The Times - smear campaign by trans lecturer at Goldsmiths

[tiredandweary]

The Times reporting on the smear campaign against academics run by 'Natacha Kennedy' of Goldsmiths. Given how movingly women academics have written here about the fear and intimidation they experience working in universities, how good to see the source of the bullying exposed. share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-goldsmiths-lecturer-natacha-kennedy-behind-smear-campaign-against-academics-f2zqbl222?shareToken=c2e850050d0c9913ecbcbbb9b0e9ccfb

And a brilliant article by Janice Turner about dangerous trans rapists in women's jails:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-rapists-are-a-danger-in-women-s-jails-5vhgh57pt?shareToken=a5c5b379f8c0f6ccd446176a676344e6

So pleased that I took out a subscription to the Times.

Sex is, shock horror, as much of a social construct as gender."

Tell that to all the women who are dead because they found themselves pregnant with a foetus they did not want and couldn't access a safe abortion.

Tell that to all the women who are dead because they died in childbirth. Or to the women who have lifelong injuries as a result of giving birth.

Tell them that sex is a social construct and they could have identified their way out of their fate.

Sex as a social construct...... Seriously, these people are so fucking clueless I don't even know where to begin.

Sex as a social construct......

Is pure sophistry.

Ereshkigal The bottom line is: if sex is a social construct, everything that humans have ever verbalized in order to make sense of the world is. Everything. They want to do away with all that?

I've decided to redefine gravity as a social construct. This is why I'm currently floating above my house among the clouds. It's quite nice up here. If only you Luddites would understand how self-limiting you all are.

Clouds are also a social construct, you floating facist.

Fascist, obvs But I’ll bet you’re a facist, too.

I think you’re probably right. What a truly stunning and brave advert for that university, it needs saving for next years clearing threads.

Michael Biggs
Associate Professor in Sociology and Fellow of St Cross College article MAy 2018:

users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/FreeSpeechOxford.pdf

"A meeting was held on 25 April 2018 to discuss proposed changes to the law on gender recognition. The proposed legislation will eliminate sex-segregated spaces and activities, from women’s refuges to competitive sports. In a democracy, people have the right to meet to discuss—and indeed oppose—legislative changes. This should be incontrovertible. I am appalled that a small number of students at Oxford used extreme measures to stop this meeting from being held....
(concludes)
I have entered this debate not because I am a feminist but because freedom of speech is one of the highest values of a democratic society, and the basic foundation of university life.
Transgender activism poses a grave threat to freedom of speech. I think of the young MPhil student who had to disguise herself to attend this meeting because she feared the reaction of fellow students. This is the generation that we have educated."

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3257819-Michael-Biggs-Sociology-Dept-Oxford-Free-speech-at-Oxford-Do-women-have-the-right-to-meet-to-discuss-legislation

There is a physical world and a social world. Constructs/ notions relating to sex and sexual reproduction represent human sense making physical realities. Constructs relating to gender represent social constructions.

Notions around gravity relate to human sense making of a physical phenomenon.

Until there is compelling evidence, or even evidence, to providing alternative explanations for ‘gravity’ and ‘sexual dimorphism’ etc. , these explanations will reign.

Outside of Twitter and some select social media forums, the world recognises there are 2 sexes, easily distinguished in all disguises!

When I was at University, Goldsmiths was a really respected university. If this lot are anything to go by, they no longer deserve that reputation.

It's a car crash of fascist cultspeak

Also I love the fact that they have said that XX/XY is a 20th century concept, stolen from a woman scientist. Was she a biological woman or a constructed one? Did she identify as one and was she actually a cat? Enquiring minds want to know

Ohmigod I HRTFT and it may have been posted already, but just came across the screenshots of the plotting on fb to get rid of GC feminists from wikipedia page about feminism, and stuff the lists with 'trans feminists'. These people live in some kind of deranged bubble, but they're so dangerous for the rest of us.

pbs.twimg.com/media/DminHeTU8AAfRVh.jpg
pbs.twimg.com/media/DminH9sU8AAOzut.jpg

Well done to whoever took those screenshots.

What is going on with science education in this country? Diversity of sex gametes, fgs.

The idea of sex as a social construct isn't particularly new or complicated. What's new is the way some trans activists are misunderstanding the idea.

Trying to deconstruct sex sartorially just won't work. Trying to deconstruct sex by legally redefining it is politically inappropriate and also won't work.

Social constructs are real, not imaginary. They have real effects. If people want to deconstruct sex, it's necessary for men to know and believe that women are fully human and equally valuable. It's necessary to overturn symbolisms in which women are signified as inferior.

This is why I can't accept statements like 'suck my lady dick' or 'lesbians who reject my penis are transphobic'. This is why I can't tolerate secret societies, no-platforming of feminists, and shouts of Nazi or Terf as a substitute for debate. These things represent a fundamental misreading of social constructivism - in addition to being deeply offensive.

If sex is a social construct it's constructed in order to establish and preserve a social hierarchy. It's not about an individual sense of gender identity. At all.

ideology/ propaganda?

I think Nick Matte is oversimplifying, which doesn't help. It can be argued that 'biological sex' is something we identify and classify, and to which we've attributed certain meanings, but that it's possible to reclassify and to atttibute different meanings to the same empirical observations.

And that's all very well but if we wish to do that, we have to start from our current position, which is a history of tens of thousands of years of oppressing half the population on the basis of those observations. I'd like to see liberation from that oppression before I accept wholesale reclassifications. Perhaps Nick thinks reclassifying will lead to liberation. I disagree.

Once upon a time I hoped that the transsexual phenomenon could be part of that liberation by problematising sex classification. However, the current Stonewall agenda suggests a doubling down on a binary I consider oppressive.

As for Riley... I'm happy to agree with this single phrase, but from Riley's other statements I'm not sure Riley understands what 'social construct' means.

I watched an interview with Nick Matte (which I think this quote comes from). Matte's explanations are quite extraordinarily complicated and a good example of pomo / queer theory.

If Nick Matte honestly believes what Nick Matte says in that clip then Nick Matte has absolutely no idea how babies get made.

Cardsforkittens you are right about sex as a social construct. It was an interesting idea when I first encountered it as a postgrad from butler. I think it has some usefulness but the way it is being used (eg by the goldsmiths LGBT Twitter account) is dim and narrow. It's interesting to me that Judith butlers account of gender does not back up the idea of an innate individual gender identity at all. I'm not sure where that idea has come from - was it developed in grass roots activism? I can't find it it any feminist theory or other scholarship.

Fascist, obvs grin But I’ll bet you’re a facist, too

According to Urban Dictionary:

A subculture of racism, instead of classifying people by race, the facist judges people by how attractive he/she finds the face of other people. It is not to be confused with "fascist" which is extreme idiotic loyalty to an imaginary state which may or may not exist.

That's it! I'm an uglyphobe! Still floating in my clouds though. Ner!

But fascism is funny guyz

I think it would be really helpful if somehow this whole issue could be floated apart from any political labels. I've just read the comments under a WSJ article about the suppression by 'ideologues' of Littman's research. Whilst overwhelmingly gobsmacked/critical of the TRA position, there are lots of snide cracks at the left and 'progressives'. One comment says "welcome to the deplorables". That's not the company I want to keep and all the political parties here have let us down. This is a bigger issue with wider implications than any I can remember and needs to be free of labels that might stop some people even listening. But how?

It's ridiculous - like Animal Farm or the Emperor's New Clothes. We all know what a man and a woman is. The few unfortunates born in the wrong body can get surgery and switch under current law. There is no need to change the law to let people self declare.

The LGBT twitter account is still bleating on...

"The state of our mentions right now is testimony to the increasingly hostile environment against our trans siblings across the board. The transmisogynist, bioloical essentialist rhetoric being spread by well known and renowned academics endangers trans students everywhere."

twitter.com/lgbtqgold/status/1039149808127279104?s=19

well known and renowned academics

Wonder why they're well known and renowned.