Universities will be the last bastion of gender ideology and the denial of women's rights

"There are ideas so absurd that only an academic would believe them" (attributed to George Orwell)

The universities have no interest in dropping gender ideology. It sets them apart as the sort of clever people who get it, while the rest of us mere mortals think it's about toilets.

If anyone ever remembers the academic Matt Lodder on Twitter, and probably lots of other academics - he would write literal gibberish to explain why men can be women. Everyone could see he wasn't interested in the truth - his entire modus operandi was to try and look clever by posting arguments that made no sense in the hope that everyone else would say 'oh this is too confusing, I better leave it to you because you're extremely clever'.

It then turned out he'd written an essay or a book in which he overtly subscribed to that approach - nonsensical arguments that would include made up words that cannot be defined, simply to exclude people from understanding whatever point he was trying to make, so that they could therefore be excluded from the debate.

That is basically humanities academia in the UK this century. It's been a total failure.

I hope he's having a better time of it than Ann Henderson elected Rector of University of Edinburgh 2018-2021 (see her chapter in The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht) Accused of anti-semitism and transphobia by Edinburgh Labour Students, formally complained about, investigated and cleared by the University and refused support by UCU.

Parsimonious means as simple as possible not simple. As we know more about <thing>, it would be extraordinary if we didn't discover some nuances along the way. Life isn't simple or we wouldn't need so many lawyers...

And as Grok, like every current AI tool, cannot do more than give us fancy predictive text, you (and we) would be far better using your own intellect to summarise. This is after all the same programme that proclaimed itself the reincarnated leader of the third Reich, and its owner more moral than Jesus, a better author than Shakespeare, and still contains a CSAM on demand tool.

I think Ireland will be the last holdout. We have utterly commited with self ID so we wouldn’t want to be seen as rolling back, a little bit like having a teeny bit of nuance on what is happening in the Middle East.

I have a feeling that just like with abortion, 40 years down the line we will start to see the error of our ways and the harm of gender ideology and try to pretend that yet another example of an extremely harmful ideology that damages women and children could be tolerated and hidden in our society,

It’s not all bad news:

https://x.com/jophoenix1/status/1933458079661867275?s=61&t=Og74NL350OdVbEJ3Se9_Iw

There was also a protest a few years ago about a gender critical speaker, after which it was made clear that freedom of speech will be upheld. I seem to remember the phrase “No one has the right not to be offended” was used.

I work in a very captured University (professional services). It has been a tough decade.

However, more university staff and students than you might think are gender critical. Edinburgh University currently has a gender critical Rector - and this is significant because the Rector is voted for by staff and students and is supposed to represent their views:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-68272222

I think this theory hits the nail in the head.

J.K. Rowling has said that people who work in the Arts have a horror of appearing unsophisticated - I think this is also the root of HE pushing gender ideology

It's a depressing thought that the very institutions that are supposed to nurture freedom of thought are the very ones most likely to continue pushing an insane and irrational belief long after everyone else has seen sense.

Is it true, though? I sometimes think universities are particularly captured, and then I look at the NHS, the police force, the publishing industry, the charity sector, the judiciary*, and I really wonder. All those sectors appear to be ideologically captured to an insane degree.

*Feel free to add any I've forgotten.

Thankyou for this, I’ll pass it on for when dc is making their choice. Disappointing.

ETA feel free to do me contact details for someone in admissions - they should know that this approach will affect applications

@oxfordfeminist a big part of the problem you are dismissing is the willingness to debate or allow other people to express their reasonably and legally (and logically) held views - eg Michael Foran. Why do you think this is desirable in a university setting - surely exactly the place where ideas should be rigorously tested?

There's a theory doing the rounds at the moment, and was discussed on Free Speech Nation last week, that this all stems from humanities academics wanting to be treated as scientists, and therefore rejecting simplistic theories in favour of complex ones.

This is Grok's explanation of this theory:

Many (or most) battles in the culture wars — from gender ideology, cancel culture, DEI initiatives, COVID policies, net zero, academic freedom erosions, and more — stem from the same underlying philosophical mistake: a rejection of simplicity (parsimony, elegance, and straightforward explanations) in favor of overly complex, "nuanced," or exceptionalist theories that multiply entities unnecessarily and resist falsification.

Simplicity as a virtue: Good theories (in philosophy of science and reasoning) should have fewer independent assumptions or "moving parts" when they explain the data equally well. This is rooted in classical ideas like Occam’s Razor.

The modern problem: Society/academia has increasingly rewarded complexity bias — treating simple, unified explanations (e.g., biological realities for sex, individual agency, basic free speech principles) as "simplistic" or naive, while favoring elaborate, disunified, or "intersectional" frameworks that can explain anything but predict or test little. This leads to bad policy, institutional capture, and cultural dysfunction.

This isn't just a left/right issue but a deeper epistemic failure: people (especially in elite institutions) have lost methodological sensitivity to when complexity is justified versus when it's obfuscation or ideological overreach.

I think that’s maybe the case for some struggling unis but it cannot be the case for those most oversubscribed?! There will be plenty people who would fill the place of any TRA who decides on a personal boycott. The top unis should be pressured to take the lead - if Section 28 (?) was a source of guilt for done then surely the woeful track record on women’s rights should have the same shaming effect?

Michael Foran describes a case in the 19th century where women at Edinburgh university sued to get the courses they needed to graduate after some lecturers refused to given them to the women. The courts found that the university had been founded for the benefit of men - so the women lost their case. This established a presumption of sexism/second rate status for women which lasted about 100 years until the 1975 sex discrimination act. Which as we’ve discovered was ignored in many places across the uk in terms of access to financial products/banking. With the arrival of the GRA in 2004, it seems that we only had around 30 years until work began as n to demolish those rights?! In stealth.

I think it’s time to run a history campaign

Everyone knew what a woman was when we were not persons under the law and could be discriminated against. Now many claim not to know what a woman is so that we can be denied our hard won rights and (surprise!) be discriminated against?!? You couldn’t make it up

I know just the person! It won’t be quick though - i think the NHS responses took several months to submit and then follow up… And it is a lot of work to collate the info (and I can’t take on the coordinator role) but I’d be happy to share how I did it. So is there anyone who could take the lead?

How many universities are there in the UK?

Which ones are the Mickey Mouse degrees?

I think one aspect that is being overlooked is who these students are, the influences growing up.

They dont arrive at university innocent and questioning. They arrive, in some instances, fully fledged TRAs.

The bully of students not to attend talks is other students.

I suspect many Universities will go on being non GC assertive because as they are now dependent on fees, they are not going to try and impose standards of decent behaviour on each crop of cash cows.

If parents could stop their children being TRAs bullies why would anyone think Universities will do it for them.

The only hope is, and it may take decades, that if it is possible, despite drag acts and all the rest of it, it that in years to come fewer and fewer teenagers will arrive at university puffed up with "pride" that they are trans inclusive.

Quite a sad state of affairs that the loudest (ie bullying students) have only recently left home and arrive as entrenched misogynists, demanding women acquiesce to male rights.

Maybe we should run a HE policy audit, like KnottyAuty did for the NHS. It would be unwise for those of us who work in the sector to use FOI Act requests, especially via What Do They Know, to find out what university equality, transitioning colleague, and accommodation policies are. Experience tells me that they are usually hidden on internal-only intranets, so they'd have to be requested under FOI Acts.

If you make a FOI Act request under a false name, you cannot complain to the ICO if the institution declines to supply the information.

We need a "cat's paw", someone outside the sector, ideally retired or with a very common name, who is willing to put their name to FOI Act requests. I don't mind paying for a WDTK pro account for a short time to enable all HE institutions to be emailed at once.

We know that many universities have withdrawn from Stonewall, but there's a lot more to do.
Random looking at a couple of RG universities near me finds they are still Stonewall. I wonder if there is a list?

There is a Higher Ed forum, mainly people asking about individual unis.
I was not really thinking of anything formal. Just somewhere where people can post anecdotes from open days, students' experiences, staff experiences. Also issues that reach national news, such as today's. Anything to do with freedom of speech around women's rights really.
I know there is always the problem of threads dropping off into zombie land. Let's see if anyone has an opinion on this tomorrw 🙂

Wonder if we should start a Universities thread, to keep track of the good, the bad and the batshit? Could be a useful resource for parents and teaching professionals.