Institute of Physics appoints an Inclusion and Diversity representative

Has the difference between sex and gender been explained to Dr Clara yet? He seems confused - although if he’s comparing himself to a fish that’s probably the least of his worries.

Yep, Clara's ridiculous comments on fish are still up on the Oxford Natural History Museum website:
https://www.glam.ox.ac.uk/outinoxford-natualhistory

The Bluehead Wrasse fish is an important example of non-standard biological sex in nature. When aging, even after sexual maturity, some females may transition to become breeding males. The Bluehead Wrasse is not the only fish species to change sex. Some species of clownfish exhibit similar behaviour, with individuals changing from male to female. (Nemo’s father should have become his mother in the popular Pixar movie!) The Wrasse are not born with both male and female anatomy, but they change from one sex to the other in order to maintain a gender balance necessary for population stability. This process is called sequential hermaphroditism.
As with the human transgender population the transition is neither a decision nor choice they make
. These sex changes are due to the levels of hormones in the environment, based upon the ratios between the sexes of Wrasse. A similar process is thought to be responsible for transgenderism in humans, but in this case due to the hormonal environment in the womb during development.

What are Dr Barker’s views on protecting the rights of gender-critical physicists under the Equality Act?

As I linked below, Clara is on the record as thoroughly disapproving of Maya Forstater and others being able to crowdfund her Equality Act legal challenge, so I imagine they are fairly negative.

Agree with @WorkingItOutAsIGo though:
I think it can be a career cul de sac for women scientists to be pushed into these sorts of roles so actually it’s good if female physicists are doing physics rather than EDI nonsense.

I was keen to get involved in the local chamber of commerce (non science) women's committee but then found it would actually be lumbered with "all the diversity stuff" - luckily I found out before I agreed to join. Fuck that shit - we have enough to do without having to fight everyone else's battles / make the organisation think it's ticked the inclusion box

Fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off

To be fair “diversity and inclusion” isn’t about getting more women into STEM.

Well, actually for the IOP it is - it’s no. 2 on the list:

girls will make up at least 30% of those taking physics at age 16-19

https://www.iop.org/strategy

Of course we won’t know how many of these “girls” are actually female as it will just mean “identify as a girl” in reality.

"Since mid-2017, more than 800,000 pounds has been raised via about 27,500 donations to fund about 16 trans-focused legal cases on CrowdJustice, a crowdfunding site set up specifically for lawsuits, according to a tally by the Thomson Reuters Foundation."

Call me naive but I thought science (particularly physics) was all about facts? Over £800,000, how much over? one penny? a million pounds? About 27,500 donations and about 16 cases. Not one single exact figure to make their point.

Surely it would have been clearer and relatively easy to take a fixed number of cases and the total raised by an exact number of donations? But I suspect that would not show that money is being raised to bully trans people, rather that people are mobilising to help people like Maya Forstater to defend themselves against bullies.

@drhf - I have a feeling they could be summarised very succinctly by the phrase: the fucking bigots can fuck off.

I wonder what Athene Donald thinks of this?

What a fantastic question!

What are Dr Barker’s views on protecting the rights of gender-critical physicists under the Equality Act?

Cracking photo.

It really is!

I believe the previous holder of that post is a woman.

She is called a 'cis woman' in some of the tweets by those who defend this appointment, even though we are not told if she possesses an unfalsifiable inner conviction of her femininity which just happens to match her female sex without being based on it. That would be the actual definition of a 'cisgender' woman.

So they couldn't find one woman in the whole universe who was up to the job?!?

I am torn: I think it can be a career cul de sac for women scientists to be pushed into these sorts of roles so actually it’s good if female physicists are doing physics rather than EDI nonsense. And Dr Barker might be good at the role so should be given a chance.

But but but…clearly it’s a ridiculous appointment and D B has faced no problems in his career from being a white man. And I have skin in the game - my DD graduated with her Masters in Physics with Distinction and having won a ton of prizes along the way - and what stopped her continuing her career in academia was the horrendous sexism exhibited by her fellow students, supervisors and lecturers. She decided she had no interest in being a token female, fighting this culture and expected to do diversity work on top of her own academic work and instead would go and make a tonne of money working for an investment bank, not because she cares about the money but because it would be a meritocratic environment where she would be judged purely on how good she is at her job.

She’s exactly the sort of person who is a great loss to science, and there is nothing about this appointment that would change her mind. She had been toying with taking up her phd place after a couple of years out but this won’t make her want to.

From that article:
Dr Barker is a Daphne Jackson Trust Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Applied Superconductivity and the Dean for Equality and Diversity at Linacre College. She received the Points of Light award from the Prime Minister’s Office in 2017 for her LGBT+ awareness work, and in 2018 won the Individual Champion/Role Model award in Oxford university’s Vice-Chancellor’s Diversity Awards.

https://daphnejackson.org/fellow/dr-clara-barker/

Cracking photo.

Very disappointed in Gina Rippon's response

'Luckily we don't have to take the ignorant opinions of such narrow-minded bigots into account.'

https://twitter.com/ginarippon1/status/1722348115850653929?t=I7iCdNMPidmKX4HwBvMCdQ&s=19

My comment was deleted. This is clearly another topic that cannot be openly discussed.

My point was only that appointing a D&I lead who hasn’t actually faced any barriers in entering that sector is hardly going to help the IOP improve its diversity.

I was in my Physics dept for 4 years and had 1 lecturer for 1 subject, 1 semester. Seems like things are no better (30 years later)

Another white male telling us all how to do diversity and inclusion. FFS.

Oh for fucks sake

This is just madness. How could (s)he - as a white, middle-aged male - possibly have faced barriers in accessing a career in Physics?!

Pure misogyny. We see you, IOP.

I know a lovely physicist. She is an ESOL immigrant from a VERY different cultural background; she’s from an ethnic minority; she has a disability. Exactly the sort of person for the job, surely? (Particularly given she throws herself into her work; wouldn’t pick her pet projects but those that would be of most benefit to the most people/those that were most urgently needed; & she would listen to other people & consider their views.)

Frankly I think a team of cats (given all the laws of physics they defy, they clearly have it sussed - & they’ll literally be all over string theory) would be better.