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

the investigation focused on policies, not on the university's practical failure to prevent harassment and bullying, or the specifics of Stock's case.

From the article it was these policies that caused a chilling effect:

My comments were more about the Universities responsibilities as a whole. ie even if you have some flawed policies (ie amping up the who is the most vicim victim in the pecking order) ganging up, bullying, insulting staff (whose side are you on) by students should not be tolerated. And even if you think your policy is faultless, you would point out that it isn't a green light to intimidate and bully someone.

This is always the problems with "investigations" or whatever. They are confined, ie limited by the brief.

So agree that having written the policy they did the University should have been found to be a fault - exposed as being ridiculously captured.

But they still failed in terms of creating an environment where all students are respected.

But I suppose if the formal inquiry wasn't interested in that aspect, although I would have thought it was the logical conclusion. The the University created through its policy an atmosphere that would allow students to think they were merely enforcing the University policy.

Not necessarily true.

Believing in sex is WORIADS. It's been tested in court.
Believing that TWAW is not tested in court. It could be very much the case that it isn't protected because you can't change sex and sex is not gender. Therefore harassing someone for changing gender may not be ok, just the same as abusing someone for being a goth. But compelling anyone to be compelled to uphold the idea may very much be NWORIADS because there's too many conflicts and problems with that. And ultimately no one actually really believes it because how can you be trans if sex doesn't exist?! The whole point is you say you are opposed to the sex you are born. If you abolish the concept of sex then by default there is no gender identity to protect! It'd just be women criticising women for unwomanliness which is just being mean rather than having a legal status!!

Gender Identity can't exist without sex. That's the ridiculous paradox. If you can't see sex you can't protect lesbians. But neither can you protect transwomen's special status.

The whole point is they want to have their cake and eat it and have this double status of protection and have this elevated status as untouchable and above women in the hierarchy.

The whole thing is about power and control. That's not equality that imposing yourself on others and trying to force them into capitulation. So it falls apart on contact with reality.

It's not about the toilets. It's not about the ability to compete at sport. It's about the use of women as a commodity to validate (or to get off on). Otherwise third spaces would be fine to use and open categories would be perfectly acceptable. The fact there is such hostility to this, and the insistent that women MUST go along with it, demonstrates that it's not about wishing to have equality and respect.

It's not just the content of the pro-trans policies that were criticised by the OfS, but also the way in which they were adopted:

The OfS found a breach of condition E2 in respect of the university’s failure to have adequate and effective management and governance arrangements in place to ensure that it operates in accordance with its governing documents. The Prevent Steering Group approved and adopted the 2021 version of the university’s Freedom of Speech Code of Practice despite that group not having delegated authority to do so. The 2023 version of the External Speakers’ Procedure was approved by the University Executive Group despite that group not having delegated authority to do so. The University Executive Group also approved the 2022 and 2023 versions of the Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement, despite that group not having delegated authority to do so.
[my emphasis].

Note that some of the breaches were in 2022 and 2023, during the tenure of the current VC.

Exactly. If not complying with gender ideology is hate speech, then equally, not complying with the gc Forstater views are exactly the same.

Either they both are, or neither is.

(As a side point for posters saying they didn't know of the OfS' existence, it was created in 2018 along with Research England. Previously the two services came under one umbrella, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) but they were separated. OfS covers the education part of universities' remit, RE the research bit.)

The crux of the issue, as far as the bleating of UoS goes, is that they're saying they now can't prevent hate speech/bullying. If you believe that gender critical views are inherently transphobic; that saying transwomen are not women is hate speech; or insisting that male bodied people do not have any right of access to women-only spaces is bullying then yes, this fine does stop you imposing that view.

However, that really depends on whether this is the correct definition of hate speech/bullying/transphobia. I - along with many others - would argue that it isn't, particularly post-Forstater where GC views were deemed to be WORIADS.

UoS seem to have imposed their own definitions based on how they would like things to be (aka "Stonewall Law") and also allowed the horrendous mistreatment of those deemed to have transgressed. They have allowed an untouchable sacred caste to rule the roost to the detriment of everyone else and in doing so have - with perfect irony - allowed the hate speech and bullying they profess themselves so opposed to.

The bottom line is that UoS was wrong to define hate speech/transphobia/bullying as they have and therefore they a) have a responsibility to accept all legal views, even if they do not like them, and defend the right to hold those views and b) cannot take action or allow action to be taken against those who hold, espouse or express those views. That they don't want to accept they were wrong would explain all the tedious whining.

LOL thanks.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5300419-is-it-not-time-now-for-mumsnet-to-leave-xtwitter?page=3&reply=143094637

On site stuff

Hahaha when and where was that?!

Mnhq got asked that the other day.

It's utterly ridiculous.

Haha, yes that's a pretty good description. I know all social media apps are echo chambers to an extent because of the algorithms, but it seems to be another level there. And the sanctimonious "I'm right and everyone else is far right' attitudes 🤮

I see a lot of GC stuff on X but I do see a lot of disagreement and dissenting views too.

On one of our all staff calls (public sector) someone piously asked if we would be following the Guardian's example and leaving X for Bluesky 🙄 Thankfully, the response was that we need to maintain a neutral position on these matters, so no, we wouldn't be.

I imagine that the difference was and is that Stock was making a sensible and reasonable argument, so was far more threatening.

Yes, the main UK subreddit (which is quite TRA) less so though, as I posted yesterday.

They are losing ground elsewhere though. The UK Politics sub on Reddit is pretty sane on this news.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1jk4fqh/sussex_university_fined_585000_in_transgender/

Good point here from X I think this is another huge blow against this stuff.

Jon Pike

It seems very financially imprudent for any (English) University to remain affiliated with Stonewall.
If you fail to act on their recommendations, there is no point in spending all that money.
If you act on their recommendations, you make yourself liable for a huge fine.

I think this is good of course, because I think Stonewall has become a terrible organisation. But I'm just spelling out the options that any chief financial officer faces, in a neutral way. And if that is right, then many universities will leave Stonewall in the next few months. They will aim to do so very quietly.

I doubt anyone who was inclined or willing to challenge it would remain on Bluesky.

Academic Blusky is an absolute cesspit of nutjobs wanking each other dry over their position on the right side of history.

I've just made a rare visit to Bluesky, and did a search for Kathleen Stock to see how it is being discussed. Wow, it really is a different world over there.

The general consensus is that she is bigoted bully who has become famous off the back of attacking trans people and that the OfS ruling is biased and corrupt. There didn't seem to be any challenges to this view that I could see.

I'm interested in this from something that was posted upthread

Adam Tickell (now at Birmingham) defended Stock’s academic freedom and announced an investigation into the protests.

I didn't know about an investigation in addition to the empty words. I wonder what happened to it, did it just stop when he and Doc Stock left.

I can understand the current VC's frustration if she feels ignored, that there were no meetings with the OfS, but really what could be said? The problems identified were with the written dictats the University had around trans and NB. Would she have said 'but that's not what we meant'? So, it shouldn't have been published like that.

Thanks for the link to that blog, it’s always good to get a different take on things.

the comments section is the usual mix of rational comment and “everything is transphobic” so it will be interesting to see how that debate continues.

Having to use only positive materials must have made any criminology course interesting. "The lowest rates of sex offending are seen in straight south Asian women aged over 80¹. The highest rates are ... um... well... never mind that - the highest rates aren't important." Or do you go Trumpian and claim the bigliest, best, most huge rates ever for your sacred caste as a positive?

¹ Imagined statistic for illustrative purposes. I've not actually looked up details.

Well said JKR.
As for going further than the law (which in my view is when we start to get into danger areas), universities have always done that to some extent - eg what they regard as plagiarism goes further than breach of copyright - I understand why they do that and it is a very different topic than the one in hand.

I do not really follow these issues very closely, but I am certainly glad the tide has started to turn back to some normalcy and common sense but we need to keep pressing to make sure things are changed. As a mother of 5 and grandmother of 4, I am not at all happy about the ways some of the NHS even in 2025 refers to pregnant people etc when women are at their most vulnerable giving birth etc - that particularly annoys me. It denies us one of the few things we can do that men can't.

I do not understand the need for any institution to go further than the law requires. Certainly not dictate curriculum and thoughts.

Certainly, nothing like it existed for any other protected group, either at the time or since.

Dr Stock says they did not. What a shock.

On point of course:

J.K. Rowling

I feel nothing but sympathy for some of those who kept silent while the gender wars raged around them. I’ve had literally thousands of emails on this subject and some of the most desperate have been from people who risk their livelihoods and face persecution and harassment if they speak up.

That said, I have zero sympathy for academics who did nothing to prevent illiberal and authoritarian activism stifling debate, freedom of speech and academic enquiry at their place of work. Defending those values is fundamental to academic life and you didn’t just fall short, you disgraced yourselves. Your inaction and cowardice enabled a campaign of persecution against one of your own that shamed SussexUni
.
There are times in life where we are confronted by clear moral choices, when there is no middle route. Either you stand up for freedom of speech and belief - yes, even up to the point of causing offence - or you bow down to a totalitarian culture that relies on intimidation and threats to sustain itself.

It’s deeply depressing to think that a university requires a punitive fine to make it wake up to the fact that it’s abandoned basic liberal values, but the OfS has at last drawn a much needed line in the sand. I wouldn’t bet against more monster fines to come, though. The University of Sussex is far from the only institute of learning where a culture of fear has been allowed to flourish.

A requirement for “any materials within relevant courses and modules [to] positively represent trans people and trans lives.”

It's not just transactivism, it's extreme transactivation.

What on earth could possibly be the mindset of someone to agree to that? It's sacred caste on steroids.

I'm going to hazard a guess that the University of Sussex's trans population skyrocketed after that.

idiots. Dangerous too