Academic Freedom, Harassment and GC academics - ask me any questions

Elsewhere there's a fantastic collection of over £60,701 carrots in a garden from nearly 2,500 citizens - women and men. Many of them have posted heartfelt moving comments if anyone wants to be reminded of the warmth and integrity of so many people.

Why has nobody, including Jo Phoenix, addressed the 7 questions I put down earlier?

Alexa, define entitlement for me

@suggestionsplease1 Have you read this article linked to earlier? www.modernlawreview.co.uk/asteriti-bull-sharpe/

Also, we're still waiting for your definition of a woman. To quantify harm to women you need to first know what a woman is. You've been asked quite a few times but never answered. Kind of ironic that you said this:

"It seems that when people are talking about 'academic freedom' they mean the freedom to have the difficult conversations that make other people feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, whilst excusing themselves from the difficult conversations that might make themselves feel uncomfortable and vulnerable."

With such a bullying tone to your posts it does make me wonder if you are one of Jo's colleagues.

Why has nobody, including Jo Phoenix, addressed the 7 questions I put down earlier?

Because no one is interested in being your intellectual servant.

(That post was to @suggestionsplease1)

Should probably have either finished that last sentence or deleted it, but I will leave it as it is, incomplete and unmoddable. I am thinking forbidden thoughts, and no one can stop me.

I think you are straw manning there - I’ve heard plenty of opinions in my life that make me feel uncomfortable or that I disagree with. I haven’t resorted to violent protest, “cancellation” or whatever. As I say, I’m perfectly happy for people to write and publish books I disagree with and hold debates about them. I’m not OK with violent protests by students just because they don’t like an opinion.

As an LB person I have been in the presence of people expressing homophobia and sexism many times in my life, and I’ve managed to survive without having to accuse anyone of hate speech, or wear a mask protesting them, or feel like I’m denied a right to exist.

We’ve all been answering your seven questions. Why don’t you have a little read of these articles on the 2017 cancel culture “protests” against Charles Murray and answer us as to whether you think it’s OK for students to assault professors they think they don’t agree with? The professor who was assaulted wasn’t even Murray, she was the left-wing respondent.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/04/protesters-at-middlebury-college-shout-down-speaker-attack-him-and-a-professor/%3foutputType=amp

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/518667/

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/04/middlebury/hAfpA1Hquh7DIS1doiKbhJ/story.html%3foutputType=amp

So, Suggestions - why don’t you answer: do you think people should have the right to harass and assault those who have opinions they don’t agree with?

It used to be “it works in Canada” but you don’t often hear that any more, and then it was “it works in Ireland” but ooh, maybe not so much lately. What country will they point to as a success story, after some hideous self-ID related scandal eventually emerges out of Malta’s tiny population? Does the Vatican have self-ID yet?

It’s so obvious that

suggestionsplease1
Nobody owes you a damn thing. Personally I recognise you as a sealion. If I chose to waste time sourcing evidence for you, you'd reject it all and continue to derail the thread. I don't want to do that, I reckon the other women on this thread don't want to do that either, and Jo Phoenix probably doesn't want to do it either.

Now you can argue (to yourself) that means you're right and we're wrong, and to be honest I can't stop you from thinking that, and you'd probably think that even if you got your arse handed to you. So let's cut out the lengthy middle bit, you flounce off and tell twitter how clever you are, and we can continue the thread without you.

Why has nobody, including Jo Phoenix, addressed the 7 questions I put down earlier? They are extremely important questions about how freedom of speech operates in the context of possible societal harm and discrimination.

Are you stamping your foot as you say this?

Jo Phoenix reports that she has been instructed to not show her own work in departmental meetings - this isn't a departmental meeting is it?

And we're surely not restricted to just her research on these matters - I was very clear I would be interested to see any research whatsoever - carried out by anyone, anywhere, achieving statistical significance.

Anyone can post this information - it needn't just be Jo Phoenix, just go for it!

Why has nobody, including Jo Phoenix, addressed the 7 questions I put down earlier? They are extremely important questions about how freedom of speech operates in the context of possible societal harm and discrimination.

It seems that when people are talking about 'academic freedom' they mean the freedom to have the difficult conversations that make other people feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, whilst excusing themselves from the difficult conversations that might make themselves feel uncomfortable and vulnerable.

Ah, Malta - the very bastion and beacon of women's rights.

Ah yes, Malta where a female journalist was assassinated for exposing Government corruption. Government officials allegedly being complicit in said assassination. Women's rights are a belter in that Country.

Most of the other Countries brought up as beacons that have introduced self-id have appalling records on women's rights, indigenous women's rights and are misogynistic to their very core. You only have to scratch the surface for the above to be blindingly obvious.

theconversation.com/why-it-is-vital-to-decriminalise-abortion-the-case-of-malta-163679

As self id represents a change to the current law it's not beholden on women to prove it's harmful. It's on proponents of self id to prove it's not harmful. And so far I've seen no compelling evidence. It's not good enough to say "well it works in Malta" because Malta is a fundamentally different country to the UK.

It certainly is.
www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58012903.amp

I'd argue that a lack of reporting coming out of various countries with self-id proves the square root of fuck all.

Well, this thread would have been an eye opener if I had any illusions left in terms or the transgender activists.

A woman has been harmed and forbidden to share badly needed research on the transgender issues.

We have

1. A person claiming that no harm has come from the trans activists. This is ignoring the entire premise of the thread.

2. A person claiming that there is no research on harm implying that it doesn’t exist. Prof Jo has been prohibited to share this very research.

3. A person coming on the tell all GC women that they are flies, which is insulting and dehumanising.

Step over and onwards.

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-web-violence/201806/what-is-dehumanization-anyway

'Dehumanization involves redefining the targets of prejudice and violence by making them seem less human (that is, less civilized or less sentient) than other people. The classic strategy for this is to use terms like “animals” and “vermin.” '

“Screenshots” in this case are more targeted than the usual Twitter bullshit. People will be poring over this thread looking for ammunition they can use against Professor Phoenix specifically, and they’ll twist anything that is said entirely out of context if necessary

Bunbury would agree with you.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3438714-Bunbury-s-Public-Service-Announcement-2

#Orderofthephoenix
#phoenixrising
#teamjo

She was actually quite emotional, btw! Really very overcome at the response

Was there, watching Prof Jo being fabulous because people started donating on the dot of 9am the moment the crowdjustice site opened, and the donations started flooding in.

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The stuff OU have put her through is fucking unbelievable

Well one of the reasons I objected to the comparison was that manifestly Charles Murray didn’t get cancelled. Quite a lot of other men stood up for his academic freedom, took the book seriously (and it’s more complex than suggestions allows, though it has its own bad faith reasoning); many serious senior male academics wrote reviews, critiques and rebuttals of it. He faced some controversy and a few protests, but was manifestly not treated remotely like Kathleen Stock or other gender critical feminists. The academic phrase of the time was “teach the controversy”! Whatever the conclusions about Murray’s work, it was certainly not denied a platform.

So not only does suggestions’s analogy not work on the basis of race, it doesn’t even work on the basis of what actually happened. Murray wasn’t censored or silenced - his book was widely debated. The protests suggestions mentioned were actually in 2017 and quite nasty - the university concerned too disciplinary action against the protestors. But 2017 is firmly in our current age, very different from 1994 when the book was published. The culture has changed radically since then.

I myself am perfectly happy to accept that academic freedom involves sometimes defending the freedom for others to hold and debate ideas I dislike or find abhorrent - as many of us argued on the thread about pro-life groups and free speech recently. As long as something does not cross the line into harassment, threats or incitement, then the bar for banning it has got to remain a high one - a democratic society must be able to have academic freedom and free speech, or totalitarianism beckons.

I also fail to see why on Earth these protestors are singling out academic monographs in the first place, given all the harms, false information and frankly dangerous idiocy freely available on the internet. But of course it is much more fun to bully lesbian women academics than It is to, for example, lobby for Pornhub to be shut down, or anti-vaxxers on Tiktok to be suppressed. In terms of great harm done to trans people, logically the “trans” porn categories on “big porn” sites cause trans people more measurable social and psychological misery and harm. But to acknowledge this would be to acknowledge that “swerf and terf” feminists might actually have a point about something.