Is there a simple explanation for why so many academics have fallen for this?

[resistingreality]

Hi all, this is a bit of a woolly question but I am trying it anyway. I am an academic in the broad area of equality and diversity (not specifically sex-based inequalities). I am aware of many other academics, people far senior to me and much more 'successful,' and who I admire for their work, who are fully behind gender ideology. Some are advocates of queer theory and work in this area, but not all. Most are feminists, and one very prominent example posted on twitter this week saying that anybody who called themselves gender critical was not (a feminist, that is). It sent a shiver down my spine partly because I simply cannot understand this. I can sort of understand how people not immersed in these debates could be swayed by the 'be kind' thing and not see how trans rights and women's rights might clash. But these are intelligent, well-read, people who are supposedly (as academics) led by evidence. I simply can't understand how they can't see the very active harms caused by gender ideology. Or ... perhaps they can, and they don't care? But this requires a shift in my thinking to accept that women (and some men) who profess to stand for other women and have often built a career on this ... simply don't. I'll also admit to not knowing what to do. I want to stand up for my beliefs and I absolutely hate this conspiracy of silence but I am also aware that these more prominent academics could damage my own career and I don't feel brave. Help!

I guess there are a number of factors; environment of the University, general left wing leanings... I personally know a number of academics from where I did my PhD (scientific department) who are following the TWAW line and they seem fully committed to the idea that this cause is the very same as same sex marriage or general gay rights and haven't given any/much consideration to the actual issues at play (children transitioning, women's rights etc..).
Shocks me to see people whose career is in biology and who are so anti misinformation regarding vaccines, evolution etc.. come out with this stuff!

I think this goes some way towards explaining it.

Hmm interesting @Lollipopony The trouble is, the people I am thinking of have devoted much of their career to exploring issues of inequality and injustice. That is what makes it astonishing to me that they cannot take a reasoned approach which respects everybody but recognises the specific harms of gender ideology to specific groups. I'm baffled and I think I find it so painful in part because it induces a sort of cognitive dissonance: people who proclaim to speak for women who apparently do not care about women.

Someone might have link for original of this or you might access to T.H.E @resistingreality . Or find it on Twitter. Think this explains it pretty well.
www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/researchers-are-wounded-academias-gender-wars

Oh brilliant @damemaud - I'll look at that. I think I've realised that wounded is a good word. I feel almost betrayed by people who I previously admired. It really undermines the foundations of how I think!

I've posted this link before but it gives interesting background about how the academy became corrupted. Peter Boghosian, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose have done quite also of work in this area, they talk and write about the concepts of "idea laundering" and the "legitimacy crisis" in academia. Watching their interviews about The Grievance Studies Affair is both fascinating and frightening.

Benjamin Boyce did a huge series of interviews about Evergreen College where the issues were about race rather than gender but they do give some insight in to what can happen when otherwise intelligent and rational people get caught up in the political activism of social justice. Brett Weinstein, the Professor at the centre of the Evergreen debacle, also has a podcast (The Dark Horse Podcast) which discusses the counterproductive excesses of social justice activism.

I think there are many reasons. Intelligence doesn’t always equate to common sense being one. Lack of real world experience another. How many academics have only ever worked in academia? The best lecturers I had at Uni were the ones who worked in industry and came to academia late. They had ‘lived experience’ of what they were teaching and were able to be far more critical of the range of theories around the course.

If you find an archive for it, please repost on here! I can't find it anywhere.
Look forward to hearing what you think of it!

archive.ph/Awx3k

Knew someone would come through! Thanks nauticunt .

🙄😂not rudenaming you! Sorry!
Nauticant

I think there is a big difference to most GC women about how threatening they find trans women and trans men.

Ill cut to the chase and further posit that it is older trans women that GC women have more safeguarding worries re crossdressing/fetishes.

Most academics in universities I would assume are mostly in contact with young people going through the usual angst of the teenage years and of course seeing young people with genuine gender dysphoria. They are seeing students who have genuine problems and those that transition, wholly or partly, probably look a lot more like their assumed identity than a ‘bloke in a bad wig’.

I think many GC women worry more about those acting in bad faith than the genuinely young people just trying to find their place in the world.

The other issue of the early medicalising of teenagers with hormone blockers, breast binders and surgery is another issue. I think many people are only now realising how quick some doctors were to put them on a path to transitioning. The closing of the Tavistock GID centre is an example. Perhaps as a professional group some academics put too much faith in another professional group, doctors.

I'm as baffled as you are, OP. The reluctant conclusion I've come to is that a lot of academics aren't as clever as you'd expect them to be, and that they are just as susceptible to falling for groupthink as anyone else. Cowardice plays a big part too.

There is also something in the idea that trans ideology sells itself as being much more sophisticated than traditional feminism. Only silly old dunces would imagine that there are only two sexes, whereas very clever people know that sex is extremely complicated and exists on a spectrum. There's that line attributed to George Orwell that some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals will believe them - I think this perhaps falls into that category.

I also think that Stonewall has been such a trusted presence for so long that they have full control of some of the narratives which means nobody bothers to ask exactly how many trans people have committed or considered suicide, or how many have been killed for being trans. The actual numbers for both are minuscule, and Stonewall uses evidence very selectively, but people don't question them enough. The narrative of trans people as more vulnerable than any other group will take a lot of dismantling.

God, I love that last line @royalcorgi Especially more generally as the kind of academic (who used to work in industry) and sometimes struggles with theory, and can't help wondering whether much of it is about making something that could be explained in quite simple terms, extraordinarily complicated. While also grappling with imposter syndrome.

Most academics don't want to be seen as trampling on a vulnerable group of people, and in addition, it surely gets you quite a lot of kudos amongst the students if you are supporting the same cause..

In my opinion it’s a combination of:

1. believing that transgender people are so oppressed that their needs must be prioritised at all times. This is probably a product of the culture in universities.
2. They think that they are clever, meaning that they buy into complex theories around sex being a construct etc and don’t worry that it doesn’t make sense/about the real-world implications. They can exist comfortably in a very theoretical space, so abstract theories are just as real to them as human bodies are to a normal person. There is a long-standing tradition of some academic disciplines being entirely self-serving and this is just more along those lines.

Hahaha @DameMaud, that was proper funny.

There are disciplines where obfuscation is valued over clarity - if you can confuse someone with word salad they're less likely to point out you're talking nonsense and if they do you can claim its because they're too stupid to understand.

If you've got feminist academics who have nodded along to Judith Butler then they're already practised at pausing critical thinking to go along with the fashionable. Throw in a few thought terminating clichés and false stats about vulnerability and the typical purity spiral and voila.

@LifeSlalom I think number two makes particular lot of sense. I mean some of what I am seeing is the work of VERY prominent academics - people who you would think could resist groupthink. One way I can explain this is people like that do not have to deal with much challenge, given their seniority and reputation, and do not have to come down from the theoretical - although equally, one that I am thinking of has actually written a PRACTICAL HANDBOOK on feminism. Apologies for caps. I say this with care because I don't think you need your own children to 'get' the problems with gender ideology (and clearly, you can have children and be entirely captured by it). But equally, the specific person I am thinking of does not, and I wonder if this is one fact making this a little more abstract.

So glad you didn't feel erased nauti !

I think one element is similar to that which is currently playing out in the Arts and media: it's a very white, middle class, privileged field, feels guilty about that especially since BLM, has largely abandoned social class politics, particularly since Brexit and the popular idea in #FBPE circles that the working class are a bunch of knuckle dragging racist sheep so can be ignored now, and has found a new 'minority group' that is also very white and middle class that it can easily identify into and with, and tick the boxes of 'diversity' and 'inclusion', without having to genuinely reach out into real world unrepresented groups like working class people, POC, disabled people and the like.

I have worked in universities for 25 years, and I think this current gender identity obsession has lots of possible explanations. Personally, I think it stems from many academics having a need to be liked by their students. They want to be admired, and they see this matters to students so they go along with it. Their desire to be 'cool' and popular over rides anything. Academia is a world where people are being judged constantly - where did you study; what is your specialism - is it old fashioned, or cutting edge?; do students rate your lectures highly?; how many publications do you have?; how much grant money? (and bear in mind that this area has been highly funded - one could speculate as to why). Combine all that and it's no wonder it's attracted people to jump on this bandwagon

FOJN 's video link is concise.
Cynical Theories, which I link to to a lot, is readable about the unreadable - the various Theories (Queer Fat, Race etc.) - and their intentionally ahistoric, unintelligible and cynical nature.