Kathleen Stock. Now they are writing academic papers about how terfy she is

[Birdsweepsin]

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09612025.2022.2147915

In this article I write on the feminist rift within University culture and the wider impact it has had in the British media landscape. I will chronicle the case of Kathleen Stock and its reporting in the media principally through a focus on a selection of particularly relevant articles in the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph as a newspaper closely aligned with gender critical and UK Conservative government thinking.

OK, no worries. So a dispassionate look at both sides, considering media bias goes both ways, hey?

I want to consider Stock as a totemic figure for a trans-hostile media, and discuss the way her case has been used to spread misinformation around universities, and trans people. My focus here is on trans women as those on the receiving end of most gender critical hostility.

Oh. Sigh.

Pointing out inconsistencies, and disagreement - neither of these things are abuse.

'I'd rather be rude than a fucking liar'. M Berns.

Are we looking at this the wrong way around??

Was that tweet supposed to get a reaction on twitter from anyone other than the tweeter's followers?

Of course it’s just for her followers.

But it’s reinforcing the ‘I, an academic, am
a poor victim of transphobia by proxy for having tried to fight the good fight; those nasty women on MN have overstepped their boundaries and should stick to breastfeeding advice and other mummy-related concerns’.

Although I’m hoping that she’s been berated for her trans exclusionary language in breastfeeding.

There's less than 50 posters on here. Mainly discussing what many of us think is a pretty disingenuous article.

The writer of the article willingly goes to the FWR section on mumsnet, a place known for it's "terfiness" has a go about one comment, although doesn't actually point that out originally, and then stomps off in a huff to disingenuously post on twitter:

I've gone back in and there's so much abuse of me on the platform that it's not the right tone for me to respond

ignoring the fact that mumsnet is shit hot in removing anything they have decided is the slightest but offensive or that has been complained about, and instead of actually engaging with the criticisms that we have about her article cries wolf.

Tells me all i need to know about my original thoughts on the robustness of the article.

do you think anyone wants to be treated like Kathleen Stock?

Having been subjected to about a tenth of the animosity which was directed at Professor Stock, I can confirm how utterly horrible it is. I don't know how Kathleen has kept her equanimity.

Well, Deborah/Devora is keeping the internet archive machines busy with her embarrassing tweets. Lest we forget, and all that!

Actually it was the other tweet that could be construed as more of an invitation to ‘report’ the post that was being framed as someone here suggesting a pile on… I don’t think posting examples of actual crimes to disprove a paper is a pile on. I consider it women doing the research that some academics seem to ignore.

Either way, the hypocrisy really is very very clear with this tweet.

twitter.com/devorahshawa/status/1604407285505478656?s=46&t=MLlt4UeDs-ua0tmozsNCZg

Claim of a ‘pile on’ while encouraging both a pile on from twitter to FWR and mass reporting of a post.

Can you see it yet readers?

Sorry if I'm being thick, but I like clarification
is the "abuse" literally this thread, or is there another one?

I've got a fantastic idea that'll shake up academia and increase clarity, reduce ambiguity.
When you're referring to something that has happened, or a piece of information that's been found, you could find a way to somehow let people know where they could see this for themselves.
You could even write a list of where to find everything you've referenced, and then... you could let other people see it!

so much abuse of me
I would say she needs to go and refer to a dictionary, but then, these days words mean what individuals say they mean....

If you can't defend your views to people who disagree with them, perhaps you need to re-examine them.

Yes, this is it, as far as I can tell.

is the "abuse" literally this thread, or is there another one?

We know how it works by now. Trans ideologue writes nasty personal attack. Polite challenges to the attack are "abuse" and trans ideologue garners sympathy and murmurs of outrage at nasty Terfs from fellow ideologues on Twitter.

Trans activist sends sexually aggressive threats to women. These are so rare as to be barely noticeable, and what are we making a fuss about anyway? We probably provoked the poor dears in the first place by being women and having opinions.

To be scrupulously fair, I did call the people behind this article "twits", which is not very nice or kind of me. I think it's stretching it to call it abuse though.

Trans activist sends sexually aggressive threats to women. These are so rare as to be barely noticeable, and what are we making a fuss about anyway? We probably provoked the poor dears in the first place by being women and having opinions.

As she implied in the various links to conversations about the FiLiA protest.

I am in equal measures appalled, disgusted and disappointed in your cowardice and dishonesty @devorah.

You refer to this thread as a 'pile-on' as you being 'abused', that is so far from the truth it's currently orbiting Mars. Abuse is what happened to Dr Stock, what happens to JKR, what that crowd outside the Portsmouth FiLiA conference were writing on the pavement, their signs and the violent sexually abusive threats they were shouting outside directed at those inside the conference whilst survivors of the most extreme and hideous sexual abuse were giving speeches about their experiences to the conference and make no mistake @devorah those attendees heard those violent, sexually abusive threats made by those outside. How do you think that made those women feel? You were part of the crowd outside did you feel proud that they were directing violent, sexual threats against a group of women who had suffered the kind of sexual abuse that is the stuff of nightmares? This is what you are not only defending but enabling.

I don't expect you have the integrity or indeed guts to respond to this you'll no doubt just whinge to your Twitter supporters in the hope that they will pile on here to dish out abuse in your defence.

I always think when the Righteous broadcast themselves, that if there's anybody anywhere who somehow still doesn't know about this issue, a brief inspection of the surveillance behaviour, pious fraud and hypocrisy of the Righteous is enough to send genuinely unbiased people scurrying away from the "Right Side of History."

You were part of the crowd outside did you feel proud that they were directing violent, sexual threats against a group of women who had suffered the kind of sexual abuse that is the stuff of nightmares? This is what you are not only defending but enabling.

At Portsmouth, I was in Julie Bindel's session - she used her allotted time to give a platform to a number of women - but memorably the women from Tigray - who were imprisoned, raped & abused. Their stories were moving & harrowing.

Meanwhile, the TRAs had looked at the programme (publicly available) and stood under the windows of the room we were in, and chanted to try to drown out Julie Bindel.

Except, they actually drowned out the voices of refugee women, and imprisoned, raped and abused lesbians. Really on the right side of history, those TRAs.

Even that totally captured TRA mouthpiece Amnesty distanced themselves from what happened outside the FiLiA Conference in Portsmouth if that doesn't tell you how appalling it was nothing will @devorah

I don’t think that I would be proud of any of those protesting Filia last year. I think it is rather telling when people pop up to proclaim how proud they are of those protesting.

Just like I cannot understand a person declaring pride in any protest that drowns out women’s voices. I mean, the reality is that if drowning out voices of women you disagree with gives you pride as an academic or a student, you must really understand deep down that your arguments are based on completely manipulative foundations. They simply cannot be defended in an academic arena.

So, I wonder if these academics ever think through that fact. That if their arguments were robust and strong, why are they silencing women? Let women speak their supposedly clearly hateful thoughts and let them expose themselves to the world for the haters and ignorant phobists they are said to be. Why are they using the abusive tactics?

Why write a hit piece on Dr Stock who has left their role, left their career? Some people must be very very insecure in their arguments.

Hopefully other open-minded people will see the Twitter posts about Mumsnet and how awful we are, and will come here to see what all the fuss is about! I’m perfectly happy for them to judge for themselves.

I have no doubt that Stock’s life was made very uncomfortable by the students, or that she was, in her words, very isolated and ostracised at Sussex, and this elicits sympathy on a personal level. This sympathy should also be extended to Professor Phipps who following the media coverage was subject to harassment in the form of gender critical ‘pile ons’ on Twitter, causing her to leave the social media site for a period. Unlike Stock, she received no statement of support from the Vice Chancellor, or any positive attention in the national media

This is extremely disingenuous, to the point of being a false comparison.

• Phipps remains in her post
• Phipps still has a professorial salary & the pension perks that go with it
• Phipps still has access to institutional and Research Council support for her research
• Phipps still has research support such as sabbaticals
• Phipps has not had balaclava-masked students line her campus with signs, & smoke bombs, chanting "Phipps Out"
• Phipps has not had her union denouncing her
• Phipps has not had abusive graffiti about her scrawled all over the women's lavatories in her office building

In short, Phipps hasn't had her life and her vocation ripped apart in public.

Absolutely, EasterIsland. False equivalency or what? And yet this weak paper apparently underwent through peer review...!

I did ask what the criteria are for a viewpoint and some indication of the type of comments made by the reviewers but no response.

Oh but Phipps had to take a bit of a break from twitter. 😱😱😱

Can you imagine how traumatic it might have been to stop using twitter for a bit because people kept disagreeing with you on there? It’s inhumane. Unthinkable.

Literal violence.

If it was anything like the reviewers' response to one of the hoax papers in the Grievance Studies affair (IIRC, the authors suggested that white students should have to sit on the floor in lectures to atone for their white privilege; the reviewers suggested beefing this up and making them be humiliated, too) the author will have been encouraged to be even less even-handed.