Oxford Students Union servers ties with Oxford Union

[Apollo441]

For inviting 'notorious transphobe' Kathleen Stock to speak.

They are unable to debate her as their ideas are based on nothing so all they can do is throw their toys our of the pram. Utter imbeciles.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e027959a-ee80-11ed-87b0-716b9284a2b0?shareToken=1591551c2ac2d9a79c7ee4b39589f116

Excellent response from Kathleen Stock:
Stock said in response on Twitter: “Reminder for brave, resilient types who think they can bear to face my ideas on gender identity — my book is on a Kindle deal for 99p at the moment. Extra counselling is available for Oxford students affected by this news.”

I guess the Oxford Students Union has clearly signalled its "No debate" credentials by severing ties with one of the leading student debate forums. What does that say about the strength of their arguments, I wonder.

Gosh. The Oxford Union won’t uninvite Dr Stock so the student Union cuts financial support, based on the SU claims the OU has a culture of bullying .

You couldn’t make it look like the SU was more hypocritical, could you? Do the SU understand how their coercive tactics highlight an abusive relationship?

How embarrassing.

And this is supposed to be where the brightest students go .....

Mmmmm, hopefully they'll grow up and some point and realise, shock horror 😱, that some people say things you don't like but normal adults understand that we are all different have different view points, perhaps they need to teach this at Oxford?

How would that work in a seminar then? I'm just trying to imagine them all saying no sorry we're not going to discuss this because I disagree with it.

Now Oxford Union should take Oxford Student Union to court for clear discrimination due to a protected belief.

Pretty sure that is how it works.

You take a book you've never read, assume its content based on third party reviews, claim it is literal violence and refuse to read it, oh and never take any responsibility for your own actions.

Most SUs are nothing short of scams anyway. Working for the students is all a fallacy and you have the sabbatical officers doing vanity projects that never really get off the ground.

OU need to take legal advice on this.

Thanks for the share token.

This one is interesting because the students who have voted for this genuinely believe that what Ms Stock is representing is the equivalent of the KKK. The issue is their inability to separate this untrue belief from the reality. In other words complete lack of fact checking and critical thinking. But done with absolute righteousness in the belief that their actions are proportionate and necessary. What a mess.

And based totally on discrimination against a protected belief

Just bought her book on kindle. Free advertising

The OU’s latest accounts show it had an income of £1.53 million last year but an expenditure of almost £1.5 million.

crikey. Sounds like they’re in the black though. I must admit to being woefully ignorant about the OU. I wonder what they do that soaks up that kind of cash annually?

The shock is not the students who you might reasonably expect to form opinions on hearsay without reading the book.

It’s the four Oxford colleges issuing statements criticising Professor Stock with an ad hominem attack apparently not having read any of her material themselves.

What hope for the students when their lecturers and academic leadership demonstrate such a shocking lack of commitment to informed and educated debate?

So could afford a discrimination case against OSU?

I'm reading Matthew Syed's Rebel Ideas and he has a good chapter on echo chambers. The point being that in an echo chamber you DO see the opposing ideas but they are labelled fake news, hate speech etc.

When I was there most people generally avoided anyone involved with either OUSU or the Oxford Union as they tended to be a bit Slytherin.

It was also a certain type of person who attended JCR meetings, so I wouldn’t assume that statements put out by a JCR are particularly representative of the views of most students in that college.

I’m intrigued by the description of KS as an “unreliable transphobe”. Surely if you can’t rely on her always being transphobic they would see that as a good thing? Or is it more difficult, because they can’t always tell when she’s being transphobic? Or she unreliable because she’s not likely to turn up? Again you’d think they’d view that as a good thing, because then they wouldn’t have to try and cancel her. Baffling.

Excellent points, @FisherthemsFriend 😂

Of course, Prof. Stock was invited to Cambridge's equivalent debating society and the sky didn't fall in. Of course, her side won the debate so probably that's what the Oxford Students Union is really afraid of.

How on earth can 4 Oxford colleges have determined that Stock is transphobic unless women's rights are transphobic?

They should at least set out what the transphobia is so that we understand what one of the most prestigious universities in the world is opposing free speech in favour of.

Because if women's rights to determine ourselves and to group independently of men with identities, which are intangible, is transphobic then I have questions. Lots of questions.

It’s fascinating to me how being gender critical is now considered the height of evil. The union has hosted actual far right people, people who sympathise with Nazis. Yes there were protests, but not this level of hysteria. A blind black man was assaulted and physically ejected from the Union because he sat in the “wrong” seat, and that act of racism (plus the long wait for an apology) didn’t spur the student Union to cut ties with the union. But a lesbian academic who actually has fairly mild gender critical beliefs in that she is sometimes willing to countenance that transwomen are women does the trick?

Also on the JCR motions, I would be extremely uncomfortable if I was a gender critical student at those colleges. I find it incredible that JCRs are able to condemn people who hold perfectly legal beliefs.

I love how the strong, clever, witty women are all GC - almost like they’d thought it through rather than just relying on sound bites. You always get a good comeback from KS, JKR, Elaine Miller etc 😆

ou - posh kids playing at having ideas
ousu - lefty kids playing at having principles
jcrs - misfit kids playing at having friends

student politics is a cesspit of fevered egos and righteous indignation.

i miss the days when we could just laugh and ignore them in the expectation that they’d eventually grow up