Dr Jo Grady, new general secretary of the University and College Union, crticised by academics for her use of Twitter "Terf-blocker" Telegraph article

[R0wantrees]

'Feminist academics in uproar over new union chief's 'Terf blocker' as they complain of assault on free speech'

(extract)
"Ms Grady has defended her past use of a “Terf-blocker”, which she said is an “easy mechanism for blocking large numbers of accounts that have been identified as articulating transphobic views”.

Prof Selina Todd, an expert in modern history at Oxford University, said that she and many colleauges consider "Terf" to be an "abusive term".

Refusing to debate with people whose views you disagree with is not a suitable approach for a representative of academics, she said.

Prof Rosa Freedman, Reading University’s chair of law, conflict and global development, said that by using a Terf-blocker “legitimises” the narrative that anyone who expresses gender critical views poses a danger to transgender students.

“She is in a position of leadership and is supposed to defend all academics and academic freedom,” she added.

Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology at University College London, said: “Academic freedom means nothing if it does not extend to those with whom one disagrees.”

Michael Biggs, an associate professor of sociology at Oxford, said he fears Ms Grady will treat transgenderism “as a new orthodoxy, beyond question and scrutiny”.

He added: “Precisely because this issue is so contentious, the Union must defend the academic freedom of all its members—which will inspire our students to value intellectual and political debate.”

Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at Sussex University, said she is concerned by Ms Grady’s use of “block lists” which mean “she can’t hear voices of gender critical academics”.

Ms Grady, a senior lecturer in employment relations at Sheffield University Management School, was elected as general secretary on Friday with 64 per cent of the vote.

Defending her previous use of a “Terf-blocker”, she has said that “filtering out and muting people is not the same as denying them free speech”, adding that she used it due to the “enormous volume of personal abuse” she was getting online. "(continues)

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2019/05/24/feminist-academics-uproar-new-union-chiefs-terf-blocker-complain/

Yes, I agree R0wan. I also know that many of the academics who proudly use terfblocker are also part of large whatsapp and other social media groups where they share stories of ‘problematic’ colleagues. Some of this relates to serious concerns, such as sexual harassment, but it also involves swapping stories about who is believed to be a ‘terf’. I have seen several online and RL instances of where an academic says ‘X is blocked, so must be a reason for it’ and doesn’t even seek any actual evidence of what has supposedly been said. People are blocked for as little as following a ‘problematic’ account like eg Kathleen Stock. Those who have been caught by the blocker despite never having been involved in the debate are advised to publicly say that they believe trans women are women in order to persuade the list-creator to unblock them. It’s mad.

It’s especially worrying for things like conferences, where much is live-tweeted and people will tag the twitter handle of the presenter when sharing the contents of the paper. If the speaker happens to be on a block list, inferences are drawn and can have a knock on effect on eg collaboration, citations and even publishing.

This isn’t just paranoia on my part- this is actually happening.

Yes, I agree R0wan. I also know that many of the academics who proudly use terfblocker are also part of large whatsapp and other social media groups where they share stories of ‘problematic’ colleagues

Well I hope they've done due dilligence on who manages such things.
It would be extraordinarily naive for academics to accord such power of censorship otherwise.

The role General Secretary of a union is that of a public representative for all its members, isn't it? How can that representation be adequate if members are blocked from a necessary public communication channel?

Professor Selina Todds' (Modern History Oxford) speech at WPUK London has relevence:

(extract)
But feminism, like the definition of woman, is an object of suspicion for the opponents of women’s sex-based rights. I want to talk briefly about where this hostility comes from, drawing on what’s been taught in UK and US universities over the past thirty years. Some of what I say may sound esoteric, but two, almost three generations of students have been educated to see the world a certain way. They are now the teachers, journalists, civil servants and politicians seeking to negotiate the current debate over women’s rights. We need to understand how their education has influenced their worldview, if we are to set the record straight.

Postmodernism

Suspicion of feminism owes much to postmodernism, which began to prevail in British and US universities after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Dressed up as radical, it is really the acceptable face of neoliberalism. Many students were and are taught that people cannot break out of the confines of capitalism – though this is a strange form of capitalism, in which language, rather than money, makes the world go round. People cannot change the world, but individually they can alter their relationship to it, through their self-description and performance of gender. No reality exists other than self-description.

By this logic, feminists brought women’s oppression into being by naming it. Feminism prevented people being ‘queer’ and gender fluid by insisting on the category ‘woman’.

Over the past thirty years, students have studied collective movements less, and individuals’ identities, emotions and desires more. While individual choice is celebrated, the very notion of collectivity is deemed oppressive. Revealingly in our neoliberal times, socialist, labour and feminist movements have been most strongly attacked. The leaders of feminist movements were, it is claimed, attempting to dominate those they purported to represent. The world was and is a collection of self-interested individuals seeking to dominate others or avoid domination themselves. In the words of that great postmodern theorist Margaret Thatcher, there is no such thing as society.

We’re now seeing the rise of scholarship on transgender people in the past, and museum and gallery celebrations of ‘queerness’. These university courses and exhibitions aren’t replacing the older focus on white privileged men, but rather taking over the limited space that we’d fought to create for women’s history. Often these ‘queer’ histories involve appropriating lesbian history, as the transwashing of lesbians’ contribution to Stonewall’s establishment shows. This is a glaring example of why we need single-sex, feminist spaces and organisations, to record and learn from women’s achievements.

The attempt to reclaim transgender ancestors is deeply ahistorical. Transgender ideology argues that biological sex does not exist; and that gender is a personal identity brought into being by self-description. These claims do not speak to the experiences of people in the past. Before the late 20th century, gender and sexuality were widely understood as determined by one’s biological sex. That’s why some lesbians understood their sexuality as a biological ‘inversion’.

Postmodernism
That biological sex does not determine gender was revealed by feminists, not postmodernists, in the 1970s and 1980s. They showed that the very existence of gender is due to historically specific, unequal relationships between men and women. Male oppression of women predates capitalism, but in capitalist societies certainly, women’s biological role as actual and potential mothers – and therefore as reproducers of labour power – explains their oppression as a sex. Gender and sex are connected by the exercise of male power over women. Social and cultural gender roles helped to control women.

Who holds power?

This analysis of power – who holds it, how and why – is often lacking in university teaching. Power is presented as diffuse and operated through language. Feminists can therefore hold as much power as white male capitalists. But gender was not and is not an identity, freely chosen. Gender norms are meant to keep people in their place. The minority of people who lived as members of the opposite sex in the past, did not make this choice freely. Very often, they were lesbians or gay men who faced social opprobrium or worse if they did not conceal either their sexuality or their sex. Others did so for equally material reasons." (continues)
womansplaceuk.org/2019/05/21/feminism-postmodernism-and-womens-oppression/

Well, quite. One could say the same about women’s reps who refuse to listen to women; and cities who consult and then only listen to pre-appproved types of response.

The role General Secretary of a union is that of a public representative for all its members, isn't it? How can that representation be adequate if members are blocked from a necessary public communication channel?

Exactly.
Its also interesting that it seems likely no other 'mass block' tool exists for other groups of members who are deemed deserving of censorship & silencing.

I am not a lawyer, but is an action that has a disproportionate negative impact on one class of person not discrimination, especially when it affects, say, academics to do their job (as in exchanging ideas.)

"is an action that has a disproportionate negative impact on one class of person not discrimination,"

I guess it could be seen as sex discrimination since "Terf blocker" is a list of women. So its use means women are being treated less favourably than men in that public access space.

Precisely. Seems racism, ageism and misogyny can be tolerated just fine. And of course, the acronym terf means radical feminists. The men who attack trans people in public are no feminists on anyone’s account. So the very very worst people in the eyes of these supporters are women. Says so much.

A proforma letter for people to send to Dr Jo, Ted Lord or any other figures who uses their Twitter account for matters of public interest, and also uses terfblocker warning them that their actions are considered discriminatory?

It is both silencing women, and denying women access to information on the basis of their sex.

And one for Lily our lesbian leftie organiser of the girlgang?

There was a reason I never went into law...

Here we go: Trinity College Cambridge have just announced that they are leaving the USS pension scheme. Tough times to come, and while I'm not a fan, I hope Grady gets on the with the job now.

I hope so too. I hope that she prioritises this. Chances are Trinity is the first of several Oxbridge colleges wanting out of the USS so we should brace ourselves for troubling times ahead and no doubt more strikes. I am still catching up financially from the last lot- not sure if I can hack another almost month of no pay.

From what I’m seeing on Twitter I think it highly likely that UCU Congress is going to vote down the motion in defence of academic freedom. It’s like watching turkeys vote for Christmas.

Yes, I saw how they said they will support their trans comrades UNCONDITIONALLY. Presumably that means that anyone who dares challenge the dogma will be thrown to the lions.

Idiots. Seriously, idiots.

Motion defeated, apparently. Sickening.

Academics will now have to rely on their universities, not their union to protect their rights to academic freedom. This is dangerous territory for everyone, including for those who have gleefully slurred their feminist colleagues as transphobes.

Dark times.

So, the UCU has just voted against adhering to one of our fundamental human rights?

Our Human Rights law exerts will have something to say about that I am sure. They'll see that union in court no doubt.

Supporting 'trans comrades' [vomit] means voting against academic freedom?

It also means embracing disablism, homophobia, sexism, racism, classism, ageism, and rejecting the Human Rights Act, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Equality Act.

It's utterly baffling that academics haven't thought, hang on a minute, there's something majorly wrong here?

Only lost by 8 votes.

That’s a pretty good result given the public direction of travel in academia, I think. There are clearly a lot of GC academics, who I suspect are underrepresented among congress delegates.

I saw that UCU Left instructed its delegates to vote for the motion, interestingly.

I am an outsider here, but surely this is absolutely the wrong signal.

The Government has made very clear that they support free speech on campus.

The Union priority is to get a good deal on pensions. They do this by being clear about what they want and having the information to back up their position. Plus understanding what flexibility the other side possesses. It is always easier to negotiate with a partner who is professional. Regardless of who is the negotiating partner, the Government will be watching, especially is they have to open the purse strings.

What you don't do, is some silly posturing right at the start, designed to irritate one of the parties you are just about to start negotiating with. I appreciate that Dr Jo is supported to be an expert in collective bargaining. Surely she knows that how you prepare and present is crucially important.

That's really interesting, that the motion defending academic freedom got this far. Maybe UCU isn't a lost cause. I'm willing to hang on a bit more to see how things go ...

From what I can see on twitter, Jo Grady was annoyed about the article in the Telegraph (which was really factual - nothing horrible at all). Not the right kind of attention for her, maybe?

Compared to the last UCU gen sec, who was really quite dull, Grady has chosen to publicly talk about her personal life so that it can be legitimately written about. Right-wing publications will be able to have a field day with 'look at my miner father and photos of my birthday party and it's a scandal that I'm still renting even though I'm on a senior lecturer's salary (around 50K)' Grady. Can you imagine the likes of the Daily Mail? 'Out of touch middle-class academics elect inexperienced young radical who has tried to bully a disabled female academic out of a job for wrongthink, likes to boast about her working-class background but gets 100K as gen sec'

And is it a coincidence that Trinity College Cambridge has announced that it is leaving USS now? Maybe they think Grady's a lightweight and that's why they are making this move.

I find it disgusting that a full UCU branch were harassing the people who moved the motion. Can we do something?

twitter.com/ProfAliceS/status/1133330597798191105

Do we know which branch it was?

Based on this, Sheffield. I messaged her last night asking to talk to her about it and got no reply, of course. None of them are willing to actually defend their ideas because they can't.

twitter.com/rorfitelli/status/1132560287830302721