Transphobia at Edinburgh University ‘driving out staff’

[Igneococcus]

Times Scotland today, both sides vicious, yada yada.

"Katie Nicoll Baines, a geneticist who is a feminist activist and co-chairs Edinburgh’s Staff Pride Network, blamed gender-critical colleagues for what she called a “growing culture of hostility”.
She said: “I have worked at the University of Edinburgh since 2017 and in the past seven years have witnessed a growing culture of hostility towards trans and non-binary staff and students at this institution. Much of this hostility has been stoked by those who want to spread their ‘gender-critical’ ideology that is largely based on the premise that sex is binary and immutable, a premise I know to be incorrect, both scientifically [and] based on my academic expertise.
“While these gender-critical colleagues have been the ones to stoke this hostility, by inviting transphobic speakers on to campus, screening films that are filled with anti-trans misinformation and propaganda, etc, it is the failures of university management that have enabled this hostility to go unchecked and [often] it has been enabled by the structures of the university organisation that perpetuate discrimination against our trans and non-binary staff and students.”"

Are there physics departments with outspoken flatearthers? And if not, why not?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/1cfa0aeb-ac6a-42e4-a667-829427f1f572?shareToken=5f5780ef3e0eabba2a85129ecdf3f08b

They don't see it as an ideology because they don't think about it (or anything) analytically, or examine implications or possible consequences - never have. They just know what they want, even if that involves contradictory things, and they retcon the justification. That's why it's so incoherent. It's a mess of piecemeal retconned justifications - it was never conceived of as a whole in the first place.

Didn’t you get the memo? You can just say anything these days as ‘your truth’ and everyone has to agree.

Of course this is mostly if you are male because women are usually told to shut up and sit down.

There does seem to be an extraordinarily high number of people who are suffering with mental fragility and inability to deal with life's harsher edges...and one of the big issues, I think, is how much mental fragility is being nurtured in society, and certainly within the TRA movement.

Being given space to explore one's negative feelings can be a really positive thing - but the idea is not to propogate these feelings further, but to resolve them. Gender affirmative pathways actively nurture mental ill health and treat it as sacrosanct.

That's pretty much the basis and evolution of 'hate speech'. It used to mean actually inciting some kind of violent action against an individual or group of people.
But it had such a vague remit, that it inevitably expanded to include any kind of criticism, however mild, or offensive / upsetting rebuttals. Any activist with an ideological axe to grind can cry 'hate speech' in an attempt to censor and shut down their opponents. It has worked for a long time at Edinburgh university, but now that it's losing its potency, the toys are being thrown out of the pram.

Unfortunately that ship has sailed and is never coming back. Not for decades, if ever.

SW and SW friendly faculty got in quick and have been systematically extending SW law for years. Again it’s that ideological capture of progressive institutions and piggybacking on to the LGB to gain a foothold and then expand.

Every year the pronoun badges are worn by more people. Latterly it’s become bad form to ask for ‘preferred’ pronouns. The righteous and sanctimonious finger pointing and scolding is a desirable and powerful position that will not easily be seceded.

Has she heard about freedom of speech? And that this doesn't mean that there is only freedom for the people who agree with you but those who disagree too?

She is just deflecting because of the call for universities to just sack all DEI DIE EDI Whatever departments.

I'm not sure what was originally claimed, but I would say sexed bodies are dimorphic because sex is binary. And various factors around reproduction can drive evolution of greater and greater dimorphism.

I may have completely missed the point, of course.

But it had such a vague remit, that it inevitably expanded to include any kind of criticism, however mild, or offensive / upsetting rebuttals.

Any kind, yes, but it's 100% selective based on who's doing it, and to whom...

The self indulgence of 'Oprah style' confessional TV - in which the audience is held rapt while the guest "explores their truth" and emotes for public entertainment.

Psychological and emotional intelligence is something i used to associate with Americans...but we're now witnessing the dark, less healthy side of that obsession with every passing feeling.

Sarah Liu, an American academic at Edinburgh who studies academic freedom as well as gender and politics, said some trans staff and their allies were likely to be more marginalised, particularly those on short-term contracts.

That woman is terrible. Check her trolling out on Twitter.

😡Everyone needs a safe place to pee.

Academia needs its own Cass Review.

This.

Completely not on topic, but the face of the police officer in the picture that accompanies the article reminded me of one definition from Douglas Adams' The Meaning of Liff:

"Grutness (n)
The resolve with which the Queen sits through five days of Polynesian folk dancing."

"This doubling down in the face of conflicting evidence is a way of reducing the discomfort of dissonance, and is part of a set of behaviors known in the psychology literature as “motivated reasoning.” Motivated reasoning is how people convince themselves or remain convinced of what they want to believe—they seek out ..."

".....in moments of financial, emotional, or temporal loss, you double down and lose more. You think that you're somehow going to get back what's already gone. If you remain blind to the dangers of the sunk cost fallacy, your losses quickly multiply"

twitter.com/knicollb/status/1655640492225224713

Well anyone sane is going to give these people a wide berth.
So if they being "marginalised" that gives me a modicum of hope for the university.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beliefperseverance

Belief perseverance /conceptual conservatism

Peter Marris suggests that the process of abandoning a conviction is similar to the working out of grief. "The impulse to defend the predictability of life is a fundamental and universal principle of human psychology." Human beings possess "a deep-rooted and insistent need for continuity".[31]

Someone was talking about the stages of grief yesterday.

It's similar to when a clothing fashion clings on for years after it has passed and been replaced by another. You still see people wearing the ugg booots, maxi dresses, or whatever it is......for another few years...to then be replaced by the latest trend. Currently you can't move for people in gym wear and trainers...and those quilted coats - certainly where I live.

It's amazing how they can twist feminist language and use it against us and portray it as truth.

They don't see it as an ideology because they don't think about it (or anything) analytically, or examine implications or possible consequences - never have

DH and I were discussing this yesterday. I was trying to explain to him that, just as we know, as absolute given fact, that there are two sexes that people can never change, GI believers are equally convinced that their side is 'right'. But we have the whole of actual science and evolution to back up what we know to be true, not the junk variety, so 🤷‍♀️

(BTW, I see from that TwiX thread above that the delightful Dr Nicholl called out anyone who dared to misgender Katie Dolatowski. So I think that says it all about they/them's allegiances)

Yes, Kubler Ross's five stages: Anger; Denial; Bargaining; Depression; then Acceptance

Liu's twitter feed.....

"It cannot be stressed enough that academia is primarily a bourgeois institution, and even if liberatory texts are published within its walls, oppressive and, quite frankly, loser ideology is propagated relentlessly under the guise of nuance and “academic rigour”.

Yet screening a film in a room that she is not compelled to be in is a big scary thing that makes that "grown-ass woman" feel unsafe. 🤔