Times article on academia

[SuperLoudPoppingAction]

www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/researchers-are-wounded-academias-gender-wars

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What a very brave article. Thank you Laura Favaro.

Yes well done Laura. This is an incredibly courageous research project and she provides a thoughtful evaluation of her interviews. She chose to interview academics who actually teach and research gender (not so many years ago that meant women) so this is the sharp end of the debate. I found it fascinating- and very reassuring - that even here she has plenty of GCs and moderates (effectively GCs). I'm an academic but not a gender specialist. I don't publicly advertise my views (with apologies to the courageous women and men who do and the posters up thread who condemned silence), but I've had loads of quiet conversations with people in and out of work and GCs are everywhere.

This matches what I have heard earlier through the grapevine and also what we all have seen in news and social media. This is NOT how universities are supposed to function, and it's sad that this must be said.

I would love to read a good explanation for why this particular ideological trend seems to come with such a large package of vitriol and at least verbal violence, attempts to close down all debate and so on. Perhaps similar things have happened in the past and I just didn't pay attention?

But if not, what is now different? Why is so much of the trans activist language catastrophising and why are we drifting further and further away from any general consensus in how we define reality?

For instance, the odd argument that binary sex is a Western colonial invention surely should have been something widely debated in the relevant academic fields?

It wasn't?, and now there are people who cite that as presumably a general historical fact applying to all cases of colonialism.

Similarly, I repeatedly read on Twitter that anyone saying that humans fall into two biological sexes only doesn't understand the latest findings in biology, yet when I look into this it's all about DSD which doesn't make the human sexes more than two. But discussing this, over and over on Twitter, doesn't seem to have any impact at all.

It's as if we have moved from "everyone can have their own opinions" to "everyone can have their own facts."

"Latest findings in biology"...

Christ.
As in what?
The latest & tiniest fucking seahorse (?!)
so tiny in fact, they're billy no mates as they
can't even locate themselves on account of being,
err, teeny weeny tiny and the rest.
So they swim about in a non-binary, queer fashion.
No sex, please.

TANSplayground frying me brain - again.

'Despite its conceptual diversity, genderism coheres around the push for gender (identity) to replace sex in most – if not all – contexts. Unlike feminism, its political subject is not female people but rather all those subjected to gender oppression – a concept that is redefined to emphasise lack of choice and affirmation relating to gender identity.'

Yes, this bit struck me, both personally, and as a working feminist academic historian (and historian of women). Laura Favaro (author of the THE article) pins it beautifully there.

The gender ideology extremists have lost sight of what feminism, and the women's movement is and - importantly - does. Centres women.

The gender ideology extremists have lost sight of what feminism, and the women's movement is and - importantly - does. Centres women.

I’m not sure they all have. Many of them realise this. And that’s why feminism and the women’s movement are the main targets of vitriol.

Turns out that there are a lot of people who really, really hate the idea of centring women.

I was at "Many genderist academics struggled, or were discomfited, when asked to provide their own definitions of sex, gender and (particularly) gender identity, despite their research and teaching revolving around these very topics."

I have always been proud to call myself a feminist. I think I was born one. I fought in the sixties and seventies for equal pay, equal rights and so on and was also proud to see the progress we made in the battle to see women treated as independent individuals and fully functioning humans, rather than appendages to the default male.

I have finally, and with huge reluctance, stopped calling myself a feminist. I have nothing in common with this tribe of batshit women who are sucking up to the trans ideology, throwing their sisters under the bus and taking the TRA vipers into their bosoms.

It is truly the 21st century version of the labotomy and I can no longer "identify" as a feminist and for those individuals who do call themselves feminists and have bought into this ideology - shame on you and your igorance.

I am so glad I was/am a scientific academic - this nonsense has no traction in the sciences.

Thank you for this, ImNotAnExpert

It's bloody chilling when a nation's universities become prohibitionist towards thought and debate. Especially when it's targeted against women.

Can I ask what fields remain free from this because it's live in medical/physiology journals. (A hacked off reviewer may be commenting here.)

Can I ask what fields remain free from this because it's live in medical/physiology journals. (A hacked off reviewer may be commenting here.)

Engineering, mathematics, physics, chemistry, most of computer science, earth sciences, ocean sciences, .... All the fields that don't involve ethics clearance for their work, as their research does involve people.

Research does NOT involve research on people.

@acfree123 those disciplines may be free of this nonsense in some places but not at all. I've heard some unbelievable rubbish in physics for instance

"When asked to describe their arguments, however, she responded: “I don’t know if what I understand or what I think are the issues, are the issues, I’ll be honest with you – I stay out of their way.” This remarkable coupling of condemnation and ignorance regarding gender-critical feminism was fairly common among genderist academics. Many readily admitted that they limit their academic engagements, including their reading, to their “echo chambers and bubbles” where, as one journal editor noted, “we all share basically the same perspectives”."

This is insane. Just insane. They're saying "I am prepared to condemn and silence a group of people who have a different opinion from me, but I don't understand what my own opinion is, or how it differs from theirs."

It is absolutely fucking batshit. And it is happening in our universities. Why is no one doing anything about it? Why aren't THE reporting on this every single week?

This sort of stuff is being reported in journals like The Spectator, Spiked and The Telegraph. You won’t find it on the BBC

True. Also being reported in the Mail and the Times.

But THE's remit is to cover what's happening in higher education. For the past five years this huge news story has been unfolding in front of their eyes: a news story about the bullying of academics, about censorship, about the collective denial in multiple academic disciplines of scientific reality in favour of a pseudoscience that is intellectually equivalent to flat Earthism or astrology. It ought to be a massive story for them. And yet there have been something like three stories in five years. What on earth is wrong with their journalists?

This is insane. Just insane. They're saying "I am prepared to condemn and silence a group of people who have a different opinion from me, but I don't understand what my own opinion is, or how it differs from theirs."

It is absolutely fucking batshit. And it is happening in our universities. Why is no one doing anything about it? Why aren't THE reporting on this every single week?

Exactly. Like the two dead women a week, it's just background noise to be ignored.

But THE's remit is to cover what's happening in higher education. For the past five years this huge news story has been unfolding in front of their eyes: a news story about the bullying of academics, about censorship, about the collective denial in multiple academic disciplines of scientific reality in favour of a pseudoscience that is intellectually equivalent to flat Earthism or astrology. It ought to be a massive story for them. And yet there have been something like three stories in five years. What on earth is wrong with their journalists?

Why has nobody reported on the story that brings death threats, sackings and social ostracisation to anyone who raises it?

Wow! That is a scorching quote. Really nails the issue. Really exposes it for what it is.

Yes it does. It is infiltrating there too.

The most shocking thing in the article is the acceptance of those death threats etc because it would be intellectually uncomfortable to do anything else.

I say shocking, but actually it comes from the same place of apologist avoidance that has plagued left wing academic righteousness around all kinds of terrorist activities for decades. I remember being an undergrad many years ago and being taught about the ‘resistance’ tactics of all these marginalised groups in overly simplistic ways. With an added air of almost romanticism around this stuff.

It’s the same rhetorical move, which conveniently avoids all the messy complexity and lack of moral certitude in any of this.

Well yes, this is it! This a 'philosophy' which cannot define its own key terms - woman, man, trans, gender, gender identity. They can't define them! Yet still don't see how this shows the conceptual vacuity at the heart of their ideology. Its astonishingly disturbing that something with such a lack of foundation, a lack of coherence, has gained such traction. I overheard a couple of staunch gender ideologist friends saying they did not know what to say to their young children now, when they ask what a boy is, as they can no longer say a boy is a young male or has a penis. Yet this still did not seem to get them to reflect that perhaps the ideology they are following does not actually make sense or hold up to scrutiny!

apologist avoidance is a very human trait, though. Most of us are guilty of swerving things for a quiet life.

Well yes, this is it! This a 'philosophy' which cannot define its own key terms - woman, man, trans, gender, gender identity. They can't define them!

They quite literally don't know what they are talking about. They talk about a 'woman' but they do not know what one is. Or they claim not to. Why aren't these views just laughed away? The whole thing is totally baffling.