Selina Todd, threats, security, wrong side of history my arse

[janeskettle]

Prof Selina Todd, a historian who specialises in the lives of women and the working class, said that she has now been provided with “routine security” to ensure she is not attacked {by TRA's}

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/23/oxford-university-professor-given-security-guards-lectures-threats/

Female historian needs security guards on campus (Oxford) to accompany her to lectures because of threats.

And we're the aggressive orthodoxy!!! I don't bloody think so!!

Its horrifying to know this is happening to Professor Todd & incredible that Oxford University are not doing more to Safeguard women from threats made by students.

Selina Todd's work is really interesting & important.
Do have a look at her books:
'The People: the Rise and Fall of the Working Class 1910–2010' was published in 2015
Her authorised biography of Shelagh Delaney, 'Tastes of Honey' was published last year.

Like so many others I thought her speech at A Woman’s Place is at the lectern in Oxford on Friday 25th October 2019 was brilliant. The transcript is here:
womansplaceuk.org/2019/11/01/power-and-history-selina-todd-at-a-womans-place-is-at-the-lectern/

Women having to have security guards to go to work as professors at university, because they are feminists.

This is the world we live in.

This is the world we need to change.

Justa
Convenient narrative that isn't borne out in real life though. Those of us who have been around here for years (under various names) said that this aggressive push by TRAs would badly impact on the rights of all minorities as people would blame the left for what is actually a neo liberal agenda that mostly benefits straight white men. When the tide goes in on this trans stuff it is minorities who will be left more vulnerable because people will be sick of anything to do with equality or diversity as they see it as pushing a very damaging agenda.
Yes some people on the left have tied themselves in knots pretending to believe people can change sex. The pushback against TRAs seems to now demand a pushback against equality narratives in general just as predicted. Yes the writings of the likes of Murray may be seductive but that doesn't mean it is right. It is just the other side of the coin that tells women and other non trans minority groups to STFU about the difficulties they face.

What part of Murray"s narrative do you see as seductive but untrue?

This is horrifying,

At Oxford University - a history professor must have security personnel with her, in all her lectures for the rest of the year, because of credible threats of violence from a certain faction of her students.

Bearing in mind Lord Acton’s quote: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

A great many otherwise, very, um, average, men, have discovered a way of both centring themselves and indulging their misogyny. They have been given a disproportionate voice by the active collusion of governance organisations in their mission to erode women’s rights.

Instead of our important institutions moderating with proper governance and consideration for the rights of women and children, they have exposed the fetid misogyny which lies at the heart of those organisations.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”, said Burke, but I’ve long suspected that “doing nothing”, is actually standing aside and tacitly encouraging evil by simply looking the other way at crucial moments.

Whether students are paying customers or not, threats of violence should not be tolerated. That they are tolerated says much about the attitude of institutions to women.

No doubt many supporters of aggressive trans activism are well-meaning, if hard of thinking. But uncritical outrage is a poor servant and a worse master.

Times article today:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/security-for-transphobic-professor-after-threats-ht2rjqmc3?shareToken=d85d0d5b8b76b4c87e425db198f1ceba

It's also going to be on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, although not yet clear when.

Justhadathought I think you’re wrong here. Think about the torrents of abuse faced by Allison Bailey for instance. You can be a woman of any race with a GC opinion and they will treat you like crap. Your comment sounds a bit right-wing tbh.

Just wanted to say, I work in academia and I am so upset about this but the main reason people don’t speak out is fear. As you can see, Selina’s faculty gets daily complaints against her. She’s in a much more secure job than me and I am scared I would lose my job if I said anything. I know lots of others who feel the same. I am keeping a list of the people who are part of this movement and I am hoping that at some point the tide will change on this and they can be held accountable for what they helped create.

Sally Hines has tweeted to mock Selina. So has Sara Ahmed and various other so-called feminists. It’s disgusting. The woefully incompetent head of the academics’ trade union, Jo Grady, has said nothing. She has previously been involved in harassing and bullying GC feminists. There’s a few branch leaders who also bully women using the union’s official twitter. Like GCAcademic I have left the union. I am currently looking for a new one to join but I do have legal expenses insurance. It’s such an awful environment to work in at the moment and it’s having an effect on my mental health.

I am sorry that is happening to you Pota.

For anyone shocked by the university standing by while students threaten harm to lecturers voicing conventional views, I recommend you look at what went on at Evergreen College in the US. For example:

quillette.com/2017/12/18/activists-took-control-university-case-study-evergreen-state/

What's happening at Oxford has been happening in various forms for years.

On R4 now.

Selina was wonderfully clear and to the point on R4.

Just heard her being completely sensible and sensitive on the radio. Well done and thank you for standing up Selina.

yes the writings of the likes of Murray may be seductive but that doesn't mean it is right

Nappyvalley

Can you please give concrete examples of which part of Douglas Murray's excellent analysis is false? The hierarchy of victimhood which has placed groups of people beyond criticism irrespective of whether the criticism is valid has created the current dystopia. Where a university professor requires bodyguards in Oxford, where prolific, organized sexual abuse goes on for years in full view of authorities, who do nothing, where an ex cop gets visited police for the crime non crime of a limerick. It is way past time for some serious pushback against this damaging BS.

st wanted to say, I work in academia and I am so upset about this but the main reason people don’t speak out is fear As you can see, Selina’s faculty gets daily complaints against her. She’s in a much more secure job than me and I am scared I would lose my job if I said anything. I know lots of others who feel the same. I am keeping a list of the people who are part of this movement and I am hoping that at some point the tide will change on this and they can be held accountable for what they helped create.

Pota

Your post eloquently highlights the dystopian, totalitarian environment which has colonised universities. It is absolutely incredible that academics such as yourself exist in an atmosphere of Stasi esque intimidation. The Conservatives promised to challenge the existential threat to freedom of speech in academia. When the actual f#ck are they planning to do this? Pota, what can we do to help?

Douglas Murray is good on some stuff (TRAs basically) but he’s also critical of women’s equality and ‘going too far’.
In a nutshell, the whole woke TRA movement has ducked things up for achieving equality for marginalised groups because people have become angry with how ridiculous some of it is (like self-ID). That’s part of the reason we now have a right wing government with a huge majority. It’s fucked everyone over but most of the TRAs don’t care as they are white males anyway

up for achieving equality

Many attempts to create equality resulted in totalitarian horror shows whose citizens had to be prevented from fleeing by walls and bullets. It is no coincidence that the identity politics paradigm emerged from the debris after the Berlin Wall collapsed Freedom and equality are mutually exclusive. And in the current climate, it is freedom which is facing an existential threat from implacable authoritarian zealots

That’s part of the reason we now have a right wing government with a huge majority

The current government is not right wing. The political illiteracy is tiresome

I don't want to derail this thread any further but can you not pick out the difference between what is happening with the TRAs and other equality movements? Who is threatening a female professor and getting away with it? Who is getting women sacked for starting facts? Who is making our children hate their bodies and less safe? Who is forcing us to deny that there are two sexes?
Did you not notice that most of the evidence Murray used on race and sex came from American examples? Do you not think that within the UK there are some structural inequalities around class, sex and race that he underplays? We need ways forward that recognise what we all have in common and offers a continued push towards equal opportunities. I don't agree with everything done and said in the name of equal opportunities but I recognise how much worse things will get if we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
FWR used to be the home of nuanced debate. In our understandable frustration at the 'woke' I hope we don't lose that. Remember most of the 'woke' in the UK are TRAs and their supporters who have very little to lose if we go backwards on equality.

BovaryX by right wing I mean pro individualism and anti welfare state. Not that they are the Ku Klux Klan.

Excuse me if I am not up for pretending that women have complete equality and that anything else goes too far, which is something Douglas Murray has said on numerous occasions - that feminism is claiming women are better than men.

Who is threatening a female professor and getting away with it? Who is getting women sacked for starting facts? Who is making our children hate their bodies and less safe? Who is forcing us to deny that there are two sexes?

I caught the end of Selina Todd's interview on Radio 4 Today program & the final point she made was very similar. Additionally that students at Oxford often go on to occupy influential roles in politics, civil service, media etc. If there is a generation in such positions who have come to believe that 'no debate' secured this way is the norm, then what implications for society?

It's all part of the commercial model higher education has adopted, with students as customers who are always right.

You also see it in the power of Chinese students to demand the removal of maps from walls and break up meetings and peaceful demonstrations with violence, suffering no sanction as a result.

The idea was that we would export our liberal humanist values to the Chinese. We have ended up importing their Confuscian authoritarianism.

I caught the end of Selina Todd's interview on Radio 4 Today program & the final point she made was very similar. Additionally that students at Oxford often go on to occupy influential roles in politics, civil service, media etc. If there is a generation in such positions who have come to believe that 'no debate' secured this way is the norm, then what implications for society?

Yes! It needs to be dealt with, for all our sakes.