Kathleen Stock. Now they are writing academic papers about how terfy she is

Don't be silly Helle when in all of humanity has that ever happened?

Yes that too 😏

I was thinking of how rape victims have their stories torn apart and characters assassinated. 'we believe her', except when she's saying something that's inconvenient to males or denies them their desires, asserts her boundaries or says 'no' to males. Then she must be sneered, jeered, and derided.

Indeed arabella.

Wims!! Be lovely!! Maybe the males will be kind and stop demanding access to the rights of female people….

I find it interesting that a woman asserting that she feels violated by a male in her space is met with this statement: 'Such a lovely person'.

A woman stating her boundaries and expressing how she feels has aspersions cast on her character.

We've seen this many times before.

Seems strange you are missing the metaphorical device here.

The linguistic device of declaring that something 'is' something when it is not that something at all.

And also strange that you cannot see what Raymond is actually saying. But then I think it is not something that a male would ever understand so maybe that is important to note.

Raymond explicitly identifies the practice of transsexuality with rape, unequivocally stating: “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves”; she asserts that the mere presence of male-to-female transsexuals in women’s space “violates women’s sexuality and spirit".

Such a lovely person. I'm 'raping' other women by being more content in my very own skin.

One day we'll look back at this time and shudder at some of the things that were said...and it will be second time that's happened in my lifetime.

Hah, she lives rent free in their heads.

If this piece was peer-reviewed, and I have my doubts about that - even the WHR's notes say that viewpoints may verge on a polemic, and how do you subject that to academic standards of justification, analytical rigour, balance, measured expression, etc? - the reviewer(s) have done a very poor job.

I think it's quite normative now in certain parts of academia for people to simply quote mine certain authors for things that sound like they support the argument the academic wants to make. It's not that they have read everything this person has said, usually they are not well read at all.

Often their whole university training has been done this way, topical studies that use small parts of texts from many different authors.

It reminds me a lot of what in Christian circles is called "proof-texting." Just pulling out bits of the Bible that seem to support what the preacher wants to say, without regard to the context of the quote.

I am the sort of nerdy person who will read something and then go and read the references (partly because I don't always trust peoples' reading comprehension, partly because I want more details). I'm very well up on one particular narrow field, but I read papers about all sorts of things because I am, as I say, a nerd.

And honestly? The quality of academic papers varies hugely. I came across one with an egregious error that the author should not have made and which a competent reviewer should have picked up (all you had to do was Google a name). Because she got things arse-about-face, she used her 'fact' to support her conclusion, when it showed the exact opposite. Yet you get other stuff that is really thorough and even-handed and fair. The problem is that you can't easily tell the BS from the sound information unless you already know something about the topic. The bullshit gets into the zeitgeist or whatever it's called, and becomes The Truth, esp. if it is trendy.

It's not just the social sciences that have problems. If you want to know what a mess the sciences are, try reading 'Science Fictions' by Stuart Ritchie, or familiarise yourself with the Retraction Leaderboard.

I know that I bind on about this repeatedly, but it really is a massive concern. We rely on academia to find out new things about the world we live in. If academics are biased or blinkered or just willing to tell fashionable lies to get ahead, we're screwed, because we don't know what's been properly researched and properly reviewed and what's just a pile of unmitigated bollocks.

We know that some academics are not honest actors. They should be bloody ashamed of themselves.

Absolutely agreed, GreenUp and EasterIsland.

@GreenUp thanks for putting this so clearly:

She wasn't being asked to "debate trans lives" she was asked to discuss conflicts between sex and gender which she refuses to acknowledge even though there is plenty of legal evidence that those conflicts exist.

I think part of the clash (and the abuse) comes from people like Phipps (and some of my students) not understanding that there’s a difference between discussing the principles and concepts of women’s sex-based rights, and discussing individual transwomen/men.

Ahh cheers. I am a very proud mama - she just needs to keep going for the final hurdle now!

Thanks Zanda. I feel more assured that perhaps this is not the acceptable standard these days.

And brilliantly done for your DD!!

@Helleofabore My Dd is getting her BA project peer reviewed to publish in a journal. It first went through some sort of academic moderator who deemed it worthy to be sent to two more professors. The feedback they have given has been incredibly detailed (and sometimes contradictory) but my Dd is delighted they have scrutinised it so thoroughly as it’s her first publication. It’s now been read and praised in three different continents! I am so proud of Dd - she just needs to tweak it to be in the designated journal’s style now.

As Deborah Shaw said, this was an opinion piece but I could not see it passing the moderator and professors my DD’s did if it were due to be published as a research piece. I (only) have an MSc, a science teaching qualification and a bit of a research background but the conclusions were always statistics based. In any discipline you need to justify your opinion with the correct facts though.

I hope her Twitter remarks have sent a few critical-thinkers this way to see why us mums are concerned about this ideology, and it’s impact on informing policies affecting women and children.

It's not just the trans flag issue but the behaviour on social media. Every time Stock or other feminist academics like Selina Todd were in the news for some no-platforming, cancellation or other attack by students or academics, Phipps and colleagues at Sussex and other universities would do these passive aggressive "My support for trans students today", "She who claims to be cancelled gets platformed in the press" tweets which they'd all share and like, along with various nasty comments.

This was happening at a time when multiple female academics were prevented from doing the core elements of their jobs. Threatened, intimidated, no-platformed, had talks cancelled, assaults happening at talks they'd organise or be involved in, bomb threats, Selina Todd needing body guards, Stock needing security equipment installed, students circulating posters with weapons on them. That @devorah thinks this is some kind of comparable situation to academics saying "women have rights based on our sex and this has implications for law and policy" being upsetting to trans activists is horrendous. The academics mistreating Stock seem like really unpleasant types and it was seeing their bullying behaviour that first led me to find out about GC feminism.

Phipps was also frequently tweeting some racist, classist assertions that GC feminism is for middle class white, women but has never backed that up with any data. She trained as a social scientist, so you'd think she might be able to present some surveys or empirical data for her claims.

If she really believes that women from ethnic minorities in the UK are somehow more okay with being undressed around or being imprisoned with bepenised people, than white women, then she should prove it. If she thinks working class women have some kind of invisible shield that makes us impervious to fear of male sexual violence then she should present the data. Instead she constantly smeared feminists and ignored and elided all the BEM and/or working class women who are involved in GC feminism.

When Kathleen Stock and others like Selina Todd and Julie Bindel offered to sit down and discuss or debate the issues with Phipps, Phipps either ignored them or did the whole "I won't debate trans lives" schtick. She wasn't being asked to "debate trans lives" she was asked to discuss conflicts between sex and gender which she refuses to acknowledge even though there is plenty of legal evidence that those conflicts exist.

Now that I have gone through it, I repeat my question on just what ‘peer reviewed’ means in this instance? Happy for one of the MN academics to let me know.

Because all I can say is that this article was a hot mess of unsubstantiated claims while making out that they were ‘evidenced’, and quoting absolute misogynists as some kind of moral authorities, and an indulgence in cognitive distortions in place of balanced discussion of views.

I do have to say though that I am not an academic so I don’t know if there is something I am missing. If I turned in a report that was evidenced and argued this way to my manager, I would have had it handed back with a ‘do better’. But maybe that is the difference with working for a multinational corporation and academia? I had thought that it would have been the opposite.

I will happily accept that I am wrong and that I have missed vital things in this because I am not an academic. I look forward to seeing what I missed and other people’s take on the article.

If Non-birthing Parent Christmas could grant me one wish, it'd be that the word "link" in this context vanish whenever it's used in place of actually starting what the link specifically is.

Everything on Earth has links to every other thing on Earth. If you're stating they have a specific thing in common, or a causality, or whatever it is, you need to state that. "Has links to" has become as meaningless as "transphobia".

Particularly when Serano is being used to discredit Dr Stock's with :

Kathleen Stock, for instance, asserts that trans women are living ‘immersed in a fiction’.

It is also astonishing that Deborah Shaw doesn't mention that Serano is mentioned and quoted several times in Kathleen Stock's Material Girls.

finally on that list of pledges.

"Bullying and harassment"

Really? The author did indeed go there.

Speaking out as a gender critical feminist does have consequences in the university system, but before we censor this, we need to be aware of the consequences for our colleagues and students who identify as trans and non-binary. Threats of violence are never acceptable and the need for security is alarming and should be condemned whether that violence is directed at trans people, trans inclusive feminists or gender critical feminists. Yet, gender critical feminism does present a cause for concern. In a blog post Alison Phipps notes this concern by the Institute of Race Relations over the links between gender critical feminism and the far right.61 However gender critical feminists identify politically, it is clear that their viewpoints are being co-opted by those who do not have feminist interests at heart. While I am not accusing gender critical feminist of being racists, some of their allies are, and this should worry Universities who claim to prioritise equality, diversity and inclusion.

Ahh.... here we again have a call to discredit feminists because 'allies'. And more false links with 'far right'. The author has carefully put this in Phipps' name, I notice. The author doesn't, of course, cite any credible examples. Just leaves it as a vague sword dangling.

(Yet, the author conveniently never once has acknowledged the behaviour of 'trans allies'. )

Speaking out as a gender critical feminist does have consequences in the university system, but before we censor this, we need to be aware of the consequences for our colleagues and students who identify as trans and non-binary.

What about the women and children? Does the author write anything about being aware of the consequences for women and children for people under the trans umbrella having all their demands met without question??

If they did, I missed it.

FFS. I find this really hard to believe that this is an academic writing this:

In this context, the Stock narrative might appear to be ‘just another story’, yet there is no doubt that her case has fitted neatly into a pre-existing trans-hostile right-wing media narrative seeking free-speech martyrs, and been weaponised by those seeking to attack trans people and universities. All of these stories take the point of view of Professor Stock and defend her position. Accordingly, in this section I will focus on the way the story has been presented in The Daily Telegraph through a selection of apposite articles. This broadsheet paper closely aligns with the UK Conservative government in terms of its wider politics and its negative views on trans rights.

Read that and wonder where the balance is. Where is the Pink News coverage??? Oh wait .... here it is.... discussing Phipps and Phipps' encouragement that trans flags be posted on doors as an act of solidarity for trans people.... that supposedly is not 'targeting Stock'. This is a very transparent positioning by the author and really shows the lack of balance. The Daily Telegraphy = bad. Pink News = good. Just more polarisation and absolutism.

When we actually look closer at the story and the actions of Phipps from her point of view another story emerges of a positive and symbolic act of supporting trans students without targeting Stock. In one of the few media outlets that presents her side of the story, the LGBTQ community paper Pink News, we learn that Phipps requested that colleagues post the trans flag on their door as an act of solidarity with trans students.52 This can be argued to be an appropriate act from an academic who teaches and is tutor to trans and non-binary students and at the time Director and Professor of Gender Studies at Sussex University at a time of increased trans-hostility. Her email to colleagues, reprinted in Pink News reads as follows (and I will reproduce it all as it has gone under-reported outside of the community outlet):

But seriously. What planet do people live where having people post trans flags on their door when that group of people have specifically targeted Dr Stock is not further victimising Dr Stock?

I really cannot believe the denial of bullying while claiming victimhood that is going on here in this article.

Oh. look... Exhibit 7: Editorial position of articles surveyed as % of total for each case study

www.ipso.co.uk/media/1986/mediatique-report-on-coverage-of-transgender-issues.pdf

Page 13 has a lovely chart that shows the break down. I guess if you want to misrepresent the reality, you might judge this as 'hostile' in that the numbers of 'questioning' articles is not 0.

But then, look at the events selected and then make a mature judgement on whether those articles should be affirming only or whether there should be 'questions' raised.

Citing the Independent Press Standards Organisation, Jay Prosser notes that since 2009 there has been ‘a 400% increase in reporting in trans issues accompanied by “increased hostility” in the media towards transgender people’. Shon Faye’s research cited in a CNN report on the UK as one of the most trans-hostile media countries, revealed that ‘in 2020 the Times and the Sunday Times published over 300 articles (on the subject of trans identity), almost one a day, and they were all negative’.

Just a note about this.

What is really interesting is when you go and look at some of the data (I only went so far as to look at the report from the consultants that IPSO had do the research), that data is from 2009 to 2019.

I notice that the author doesn't go into any depth about it. However, the event spiking the reporting on trans issues for that time period was.... drum roll.... Willoughby appearing on Big Brother.

What the author fails to also mention which would then explain much of that 'increase' is that of course, the numbers of transitioners grew substantially during that time. Concerns were starting to be discussed about young transitioners.

Also that the report itself shows the number of events that were 'newsworthy' increased dramatically. So it is a logical correlation. FFS. It doesn't take a genius to understand that if there are more events associated with trans people, and that there are laws being changed, language demands, events where males are being 'celebrated' as females such as Jenner, then of course there will be more news articles.

Also, that 400% increase to be clear is not 400% in 'hostile' coverage. In fact, reading even their deeper analysis of 11 selected events that were widely covered - most of the coverage was 'neutral'.

www.ipso.co.uk/media/1986/mediatique-report-on-coverage-of-transgender-issues.pdf

see Exhibit 2: transgender-related stories published each month vs some key events

‘a 400% increase in reporting in trans issues accompanied by “increased hostility” in the media towards transgender people’.

Just repeating a biased viewpoint as evidence, surely cannot be considered adequate for the purpose of this reputationally damaging article.

If the author wishes, I am very happy to compile a spreadsheet of 'questioning' toned articles from the pdf for the 11 articles, but surely if you are using a quote from someone you would verify the information yourself. Isn't that what academics are supposed to do?

I would say that Jay Prosser probably took two areas of a study and mashed it into one sentence that made that sentence misrepresentation of the reality. Simply repeating without checking makes for misleading information being replicated.