University of Sussex fined £585,000 by Office for Students

I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head but there is a website that tracks all the papers that are later quietly retracted. It's quite the eyeopener

Retraction Watch. Knew that information was somewhere in the recesses of my mind!

Hiliary Cass isn't just an academic, she's actually practiced and still practices (I think, or did until recently) front line medicine. And she spoke up against the consensus, loudly. Backed up by evidence.

Obviously death threats are actually criminal and should be prosecuted.

However, I can see why academics are automatically dismissed now by many people. Because what they say, and often what they research, is all about being in an ivory tower and cushy lifestyle that most people in the real world can only dream of. And people suffer real world harms that are just not being acknowledged. As MaybeDoctor says why not join up with practitioners? I think Jo P tried to do that for prisons, saying look at the real world consequences and there have been NO REPURCUSSIONS for how she was treated by colleagues for trying to do that.

I've been in academia myself and I just don't trust academics anymore. Now I work more closely with frontline harms - particularly those experienced by children and I'm really, really angry. For the children mainly but also for the low paid, minimum wage staff trying to pick up the pieces of the harm caused, like TAs. The people without a voice and themselves victim to sacking if they speak up, even when they're speaking up for safeguarding (many, many cases of this), unlike academics who seemingly don't get fired even when found to have bullied a colleague in a court of law.

I'm sorry but dealing with the consequences in reality just doesn't compare to having to argue with tin foil hatters or other captured academics and those academics who've stayed silent should hang their heads with shame because they could have spoken up and chose not to.

Sadly Pastor Martin Niemöller applies here.

The complicency itself is problematic.

Stock is clearly still upset about what happened to her and rightly so. But I seem to recall that in an earlier piece she spoke about administrators supporting her, and there was also an article in the New Statesman for which some of her colleagues in philosophy were interviewed who said they had no problem with her work. I may be misremembering but I think they even used her work on gender identity as an impact case study.

That’s perhaps not ‘public support’ but the people with the power to discipline the students and colleagues who bullied her were the higher ups. To my mind, the problem is with the way academia is (mis)managed. We still need universities and research, saying we can burn it all down seems counterproductive.

It is indeed. And it speaks to the culture inside universities of not wanting to be cancelled, of not wanting to find yourself on a UCU blacklist (I'm thinking here of their previous efforts to "hunt down" GC staff) or find yourself at the receiving end of a terrifying, career-ending student protest, like Stock did.

A separate point is the one @MarieDeGournay made about how "fake facts" and all sorts of shite peddled on the internet are taken as being just as valid as peer-reviewed good quality research*. It's inclusivity taken to the extreme.

(*And yes, I am aware of all the flaws of published research. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head but there is a website that tracks all the papers that are later quietly retracted. It's quite the eyeopener.)

At Sussex, ONE fellow academic supported Stock.

ONE.

This is problematic.

I am aware of the threads on surrogacy and pornography and prostitution and have learnt a lot from them.

I do wonder if KS maybe meant academic feminists need to move on, but I agree the wording is clumsy. I think I read something fairly recently (Twix?) that suggests she is tired and has had enough, which is understandable after what she has been through.

However, I agree with her on boys/girls, for example. When the reaction to that is 'Whoever does she mingle with?! Such an insult to all the women who have spent years campaigning around male violence. And have done and are still doing work on this' I feel that tone is directed to me as well as KS. I don't like being spoken to like that and my reaction is 'oh well, another reason why I am not a feminist'. It's not the discussions as such, it's the dismissive, haughty tones employed.

I have a foot in both camps, being involved in academia and outside work. It always surprises me how far removed the conversations within the university are from issues and conversations in the practitioner or third-sector spheres. Or the political sphere. This is in an applied social science. Why are academic conferences so separate from practitioner conferences? Both are using the same evidence base after all. Both are hoping to influence policy makers. Why not integrate these activities?

Why do universities witter on about impact but keep themselves at such a critical distance from real life work?

Even more alarming is that a small proportion of the seminar topics that I see circulated on university email are verging on incomprehensible, nay, even nonsensical. If these were described in the tabloids, there would be a field day!

Academia always thinks it's right. Judith Butler thinks she gets to trounce JK Rowling on gender issues because of her academic credentials. But the world is changing. And academics, who used to hold all the power, are furious that ordinary people, whose views used to be restricted to letters to the editor,care now being heard.

K Stock is probably no different from Judith Butler or the VC of Sussex in this regard.

Gender critics have KJK and JKR as potential gurus/spokespeople/leaders - the academics have a role to play but they are not necessarily driving the debate in the way they want/think.

I'd like to think, for brevity her quote, came across as more absolute than it was? Only the Sith deal in absolutes 😁 It is, on the face of it, nuts that anyone should have to waste any energy on the harms and idiocy that have arisen from gender ideology. Imo I see it as Venn diagrams with, currently, a chunk of the feminist time, money & energy circle overlapping 'trans nonsense' and, necessarily, making the amounts available for 'prostitution', 'surragacy', etc. smaller. Or perhaps it's a pie chart.

But on the whole and unavoidable reading it through my own interpretation I agreed with the article. It's like Doc Stock is me, but taller, thinner, smarter, braver, better dressed....

SOME academics are insulated from reality, no argument there!🙄

But many academics are struggling to hold the line for scientific reality against an onslaught of post-factual anti-intellectualism that claims to know all about everything from sex being a spectrum to MMR vaccines causing autism to the moon landing[s] being faked.

Many academics are struggling in a climate where some random bloke on the internet can confidently dismiss the Cass Review as wrong because Hilary Cass* is underqualified and inexperienced and probably transphobic as well.

In many cases academics are subjected to abuse and even death threats.

*Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, who is or has been chair of the British Academy of Childhood Disability, established the Rett Clinic for children, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital for 15 years and honorary physician in paediatric disability at the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.
So no match for some random bloke on the internet.

@NoBinturongsHereMate

Thanks you've articulated why I felt pissed off on reading that KS quote.

I care about sex realism, but I also care about - and campaign on - surrogacy. I also care about and am asking questions about assisted dying and the impact on people (particularly women) with dementia in care homes.

So do most people on MN. So she's just wrong. She might be right about female academics, but she's not about MN users and there's probably more of us.

If you are a good researcher the default question first questions are 'what might this research miss?' 'does this research potentially have a bias?' 'what other ways might the research be flawed - eg the design of the research, who and why might you miss people/views from research, has the way the research been worded coloured the outcome of the research?'

White hat bias is a known phenomen.

I remember seeing one such astonishing case of white hat bias. It was a research paper into ELCS by the WHO. The conclusion of the report detailed that they found that attempted natural birth was safer. But when a number of people looked at the methodology and results that were published as part of the same document, it transpired that the actual data showed a very marginal benefit in having an ELCS. Now this was one report and I think this is an area where there are a huge number of variables, so my point isn't about what is safer here. My point here is this study had a conclusion that said something different to the actual data because that was the official position of the WHO at the time and they clearly had an ideological bias.

There are numerous other examples. We should be mindful there is actually whole industries who use research in a way thats not necessarily transparent nor unbiased. Ben Goldacre very much highlighted the problem that research is Not God. So did Margaret McCartney.

We also have an issue with so many people not understanding things like statistics and risk. Even people who deal with it for a living or have to explain it. Because they don't actually understand the data they are sharing and what it means. This includes very intelligent people and people who work with data.

There was a link to an telegraph article over the weekend with comment from Prof Alice Stewart (data scientist) who stated that

"that when it comes to liberating public bodies from institutional capture by trans activists and highlighting the dangerous lunacy of conflating sex with gender, our doughtiest defence is data."
She said many people in a great many organisations don't understand data collection as a discipline and have been taking advice from other people who don't understand it either; the result is a mess. We need - have a responsibility -to record both sex and gender identity.

I think this is the heart of my point (and actually one, I've been commenting on since I very first started on MN in 2008/9). People don't understand data collection as a discipline and don't look at the quality of data often enough. Its automatically assumed as reliable and its rarely the case that a skeptical eye is cast over anything.

(I think this is partly why one of the current political rising trends is starting to be growing discontent in the US about medical research which started since covid - its not about covid but a wider problem within the data industry and a problem with the commercial nature of health care in the US).

It is VERY easy to fall into this trap. Even if educated and experienced. Pretending its not a huge issue, is exceptional naive and depending on your job, potentially negligent.

Its frustrating. Often its a closing ranks thing thats the biggest issue though. This is the way we believe it should be / it has always been and if we change course there are massive implications... usually financial.

Another problem is that one propaganda technique is precisely to use a position of authority to squash criticism. This is another way that language matters - word saladism closes debate automatically and creates a hierachy based on status on who is 'allowed' to comment. Its no coincidence the level of language that Trump speaks at, and how it has actively helped him. Its about participation in debate and therefore in power. Its why I always encourage looking beyond phrasing and asking WHY people are saying things and to try to look for motivations because people don't turn to conspiracy theories etc for no reason. They will pick up on certain issues because of a real world ressonance and the grains of truth which have been areas neglected by establishment - if you understand this, you start to understand certain parts of extremism and parts of conspiracy theories. NO ONE does anything for no reason. And for the most part I think humans do things because they have good intentions - its just they prioritise and value different things; keeping in mind that the key drivers are the very basics - food, shelter, water, basic security (physical and financial). They aren't into high minded ideals, concepts and ideology as a priority, these are secondary to their main concerns. To put it another way - we forget that Hitler came to power on the slogan 'Arbeit und Brot' (Work and Bread) not 'Kill the Jews' and came after a period of significant economic hardships and hyperinflation. And more generally we forget that revolutions are always connected with high levels of young men being unemployed.

Right now we have the perfect storm, thats missing lots of these points - we have data and systems to disguise and distort employment levels. We have language which shuts people out of political debates that involve them. We have a lack of public accountability. Critical thought is only the preverse of those who are qualified, rather than being a proper discipline which actually involves the whole of society.

Modern democracy has failed so many people because they have been deemed as unimportant, irrelevant or worthy of being ignored in various ways thus undermining the intergrity of democracy itself because it has nothing to offer those outside positions of authority anymore because they are no longer part of decision making or accountability or social concensus making on ANY level because they've been actively and deliberately shut out in some way. Thats the real danger of censorship and cancellation - this alienation process.

We have to remember that everyone has a point some of the time and no one is always right - and thats the central core of democracy. The right to be wrong, but still be able to be wrong because you might be right when it really counts.

Finally: but neither is the shift to "It's not healthy, but neither is the shift to "all opinions are equal". One of the problems with this has been the issue that we can no longer tell the difference between opinion and fact and we have growing issues with the integrity of facts: this is where sex as a reality sits as a problem.

We have those who champion and value 'fact' actively promoting the idea of sex as a concept rather than a fact. This undermines all other facts and data intigrity. It becomes a question of trust. And this is where we refer back to people of all levels and their observable reality being important and unignorable regardless of language. Fact only holds weight when its integrity is clear. When you have massive PR operations to surpress realities an protect reputations of those with elevated status, facts are no longer trusted sources of information (For good reason - not enough critical examination is going on from People Who Should Know Better). This creates the vacuum. The rise of opinion has filled the void of accountability - remember that journalism was about checking the accuracy of facts and as this as a discipline has collapsed because opinions are cheaper. Newspapers stopped being written by journalists - and instead are full of opinion pieces. And too often these opinions are presented as 'facts'. So now no one can trust facts, and everyone has an opinion. Its not about 'all opinions being equal'. Its about the lack of integrity of fact, the presentation of opinions as fact and the lack of accountability when facts are demostrated to be flawed. Which goes back to the start of this thread. The BBC (as an example) has got itself into a right mess with this, because on the one had it has 'fact checking' but on the other has championed gender replacing sex and continually has headlines along the lines of 'Anti-trans JKR' which frames things in a totally biased way - and still can't present a single example of where JKR isn't being within the lawful space of the protected characteristic of observable sex and its valid exemptions and is in fact demonstrably 'anti-trans'. These blurred boundaries are hugely problemtic for an institution thats credibly is based on its reputation for 'seeking the truth and representing facts accurately in line with true ethical and unbiased journalistic principles' precisely because its fallen down an idealogical rabbit hole and suddenly thinks its about actively pushing these values. The BBC should be about reflecting and observing and shouldn't have an agenda beyond this - its guiding principle is accuracy and openness not 'progressive values' in a liberal democratic society. I do think the two concepts have been widely confused...

It comes back to this: academics (amongst others) need to get their heads out their arses and stop being arrogant pricks and learn how they are priviledged and how they are omitting huge issues and elements through their failure to be self aware and hyper self critical which the position of power they hold requires. The institutionalisation they demonstrate by failing to recognise this is effectively a form of massive corruption. You need public consensus and approval for justice and law to work, when its undermined, you lose public trust and you produce civil discontent and unrest. Ultimately though the rot had to be there to start with, for all these strains of discontent to have risen, and this is another one of those pesky 'ultimate truths' thats not going to go away all by itself. It needs to be acknowledged as a first step.

Again this is why and how 'sex is not real' logic has so many implications that go way past the subject itself.

Narrow thinking leads to narrow minds in all senses and in all quarters.

(And breathe)

You don't have to defer, no. But that academic background isn't what the point is about - it was about grassroots knowledge of what feminists in the wider world are concerned about and campaigning on.

For example surrogacy - spend half an hour looking fairly casually at this board and you'd know that lots of feminists are concerned about surrogacy. With a little more focus, and maybe use of the search function, you'd know that there have been letters written, consultations promoted and engaged with, MPs and their canvassers collared on doorsteps, news stories directed, regulations in different countries discussed, and the social and individual harms endlessly analysed.

So to say 'feminists are concerned about trans issues to the exclusion of surrogacy' is to show you've a incredibly narrow view. Her 3 friends all working on the same set of academic papers about trans issies may not have noticed surrogacy, but lots of other women have - and MVAWG, and the pay gap, and street harassment, and the glass ceiling, and the glass cliff, and unequal division of unpaid labour within and outside the home, and Iran, and Afganistan, and Roe v Wade, and the recent Irish referendum, and rapes in schools, and, and, and ....

That's the background she seems (from that interview) to lack. It's not about having read the complete works of Dworkin.

No, you absolutely don’t. One of the things I’ve always valued about this subforum is the plurality of views and that it’s generally accepted that there is no prescribed way to be a feminist.

Maybe, it's partly a class issue too as the late lamented LangCleg would point out. Academics are just really, really insulated from reality.

I have lots of academic friends and they have so many blind spots about reality. I find it increasingly irritating to be honest and it's not just on gender woo.

@thenoisiesttermagant Does that explain the issues in the CofE then? Too academic to understand real lives and arguing about issues that affect them and not the victims?

What happens in academia is also what the funders will fund and there's probably a political agenda there too.

No you don’t.

@IwantToRetire Dear oh dear ... there are 2 quotes that are more that a bit of an indication of not much background knowledge of feminism.

Where is this 'background knowledge of feminism'? Is there a sort of 'Bible' that all feminists have agreed on? Do I have to dedicate years of my life to reading a 'correct' booklist before I can decide if I am a feminist? Do I have to defer to an academic feminist or someone who has been 'doing feminism' since the 1960s? Genuine questions

When it comes to the impacts of taking the ideological position that men can become women if they self identify as such, the most vulnerable ARE the experts. Because the impacts happen to them. But unlike academics, they don't have the money and security to have a voice.

The thing I blame academics for the most is that they have allowed women and children to be harmed in order to retain their cosy bubble and lives where they're not directly affected.

Edited to add: With notable exceptions such as Jo Phoenix who has been a very rare and much needed voice for those most vulnerable in academia, such as the women locked in prisons with male sex offenders.

Agree 100% with these criticisms of Stock's take here but I think it's also that she's coming from an academic viewpoint and academics seem to always want to focus on individual issues, as that lends itself to deep dive research.

It's my observation that most academics are really really crap at understanding safeguarding in the real world, which should apply to more than one single issue to protect the most vulnerable.

Ideally, you could have an assisted dying bill where safeguarding (proper enforced safeguarding laws which are monitored and regulated) ensures the law is not abused.

The problem is on gender woo and on other issues, safeguarding -even for children in schools - has been undermined, compromised and there is never any accountability for this. So people are rightly extremely sceptical of the ability to safeguard in reality.

Compelled wrong sex pronouns enforced in schools ALREADY breaches KCSIE, the statutory safeguarding guidance for schools. It's emotional abuse as defined in the existing (and previous) guidance and yet is there any accountability for where this has happened? No. And that's before you even get to mixed sex toilets. Illegal, yet no consequences for breaking the law because staff in schools are able to redefine the meaning of words apparently at will.

We hear again and again of horrendous things happening to children and then there's a lot of handwringing but it's not as if the law and framework isn't there. It is. What is needed is better enforcement and accountability and some firings when things go wrong. But this never seems to happen.

That’s pretty much how I see myself too, @withthegreatestrespectand I do refer to myself as a feminist. No one has a copyright on the label and it doesn’t have to be academic. If you are a woman who stands up for women and girls in my view you are a feminist.

I consider myself a fighter for women's rights, but I have never been sure whether I am a feminist or not. I came on these threads, like many others, to seek an explanation for gender ideology that was logically coherent and that justified the sacrifice of women's rights. However, as a side benefit, I hoped to discover if I could call myself a feminist. My conclusion is that I don't think I can. There seems to be a set of beliefs that you have to subscribe to, whereas I was hoping for something more open to a variety of views and opinions with a commitment to discuss freely, always with a focus on what might be best for women as a sex-class.

Academia needs to recognise issues with those who value education and those that don't and that both are valuable to society and still have equally valid points to make. There's been a massive shift to looking down on the uneducated in the last few years - you HAVE to have a degree an if you don't you are somehow a failure. This isn't healthy.

It's not healthy, but neither is the shift to "all opinions are equal" which does lend itself to the opinion of someone who actually has a lot of expertise in an area being treated as being on a par with someone who "read something on FB". That's a rather hyperbolic example, I know, but all opinions are not always equal. You absolutely don't need to have a degree to have an opinion or to be educated/intelligent/have read widely on a subject (after all, a degree/any qualification is just proof of those things) but opinions are often expressed on the basis of "I heard" or "I just think" with no critical thinking or

We should be able to talk about uncomfortable issues. This does not mean we are 'anti' anything. We shouldn't fall into this trap of thinking that because there is considerable criticism that its a 'them v us' situation.

Of course we should address uncomfortable issues and I've long since held the views that universities are inherently inward looking because they are (generally) such large organisations that they don't need to see the outside world or engage with it that much. It's very easy to stay in an academic bubble and there should be more outwards engagement, if only for context (e.g. the pensions dispute). But I don't think it deserves the "considerable criticism" it encounters. it's not wrong to value being educated or an intellectual, it's not wrong to have an opinion (or even to think you're right!) and it's not wrong to value more highly the view of someone who has spent their entire career studying a particular area.