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 absolutely think this is a large part of it. I read something years ago, about how the demographic in journalism has shifted for example- that there used to be more journalists who came up through life experience and now much more frequently young graduates - and the impact of that.

I guess with more people generally going to university than in previous generations, could this be part of the shift- bias more to academic and conceptual thinking more than from experience in the real world?

Another part of this which I think is relevant is that these culture wars are very much centred on language. The idea that changing and controlling language is a way to change and control the world. I think academics are susceptible to this way of thinking because they are already thinking in language and manipulating language and working with the sorts of coded and specialist language which is used in academia. So they are dealing with this issue at a level of abstraction.

It's the same reason why writers, librarians, booksellers etc are so susceptible. And to some extent, it makes everyone on social media susceptible. It is an abstract field that depends on the most subtle manipulations of language. People who are good at words gain status and respect quickly. Those who are immersed in language, whose social and professional interactions take place through text, are more likely to be lost in the abstraction.

I'm sure there are other elements to this, as people have already mentioned, but I think this is a key part of it.

Really interesting replies

my cousin is an academic and I can never quite tell if she believes half the shit she spouts or is just repeating what she thought was impressive word salad from someone else. Same for her colleagues - I used to socialise with them but she moved away for work.

another thing is the claim to be left leaning but then she was really annoyed that she would have to pay the NI increase. There's always a strong sense of "I want better public services but others should pay".

My parents always held academics in high esteem. I didn't - but I think less of them now, after the craziness exhibited over the last ten years.

I've mentioned it before, but Andrew Doyle's latest interview with Triggernometry reflects a lot of what I feel. This has been going on for years, it can't be written off as people getting carried away or not thinking. And it has massively serious consequences, which many academics just won't acknowledge, so you can only conclude they mean and believe what they are saying.

I'm a POC, as is my academic cousin. I don't feel that we aren't represented but I do feel a group of academics are trying very hard to convince us that we are traitors if we don't think a certain way.

This discussion is really informative and interesting. I do think that it is difficult for academics given the emphasis on TWAW from universities and student unions. You do run the risk of complaints and grievances if you are explicitly GC

It’s like a religion OP. It’s particularly attractive because it’s goodies versus baddies and a very low effort way to get applause and attention is to say TWAW.

By the way, when trying recruiting suicide bombers, the pitch from terrorists goes something like “There is a great evil abroad in the world and a few are taking a stand against it, you can be one of those few…” It is not actually hard to convince otherwise rational people to believe crazy things, all you have to do is give them an enemy and tell them they’re part of a heroic struggle.

I work in a STEM department and the only people with email pronouns are new, young female admin staff. I think it hasn't taken much of a foothold here because our undergrad course is so intense the students physically do not have time to navel-gaze, and we have very strong industry links. Our research funders are interested in very specific results ie are the pipes in this chemical plant strong enough? Wonky maths/physics will be shown up under experimental conditions, so there is certainly no space for obfuscating language. These subjects are also very international, with students and staff using English as their second/third/fourth language so clarity is vital.

So I assume that without scientific rigour as a bedrock, Arts departments are much more vulnerable. From an admin point of view I find the dodgy PhD supervision at supposedly respected institutions baffling.

I ordered some workshop electronics gear the other day- including male/female connectors. I'm sorry to report that there was not a non-binary option.

I was at a uni open day this weekend and listened to a talk by someone in a rainbow lanyard with various badges about the inate differences in how men and women speak and use language. It was cognitive dissonance on display.

Don't underestimate the desire to tick all the boxes on a funding approval which has listed a commitment to this ideology due to the influence on 'inclusion' being underpinned with every trial and research application.

If the potential for actually losing their funding, added to the potential of having their office door pissed on, or placards with '[insert your name] out' as you walk onto campus is too much for most normal people to want to bear. It is just easier to go along with it for an easy life.

This made me LOL.

But a male friend working in a big engineering firm has just been lamenting the change to workplace loos, now all unisex. Not many women in his particular section. Everyone is annoyed and complaining to HR who so far are saying they cannot understand the complaints and they are merely trying to be inclusive.

He thought he'd escaped all this nonsense. But as Douglas Murray says, the students of 10 or 15 years ago are now running HR.

Academia is a closed shop to the vast majority of people. Academics are not necessarily the most intelligent people in society, yet their status as "experts" working in the hallowed halls of education gives them that cache, irrespective of whether it is deserved. You can get a PhD in seemingly anything and then set yourself up, with your doctorate title, as a great thinker, getting plenty of media gigs and you feet through the doors of think tanks reshaping society. The language of academia is often impenetrable, coded and couched in terms only other academics would understand. People are beginning to see through the smoke and mirrors. We see the intellectual difference between, say a Prof. Robert Winston and a Prof Sally Hines. The frauds are on the defensive.

I'd say the simple answer was funding.
Look everyone really knows the difference between sex and gender so the question becomes why are supposedly intelligent people lying? And the answer, usually, is money.
You see it all the time in local government, academia and the third sector - swathes of money is directed to certain topics and suddenly 'everyone' develops a specialism in that topic. It's the same with the gender stuff.
The other issue in academia is that Arts Departments have flirted with post-modernism for decades. Those theories were consigned to essays and lectures - where they had a place. When they tipped into RL without any of the constraints of academic rigour or a basic political undermining or a standard of educational attainment to see them in the wider context of other theories, that's where problems started.

political underpinning not undermining

Toilets in office blocks are the responsibility of the Facilacaities function, not HR. I've worked in HR for years and never once had any involvement in facilities management. Your friend is probably complaining to the wrong people @EmmaH2022

Academics are people who have never left school and still act like they are in the playground.

Facilities!

They are used to fighting for the rights of those asking for help. No need to question it.
Generally people who have previously been asking for equality are, in fact, at risk of being disadvantaged.

Race
Sex
Sexuality
Disability
Age

Now the group still is at risk of disadvantage- I would undoubtedly be slightly prejudiced and uncomfortable about employing a poorly presented trans person on the reception desk of my company, for example. A bias I need to examine.

The difference is that the group has expanded exponentially to include a huge number of people who are disadvantaged only by their poor behaviour, and the 'disadvantage' they are trying to address is being allowed to violate other people's boundaries.

Now seemingly self evident disadvantage that needed addressing was historically not self evident. My small businessman dad couldn't see why he wouldn't avoid employing a young woman likely to get pregnant. It was self evidently risky.

They think this is the same, because of habit of previous experience.

It's an excellent question.

With many excellent answers on here already.

Some further thoughts.

Academia is really precarious these days, jobs are hard to come by/hold on to, I see why academics are unwilling to risk speaking out on this, when their jobs are threatened already. Why make a bad situation worse?

There were some great posts on here about a week ago about the rise of post modern theory and the impact that's had on magical thinking, breaking down boundaries, everything's possible mentality.

Academics tend towards the left and I feel the left focus on how humans could/should be in an ideal world, whereas the right is more grounded in how they actually are in reality. That's obviously a huge generalisation, but simplifying for this discussion.

I see how the left gravitates towards the positive potential here (people breaking free from the constraints of their bodies to be their true selves, the triumph of an oppressed class of people) without engaging with the more problematic realities (sex changes not actually being possible or 'the answer' for many, the capacity for trans rights to be exploited for money, power, sexual kicks).

Plus the point about white, middle class guilt is a great one.

So I am starting to see why, though the denial or basic scientific principles from academics will always blow my mind.

Also, the left are not particularly great at acknowledging when they've been on 'the wrong side of history' though God help us, that has happened.

So that's impacting too. They feel the left is the side of moral right. Their historical understanding isn't sharp enough to question that the way they should do.

Guessing you lose funding if you say anything. A college would look at what happened to Kathleen Stock and think about the cost of policing and navigating that and think "No, thanks".
The thought of little darlings with time on their hands protesting every five minutes on your turf (no pun intended) would put you off.

I think that for people who have a vested interested in being on the side of the underdog, particularly people like you mention, who work in the area of inequality - they have aligned themselves with those who are struggling, and so are presented with TW as the 'next cause' or whatever, and don't want to see themselves on the side of 'oppressor' or whatever it is.
They have this kind of white knight mentality and it clouds their vision a bit.

Traditionally academics didn't 'fight for the rights of people'. That wasn't their role.

Students may have done so. Academic papers may have formed the basis for RL research that slotted into campaigning positions but 'fighting for rights' was the antithesis of academic work. Because if you're 'fighting' you're not being objective. You've already decided on a 'side'. There's nothing intellectual about emotionally adopting a position and then looking for evidence to justify your opinion. Academia was about following facts not feelings.

I can just imagine how our professors would have reacted if we'd all suddenly decided Saussure or any other post-modernist was 'right' and all other theorists and theories could be ignored and rejected. You couldn't have gained a degree with that attitude in the UK.

However, the US has always been different and part of this push to post-modernism and gender theory (alongside the financial incentives) has been the Americanisation of Europe. It's marked a real erosion in critical thought and practices.

When I was sort of in academia around 2008, I first came across the whole gender fluidity concept.

Honestly, I thought it was spectacular. A new idea. Exciting. Progress. All of those things you feel when you have an amazing new piece of information that no-one else has.

Combined with the rise of the rights movements (especially Pride etc), combined with being totally engaged with feminism, combined with a collective move away from Thatcherism and a 'kinder politics', I was taken in. It also tapped into something that was around at the time about gender stereotypes, I was a fairly new mother and realising that having a family and career was pretty fucking hard, and I sort of had some will to 'have the easy life' of being a man. It felt 'right on' to not have to submit to your biology, you could 'be more man' if you wanted, and I could feel less shackled by womanhood.

Anyway, obviously I realised quite soon after that it was all bullshit, but I can see why people still want to believe it. It's nice. It feels good to be somehow free from all the constraints of society and history and not thinking like the 'common person' who just spits out the kids and accepts their lot in life.

Just to be clear, I don't think this, but there is a part of everyone who wants to be seen as intellectual and cleverer than the rest and academics are literally paid to do that so 'new exciting ideas' are what they are susceptible to falling for. Look at how many times they will talk about being on the right side of history - that is what they think they are doing with the 'new exciting idea'.

Terrifying isn't it. Unrelated to your specific topic, but along the same lines, I once had a conversation with a lecturer at a university (PhD in physics), who denied climate change, said it didn't exist and this is normal for the earth. She was a scientist who worked at a university. I was in disbelief.

Maybe it's partly because with an academic mindset/argument, you can make a case for almost anything. Angels dancing on pinheads.

I've just read the recent book Bitch, about the myths surrounding male and female behaviour in the animal kingdom. It's excellent – but it goes a bit peculiar in the last chapter, which talks about species of animal that change sex, sometimes more than once, and that have ambiguous genitalia and reproductive behaviour. The author's point is that this makes sex a spectrum.
Obviously I don't doubt that these things are true of moles/barnacles/whatever, but there seems to be a subtext that this must mean it applies to humans too and we need to be more open-minded in how we think about biological sex.
Maybe it's because I'm quite annoyed by sensitive to this sort of stuff these days, but it seemed a bit tacked-on and like agitprop.

Are you looking for a route to empathy? The closest I've come to empathising with this insanity is extrapolating from a minor insanity of my own. I lose stuff often, and when I do I very frequently find myself getting angry with the man I live with for hiding or moving it. I keep this anger to myself because my rational mind knows that nearly every time this happens, he didn't in fact move my stuff, it's my brain trying to blame-shift some ADHD related shame. I can see through my brain's bullshit narrative in this case because it's a repeated pattern that I recogise. There are probably other, more elaborate bullshit narratives I'm not even close to having insight into.