Selina Todd in the Times supporting Suzanne Moore

[persistentwoman]

A powerful but depressing article by Selina Todd in the Times / Sunday Times. Share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a5eb66d6-2a88-11eb-9d71-3a8cfebe9319?shareToken=9e74b903f031f0b7611de0164b3affe5

Thanks for the share token, OP.

Powerful but depressing is an apt description.

Go Prof. Todd!

Thank you for sharing. Hopefully his will make a few more people realise what is happening to women who dare to suggest that women are female.

Powerful but depressing is an apt description.

Isn't it just?

So is the cowardly responses from the establishment when this kind of thing comes up, which is a few mutters about of course free speech is really important to democracy, and platitudes that usually mention kindness, and ooh look a squirrel.

This is not going to go away. It is not going to get better by itself. Rather like Brexit and Covid (and you'd think they'd be capable of learning from all this experience), the more dithering that happens, the worse the choices are when the situation deteriorates enough to force government into action.

Thanks. Truly depressing that such a piece has to be written.

Thanks for the share token. A brave lady. But ridiculous and terrifying that bravery would be needed.

The authoritarianism that has overtaken academia in just a few short years is terrifying. No surprise that it is happening somewhere where there are many young people - authoritarianism has always used the young to police their elders, think Mao's China or the Hitler Youth. A bit of denunciation always goes down well.

Thanks for sharing Persistent. I have huge admiration for Selina and I'm grateful that she has taken a stand at huge personal cost to her career. How can the women backing the chorus of disapproval wilfully ignore the context that Selina points out:

As a woman in a world that’s still dominated by men at the top — only a quarter of the UK’s professors are women — I’m acutely aware of my privilege. I regularly pause outside Oxford’s Radcliffe Camera and marvel that I’m paid to research and teach here. But I’m also in a minority, and like most people in that position I can believe that anything bad that happens to me is down to my ineptitude. It’s an experience with which many women are wearyingly familiar.

It made me very sad reading it. Knowing that these levels of intimidation and bullying of women are happening in plain sight, aided and abetted by powerful institutions everywhere.

Women haven't had the opportunity to establish themselves at these institutions and they're being hounded out........for speaking up for women.

Thanks for the share token.

In one way it is disappointing. This story has been told over and over again. And I am not in any way minimising the impact it has had on the individuals directly concerned.

But not only has nothing changed, if anything it is worse. It is so wide spread.

And the very people who should be upholding the right to freedom of speech / believe are just silent.

And we are left with this uncomfortable position of having to rely on more right wing papers and writers to be a platform for women (and some men) defending women's sex based rights.

By the way are there really no comments or does the share token mean that comments dont display. Was interested to find out what Times readers feel.

I saw Todd speak at a WPUK meeting in London and was blown away by her. She's brilliant. Thanks for the share token.

I posted hours ago and it is not yet showing up, probably just the weekend moderation shift

I think the story will need to be told repeatedly until it sinks in Stumbled, I can't help but think it is women's curse to have to keep telling the same story.

I suppose its going to be like that thing when in a meeting for instance a woman says something and is ignored but when a man says it everyone listens.

Although in fact that isn't true. The mob just turns on men like Graham Linehan. And in fact week after week he is telling the story and people chose to ignore it.

He doesn't have institutional backing. Plus when you're further ahead in your thinking, as many of the women here are, most people will decide that you're mad, until they're forced to see otherwise.

I think it’s true that once you’ve understood it you are very far along the curve and have accumulated a huge amount of knowledge. While otherwise smart people are still at the ‘be kind to sad people’ phase, not having any awareness of the metaphysics of this - let alone the details of the paraphilia, the colonisation of women’s spaces and words to facilitate the paraphilia, the aggression towards women, the demands for capitulation. They are just so far behind it’s hard to have a conversation. But even saying that makes you sound like someone who’s had a holy revelation and you’re trying to persuade sceptical bystanders that you have seen the truth.

On one level agree with last two posts. ie most peole want to be "kind".

But if they want to be kind, why doesn't that extend to women. Women being threatened with physical violence, women losing their jobs, women being taken to court - JUST for saying women are biological females and no one can change sex.

Its like the Emporer's New Clothes on steroids.

It shouldn't be this fucking hard though.

My guess is that they've convinced themselves that women have made the gains they need to make and they need to park their 'privilege' and step aside for the 'most oppressed' minority. Combined with an absence of critical thinking and a desire to be on the 'right side of history', to not be singled out and to be one of the 'good' people, as dictated by current trends (I.e. Stonewall DV&I policy). The absence of critical thinking means, as mollscroll points out, that they haven't amassed the requisite knowledge and considered what is meant by 'trans' I.e an umbrella term of disparate individuals some of whom genuinely have gender dysphoria and others who have syndromes that cannot be named, it's all a fluffy mass of good feels about supporting people experience terrible (imagined) injustices.

I think a lot of people are too busy doing "the work" / "educating" themselves in the opposite direction. Which is probably counterintuitive to everything they know.

Actually I'm going to argue myself out of that last point, because it contradicts what I said before, it's a lot easier to agree with views that are aren't controversial.

I used to read The Guardian every morning. That's where I got my news for years. It slowly dawned on me that they were fucking lying to me. Every day they were delivering a steady steam of propaganda to go along with my morning coffee. They weren't always like this but they are now.

I get an error message. Is the article still up?

I got the error message too

Share tokens sometimes expire it seems. Here is a new one:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a5eb66d6-2a88-11eb-9d71-3a8cfebe9319?shareToken=3fc9a83b44f0e7ac2fe9a5d8584b7bdb

Thank @Igneococcus
That one gives me the same error!