Kathleen Stock triumphs at How the Light Get In festival

[Pluvia]

Friends of mine are attending the Show the Light Gets In philosophy festival at Hay on Wye they weekend. My friends report that Kathleen Stock's talk about her book, Material Girls, was packed out — so much so that people were standing in the side areas and listening from outside the marquee. In the Q+A section several people spoke out about their concerns about gender ideology. Two TRAs asked questions and Kathleen calmly and briefly dealt with them. She received prolonged applause at the end of the event. When my friends went to buy her book at the Waterstones stand, (they'd seen a large pile of them before the event) it had sold out.

Just saying.

How the Light Gets In. Ruddy autocarrot.

Excellent to hear, thanks Pluvia!

Is this the Streisand effect? Saw some photos yesterday of the queues to get into the marquee. Glad it was a success.

Aaron Bastani sharing a platform with Kathleen Stock is quite significant too.

twitter.com/smithbarryc/status/1532828159703392257

That was at an earlier panel event about universities and academic freedom. The general feeling there seemed to be that universities were in deep trouble and needed to take a firmer line on students trying to shut down anything they disagree with.

Oh gosh. I'm at Hay Festival and that's just at the other end of town. I had no idea she was speaking.
I'm sorry to have missed her, but sounds like I'd have been lucky to get tickets anyway.
Gender ideology and trans issues are definitely being discussed at Hay, and I don't just mean it coming up in events, although it has come up.
I've been constantly hearing snatches of conversation over the last few days- women talking about self-id, single sex spaces.
It's been quite extraordinary really. I can't recall ever hearing this kind of constant low level buzz about anything else.

This is great to hear. How the Light Gets In, indeed.

This is great to hear. Very pleased for Kathleen too.

Great. Bring the sunlight.

I’m really pleased to hear this, I like her integrity. I hope universities can get a grip of things soon.

Me too! I had no idea that she was here either! I do find that there is absolutely zero promotion of the HTLGI events from the Hay Festival organisers. Obviously they are different events, organised by different people but they are taking place in the same (relatively small) place at the same time so ideally it would be good to have some coordination going on. I'd definitely have gone to see Kathleen if I knew she was there. I believe that Petee Tatchell was also due to speak at HTLGI - don't know on which day though.

How wonderful!! Doc Stock's book, Material Girls, is excellent.

Waves to @SkattieCat and @TheGreatATuin  I'm at the Hay festival too and also had no idea Kathleen was speaking down the road. Sad to have missed her. I had been thinking it was disappointing that she (and Helen Joyce) weren't speaking at the main festival. Maybe because their books aren't new enough. Or maybe HTLGI is just braver?

@TheGreatATuin, I'm intrigued now - which speakers mentioned gender issues? I must have been at all the wrong talks

It came up at the panel on cancel culture and I wasn't sure it would!
www.hayfestival.com/p-18986-prospect-debate-2-how-cancel-culture-became-a-blood-sport.aspx
I was wondering if the panelists would dare discuss it.
Jonathan Bate brought it up. He mentioned an academic in the states who got into a lot of trouble for asking why Rachel Dolezal was different when it's race to when it's sex. The other panelists were a bit more circumspect.
They'd say trans issues versus women's rights was a hot topic but not dig in much more.
There were also a couple of questions from the audience, one from someone who mentioned self-id and single sex spaces and asked about whether part of the reason why some things are being seen as 'right wing' issues are because left wing papers like the Guardian are too nervous to touch it.
He asked Alan Rusbridger to answer that one, and he said yes, which I thought was very interesting.

I've managed to pull out only a couple of bits out from what was a very interesting talk.
I think they usually put them on YouTube after. It'd be worth a watch once it goes up.

That's great news. People are hungry now for information and discussion. And as they get more data, many are realising that, yes, it is that bonkers and the fear of talking is lifting.

I love the image. Standing in the aisles, selling out the books.

My moles at HTLGI attended another event yesterday. Something about Desire and Power, I think. Catherine Hakim and Peter Tatchell.

First of all Hakim (who apparently seems to think sex work is work, Only Fans is really liberating for women, Harvey Weinstein was only doing what men do and the women went along with it knowingly) was heckled extensively by women in the audience and accused of condoning rape. And Peter Tatchell acknowledged that there were two sexes and that women (he used the word!) have to take into account the danger of getting pregnant when having sex.

Later today Tatchell will appear alongside Bobbi (fraid their last name escapes me) who was until a couple of years ago, Bobby. Bobbi has been busy cultivating the lesbian community and trying to recruit them to his Out and Wild festival in west Wales this summer. It was originally billed as a lesbian and bi-women's festival but now it's advertising to the Q crowd and anyone, their friends and their dogs, can go. My pals will be there to remind Tatchell of what he said yesterday and to ask Bobbi a couple of questions about the way Bobbi and pals have shoved their way into lesbian groups and how that's split the community.

If HTLGI is anything like the Hay Festival, all the talks will have been videoed and uploaded. I think to see all past Hay Festival talks you need to pay a small subscription.

Fantastic stuff Pluvia!

Awesome 💪

🌞 Well done.

I wish I had gone to Hay this year! Such great news about Kathleen.

And pleased to hear that that rape apologist was heckled

Dear pluvia “ruddy autocarrot” funniest thing for ages - I don’t know if it was deliberate, but may I steal it?

Yay! And may the power be with Prof. Stock, that’s such good news. Thanks.

My mates who went to see Pater Tatchell and Bobbi Pickard (D+I head at BP, a Stonewall champion, father of two) speak this morning are almost incoherent with disbelief about what they heard. Apparently it was the standard emotive nonsense about transpeople being the most vulnerable and maligned population. The BBC won't allow them a voice without having a GC person there for balance, boo-hoo. They said that we already have self-ID now and that most transpeople don't care about their birth certificate. (So much for the appalling impact of dysphoria that means that every piece of paper alluding to their birth sex needs to be altered, eh?)

They were rude about Kathleen Stock, thought GC radical feminists were the problem and urged the audience to 'think of the trans children' being left to suffer because of recent pressure regarding conversion therapy — but didn't appear to explain what conversion therapy means in a trans context.

The woman sitting next to my friends, who'd declared herself GC when she joined them and said she'd come to listen because she'd been shocked by what she'd been reading in the Times, ended up telling my mates that if it stopped people like Bobbi from committing suicide did it really matter what loo Bobbi uses? They assured her it did but she'd clearly been won over by the 'poor thing' presentation.

There were several people there recording what was said, so with a bit of luck we'll all be able to listen to it before long.

Of course you can steal it. I almost certainly stole it myself. Free speech for all.