Difficult conversation re Kathleen Stock

[mynameisnotkate]

I was having a conversation with a friend about how I'm a bit fed up with UCU, and one of the reasons I brought up was their total failure to support Kathleen Stock. I'm aware this friend feels very differently on gender topics to me, and we usually avoid talking about it. She immediately said that she and I feel very differently about that issue, implying she didn't think UCU had acted badly. I asked if she'd read her book and she said she had read parts of it (which I must admit, is more than I have ...). I said that I thought that whether or not you agreed with her position, everyone should have the right to feel safe at work and that the union should be supporting people who are under threat, and she said that she felt the way KS had acted was a big part of the problem and she didn't agree with a lot of what she had done.

I didn't know what she was talking about - I'm not aware of KS acting in ways that would increase the problems she was facing - but wasn't really sure how to address this and we agreed not to discuss this then and there. I'd like to talk it through with her though, and feel it would be helpful to be better informed - especially to get a view of the situation from 'the other side' - I've not read much about it that's not from a GC point of view - not because I think this will change my opinion but because I want to understand how this looks to someone who is very empathic and feminist but who sees gender issues completely differently to me.

I find it so difficult to discuss gender issues - it makes me so stressed and anxious! I'm not sure why - I'm usually very confident and don't mind if people disagree with me. Any thoughts about how to discuss this would be very welcome!

I tend to agree with xxyzz about changing how we think. It’s fine for each individual woman to consider how much they want to say in public, but the idea that we should not discuss or persuade intelligent women to think about these matters, lest they can’t cope with the cognitive dissonance, or might be faced with difficult decisions is massively overthinking it. We cannot hold back to spare others’ feelings. That’s infantalising women. They should be given the information we have, and challenged in any illogical thinking we see, and from there, they should be allowed to make their own minds up.

And more than that, they need to be told to stop bullying and attacking others.

I don't care if a misogynistic bully suffers from cognitive dissonance when they realise they were being a misogynistic bully.

They shouldn't have done it in the first place.

The person whose feelings I care about in this exchange is KS, who attacked precisely noone but was made to leave her job and relentlessly bullied.

"I said that I thought that whether or not you agreed with her position, everyone should have the right to feel safe at work and that the union should be supporting people who are under threat, and she said that she felt the way KS had acted was a big part of the problem and she didn't agree with a lot of what she had done."

To paraphrase your friend - 'she was asking for it'. How very feminist of her.

Can you text your friend "Hi, after our discussion today I've been thinking about what you said. Can you send me some articles about what KS has done wrong as I want to learn more and can't find anything."

This has a few things going for it - it shows you are listening to her and are open to what she says; it makes it more of a discussion than an argument. It will tell you what she has found out so you can counter it (please share here!). When she tries to find something solid to back up what she has been told she will discover an empty space- that may convince her far better than a discussion with you ever could that this is all made up of lies and insinuations.

Bollocks has your friend read any of Material Girls. Unless they are incredibly intellectually curious/ an academic in the field I find this unlikely. I think there is a strong tendency on the other side to avoid reading anything that might challenge their position (because their position is built on sand).

Admittedly I wouldn’t want to wade through the new Shon Faye book, but I think that’s for different reasons.

Cognitive dissonance is an interesting thing. I genuinely believe my friend is not a misogynist and has been a committed feminist for most of her life, but the circles she discusses this in are so completely different to mine that she just has a completely different way of conceptualising it. If you’ve read only the denunciations of KS I can see why you’d think she’d behave badly. Of course, if you’ve only read the denunciations and nothing answering them then you can hardly claim to have an unbiased view, but it’s really easy to enclose yourself in an echo chamber. That’s why I really want to read the alternative views - although I really don’t believe I will have my mind changed, if I’m not reading the alternative viewpoints with an open mind then I can’t claim any greater impartiality than she can. I’d like to send her KS’s rebuttal to that attack on her and see what she makes of it.

Absolutely her response smacks of ‘she was asking for it’ and victim blaming, but I do see if you genuinely believed that she had behaved as awfully as people claim she has, whilst you might not think it was ok for her to physically threatened, it might be questionable for her to remain in her post. Also, I doubt if she is only reading certain sources that she is aware of the extent of the attacks. There is certainly misogyny in the attacks on KS, but I think my friend is against her because of how she is painted by the misogynistic attacks rather than direct misogyny in her. Not sure I’m explaining this well! She is someone I respect enormously and I think she is a very principled, considered person and I’m finding it very hard to deal with the huge gulf in how we think about these issues. I’ve already had one close friend go completely non-contact with DH and me because of our GC views.

I promise I will pick this up with her soon, but I want to pick my moments. For example, right now I’ve had several cocktails, and it’s probably not the right time to get into a discussion…

@TheMarzipanDildo

Bollocks has your friend read any of Material Girls. Unless they are incredibly intellectually curious/ an academic in the field I find this unlikely. I think there is a strong tendency on the other side to avoid reading anything that might challenge their position (because their position is built on sand).

Admittedly I wouldn’t want to wade through the new Shon Faye book, but I think that’s for different reasons.

It may be the case that she hasn’t read much of material girls (I don’t believe that she hasn’t read any as I don’t think she’s outright lie) - but then until today neither had I! I’m hoping to get through it all this weekend and be able to argue from a much more informed position. I’m anticipating a lot of UCU conversations coming up with the inevitable strikes next semester and want to know what I’m talking about. I’m really questioning whether I can stay in the union.

This, from a parent, I found to resonate with some of the things I have been thinking about in relation to working with young (often very TWAW) people. This is from the parental perspective obviously but raises all kinds of questions about the learning environment that we all contribute to if we are involved in Universities.

pitt.substack.com/p/university?r=n5nv9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter

'We left our kind, funny, shy and self-effacing son with you on a late summer evening. His initial impression of university was that everyone else was taking it in stride, having the experience he had been hoping for, and fitting in… and that he wasn’t. This intimidating start was followed by a relentless march of exhausting days, where each seemed harder than the one before. Eventually he withdrew. He was tired of being different, tired of being alone. He went online.

And there he found someone who told him that medicalizing to look female would help him, that all he needed was drugs and surgery. That he was really a woman. This was the answer. The reason he felt different.

All of this is, in some sense, an old, old story. A young person goes to university, feels alone, finds some people who say they understand him. In this case, people who would let him join their club if he took drugs, did drastic things to his body. People who told him lies,1 either out of malice or out of ignorance. It is not the first time in history this has happened. '

“It may be the case that she hasn’t read much of material girls (I don’t believe that she hasn’t read any as I don’t think she’s outright lie) - but then until today neither had I! I’m hoping to get through it all this weekend and be able to argue from a much more informed position. I’m anticipating a lot of UCU conversations coming up with the inevitable strikes next semester and want to know what I’m talking about. I’m really questioning whether I can stay in the union.“

Yeah I’ve only read the introduction thus far, no judgement here I just think people are naturally disinclined to look for things that might undermine their world view, particularly when their view is on shaky foundations and changing their mind might lead to horrendous bullying.