GC Academic/ Professional Services support thread

[VictoriaLucas102]

I’ve noticed quite a few university colleagues pop up on different threads so thought it might be worthwhile having a dedicated support thread.

I work/ teach in a university in the north of England. I was pretty active on Twitter (professionally but also posting GC stuff) until I had an anonymous complaint (which was ridiculous and ignored by my HoD) and then a senior colleague unfollowed me after I tweeted that biology was real (and that really freaked me out). Consequently I ‘shut up’ and left twitter and have since felt like a coward for doing so. It wasn’t so much about the impact to my own career, but I work in collaboration with colleagues who I truly like and respect and the thought of their work being tainted by my beliefs/actions was just too much for me to cope with.

I know of 3 or 4 male colleagues and a couple of female colleagues who have voiced concerns but otherwise I feel so utterly isolated. Even my closest colleagues, who I would also consider friends, I just cannot even broach this with them.

I know I am not alone but it often feels like I am. I am still very much an ‘early career’ academic (despite my age and professional experience) but then I see what happens to female professors and it makes me even more terrified to put my head over the parapet, and it is not in my nature to ‘keep my mouth shut’ on issues I’m passionate about.

Sorry for the ramble! TLDR; any other GC university folk here who want to chat about stuff ☺️

I am in PS. I pretty much keep my head behind the parapet, although I did cause some raised eyebrows when I politely declined to wear the stonewall lanyard (pre-covid when we were all in the office). My institution is making a big thing of its "values" (in part because it has been accused of institutional racism) and has loudly proclaimed that "we believe that trans women are women, that trans men are men and that non-binary identities are valid".

I'm with you. I'm lucky my department has a fair few GC radical feminists but the pressure to stay silent is so real

My university has those stickers in the ladies" loos telling us to shut up and not make a fuss if we think we see someone who doesn't belong there. I feel very isolated and on edge, despite my contract alleging that the university will support my academic freedom to ask questions and think about things...

Dr Ellie, how did you find out they were gc feminists?

Very long-time lurker here- I’ve re-registered to delurk for this one as my account was so old it must have been deleted.

I am PS at a university in the Midlands. I’ve “come out” as GC to a (male) colleague who I worked with closely on Athena SWAN, but otherwise keep my head down. There are a couple of prominent (female) TRAs who I am aware of in fairly senior positions in the university, and I am a bit intimidated by some of the things they post and retweet on Twitter. As PS I am not in a strong position. My - modest - aim is to get braver about challenging “gender” for “sex” in policies. I tried this once last year, ironically in a context where male-bodied people were potentially at risk because of the confusion, but nothing happened.

I will go back to lurking again now. Thank you to everyone who mobilises for women and girls, whether in a position to stick their head above the parapet or not!

PS in a London university. Working in an area that touches on this issue and have put my head above the parapet to a certain extent (reminding that the protected characteristic is gender reassignment not gender identity, correcting 'gender assigned at birth' to 'sex observed at birth' etc.). I'd hoped that this might be enough of a shibboleth for other GC PS staff to make themselves known but not so far. Feel I should be doing more but, alas, not brave enough yet.

Oh and should have said - I don't think the institution as a whole is entirely down the rabbit hole - many PS staff and some academics are woker than woke but others are definitely GC. I am sure it will all come to a head in the next year or so.

Not a prolific poster here. In Scotland. Am known to be GC - have published in the area. Have the support of my head of research and have had positive conversations with some senior management. Am a professor so feel a bit braver perhaps...

I have also had invitations to speak and publish withdrawn - but other invitations have come instead. My head of research was radicalised by J K Rowling and tells me there is no such thing as bad publicity. But once you have been torn apart on an international list serv, you don’t want to go there again.

(Please do not try to identify me from these fragments, but am happy to talk to anyone about my experience off the board).

Thanks for starting this thread. PS staff and have considerable influence on our institutional direction of travel on this issue in terms of policy and practice. My approach is to ensure that sex continues to be treated as a protected characteristic. I deliberately avoid turning it into a debate about trans rights and tra ideology v. GC and 'just' focus on ensuring we are fulfilling our duties under the Equality Act 2010, which includes considering impact by sex.

PS in a uni here. I did try and advocate for women when a recent refurbishment meant all changing spaces were made ‘unisex’ in what I considered to be a less than safe way. However, have been quickly shut down by management and the TRA lobby who consider the GC position to be hate speech.

I realise this board isn't for me as I'm a student, but I wanted to come and say that from a student's perspective, it's very reassuring to see staff who are GC. Not so much because that's what I am, but because when you have a lecturer or tutor who you know (either cos they've said it or their online profile) that biology isn't real, it totally undermines what you're being taught both by them and the other faculty members who aren't openly GC. Obviously it shouldn't, but if you had a lecturer telling you the Earth is flat and anybody who says it's spherical is a) a bigot and b) behind in understanding basic science, then they teach you about some new research/topic you don't know much about, you don't know whether to believe them. It makes learning really hard because you wonder if they're trying to indoctrinate you about something else, but you just don't know what yet. While we can all go and check research etc there simply isn't time to investigate everything you're learning.

It also impacts how we write essays, because clearly not even the most basic of things can be assumed in certain departments and you don't want to have someone marking your work who thinks you're a bigot.

So (apologies for long post), it really matters that those teaching us and producing research around us are shown to know basic science.

So thanks for anybody able to speak out.

(I shall disappear from this thread now and leave you alone!)

Good to see this thread.

I work in a university too. I have tried querying many policies and wordings, and explained how I was like this as a child and its always been around, that the suicide stats are unreliable etc. I have re-emphasised sex as a protected characteristic whenever its been dropped from wording. I have queried the "gender pay gap" as it is actually a sex pay gap. I have written in requesting to keep female toilets as female only, not unisex.

Generally I have never had a response - but I've never been told off either. I'm certain that someone somewhere has me on a list, and I do worry that one day shit will hit a fan, but I am preparing for it as best as possible. I'm an expert at what I do which hopefully helps me a little.

I will say that for all the enforced bullshit (posters everywhere telling us never to assume someone's gender, only ever call them "them" until they explicitly tell you what they are; endless trans awareness workshops), there are zero pronoun games in meetings, and there's a vague feeling of eye rolling about it all. I am dreading the new generation of younglings who will inevitably join us and be more pro-active about it though.

I think its worth saying too that the few GNC students I've met seem so fucking fragile and vulnerable. I genuinely feel for them - as in sometimes I ache inside at how insecure they are and the clear pain they are in. It brings back a lot of memories.

I just don't think that means that we should wipe out all sex-based rights for other students and staff, and in life generally.

And one last thought and I'll shush, but I do worry that one day at least some of our students will look back and think plaintively, "why didn't my university protect me, why did it just go along with everything?" We have a duty of care and I personally don't think we're meeting it.

Thanks for your responses. For some reason I can’t log in with my original account (possibly banned??).

@anotherhumanfemale thank you so much for replying .. it occurred to me after I posted I should have also included students as I know there are GC students who are probably as terrified of being ‘outed’ as staff are. Please stay!

NC for this. I work as an academic at a university in the South, and there is a fierce battle at my institution over this. Fellow academics insulting each other on twitter, whisper networks, a trans policy that IMO contradicts HE regulatory frameworks and employment law and so on.

I keep a low profile, have downscaled my own social media activity, but have nonetheless been 'blackballed' for stating in a semi-private environment that I didn't believe that sex was socially constructed, or that there were five sexes, for obvious, entirely logical reasons. (Where do all the babies come from, huh?) I've had dirty looks at conferences in my field, been socially excluded, a senior member of staff (who I have never talked to about this issue or interacted with) blocked me on twitter, and I don't think I'll ever know the full extent to which my career has been damaged by this. I'm in the arts & humanities.

I do challenge policies, though, and I fill out surveys, insisting on correct interpretations of the EA 2010. My university has tried, for example, to omit 'sex' from one of its policies - I complained, I'm sure I wasn't the only one, and it was corrected. Even if you don't want to speak out, there are ways of showing the powers that be that we are watching them carefully. Keep them on their toes, ask uncomfortable questions.

In my teaching, I try to be neutral. I'd be delighted if more students came forward but I understand that the censorious atmosphere at universities, not just regarding gender identity, scares them.

Thanks to @anotherhumanfemale for coming on this thread, and I totally get what you are saying: "If they are lying about this, what else are they lying about?" The danger for us academics is that we lose our credibility when we spout flat-earther nonsense that can be taken apart so easily.

PS staff member here. Openly GC to just two colleagues - one male and very supportive and one female I spotted on a webinar and 'outed' myself to her afterwards. Have to be slightly careful and pick my way otherwise as have a Stonewall championing colleague in the office and a union official who couldn't be less welcoming of a GC position if they tried.

Am thankfully in a role where I can ensure we follow the Equality Act as it relates to students in a specific way. Can make certain the wording they see and advice we link to are correct. Not sure if there will be future fights where I will need to nail my colours to the mast. Think most people lack info and want to just be 'kind' rather than taking active positions that affect the safety of women but can see the drift that happens if they then stand back.

Humanities academic here - been through the mill of transphobia accusations for my use of Twitter - not my teaching, as the complainant had never been taught by me (wouldn't recognise them if I fell over them). My sorry tale is collected in Dr Stock's collection of experiences of academics being silenced or disciplined.

It makes me wonder whether we need to set up some sort of national network? For students as well.

And please, students, know that you are so important in this. My whole career has been dedicated to teaching women's history and mentoring and supporting young women. I had my wonderful academic feminist mothers - I want to pass that on. So if you see any feminist academics, chat with them about this, see them in their office hours, ask them questions ... we'd love to talk to you about this.

and I don't know how good I am at questioning their view of gender-identity without triggering claims of lack of support and formal complaints

Yes, this is my challenge. To explain - or let it be known - that I deal with the person in front of me on their terms as a pastoral care tutor. But that I hold personal political views about power structures, and significant social & cultural categories. It's interesting - the complaint against me held that students couldn't possibly be in the same room as me, or that I couldn't mark their work - I really wanted to ask them - what if I were a raging atheist and you were a fundamentalist Catholic or Muslim. Would you say the same thing?

This is one of the real problems of the sloganeering TWAW #NoDebate and the claim that by discussing matters of sex, gender & identity ideologies, we are "erasing" transgender individuals.

Well, we discuss other categories of people without erasing individuals. In the humanities, we need to be able to talk about groups and categories pf people.

Another weary GC academic here – professor in arts/humanities in an average UK uni. It’s not a problem in my department or my day-to-day job. There’s a very small handful of mostly new/young academics who are into pronouns and tried to push this onto the rest of this, but they aren’t popular and there’s been lots of resistance for a wide variety of reasons. It’s got to be pretty obvious that I’m not part of the pronoun gang, and I do have private conversations with others who feel the same way, but we’re fairly discrete. I do quite a bit of teaching on women in my disciplinary area and attract quite a lot of female students. They are just so fantastic – they appear to have precisely zero interest in identity politics and are really interested in studying women. Working with them has been a real highlight of my teaching this year.

Like lots of academics, though, I also do things for organisations outside my institution and that’s more tricky. I think I’d be pressured out of these roles if I openly expressed my GC thoughts. In one I can direct equalities policy in a way that’s quite useful so it feels better to keep publicly quiet so that I can be privately constructive. It really sucks though. The pressure to keep silent is very real and very oppressive. I never could have imagined I’d become quite senior and have some success in my career, and yet need to keep so quiet about my feminist beliefs.

Thanks so much for this thread - really helpful to read. I work in the arts and humanities and feel very bewildered by the 'new' landscape (I've had quite a lot of time out from academia in the last few years due to kids), in which feminist views that I've long held are now deemed problematic if not unacceptable in teaching and research spaces.

Feminist/gender related issues come up in many of the classes I teach and I really struggle to ensure that different perspectives are voiced. There is often a strong drift towards a consensus position that might easily silence GC views that some students might hold. But I also worry that my trans-identified students might feel unsupported by me. I feel that conversations I was able to have with students ten years ago are no longer possible now, and this feels really stifling and depressing.

I work part-time and feel on the periphery of my department, and I'm very aware from our twitter presences that most of my colleagues inhabit a parallel universe on this issue. I have on a couple of occasions voiced objections to the fact that feminism is often taught on core modules in a completely one-dimensional way in which sex is deconstructed almost without question, but my objections were completely ignored. Be really interested to hear from anyone who has more effectively intervened with such things!

It's also great to hear student experiences on this issue.

I am watching this thread with interest because I have worked in humanities academia, and would like to again. When I think of the discussions we had about women & gender in class a few years ago, I wonder if it will be possible if I do return, but as I am at arms length from the culture now it's difficult to know if things have really changed. It sounds like they have.

I think a national (secret) network of academics & students would be a good idea queenoftheair. Not sure how to manage such a thing though.

The poster who said that she concentrates on making sure sex is kept as a p/c & that kind if thing, rather than having an obvious 'gc' position is on to something I think.

I would like to ask for some advice here: we've thought of having a prize for female students in our science dept, to encourage more girls into science, but making it clear who is or isn't eligible is a minefield. Even when the idea was first mooted, someone asked "what about non-binary students?" . We have a visible number of MTF trans students, and giving them a prize under this scheme would defeat the purpose.

Any suggestions for good wording which wouldn't ruffle too many feathers and stop the inevitable whataboutery?

Possibles:
"Natal females"
"Assigned female at birth" (I hate hate hate this phrase, but it pleases the wokesters)
"Raised as a girl and therefore suffering from unconscious bias & gender stereotyping with regard to STEM"

Or check the 2010 Equalities Act. You are allowed to exclude transwomen with GRCs (which gives them the 'legal fiction' that they are female) if it is a proportionate action to achieve a legitimate aim.

You can easily make the case that girls & young women are still subject to overt discrimination, as well as unconscious bias and gender stereotyping re science/STEM, and that therefore it is legal for the prize to be restricted to girls/women ie female.