From Shereen Benjamin, who teaches at the University of Edinburgh, on the repercussions of holding views critical of gender identity ideology:
"It feels like very dangerous territory indeed, and marks a new phase in what's already becoming a dystopic nightmare in many universities.
Where I am, University of Edinburgh, gender identity ideology is taught in many disciplines as unassailable truth. As one of the few academics who refuses to teach it in that way, I have the Staff Pride Network tailing all my lectures and publications and 'reporting' me to my head of school and to editors of collections I've published in.
I'm in my 50s, I'm a pretty middle-ranking and unexceptional senior lecturer, I've got as far as I'm ever going to get, so I can take the hit. And there's been quite some hit - I've been quietly dropped from teaching gender and education which is one of my specialisms, and put on to other non-specialist things like teaching research methods, because it's too much trouble to have me teaching about gender. I should say, when I do teach about gender and education, it's in the most neutral way possible: I explain that there are different ways to think about sex and gender, and (in a school of education) I explain the different implications of those ways of thinking for what happens in schools, and I encourage students to engage with the evidence and come to their own defensible positions. This, I'm told, is 'denying trans existence' and it makes trans students and their allies feel 'incredibly unsafe'.
Most academics are now younger than me. They might be seeking promotion, or their first permanent contract (because academics are now on precarious contracts for years if not decades). In that position, they have to toe the line and teach gender identity ideology as dogma, or teach and research something else. And give those of us known to be critical a very wide berth - I have colleagues who won't be seen with me on campus in case they're targeted by association.
We're getting to the point where an ideology which doesn't have much of an evidence base is being promoted as unassailable truth on university campuses. Universities should be the places where new ideologies can be robustly examined in teaching, research and public engagement. Instead, universities are turning into the engine rooms of gender identity ideology, promoting to the next generation that the ideology is beyond question, and that there are indeed some views that can't be questioned. I find this very, very scary.
Kathleen's resignation will embolden the bullies. I say that not as any criticism of Kathleen - she's faced three years of this now, always with dignity and immense courage, and I have nothing but admiration for her. What should now happen is that managers in other universities known to have a problem - and mine certainly know we have a problem - face up to it, cut their ties with Stonewall and Advance HE, and act to protect feminist academics from harassment rather than trot out warm words about how much they value academic freedom whilst giving bullies free rein to bully. But I can't see that happening.
What should also happen is that UCU wakes up to its responsibilities to protect academic freedom, and the employment rights of feminist academics. That's not about to happen either. Dangerous territory indeed."