueenoftheAir - it isn't cowardice at all. Definitely not up for this performative 'doesn't count unless you're getting dragged off in handcuffs' stuff.

Don't know if we have any openly GC staff here, will look into it. The university is deeply saturated in woke (it seems to coagulate in particular locations, ever noticed this?) but I didn't go to study philosophy to be told what I can and can't think.

I work somewhere where the senior management are saying that disabled and clinically vulnerable students and staff are now a "disproportionate burden" and that their needs can't be accommodated within the campus environment during the pandemic. Those needs being actual, physical ones, btw, not imagined ones

Good LOrd! that is utterly appalling @GCAcademic. Just awful.

And to @TirisfalPumpkin thank you so much for asking what students can do. You can support feminist staff, you can ask questions in seminars, you can talk to feminist staff one to one (I refuse to add "gender critical" any feminist worth her salt is gender critical, it's kind of the point).

I will freely admit, I am a coward in comparison to wonderwomen such as Selina Todd, or Kathleen Stock, or any number of academic women who've put their nose over the parapet. I was the subject of a complaint (my story is in Prof. Stock's collection on Medium) and those 3 months dealing with it, and the prospect of disciplinary action (students wanted me sacked) were some of the worst of my life. I don't have the domestic support (or the guts, to be honest) to do it again. I do my quiet under-the radar version of activism by teaching women's history in various forms. If you have a tutor or lecturers who do this, make contact with them - they'll love to talk to you - honest! (I've just written several references for students going on to do MAs in Women's studies).

There's a deeply misogynistic culture in universities and it's always female academics who are persecuted, threatened and no-platformed.

That's so depressing. And I assume the gc men don't stand up for the women who are being no-platformed?

What I don't understand is that if most people think this ideology is nonsense where the pressure comes from. Is it HR? Students? Senior management? It's such a bizarre situation where the majority of academics in an institution are so cowed that they feel they have to go along with an utterly bonkers set of ideas.

"Are there any other equivalently heavy-handed policies for any other minority group on campus? (I'll answer that one: no, there are not)."

I work somewhere where the senior management are saying that disabled and clinically vulnerable students and staff are now a "disproportionate burden" and that their needs can't be accommodated within the campus environment during the pandemic. Those needs being actual, physical ones, btw, not imagined ones.

It's just a hunch, but I think most academics see this for the nonsense it is. They just choose to keep quiet about it out of a sense of self-preservation. What do others think? I'd be interested to hear from people working in academia.

The senior staff in my department are all gender critical. They are all men, and openly criticise the ideology. A previous female professor also was, but would literally whisper her concerns to me. There's a deeply misogynistic culture in universities and it's always female academics who are persecuted, threatened and no-platformed.

I am truly thankful that I got out of working in a university before this ideology took its stranglehold. I left only two years ago but the signs were there that it was beginning to take hold. We had a new non-academic transwoman staff member who was the only person in the entire institute who wore a skirt and heels, and I read in the news after I'd left that they had become chair of the LGBT soc and were demanding all sorts of things. Nothing to do with LGB and all to do with T by the looks of it. I'd definitely have found myself in trouble had I stayed.

"Are there any other equivalently heavy-handed policies for any other minority group on campus? (I'll answer that one: no, there are not)."

This is the telling thing.

It's just a hunch, but I think most academics see this for the nonsense it is. They just choose to keep quiet about it out of a sense of self-preservation. What do others think? I'd be interested to hear from people working in academia.

Many thanks to Kathleen Stock for all her dogged work over the years and for putting this together.
I work at the University of Kent which has the nonsense about Demigender, Demifluid and Demiflux in it's 37 (!) pages of guidelines. To my knowledge, this policy has not been widely publicised or circulated to staff - I first saw it here on this thread.
I am an academic and very gender critical, so it may only be a matter of time before I find myself in trouble. But I swear to God, if anyone challenges me, I am going to claim to be Demiflux - after all, they can't prove I'm not.

I find it hilarious that people who have the luxury of coming up with something like ‘demiflux’ as a self-descriptor probably consider themselves somehow marginalised, rather than highly privileged, pretentious and narcissistic.

Is there anything we can do as students to challenge this from within universities?

I mean, the policy attached to my institution seems directly at odds with the commitment I signed up for when joining, never mind the law protecting academic freedom. It's also discriminatory towards the neuro-diverse. IMO no one should alter their thoughts because an authority figure tells them too, but it's worth noting that even with a willing intent, not everyone can.

I suppose it takes the 3 years to get to grips with the gender stuff and therefore that's why students are now dafter when they leave

I also read bigender as big-ender. I prefer it, tbh. I think I could legitimately identify as a big-ender myself.

This whole stuff is beyond moronic, and to think it is being peddled by the one group of people whose entire job is to think critically is too dispiriting for words.

So ridiculous. In 50 years, we'll either be crying with laughter at the list of quotes or just plain crying...

"Demifluid: A person whose gender identity is partially fluid whilst the other part(s) are static.
Demiflux: A person whose gender identity is partially fluid, with the other part(s) being static. This differs from demifluid as flux indicates that one of the genders is non-binary.”

Wtaf... They have got to be trolling, right? I used to think it was only right-wing conspiracy theorists who talked about the end of 'western civilisation' but when I read the above, it does cross my mind...

It's also quite a bad understanding (unsubtle, lack of nuance, inaccurate) of po-mo theory ...

But rest assured @thereplycamefromanchorage there are academics like me - I've just taught a women's history course, where I talked about female biology and female life patterns & the ways that pregnancy has rarely been accommodated in a society structured around the male body & male life patterns. We also studied women's suffrage & the suffragettes. And I told them about the Contagious Diseases Acts.

No complaints of transphobia (yet). Interestingly, the serious complaint of transphobia against me a couple of years ago was made by students whom I had never met, let alone taught. Yet, they were so sure that my Twitter feed showed that I was dangerous & they just couldn't be expected to be in the same room with me.

There is a right way to accommodate trans people and women/girls, while protecting everyone’s privacy. Private information including grades, parental income, etc, is something that unis already have the infrastructure to deal with. Including someone’s bio sex as this sort of information to be used when doing things like assigning people rooms should be trivial.

I think it would be Fine if a female student opts in to room with anyone of either sex that has a female gender identity, or with anyone of the same sex and any gender identity. Or, if she only wants to room with someone of the same sex and gender ID I think this should also be supported. Like is currently done for Things like sending out bills/scholarship applications materials, or grades, it can be done “under the hood” algorithmically without any human knowing the persons sex or gender ID.

But trans women don’t want that. They want to be viewed in literally every way as identical to women. I understand this. But we all know it’s a polite fiction, and that other people exist whose feelings about privacy and bodily autonomy are based on sex, not on “gender”. You can force people to say something they don’t believe, but you can’t force people to believe it.

I think there is a marked contrast between the stress these policies place on subjective concepts of identity ("Think of the person as being the gender that they want you to think of them as.") and the insistence that 'trans' is a quantifiable group.

Post modern theory doesn't play well with statistics and legislation.

che/chim/chis

🤣😂🤣🤣🤣😂🤣😂🤣

Subject to the agreement of the individual, and except for degree certificates, a written notification of intent to transition is sufficient for the gender and name on staff and student records to be changed. This is necessary to enable the person to go about their daily life as a staff member or student without their sex assigned at birth being known.

This is from Bristol Uni. I guess, regardless of any other policy, if they allow students to register or update their sex based only on a signed declaration, the accommodation office have no way of reliably allocating same sex accommodation.

They do have a single sex accommodation policy but that is pointless if they allow students to change their sex on their records.

At least if it is not a deliberate policy (I think we heard from someone who works at another uni with a same gender policy?), then it might be easier for someone to complain and get moved.

Presumably, if they did gather the relevant information, they could ensure that transwomen get to share with each other :-)