Times on activists threatening academics

[Igneococcus]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/activists-thwart-work-on-gender-law-reforms-jx6lwd6tf?shareToken=228811c77bc80971bfe94c41286869c4

Guardian article today:

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/oct/30/uk-universities-struggle-to-deal-with-toxic-trans-rights-row

This isn’t sinister at all

Kathleen Stock
@Docstockk

1. I'm told that in several depts at my University, a trans pride flag sticker has been put into every faculty pigeonhole, and said faculty have been pressured via email to display these on their office doors. The stated desire is to show trans students & faculty that 2 ) Sussex is a 'safe place' for them after 'negative media coverage' of 'proposed reforms to the GRA'. I'd be happy to put one of these up too, taken at face value. But of course the face value message is not the sub-text. The sub-text is: if you stick up for female rights &
2. interests by rejecting self-ID (which, please note - is rejection of a proposed change to existing the GRA - not any attempt to roll back the existing GRA) you are making the campus 'unsafe' for individuals. The mixing up of political critique of structures with personal
3. attacks on individuals is anti-intellectual; as is pressuring academics to adopt a political stance under the guise of innocent 'positive' 'support'. Ironically, spreading a narrative that says that political critique of structural arrangements is in fact an attack on
4. individuals is more likely to make them feel unsafe than reassure them, irresponsibly imo. I am happy to clarify, as I have done repeatedly, that everything I write & say is directed towards large scale structures, not individuals. I don't ask for or expect agreement. This
5. is a University. Differences of view should be addressed via academic means, not passive-aggressively via the back door, under the guise of socially co-erced gestures of 'support' which faculty may be too intimidated to say no too, or else completely unaware of the sub-text.

Dr. Jane Clare Jones
@janeclarejones
Important thread on the subtle/not-that-subtle effort to enforce consensus opinion in universities on what is actually a very contested issue.
I cannot tell you how disturbing I find this.

As K says, partly because of the way the academics pushing this are reinforcing the trans ideological assertion that divergent views about this issue make people unsafe.
Not only is this being used as a form of discursive control, but, as I’ve said before, I really fail to see how the mental well-being of trans people is really being served by constantly framing disagreement as fundamental hostility.

Second. There are many academics who are
not on board with this ideology. As we know, many of them are scared, because the social cost of resistance has been deliberately made very high.

If you want to give ppl a chance to show support for the cause, send an email saying you have a pile of flags and they can come and
get them.

But putting one in everyone’s pigeon holes and sending an email saying you want them to put it on their doors?

That starts to look like a socially coerced ‘display your loyalty to the party’ test.

That starts to look like not-so-subtle totalitarianism.

mobile.twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1058007266471931904

I just read that Doc Stockk thread.

I was told a while back that the councils of towns where women's meetings are happening have been put under pressure to fly trans flags to show solidarity with trans people 'under attack'.

Same tactic.

I’d be interested to find out who’s sending the emails

That is completely unacceptable and inappropriate to try to manipulate academic colleagues into displaying particular political allegiance stickers in their workplace.

A political party would never be allowed to do this and gender politics authoritarians should not be allowed to do this either.