Grace Lavery - online talk - 18 March 2022

[yetanotherusernameAgain]

Grace Lavery is giving the annual lecture at qUCL (LGBQT interest group at UCL) tomorrow (Friday 18 March).

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-gender-critical-movement-with-grace-lavery-tickets-276617068097

Subject is:

The Gender Critical Movement, with Grace Lavery

We are delighted to welcome Grace Lavery to give qUCL's 2022 annual lecture.

The rumors are true: academic freedom really is under attack. But the threat doesn’t come from students or from “cancel culture”––it comes from university administrators, an insurgent anti-intellectual media, and powerful celebrity professors. The so-called “gender critical” movement has made the most significant attacks on academic freedom, and has normalized a set of political tools: GC academic activists have normalized a set of political tools: GC academic activists have normalized threats of private legal action against students critical of their work, while senior administrators use institutional procedures to protect them, and threaten retaliatory action against student critics. Yet these sorts of actions, and the victory laps taken across the liberal UK media, are only the most spectacular facet of a wide campaign of intimidation against trans students and workers, and our allies, that is being played out in universities across the UK: abuse of institutional procedures, legal intimidation of students, media whitewashing, and social media swarming. Developing and extending methods of feminist analysis from authors such as Jennifer Doyle and Sara Ahmed, this lecture both describes the systematic threats to academic freedom posed by anti-trans activism, and identifies some possible methods for collective redress.

All are welcome to attend this online lecture and to participate in the Q&A. Please familiarise yourself with qUCL's Virtual Code of Conduct.

About the speaker

Grace Lavery is a writer, editor, and academic living in Brooklyn, NY. As an Associate Professor of English, Critical Theory, and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her research explores the history and theory of aesthetics and interpretation, with particular interests in psychoanalysis, literary realism, and queer and trans cultures. Her forthcoming speculative memoir, Please Miss, will be published by Seal Press in 2022

mediocre male academic talks down more talented female academics

plus ca change

It seems unfair for UCL to host this event allowing Lavery to litigate social media grievances unchallenged without providing Rosa Freedman, Kathleen Stock, Alice Sullivan and Jo Phoenix a right of reply.

Grace Lavery's presentation of the students' actions also seemed very biased compared to what actually went down in these cases.

I'd certainly view the email Rosa Freedman got as threatening if I received it. And the Masters student talk in which they stated:

"If Ts think trans is an endemic threat to feminism, let us be the threat to feminism…Picture this: I hold a knife to your throat and spit my transness into your ear. Does that turn you on? Are you scared? I sure fucking hope so.”
sex-matters.org/posts/updates/gender-studies-and-sexualised-threats/

How can that not be seen as anything but threatening for feminist staff and students in that department and university. Could they get away with saying those things about BME students?

Grace had an 'interesting' viewpoint:
UK academics are attempting to shut down critical debate from the young (I.e It's a generational thing)
The UK environment enables academics to be overly litigious and to make vexatious legal claims
Most GC supporters aren't really feminists. They're just old-fashioned right wing reactionaries.

I salute anyone who actually tuned into any of that waffle. I decided I needed to be busy washing my hair.

I always try and look at opposing views to assess the merit of their arguments. I fear becoming entrenched and unquestioning in my own viewpoint. Grace hasn't managed to dissuade me.

@WearyLady

I think she misrepresented the actions of those academics she sited - Kathleen Stock got a particular hammering - but I'd like to think that as feminists we hold ourselves to a much higher standard of behaviour than that we've seen displayed against KS, JKR , MF et al. We cannot let ourselves be dragged down to the same level as those who criticise us.

There's a better view from the high road and all that.

Most GC supporters aren't really feminists. They're just old-fashioned right wing reactionaries

I wouldn't call them GC necessarily (as most aren't critical of gender in the way I would define it- social roles and stereotypes ascribed to men and women- but are critical of males "identifying as women" or vice versa).
However it isn't wrong that a lot of the vocal opposition to trans ideology - especially in the US - are not from people who could ever be conceivably described as feminists. They're from people who've figured out that nominally left wing parties have fucked up big time on this and intend to keep banging the trans drum.

It does not bother me that, on the issue of "is sex real and important"/"can males be women", I am in agreement with quite a lot of right wing Christian reactionaries in the US who wouldn't have a higher opinion of me (lesbian, atheist, typical lefty liberal) than they have of trans people. Or, within the UK, that the majority of MPs speaking out about it are people I'd probably never vote for because I strongly disagree with MOST of their political positions. It doesn't bother me because the reality of sexual dimorphism, and the historical and contemporary discrimination against women on the basis of their sex, is not contingent upon only people I like believing it.

I've gone off on an odd and possibly pointless tangent here but, essentially, of the many people who oppose trans ideology and TRAs, only a small number also consistently support policies which are to the benefit of women.
However, it is that small number of people who've been attacked most viciously by this movement. The acronym is TERF. Not TEEC (trans exclusionary evangelical Christian) or TECP (trans exclusionary conservative politician) or TEAIMSM (Trans exclusionary average middle aged man).

It is women they've gone after. And women who support the protection and advancement of women in particular. And, alongside the wealth of other evidence, one thing that will always convince me that this movement is misogynistic is the fact that, out of the myriad groups who opposed them (many of whom held far more conservative positions on other social issues than feminists ever typically have) , it was women and feminists they went after again and again and again.

Can't type. TEAIMSM was supposed to be TEAMAM.

Gynosaur, that entire post was a thing of beauty and I agree with every word.

I have found myself on common ground with this issue alongside people I know that I disagree with on other issues. And that's okay, because like you I see again and again who the TRAs go after. If they really wanted peaceful and productive lives for trans people, "TERFs" really wouldn't be in the picture at all.

To gynaesaur: hear hear!!!
Well put. I agree with you completely.