Northumbria University - Sarah Phillimore and Harry Miller 'seen as a 'safety and wellbeing' risk to an entire university.'

Have you read the Sarah Phillimore's open letter which is linked to at the top of this thread? The person who purports to be Sarah Phillimore in it (and we have no reason to believe it is not Sarah Phillimore herself, as far as I know) acknowledges their membership of Fair Cop, the social media posting by Fair Cop that we have discussed in this thread, and explicitly stands by that post. The Fair Cop website seems to have her photograph on it?

If this is the Sarah Phillimore in question and there has not been misrepresentation anywhere, she has been described on this thread as an 'intelligent and articulate' person. Do you think therefore that she should have the judgement to recognise the potential consequences of such a tweet? That it might endorse and encourage people with transphobic views? She's apparently not an ignorant person, so she should have had a bit of insight here, no? I think any half-intelligent person could appreciate this. So what are we to think? That she has the intelligence and can appreciate that this tweet has the potential to endorse and encourage people with transphobic views, and she supports the tweet anyway? What does that say about her, if it is indeed her?

I went and read the open letter too. I agree with an earlier poster who said 'She is saying that a third person says fair cop is stating that hashtag, not her, not fair cop'.
You are wrong or wilfully disingenuous.

So you don't see any problems with someone tweeting #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance?

1. You're the only one on this thread who has said that she/faircop tweeted that. Others have said it was reported falsely by a third party. As I am not on twitter I do not know which is true, though I suspect. Whilst it's not something that I would tweet if I was on twitter, and it seems nasty, it's pretty mild given the abuse GC people have received - certainly nowhere near as bad as die in a fire, or hope you get raped.

1. Regardless, SP has legitimate views, and should be free to debate them - particular in a university where debate should be encouraged.

Every murder is a tragedy, but this has no bearing on whether it is acceptable to tweet #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

No, I don't actually have a problem with that. Partly because I think there is more to the argument than just a hashtag, and partly because people who cry and feel unsafe about fucking Twitter need to grow up and learn to debate properly.

Happy now?

No, I am just reminding myself that the number of women killed in the UK annually works out to about 3 a week whereas the number of transwomen killed in the UK in the last five years barely reaches three.

So you don't see any problems with someone tweeting #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance?

Of course SP should have a platform. She is intelligent and articulate and I assume, given her profession, an astute debater. Any uni should be delighted to have someone of her quality debating her perfectly legal view.

Universities should NEVER be places where debate is stifled, only one view expressed, dissent banished. Every legally held view should be up for robust debate. That's half the bloody point of going!

Are you implying that it's fair enough for someone to tweet #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance because women are killed too?

The Transgender Day of Remembrance, is that the day when we will remember the 177 trans women killed in the UK between March 2021 and April 2022?

Oh, hold on a minute, I got that wrong a bit, the 177 trans women killed in the UK. There that’s better. Be nice if those sisters, daughters, mothers, aunts, nieces and granddaughters had their own Transgender Remembrance Day but I’m sure the kind transwomen won’t mind sharing.

Do you think Sarah Phillimore should have a platform to speak at your university?

I'll try that again.

@SilverCatStripes

So you think that someone who has co-founded an organisation that tweets #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, and to the present day overtly stands by that tweet, should have a platform to speak in universities?

So you think that someone who has co-founded an organisation that tweets #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, and to the present day overtly stands by that tweet, should have a platform to speak in universities?

Finally, on a personal note - comparing women who are trying to protect their rights to racists is crass and distasteful. Indeed - and yet it currently seems to be the analogy of choice for those who don't like gender critical beliefs.

I am not sure that these-now universities were ever that reputable. Yes they now have university status - which organisation wouldnt want that - able to charge upward of £9k per year per student - almost regardless of quality of education provided.

suggestionsplease1

May I suggest that you get yourself a dictionary and look up the words you have copied and pasted from the TRA playbook?

I would also remind you that gender critical beliefs are protected legally in the UK and as such it is illegal to discriminate against people for holding gender critical beliefs.

Finally, on a personal note - comparing women who are trying to protect their rights to racists is crass and distasteful.

I think it's pretty short-sighted if you can not envision how hearing particular views can be a starting point to harm.

Let's take a view that is different to mine and probably yours - it is what many people would call a racist viewpoint. It's held by an individual who has done a lot of research and feels that they have found evidence that a certain ethnicity is inherently more likely to be less intelligent and also inherently more criminal. They think they have stats and research that can back this up and that the social factors that others think may be at work are not actually relevant at all. They think they have found 'The Truth'. They think they are entitled to share this information, as it is 'The Truth' after all. They demand platforms to raise awareness of their views and have proposals to mitigate the harm that others may experience from this group's increased inherent criminality. So should universities then give this person a platform to share their viewpoint? What is the harm? It's just another viewpoint, right?

The potential harm is that others believe this rhetoric, develop a corresponding cognitive bias or perception error and come to think of this particular group, and all individuals that are in it, as more likely to be inherently criminal. They act differently around them, they avoid them, they treat them differently, they feel suspicion and hostility because they have been persuaded by this viewpoint. The people who belong to this group also hear this viewpoint and internalise these attributions and begin to think differently of themselves - they are told to think they are inherently more criminal, less intelligent; they experience shame, and low self-esteem.

The two factors together combine to create a powerful sentiment against, and negative outcomes for, this group. The spreading of this viewpoint encourages other to feel prejudiced and hostile towards them, and has fuelled self-loathing for the individual. They lose confidence to participate in society or to seek support. They don't know which environments will accept them or where they will be shunned. They achieve less educationally and in the workplace and their health and wellbeing outcomes are lower and their lifespan is many years less that the average. The stigma, hostility and lack of social support that they face makes them more likely to become involved with the criminal justice system...

...and this is the icing on the cake for that first individual who wanted to promote their viewpoint - because now they feel they have even more evidence for this supposed increased inherent criminality that they were talking about.

But it's just a viewpoint right? How on earth could that be harmful?

Well of course. But that give no individual mussel farmer, marine biologist etc the right to a platform to speak at any particular university, does it?

A university might decide that the practices of a particular mussel farmer are environmentally problematic, and prefer to invite another mussel farmer who they feel has better practices that their students would benefit more from hearing about. Or they might just not put mussel farming on the curriculum at all for that particular academic year, as per their prerogative.

Spot on Igmum

I'm an academic. I suspect that most employers have various rights over email addresses they provide (though my blood runs cold to say it because I use my university email address for everything).

BUT if a junior member of another department got the powers that be to divert emails sent to me from speakers at an event I was organising I would be BLOODY LIVID. I also think that actions like this, stifling reasonable debate, lead to all kinds of bad.

Our students have a right to be safe, to be free from harassment. This does not mean that they do not, or should not, listen to and engage with challenging ideas. Engaging with challenging ideas is what universities are for. I am pretty fed up with the utterly disingenuous assumption that anyone who does not bow down to say that gender rights triumph over and trump every other human right believes in genocide. It is an utterly bad faith and misleading leap.

We need medical departments producing good doctors who can recognize sex, we need well-trained lawyers who understand the implications of clashes of rights, we need engineers designing products for female as well as male bodies. If we step away from truth we fundamentally damage our society.

I'm happy to treat people with courtesy, to use whatever pronouns they desire, to approve equal rights in work etc. I am absolutely not happy with stifling debate, with denying the rights of others or with appalling misrepresentation of reasonable discussions.

suggestionsplease1

'were concerned that the content of the speech might be harmful to some of the guests'

'Harmful', along with 'unsafe' seems to crop up a lot around this issue from the gender ideology side.

Please can you explain to me how hearing, or other people hearing a view that is different to yours is harmful. Thanks.

Mussel farmers may even commission universities to carry out research.

You do know that universities are more than gender studies? They also do proper research eg aquaculture, fisheries, marine biology, environmental science, business etc all of which may well wish to invite mussels farmers to give a talk or participate in research.

I think a better analogy would be: the nephew of the groom had a hand in organising the wedding and found a speaker they believed was appropriate, the bride heard about this and queried it because they knew about the controversial views of the proposed speaker and were concerned that the content of the speech might be harmful to some of the guests (and after all - the nephew is a junior, bit-part player in this however well-meaning he is - he doesn't get to call the shots as the wedding is really meant to be all abut the bride and groom). The bride and groom speak to the nephew about concerns but as it turns out they allow the speaker to go ahead anyway.

This is a perfect analogy 👌