UCU being taken to tribunal over discrimination for 'gc' views

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/gender-critical-documentary-makers-take-ucu-tribunal

The filmmakers of 'Adult Human Female' are taking UCU to tribunal.

I'll try to find an archive copy.

Some lovely minimising of racist abuse there. Very revealing of the mindset of an entitled narcissist.

The coverage from today and yesterday is on the Tribunal Tweets substack:
https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/adult-human-female-filmmakers-vs

Reading through this afternoon it is the same unsolvable problem going round and round at every case. Women defending their rights will be portrayed by GI politics as seeking to remove 'rights' from trans people, as women having the right to say no and refuse to participate presents extremely inconvenient boundaries to those who wish to claim a right to use them. Women raising awareness of this is therefore 'hateful' because it incites others to sympathise with them and support those boundaries.

I did wryly smile at the suggestion that the gushing sewer of disturbed rape threats, death threats, choke on my dick et al is just a 'bot' and 'NATPALT'.... we've had elected politicians so comfortable with this behaviour that they stand grinning inanely on the streets under banners calling to decapitate women who want their own spaces and the right to a reality that isn't coercively dictated to them by a man. The question would be quite simply, where is any rebuttal or protest about this treatment of women from Stonewall or any other gender based political group? Even one? Where is ONE TWEET saying 'this is unacceptable, and not in our name'?

My goodness - they are a marvel.

Not only the live tweeting but updating their web site in such a timely fashion.

I'm confused by the UCU's apparent argument (from yesterday) that the film doesn't qualify for academic freedom because not all the participants in the film are academics.

That isn't what academic freedom means, as I understand it. The freedom is that academics should be able to access any sources and discuss and analyse them. If the source that academics want to view/discuss/analyse is Buffy The Vampire Slayer, universities can't ban it because Sarah Michelle Gellar isn't a PhD in Occult Studies and Joss Whedon is a bullying arsehole.

Are they relying on the idea that the film is intrinsically offensive, and therefore can only be viewed because of academic freedom?

But that would rely on the idea that the film is intrinsically offensive - which seems a difficult argument following Forstater.

And that wouldn't explain the 'peer reviewed' arguments.

Also the film was eventually broadcast without any law being broken, so it's not clear why the UCU would be able to argue that they should interfere with the lawful activity of their members.

So confusing.

I might have to wait for the summing up, but I struggled to follow that barrister’s angle.

Are they relying on the idea that the film is intrinsically offensive, and therefore can only be viewed because of academic freedom?

I was wondering if that is where they are going, but it still doesn't work because TB seemed to be wanting on about such-and-such person in the film not being an academic. When, as I say, it doesn't matter whether anybody in the film was an academic or not - what matters is that academics should be free to view it (and discuss it too). It's basically arse about face.

My cynical suspicion is that they are aiming to confuse the judge and panel by entirely inverting the meaning of "academic freedom."

Is the argument that the film was not broadcast as part of the claimant's work as academics, therefore UCU's activity was not relevant to their union membership?

If that is their case, could they be setting parameters on their union duties that would be harmful to their members in other contexts?

Yes, I think that's it - I think TB is going to argue that UCU didn't have any duty to them as members because this wasn't part of their academic work.

That makes way more sense!

I suspect the angle the barrister is going for is that “Adult Human Female” is a dog whistle, which he defines as a known signal, a phrase with a specific meaning to those “in the know”.

He would therefore try to claim that the film’s title is a way of aiming it directly at those who are already GC, as that’s how they’d know what the film’s title meant and implied. This - together with there not being any opposing voices/opinions* - means that it’s a piece of propaganda rather than a genuine academic endeavour, and designed to reinforce an already accepted viewpoint rather than stimulate debate.

(* yesterday’s witness did debunk this by explaining why there were no dissenting voices.)

Therefore, he will try to say it wasn’t a legitimate film created in good faith to debate a point, but instead it was always designed to be a harmful, one-sided agitprop piece aimed at sympathisers of an ideology that targets trans people, and UCU were right to oppose it to prevent the harm.

Then there are the attempts to say it’s not a piece of academic work because not all of the people interviewed were academics (which is a nonsense, as @Kucinghitam demonstrated) or that it’s not a proper piece of academic work because statistics weren’t precisely cited (which is also nonsense, it’s a film aimed at a wide audience, not a paper submitted to a journal). Thus undermining its legitimacy.

I think those arguments are bollocks. I don’t think it will fly because the judge has already stamped down quite hard on the dog whistle issue and I should imagine Cunningham will drive a coach and horses through what’s left of the defence argument. But IANAL!

I suspect there’s also going to be a “there is a limit to academic freedom” angle, but how that could be presented is a mystery. There is already the position of freedom of speech always having the back stop of hate speech. GC views have been found by a court to be WORIADS so I don’t know how they’d insist that GC views are an unacceptable transgressions of the boundaries of academic freedom/freedom of speech.

Do we know what time it starts today?

11:00

I was also baffled by the lines of argument by counsel for UCU but I think it was broadly that there's a threshold to qualify for "academic freedom" and to reach it the content, in this case a film, has to come from the right people, presenting the right opinions, in the right way.

This is so surprising that I'm beginning to think that this thinnest of thin straws is being clutched at by UCU. Which suggests we're in for a treat when UCU's witnesses start giving their evidence.

On that basis would UCU also argue that a documentary on climate change should be refused broadcast in a University because it slurs oil companies and represents the opinions of Al Gore, who hasn't been peer reviewed?

It feels as though some of these arguments might be quite short sighted.

No because "being against climate change" is one of the right opinions. As such it'll come from the right people and so it's fit and proper that such a documentary should be platformed.

This is so surprising that I'm beginning to think that this thinnest of thin straws is being clutched at by UCU.

Wouldn't be the first time a tribunal has had defence arguments presented which are so thin you could fart through them. It’s almost like gender ideologists don’t have a case beyond “But…but…Stonewall said we were on the right side of history!”

That would be OKish as an argument if UCU had shrugged and said 'Go ahead, show the film, but don't expect us to do anything if there are problems because the film wasn't part of your academic work'.

Whereas in fact UCU did everything in their power to stop the film being shown at all, writing letters to the Uni, posting on SM that it was hateful and transphobic, possibly? [I expect this will come out in the tribunal] even encouraging protests.

The first is a union being picky about what they consider proper 'academic freedom', the second is a union acting forcefully to thwart members' freedom to publish or broadcast their work.

Hey, that last sentence was good, wasn't it? Gizza job, Naomi! I've already got a sharp suit.....

And Correct Opinions don’t need proof or peer-reviewed papers. They just ARE.

So here we are. Correct Opinions are part of material reality while sexual dimorphism isn't. It's funny how things work out.

But when it comes to free speech, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

The first is a union being picky about what they consider proper 'academic freedom', the second is a union acting forcefully to thwart members' freedom to publish or broadcast their work.

But does a union have freedom to campaign on issues that is separate from their representation of members?

Could a union pass a resolution supporting clean water standards, and then demonstrate/speak against a member who had a non academic role advising a water company?

Or would the campaigning on water standards jeopardise their standing as a union?

I'm just trying to work through the logic.

Women defending their rights will be portrayed by GI politics as seeking to remove 'rights' from trans people, as women having the right to say no and refuse to participate presents extremely inconvenient boundaries to those who wish to claim a right to use them.

One of the things which annoys me about this is that they want extra rights. They are not having their rights as men taken away, but they want rights that aren't available to other men. The fact that they choose not to exercise their male rights isn't a woman's problem.

E.g. think of those peers in the House of Lords, who want to be treated as women, but don't want to get bumped out of their hereditary peerage now that they are pretending to be women. I know that's a fairly obscure example, but it just shows - men when it suits them, women when that's convenient, yet they cry discimination.