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

It shouldn't need saying, suggestions, but any speech allowed within the law should be welcome on campus. Anyone unable to listen and participate in polite and respectful debate doesn't have to attend, obviously. Although it will be their loss, because one's ideas can only be tested and strengthened by being challenged.

Well, despite the very many and generally irrelevant posts, which to tell the truth I was soon scrolling by as being reality-averse, it turns out that our prolific spammer was wrong and Northumbria University realised that their staff had opened them up to a litigation and PR nightmare and did the decent thing with their apology and admission of wrongdoing.

suggestionsplease1

Just FYI really, to save you the job of digging deeper should you have wanted to (but obviously don't just take my word for it 😉)

I have just had a bit of a search regarding #SayYesToHate as I remember feeling a bit surprised and somewhat uncomfortable about this from Fair Cop at the time, despite knowing that they are firmly against the police taking a political stance.

Glinner had Harry Miller on and said he didn't like it and Harry explained in a bit more depth how it came about.

Harry said (and I confess I haven't fact checked) that in 2018 there were approx 2500 hate crimes against trangender individuals posted on the government website. He also said that as far as anyone is aware, there are between 200k and 500k transpeople in the UK. The police then said a recent survey found that 40% of transgender people had suffered a hate crime. Harry pointed out that those figures did not add up - 2500 is not 40% of 200,000. Harry then said the police had blatantly lied by saying 40% of transpeople have been victims of hate crime, then on the back of that fake percentage they put up a big thing saying 'Say No to Hate'.

(At this point can I just say that I don't mean to minimise the experiences of anyone who has been a victim of actual hate crime and I sincerely hope the perpetrators were caught and punished).

Harry then goes on to say he looked at what the police considered 'hate' in terms of what they encouraged people to report and their definition of hate included:

Unfriendliness
Dislike
Antagonism
Ill will - if you aren't going to act on it, is it really a police matter?
Ill feeling
Spite

So in the opinion of Harry, if the police are saying dislike = reportable as hate, unfriendliness = reportable as hate etc which really aren't police matters, the only sensible response is 'screw you, we say yes to hate' until you (the police) change your definition of what constitutes hate to something we can all get on board with.

Having said all that, I haven't checked the true vision website to see if those are still the definitions used by the police, but I have no reason to doubt what Harry said about the reason behind that tweet and hashtag at the time it was posted. Dislike is not a police matter. Nor is unfriendliness ffs, or I'm in trouble because I can be a right grumpy mare on occasion! I do think that without context, that tweet comes across badly, but luckily I have access to the internet, so was able to do my own research.

I haven't checked the true vision website to see if those are still the definitions used by the police

It would seem some form of those are still in play although it's difficult to know what is meant by "dislike."

Exactly this. How can anyone learn to debate and think critically if they are never exposed to viewpoints with which they disagree?

When I was at uni, they invited some truly appalling people (by my standards) to speak. Some of the things they said made sense, and some of them just reinforced my view that they were utter bastards. But thats sort of the whole point of uni - you listen to opposing views, you think critically, you develop your own thoughts and conclusions.

Why do some people now think this is such a terrible idea?

What the TRAs say is that it is illegal by law to state the sex of someone. So anyone who wants to tell truths in a university for example talk about male on female violence would not be able to because we can't define male or female any more so any hint or suggestion that anyone that is trans committing male on female violence is outing them and as such, is illegal.

So we cannot talk about male violence ever again and anyone that does gets the death threats, which scares the living daylights out of them. So they don't talk about it.

That fits in with my understanding of #sayyestohate NancyDrawed, that when "hate" is defined so broadly as to emcompass things that are actually helpful to a democratic society, such as there are situations when sex is more relevant than gender identity, then it's simply true that one can support certain kinds of (mis-defined) "hate" being exercised.

Now, as far as the wisdom of starting such a hashtag allowing twitter dwellers to misrepresent the intended message for evermore, that was definitely lacking.

Very interesting NancyDrawed
I recall the trans extremists who were let loose in the CPS told children that if they failed to welcome a child confused about their sex into a friendship group, they would be guilty of a hate crime. Needless to say (as with this university) the CPS withdrew them rather than subject them to judicial scrutiny.
Imagine the hate crime statistics if the CPS had their way and children's ever changing friendships were included😮

That phrase regularly jumps into my head, on this subject.

To try and summarise this thread:

Main topic:

1. Sarah Phillimore's email to a member of staff who had invited her to speak was intercepted because she and her Fair Cop co-invitee were regarded as posing a "safety and wellbeing issue".

2. She only learned that her email had not been received when attending the event and speaking to its organiser.

3. It took a FOIA request to uncover the truth.

4. Phillimore accused the university of unlawful interference with her Article 10 rights, her protected 'gender critical' beliefs pursuant to the Equality Act, her personal and sensitive data, and breaching section 43 of the Education (No 2) Act 1986.

5. The university unequivocally apologised and promised to take action to prevent a recurrence.

Side topic(s):

1. Fair Cop criticised Humberside Police for virtue signalling its inclusivity on the International Transgender Day of Remembrance using the hashtag #SayYesToHate.

2. No transgender people had been murdered in the UK in the past twelve months, and indeed longer.

3. Humberside Police had gone beyond the law in recording "non-crime hate incidents" against Phillimore's Fair Cop colleague Harry Miller, as established in the High Court.

4. Phillimore posted a blog in which she wrote: "It wasn’t my hashtag. But I wish it had been. I wish I had the ovaries not just to think it, but say it.

I accept that it upset and horrified many and gave too easy a target for those numerous anonymous accounts who like to mutter and jeer from the sidelines. So it was right to reflect and apologise.

But we do need to talk about hate — what it means and what we do about it."

4. The situations of transgender people in the UK are significantly different from those in the US, Brazil, and other countries where the deaths remembered on the International Transgender Day of Remembrance occur, very overwhelmingly amongst transgender prostitutes.

5. Women are killed at a much higher rate - 3 per week in the UK - but the victims don't have an equivalent to the International Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Not mentioned in the thread:

1. The threats of violence are one-way, whether online or in real life.

2. Many feminist meetings have been targeted by attempts to disrupt them, resulting in at least one criminal conviction.

3. It was TRAs manhandling (personhandling?) a peaceful participant at the recent feminist event in Manchester.

4. TRAs and Stonewall do not denounce the threats of, and actual occurrences of, violence against "TERFS".

5. Nevertheless, posters here are demanded to distance themselves from #SayYesToHate, despite a) its legality and b) no actual hate being threatened or taking place.

Doubtless I've missed something, but this is meant to be a summary and not exhaustive.

Ok – I see the approach you were taking but I don’t think this is really a viable approach – we are not in a good position to compare stats on transgender victims of crime in the US with transgender victims of crime in the UK because, as we’ve already seen on this thread, the UK does not presently have large scale research studies with robust stats on this issue. This will likely be achieved over the next few years.

Even when this is achieved in the UK direct comparisons with US data will be difficult because of different definitions used – eg of crime, of transgender status, different methodologies etc. But we will be able to get some idea, certainly.

What I was really asking was why, in the US National Crime Victimisation Survey, where hundreds of thousands of individuals were interviewed across households in the US selected at random, are transgender individuals four times more likely than non-transgender individuals to experience violent victimisation?

We can make direct comparisons here between populations because it is the one methodology, all households were treated in the same way, and in fact the research had no initial remit to specifically consider crimes against trans people – it is just the general NCVS, which is administered twice a year by the US Census Bureau, not by researchers who have a special interest in this field.

What do people think are the factors at work that make transgender people so many more times more likely to be victims of crime compared to their non-trans counterparts in the US?

Some posters have suggested that overrepresentation in sex work might be partly behind the figures.

But why does this overrepresentation occur in the first place?

The research points to social factors - discrimination on systemic, institutional, and interpersonal levels, which mean that it can appear to be their only viable option for work. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24313294/

Where does the discrimination and prejudice start from?

It starts from a culture that allows or is actively supportive of hostility towards transgender people.

It starts from the low-level stuff; the shunning, the small aggressions, the lack of family support and social support, the verbal hostility, the street abuse, the #SayYesToHate tweets, the refusal of jobs that cumulatively gives rise to that bigger picture where transgender people are in social contexts where they are far more likely to be victims.

The research points to social factors - discrimination on systemic, institutional, and interpersonal levels, which mean that it can appear to be their only viable option for work. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24313294/

For anyone who was unable to access that paywalled paper, what were the takeaway points for you?

Suggestions - you continually respond to my posts without reading or engaging with them. You say: What I was really asking was why, in the US National Crime Victimisation Survey, where hundreds of thousands of individuals were interviewed across households in the US selected at random, are transgender individuals four times more likely than non-transgender individuals to experience violent victimisation?

As I have repeatedly pointed out, with citations, in the US transgender people disproportionately participate in the enormously risky activities around prostitution. All people who do that, regardless of sex or orientation, are massively at risk of the violent victimisation you keep bringing up.

I'm beginning to doubt that you are engaging in this discussion with the minimal level of good faith required to have a reasonable debate on the issues at hand.

I meant to add that the social, demographic, and legal factors behind US transgender participation in prostitution have already been alluded to above. The US is NOT the UK - there are numerous reasons, pointed out ad nauseam, why the US data is inapplicable.

Let's break this down into easy chunks, @suggestionsplease1. Please answer YES, NO, or DON'T KNOW:

1) Did Northumbria University apologise for restricting and diverting Sarah Phillimore's email correspondence?

2) Are prostitutes more susceptible to rape, sexual assault, and other forms of physical violence?

3) Are transgender individuals in the US disproportionately represented in the sex trade?

4) Has any transgender person been murdered in the UK in the past two years?

5) Can you name any trans rights event that gender critical feminists have attempted to disrupt in the UK?I

6) Can you name any gender critical feminist who has ever been found guilty of assaulting a transgender person at an event?

@TheBiologyStupid …… silence is golden, and it reflects the sunlight so well!

@TheBiologyStupid I take my hat off to your patience and clarity.

Yes I would be happy for a university to invite this speaker. I would expect the Q&A session to be full of robust questioning of their data and methodology. How else do you effectively counter claims that "research and statistics" prove stuff?

suggestionsplease; I'm not sure if you're old enough to remember the BNP. Their leader, Nick Griffin, cleverly played the "the establishment are trying to ban me, but I'm just saying what ordinary people think about race" line. He was invited onto Question Time to answer questions like any other politician; controversially as some thought it was giving him a free platform for potentially divisive views. As it turned out, he was thoroughly exposed as a total political lightweight. Exposed through legitimate questioning in a calm neutral environment. The BNP lost all its momentum and is now just a footnote in modern British history.

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?

(Quote from Suggestionsplease BTW). Not my area but it's my understanding that plenty of research does show this and then, when you take more than a superficial look at the data, it emerges that this is an issue of poverty, the way laws and crimes are defined and a structurally racist society.

I say again, we are universities and this is what we do. We discuss ideas and evidence and challenge it. Research improves as a result. Snapshots of society get more accurate. Ideas get hammered out and developed or discarded. THIS is why TRAs don't like discussion and don't like intelligent people getting together and talking this evidence and these ideas through in respectful and professional ways. It is because their argument can only be sustained by bullying and de-platforming. That isn't what universities are for.

Anybody who thinks ideas and beliefs make people "unsafe" has no business working at a university.

Especially when the belief in question is essentially that humans can't change sex.

FFS.

I'd love to know the analogous case for race - which race(s) are the ones who are at risk from pregnancy if they have unprotected sex and which aren't? Which races commit 98% of sexual assaults?

It's an incredibly poor analogy because it doesn't address any of the actual issues around biological sex being redefined.

Quite. When I was in Sixth Form many years ago speakers were invited to speak on all manner of topics, most of which would cause suggestionsplease1 to combust, the point of the exercise was:

1. To listen to what the speaker said
2. To think about what the speaker said
3. To question what the speaker said
4. To make our own minds up on what the speaker said

I reiterate this was in Sixth Form and yet University students today can't cope with this, ffs.

Anybody who thinks ideas and beliefs make people "unsafe" has no business working at a university.

and neither does any student have any business attending university with that attitude.

Yikes, VestofAbsurdity - where was the trigger warning before your (excellent) comment?! Still no reply from @suggestionsplease1, I see. The MN notification system must REALLY be glitching.

@TheBiologyStupid I have given myself a comprehensive telling off for failing to provide a trigger warning and giving those of a delicate nature time to access their safe space.😁

Also just testing the MN Notification system - do the special hand signal if you receive one!

Thanks for an interesting thread. I tried to post yesterday, but I couldn't from my phone.