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!!

There is one GC academic whose local UCU branch was planning to support students to boycott her teaching.

That's horrifying - did they go ahead? Surely that is something that ought to be publicised?

And thanks for pointing to the article about Kathleen Stock in THE - any idea why they're not covering the story more fully?

The boycott didn’t go ahead. I’m guessing it was voted down or didn’t proceed to a vote. But the fact that it was even discussed is appalling. I can’t say who it involves, as they haven’t spoken publicly about it. But there has been plenty of UCU branch-level bullying of other GC academics elsewhere. And although it clearly falls into the realm of bullying, senior university managers do nothing as they are terrified of the trans lobby.

The THE: who knows? I don’t know enough about the editors to know whether avoidance of this issue is ideological or cowardice. I don’t often read it because the sector is so awful (not just gender, but all manner of shit) at the moment that to do so would make me even more depressed than I am already.

The UCU branch at Edinburgh has been harassing the woman who organised the talk on women's sex-based rights last June (the one where Julie Bindel was assaulted) for months. I don't know whether that's the case GCAcademic has in mind, or whether it's another one. The branch president was front and centre of the campaign to get the talk stopped, and the organiser is on the branch committee! It's shocking to see a union turning on its own members, especially when you'd think that freedom of speech would be core to an academic union.

It wasn’t the Edinburgh branch I was referring to, re the boycott of teaching, but it was their senior management I had in mind in my last post as being particularly shit at protecting staff from bullying by colleagues.

Re Fae appearing in interviews and claiming threats of violence - isn't this a person with a history of defending violent pornography? Totally ok with encouraging men getting off on hurting women?

Wrote a book about it 'Defending the beast'

In fact appeared as a defence witness for a man who fantasied about killing famous women:

www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/07/another-victim-of-an-obscene-law/

I'm tapping on phone in middle of bedtime, but if anyone has more links I'd be grateful.

It would be useful if GC interviewees could make a comment about Fae and sexualizing scenes of violence against women.

Extraordinary to invite someone with that history to comment on threats of violence against a woman.

It would be useful if GC interviewees could make a comment about Fae and sexualizing scenes of violence against women.

relevent thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3374614-John-Ozimek-now-Jane-Fae-on-women-feminists-and-victims-of-pornographers

Thanks R0wantrees.

It's like a Jedi mind trick. If this person was called a man, then they would never be on air commenting on violence against women. They've made their views on it very clear. Book-length clear.

2017 Dr Julia Long's speech on the importance of naming & identifying power dynamics in context of feminist history & development of women's services:

(extract)
"So why then is it important to make this distinction between sex and gender and why is it important to name men as men? Naming men as man was such a vital part of the women's liberation movement and feminist scholarship back in those early days. There were lots of books that had 'silence' in the title or essays that had 'silence' in the title because it was about women breaking the silences of our own lives and naming who was doing what to whom, and then seeing that there were patterns of this and that is how feminist theory emerged. So it's really crucial to name men as men because that is how we develop an understanding and an analysis of patriarchy. That's how. If we can't name men as men then we can't name patterns of male violence, we can't name who is in control.

So naming men as men, then, enables us to answer these kinds of questions: Who controls economic, social, political and cultural systems and institutions? In whose hands does this kind of economic and social and political power lay? Well, if we can name men as men then we can see exactly where it lies. And it also helps us to answer the question, who's doing what to whom? And so again, over decades, feminists have answered that question in terms of looking at what we know women are subjected to under patriarchal power relations between women and men: femicide, female infanticide, sex-selective abortion, female genital mutilation, rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, poverty, economic disadvantage, prostitution, pornography, discrimination, objectification - I'm thinking here in addition to all the sex industry, but just the normalised objectification of high heels and make up and cosmetic surgery and all of this stuff - illiteracy - hugely more of the world's poor and illiterate are women rather than men - denial of reproductive rights, exploitation of reproductive and domestic labour ... I mean that was just a kind of quick list off the top of my head" (continues)

pastebin.com/nGwr3i4U

transcribed by PencilsinSpace
**copywrite permissions granted

Horrible GCAcademic, but not surprising. My own branch is hopeless which is why I'm leaving (as well as because of Jo Grady's appalling lack of leadership on this). I'm less convinced that the collective bargaining power is worth staying in for, at least for the moment. I have no faith in Grady and her team to bargain well for us at all.

One of the comments under the THE article:

trans is the most dangerous political movement on the left I have seen in my 30+ years of research and activism. it is full of fascist and proto-fascist gestures and rhetoric, and despite the surface and real differences, has many things in common with far-right anti-feminist movements like the incels and MRA. Most frighteningly, it is impossible to talk about this in academia, without the very fact that we are talking about it becoming the object of conversation, rather than the issues we are trying to talk about.

Genuinely chilling.

So UCU Women's Rep hopeful Jo...calls women "terfs". A lot. One wonders if she has done even half as much for women's issues as Jessica Eaton...?

twitter.com/academicexposer/status/1222862516935675905?s=19

twitter.com/academicexposer/status/1222862752819171328?s=19

Jessica Eaton does amazing work for girls & women, on abuse, sexual abuse, and child sexual abuse.

When one's progressive politics criticises women like Dr Eaton, well - one might start to wonder about being "progressive".

She is awful and she wishes she had the passion, drive and compassion to do the work Jessica does. Jessica could wipe the floor with her which is why she has to resort to misogynistic name calling. Same with Caroline Criado Perez, another one she calls a TERF. Both Caroline and Jessica have made measurable improvements to women’s lives. Jo, on the other hand, not so much.

Spot on, Pota.

Self-awareness not Jo's strong suit, then?

Good piece by Prof Michael Biggs of Oxford University about both last October's WPUK meeting in Oxford and the treatment of Selina Todd:

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

Thank you for the link to the Julia Long transcript R0wantrees and the Michael Briggs link Rubidium.

That UCU woman is a disgrace but is there any union that now respects and represents the interests of women - or is even in the slightest bit interested in the interests of women??

Selina Todd is the second case covered by Rose of Dawn's "Trans-Stupid" video this week (Selina's case starts here):

(The comments under the video are almost all about the first case, that of the violent Canadian with the tampon-fetish, serial harasser of girls and young women, litigant in yet more cases against women offering personal "beauty-treatment" services, who has been charged with assault and might end up in a women's prison.)

Imagine what would happen if a genuinely marginalised person, someone homeless or a failed asylum seeker, were making threats against an Oxford lecturer. Imagine how quickly they'd be in very hot water.

Yay! R0wantrees is back!

(As you were everyone).