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!

Very true.
Modern academia selects for conformity and cowardice.

academyofideas.com/2016/09/intellectuals-and-society-sowell/

nrff, sorry if someone posted this already.

OP, the straightforward answer is that academics talk any old bollocks to which funding might be attached.

There are some very brave academics prepared to say the emperor's wearing no clothes:

Jonathan Haidt

Peter Boghossian

Brett Weinstein

Jordan Peterson

Kathleen Stock

James Esses

And they've all been pushed out the system.

I think the answer is that a lot of academics are not terribly bright, especially those working in the more pseudo branches of social science - they probably don't understand Judith Butler but are mistakenly impressed by this and assume that the fact they don't understand it must mean it's really clever, rather than realising that they don't understand it is because it's a pile of illogical, convoluted nonsense.

Also, many on the (far) left are in reality quite sexist and racist - always have been. Gender ideology is very popular with them, as it gives them great cover to espouse the sexist views they always held. Much as Jeremy Corbyn gave the green light to large swathes of the far left to let out their inner antisemite. I say this as someone on the left myself - but it's not merely an accident that Labour have never had a female PM and have relatively few female or ethnic minority shadow cabinet members.

When I first peaked this really threw me as well. I am from the ‘critical’ end of the social sciences, use qualitative methods and social theory. It really disturbed me that people I respected and saw as mentors were spouting this stuff which is harmful and does the opposite of everything they were claiming to be about. As you say it made me question if everything I thought was wrong! I slowly came to the conclusion that I don’t have to throw out everything because of this madness. It definitely made me interrogate my existing positions which let’s face it is probably a good thing and I have shifted a bit theoretically. I have also lost a lot of respect for some people I admired over all this, which has been sad. I’ve also gained respect for other people though, including some who don’t agree with me but approach that disagreement like adults.

I really don't think it's just on gender that a lot of these disciplines are shoveling shit. There are basic problems that underlie a lot of their thinking, and I think often very poor scholarship over all.

Just as an example of this that is about an area that should be fundamental, there was a paper written by Adolph Reed Jr a few years ago, with another fellow, about how inequalities are identified in race studies. Basically he pointed out that the vast majority of the material produced in these journals was based on simplistic and naive understanding of the numbers and what they represented. Other scholars in disciplines like economics have pointed out similar things.

As far as why this happened - I suspect one important element is that many of these areas were essentially founded as activist projects. They had particular underlying ideas about the nature of oppression, about who was oppressed, about the nature of social justice, and about the kinds of things that might need to be done to create justice.

The problem is if your discipline is predicated on this stuff, it is not going to develop a rigorous approach to querying assumptions. And all systems have assumptions but they also need ways to deal with seeing the world in a clear way rather than simply becoming a kind of self-confirmation engine.

There are two meanings of politically 'left' - one purely economic, rooted in Marx etc. all about the workers vs capitalism, and the other, more recent, which associates identity politics with the left. The two don't necessarily coincide, as @xxyzz just said - a lot of traditional labour left men are quite sexist and some traditional working-class people can be quite racist.
It helps to keep this distinction clear.

The rise of the identity-focussed left in recent decades to largely replace the economic-focussed left is a very interesting phenomenon. Perhaps it allows middle-class reasonably wealthy people (like academics?) to feel they are on the 'good' side, by seeing themselves as left but only concentrating on inequality and grievance etc., so they don't have to acknowledge the fact that they benefit from current economic arrangements in a globalised economy.

So if you have to make a song and dance about various inequalities to prove your 'left and good' political credentials (without sacrificing your privileged class position), it makes sense to compete by being the most lefty-leftist-left ever, by showing support for the newest and most newly-discovered marginalised group, i.e. trans. After all, traditional feminism (the kind that focusses on actual women) is over a century old!

One of the big differences I have noticed between somewhat older vs younger academics, and also the ones that are more rather than less rigorous, is that the former are well read in a broad way, and the latter are not. I'm speaking here mainly of the humanities.

It seems like the expectation that an academic in the humanities will have a broad education that encompasses literature, art, philosophy, etc, isn't really a thing any more in many places.

So even if there is critical thinking there isn't the depth of knowledge, especially about historical thought, to make for very useful analysis.

Just to add to a point that has been made by others. A few years ago I heard about the concept of "luxury beliefs", which I think is appropriate here: i.e. beliefs that are adopted by the upper classes (although 'upper' in this case figuratively rather than economically) to differentiate themselves from the rest of society. I believe that a great deal of people nowadays are accepting of trans individuals, but at the same time they would harbour no doubt that the two sexes exist and that it is not possible for humans to change sex. So to differentiate yourself from the masses it is not enough to support trans rights, you have to proclaim that TWAW, literally and biologically, and that everyone who doesn't believe so is a bigot and anti-science.

I’m an academic. I can tell you that half of us think it’s unmitigated bollocks but can’t say anything because jobs are incredibly precarious at the moment and the potential repercussions by management or students are huge. Most of the other half just want to be liked by students and colleagues and to be seen as morally worthy and doing the latest Fashionable Right Thing.

A very few, largely young (or heavily deluded and invested for personal reasons, in the case of older academics), actually believe in it. But in general all grad students and undergraduates seem to be totally captured; and most older academics aren’t, but put on a front, because even just suggesting that you aren’t fully signed up to it all, or even breathing a word to them that it might all be something if a deluded historical fad, would have students up in arms and shrieking for your head to management. And you can’t be sure that management would back you.

But amongst many of us there is a lot of sotto voce mutterings of “this gender rubbish” going on quietly between likeminded colleagues.

One problem with it all — not just in academia, but everywhere at the moment and even on this thread — is that many people have opinions or theories about stuff that sound good, but just aren’t actually true. And as a society, in the last few years especially, we seem to have lost the notion that some narratives are wrong and that even if they sound plausible, they may simply be wrong. [On MN for example, there’s always a lot of stuff trotted out about “postmodernism” and nearly all of it is wrong. As someone who knows a lot about it, I see this and let it wash over me, because I know from experience that people aren’t very amenable to being corrected or to having a wrong opinion put straight.]

It’s the same with gender ideology. Many academics think it’s bollocks, but know there is no point getting into the reasons why with a gender zealot, or attempting to “educate” a resistant young person who had internalised a lot of frankly baseless rubbish from the internet. They don’t listen, and they don’t want to know, no matter how gently you try to explain. It’s entrenched and very intransigent. The only hope is that they eventually come to the realisation themselves, or that the fad for it all blows over. Though in my more pessimistic days I think maybe it’s the new idealist religion and we’ll be stuck with it for decades…

Scientific studies have shown that those identifying as trans have a brain structure more similar to the gender they say they identify with. You can’t ignore that science.

So trans people who are agender have a brain similar to ... whom? The brainless? Did you mean 'sex' instead of 'gender'? I think studies have shown that the only consistent difference between brains in male and female bodies is size, which is proportionate to the average size difference in bodies.

No matter; it's not really relevant to the OP.

OP, I am equally baffled. If I was saying 'trans women are women' yet was completely unable to thoroughly and consistently define 'trans woman' and 'woman' (and possibly 'are') I would see that as quite a major obstacle to be overcome.

And you can’t be sure that management would back you.

That's the part I still don't fully get. How did management become so beholden to clueless young ones?

I suppose the same way the police and politicians and the NHS have - via “training” and a general widespread pushing of the idea that trans people are the most oppressed, murdered and vilified group and that it’s some kind of empirical reality that you can actually be traumatically “born in the wrong body” and that taking these beliefs on board is the very latest way to tick inclusivity boxes and virtue-signal.

A trans (ftm) academic I know of through others, said on Twitter that trans people were being murdered in such vast numbers that a special trans day of remembrance is needed. That was a “gotcha” this person, an intelligent, thinking academic or so you would think, chose to broadcast - and it’s demonstrably not true and disingenuous. It doesn’t follow that trans day of remembrance exists because of high murder rates, it just exists because someone set it up. And the stats do not show that trans people are the most murdered, and even when they are murdered, it is hardly ever because of transphobic hate, but in other circumstances. (not suggesting for a second that any murder is ok or insignificant of course)

but loads of other academics retweeted this and acted out a display of “we must help this most vulnerable group”. Of course, if they believed what was being said, they wanted to be kind. But why wouldn’t they ask questions and fact-check before spreading disinformation? It is as PPs have said, it seems that actual critical thinking of the kind we associate with academics is now way down the list of priorities.

I put it down to fear, social media and the marketisation of universities. If you displease your students- you are out of a job.
If your course is unpopular and ‘cancelled’ -your university will stop running it. If you’re at conferences and being heckled and called out by threatening, sanctimonious young men in balaclavas- you have no incentive not to get on board with the prevailing nonsense.

Nobody really believes that people can change sex. We all know it’s nonsense. Most decent people are happy for other people to wear what they want or use whatever name they like. These things have been deliberately conflated to serve a men’s sexual rights agenda. It’s now a way to bash women in public life and private life.

This is no a left or right wing problem by the way- ALL major political parties have these policies. It comes at its root from successive governments not valuing higher education and not funding it properly, and successive university management teams not valuing free speech, because they need to make ends meet.

@ThatCheeseIsMine None of them will have wanted to question that claim. Because seeking the truth rather than affirming the narrative that suits them is somehow a terrible thing.

When I was an academic I taught a subject that dealt with lots of deeply entrenched societal attitudes that were based on a whole set of totally inaccurate (but morally comforting in various ways) assumptions that produced a whole set of problematic assumptions. Trying to get young people - and even colleagues - to be interested in what was really going on was a Sisyphean task.

All too easily people decide that the person asking the question is the problem and the villain. Because actually trying to understand what is going on is likely to involve many uncomfortable things and may well force you to change your thinking in ways that simply won’t line up with highly moralised categories people take as a given (see also the criticism of anyone asking questions about gender ideology as ‘right wing’/‘far right’ - it’s just a way of trying to prevent anyone asking questions that might trouble your comfortable certainties and feelings of moral superiority).

No one wants to be the one who says ‘but, that’s not even true. Is it?’. Because they will be pelted with accusations and people won’t stand with them. The university management will throw them to the wolves. Their colleagues will distance themselves so as not to be tainted by association. Even those who just try to say nothing (rather than cheering the inaccurate rubbish on) risk being ostracised for remaining silent.

It’s horrendous. And it’s all so very far away from what academics should be doing. Learning and trying to discover how things are/work seem to be discouraged - unless it’s something nice and neutral and far away from human experience. Academic values have shifted from quality and integrity in relation to trying to find out the truth to values couched as things like inclusion and participation and various other ways of not being able to do anything beyond affirming the story that the people groups viewed as most worthy want to be affirmed.

(see also the criticism of anyone asking questions about gender ideology as ‘right wing’/‘far right’ - it’s just a way of trying to prevent anyone asking questions that might trouble your comfortable certainties and feelings of moral superiority).

Yes I find that so telling - like the WORST POSSIBLE thing anyone could be is shock, horror ON THE RIGHT. I'm a traditional (economic) lefty myself but that doesn't mean it's wrong to debate ideas and listen to other views and points made, just because someone might be less left-wing than you.

I studied sociology A-level in the 80s (though not a degree) and even though the teacher was a proper lefty hippy, we discussed everything, including how people form their views and how they are led down particular paths of thought and belief, eg by media or prejudices passed down generationally - and how that applied to everything including our own beliefs. I remember big class discussions where anyone was allowed to say "but what if..." or "But I don't agree" - if they could explain their point. We were also shown how far left and far right are related and can kind of "meet round the back" where both reach extremes of intolerance and thought policing.

From a more scientific academia perspective, I think that niche expertise has a role to play too.

PhD research in physical sciences is often about a very specific problem in a narrow area of a specialised field. The undergraduate degree would have been much broader so there should be a good grounding in the general area, but that knowledge isn't actively used in research work. You can also be using quite specialist tools and devices - like an electron microscope or a particle accelerator - that is built using expertise from other fields. You can't be a PhD level expert in all of that, so you have to take a lot on trust that the science and engineering behind the tools you use are sound.

Similarly, you have to trust that people working in other fields are working with appropriate academic rigour. So if someone from another discipline presents something as a well-established tenet of their work (of course sex is a spectrum - you can have chromosomal, hormonal, gonadal sex), you assume that what they are saying and the applications presented are correct.

It's also not your discipline, so you don't have the time to get into the details to see if it all checks out. So if what you're hearing roughly supports the position you would like to take (be kind, don't want to take a right wing position), you don't look any deeper. Eg yes, a few people with a DSD like CAIS might have a chromosomal sex that differs from their gonadal sex, but that's extremely rare. It's not relevant at all to the case of trans people, who are generally unambiguously of one sex or the other.

I think Malcolm Bradbury had the answer back in the 1970s with the "History Man". Story of a mediocre sociologist who kick started his career by going woke (not used those words but its the same concept). - Went around seducing/harassing women and telling them to read Blake (he gets it wrong!) and get "A little marx, a little freud, a little social history"
Now of course they would be non binary trans fem quoting "not made but becomes a woman" and telling people to read Butler

Interesting. Did anyone see that sitcom The Witchfinder earlier this year?

It was about elite, educated men who capitalised on the social upheaval in the 17th century to make money "educating" people about witchery, and of course condemning women.

Very well-written illustration of social contagion.

I think academics, like anyone else, will say and "believe" whatever allows them to keep their funding. I think also that information has become so complex that no one person can evaluate all information, and therefore there has to be trust in the information provided by others. None of us can function if we have to verify and think through all the implications of every single thing on our own.

The pandemic exacerbated this by forcing us all, for a significant period, to rely on information provided by "trusted media" (as opposed to "untrustworthy right wing media"), services provided by the behemoth of impersonal online corporations, or to "socialize" with people we were not able to meet in person. Children went through a year or two of being "taught" by teachers they had only ever contacted through a screen. Bricks-and-mortar companies foundered, and online providers that control the online information space became more powerful. This created a new way of being in community wherein people's relationships, lives, and employment can be controlled by who has access to what information.

I think academics have always been predisposed to trust other academics (partly because academic people are a bit arrogant to begin with, and I say this as someone who used to be one). And in this new world that is rich in information and poor in on-the-ground evidence, that has just become... more so.

I saw this nice tweet earlier today. Good to see that not all academics are bought into the bollox or silenced into submission. twitter.com/EdinUniAFAF/status/1580136688419946497

Many interesting responses here. It’s a huge puzzle to me that some of my favourite colleagues seemingly support gender ideology in that they use pronouns in emails etc. They are also highly intelligent, ardent feminists, and in any other academic area are firmly in the ‘critical’ deconstruction camp. This makes their support all that much more puzzling to me.

I’m guessing that they fall into the ‘be kind’ group of supporters. Similar to my DC’s thinking that what is the harm in wearing pronoun badges to ‘make someone trans feel more comfortable’? It’s a nice thing to do and I’m a nice person way of thinking.

This is underpinned, however, by a concerted effort by others, more vested interests, who have moved into positions of influence to create a ‘queer the university’ narrative. All very SW. My colleagues have just gone along with it. I, like others, remain silent for fear of being targeted.

Tbf, whilst I intuitively felt self ID to be problematic (following the initial JKR row a few years ago), it’s only by reading these boards that the intuition has been supported with clear arguments and solid evidence.

NB. Realised that I can’t be upset or frustrated with DCs thinking when these colleagues think likewise. Plus, I probably share large portion of the blame in encouraging a ‘be nice’ approach.

I'm meant to be marking dissertations so haven't read the full thread carefully (oh, the irony). But just wanted to echo what @YetAnotherSpartacus said--this is a lot about the marketisation of universities. Students are customers, and so we have to give them what they want. It turns out that what they want is not thoughtful evaluation of ideas and evidence, but affirmation of their existing feelings.
I literally sat in a meeting yesterday where Marketing showed us the profile of our customers (millenials! They like social justice and entrepreneurship! What degree can you cook up to attract them?). HE is doomed.

Students are customers, and so we have to give them what they want. It turns out that what they want is not thoughtful evaluation of ideas and evidence, but affirmation of their existing feelings.

What a fucking mess 🤯