Northumbria University - Sarah Phillimore and Harry Miller 'seen as a 'safety and wellbeing' risk to an entire university.'

[ChristinaXYZ]

Open letter on Sarah Phillimore's website shows how deep the interference with debate and free speech goes at some universities.

sarahphillimore.substack.com/p/a-letter-to-northumbria-university

No that's not what I'm saying.

Do you not think there might have been an excellent speaker on the subject of free speech who does not also continue to support a tweet saying #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance?

I reckon there would be many options to choose from.

There are many unethical, immoral, harmful actions and communications that fall short of a criminal standard for prosecution. This person appears to be proud of a tweet that has real power to be harmful and I find that pretty distasteful, and I think I'm not alone, or unreasonable on that.

I think, if a university can find a mussel farmer that employs environmentally sound methods of farming they should invite them to speak over the mussel farmer that uses environmentally harmful ways of farming, and I think if they can find an expert on free speech who does not need to resort to supporting harmful communications themselves, rather than one who seems to support tweets that they should have the insight to know can endorse and encourage transphobic views, they should go with that first option.

Fantastic news. And good to see the thread finally getting by to the topic at hand.

D'oh - "getting back to the topic". That's what I get for cooking and posting at the same time.

Do you not think there might have been an excellent speaker on the subject of free speech who does not also continue to support a tweet saying #SayYesToHate on the Transgender Day of Remembrance?

I'm sure there would have been loads of other speakers! SP though was invited and there is no reason she shouldn't have been. Whether she did or didn't support that tweet is irrelevant as it nowhere near meets the threshold to be no-platformed.

From the ONS on this data:

"Estimates of the likelihood of being a victim of crime for those whose gender identity is different from their sex at birth (trans or transgender) are based on a small base size of 63 and are therefore subject to lower reliability."

(www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2020)

So that's about 17 or 18 people (28% of 63) who reported experiencing crime (excluding fraud), who said that their gender identity is different to their sex at birth.

and I think if they can find an expert on free speech who does not need to resort to supporting harmful communications themselves

at your irony! 'We support free speech as long it's kind!'

Good to see NU agree!

I still keep reading the title of this thread on the board and grinning at the sheer overblown drama of it.

Sarah and Harry. Managing to risk the wellbeing of an entire university .

With words like 'women should have rights too'.

Snowflakes . Either too little real problems in their lives to keep them occupied so they have to go inventing them, or absolutely no resilience of any kind.

There you go @suggestionsplease1 The University agree with Sarah.

Well yes, of course. Which is why I posted that first link which relates to a database where hundreds of thousands of people were interviewed in a National Crime Victimisation Survey, achieving real statistical power and indicating that trans people were four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than non trans people.

The UK still has to play catch up in conducting research with the scale, scope and rigour of this kind, and until it does, of course it is harder to show what is happening with trans victims of crime.

Out of interest, what factors do you think might be at work behind the crime victim figures for the US, where freedom of speech is paramount and minorities, especially trans people, are frequently vilified and maligned?

So the University looked at the evidence and decided that they'd acted illegally. Good to see an apology.

Now shoo squirrels....

The UK still has to play catch up in conducting research with the scale, scope and rigour of this kind, and until it does, of course it is harder to show what is happening with trans victims of crime.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (formerly the British Crime Survey) is broadly comparable in its methodology and has been conducted since 1982. However, when it comes to crime and social factors, as pointed out already, it isn't just a common language that divides the UK and US.

Out of interest, what factors do you think might be at work behind the crime victim figures for the US, where freedom of speech is paramount and minorities, especially trans people, are frequently vilified and maligned?

A lack of medical and social security safety nets and the concomitant higher level of transgender individuals active as prostitutes is likely to be a bigger factor than free speech protections, I suspect. And levels of violent crime are much higher in the US more generally.

violent crime

Trans people deem 'asking questions' as abuse and 'misgendering' as hate crime so in all honesty, I don't really trust that their definition of violent crime is the same as, say, people who are regularly actual victims of violent crime. This is what happens when you cry 'she misgendered me, literal violence' over and over and over again.

For the analysis of the NCVS : Violent victimization is defined as rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, or simple assault.

Hope that clarifies for you.

That's fine for you to say for yourself, but have you no understanding or appreciation of how others may be influenced by expression of views?

Sure, people can be persuaded.

If I were inclined to think we needed to shut down people with dangerous views, I'd probably be shitting down yours before those of SP or HM. Good thing for you that no one put me in charge. The question of who is in charge of deciding which views to shut down might be one you should think about carefully, you will need to be very convincing if you want people to take up your viewpoint because most people immediatly see the danger ingerent in that question.

I am slightly surprised you don't, you may be over-confident that you own views would be on the "allowed" list.

Part of the reason we send people to university is so they can learn how to think through arguments and subject them to critical analysis, to weigh them against evidence, and to understand their historical development and context. That is how we protect against bad ideas becoming socially dominant. It's not possible to do that in an environment with the controlled speech you are advocating.

You do not understand the purpose of the university. In the most basic way.

I will bite as I am actually interested in this data. Every year a female MP (her name escapes me right now) lists the women who have lost their lives due to male violence. Can you list the transwomen who have lost their lives in the uk in the past 5 years, due to violence for me? Or link? Or anything?

Otherwise its a meaningless statement really, bit like saying all unicorns are purple.

Yes, and the levels are driven by the huge proportion of transwomen working as prostitutes in the US:

The six-month prevalence of sex work was 37.4% in our study of transwomen from the New York metropolitan area (Nutbrock et al., 2013). Lifetime histories of sex work in this population have been estimated at 80% in San Francisco (Clements-Nolle et al., 2001); 25% - 75% in a meta-analysis across geographic areas mostly in the United States (Operario, Soma, & Underhill, 2008); 54%-80% in Asia and the Pacific region (Winter, 2012). Even in some cultural settings that recognize sexes other than male and female, such as the hijras in India, reports of sex work exceed 50% (Nanda, 1999).

Transgender Sex Work and Society, Larry Nuttbrock, Columbia University Press.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=sqyLDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT51&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

The university have stated there is no legal basis for the diversion of Sarah's emails.
Perhaps anyone asserting that this happens with their employer and that it does have a legal basis should check with both their employer and the law.

(Maybe before they post about it, in future, as it makes them look like they're either not very informed, or dishonest).

“And levels of violent crime are much higher in the US more generally.”

Well this is kind of a redundant point, I’m sure the figures generally are higher than they would be for the UK, but whatever the original figures are, this database indicates the ratio of crime victimisation and shows that trans people in the US are 4 times more likely than non trans people to experience violent victimisation.

“A lack of medical and social security safety nets and the concomitant higher level of transgender individuals active as prostitutes is likely to be a bigger factor than free speech protections, I suspect.”

I think this needs unpacking a bit.
So you seem to be saying that you expect transgender individuals are less likely to benefit from medical and social security safety nets relative to the rest of the US population?
Why do you think this might be?

Do you think there could be an educational, employment and wealth attainment gap for transgender individuals, making them more likely to be in this bracket where they can not so readily access medical and social security safety nets and more likely to enter dangerous work?

Why do you think there might be an educational, employment and wealth gap for transgender individuals?
Do you think it could be anything to do with navigating a culture that is hostile and unsupportive to them, that uses freedom of speech to malign and vilify them?
Where they experience routine prejudice and discrimination, making it harder for them to achieve in education and in employment?

I think this needs unpacking a bit.
So you seem to be saying that you expect transgender individuals are less likely to benefit from medical and social security safety nets relative to the rest of the US population?
Why do you think this might be?

No - less likely to benefit from those safety nets compared to the UK! As I've explained, with a lengthy quote and citation, the proportion of transgender individuals involved in prostitution in the US is very large. Prostitution entails enormously higher risks of rape, sexual assault, etc than the general population faces. So the figures are not reflective of the situation for transgender people here in the UK. Plus, as I have also outlined above, the legal protections enjoyed by transgender individuals in the UK are also very different.

So lets get this straight.

Women are routinely raped, assaulted and murdered with us losing 3 ish a week. Yesterday it was reported that what was it 870 paedophiles and grooming gangs were being let off, with no criminal record, if they 'apologise' to the victims. Women who are raped face their whole lives being shred to pieces, for a 2% chance of a charge against their rapist.

But trans people are the most oppressed and biggest victims in the UK because they upped the anti a few years ago and reported every little transgression and so invented their own niche hate crime stats?

Trans people are the safest population in the UK. They have the government, NHS, police, schools, universities, HR departments, large corporations all looking out to protect them from whatever it is they face.

@suggestionsplease1 in reply to your question I 100% think that SP should have a platform to speak at my university. Universities are in the business of inviting people in to speak. In my faculty alone we will have 30 -50 or so seminars, events, sessions every month during term time - and that isn't counting all the guest lectures within modules. This is what happens in universities all the time. Have some of these speakers got views others would disagree with? Of course. Is it possible that some may have sent a tweet I don't like? Also of course. Would I deplatform them as a result? Don't be ridiculous.

As an aside, given what suggestionsplease does on sooooo many MN threads, am I the only person to think their choice of username is singularly inappropriate?

Thanks @DeaconBoo and @IcakethereforeIam for flagging up Sarah's tweet with the letter in response to her complaint. I am repeating here in case anyone is following the OP route to find the useful stuff amongst the digressions!

twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1534481109274312710

So out of interest, is there a line anywhere, or is there just no line with alternative viewpoints?

So say in my previous example of the individual who believed they had research and statistics for increased inherent criminality of a particular ethnicity and had proposals that they wanted to share for safeguarding the rest of the population, would you be happy to ask them to speak at your university?