Gender again. Sorry!

[icowden]

The University were her employers, though I have no knowledge of the terms of that contract or relationship. We've been here with the false claims before.

Wow, ok. Because you disagree with her research she must be making false claims? Her Lawyers seem to think she has a case.

Academics might seek certain freedoms. These are actually defined or granted in law, they are assumed freedoms. While universities agree with the concept of these freedoms, they are nonetheless employers with responsibilities under the Public Sector Duty Act. If trans people at the university (fee payers remember) wish to bring forward a complaint that their university is encouraging breaches of the Public Sector Duty Act such they affect their wellbeing, then they are perfectly entitled to do so.

So you support the shutting down of research and bullying of academics by small groups of students?

Therefore on the face of it, you have one group of people who hold positions with authority and presumed academic rights in tension with learners, and possibly colleagues, with human rights. Human rights are protected by international law. The right to freedom of expression 'without frontiers' means having the right to speak truth to authority, not to indulge in campaigns against human rights especially if it is the case that it is sponsored by the government who are also covered by the Public Sector Duty Act.

So if your research upsets someone, you can't do it.
I'd have thought that were even more reason to do it.

As I said, if they disagree, let them publish their own thesis and refute the evidence gained. You know that they can't do that and prefer to hide behind "my feelings are hurt".

 

[monkers]

Wow, ok. Because you disagree with her research she must be making false claims? Her Lawyers seem to think she has a case.

I don't disagree with the research. How could I, I haven't seen it. I can tell you what I do know, which isn't much, but that you can't leap to the conclusions that you have because history shows that not all people are truthful all the time.

So you support the shutting down of research and bullying of academics by small groups of students?

I support the right of all people to stand up to abusive authority, that includes students.

So if your research upsets someone, you can't do it.
I'd have thought that were even more reason to do it.

As I said, if they disagree, let them publish their own thesis and refute the evidence gained. You know that they can't do that and prefer to hide behind "my feelings are hurt".

The university were paying this person while carrying out this research. All research is required to meet rigorous standards. The university are required to ensure those standards. If there is obvious bias they must have the ability to call a halt to it. Did it have bias? I haven't read it, but if you ask fifty academics working in the field of gender studies who identify as feminists, can you expect a range of valid responses? Although I haven't read it, I will doubt it.

 

[AuroraSaab]

Not all of the 50 women interviewed were gender critical feminists. 14 were apparently.

We don't know if Favaro's work met the usual standard of academic research because the university won't give her her own research data back so that she can complete and publish the material. Only at that point can it be peer reviewed and her methodology analysed and critiqued if appropriate.

What's a 'valid' response? The research is about people's personal experience. Every response is valid.

As usual, this is simply about shutting down the discussion because even asking whether academics are afraid to voice gender critical views is considered transphobic by some.

Maybe Favaro is an incompetent researcher. Maybe her methodology is poor. Let's see the research published and review it. Otherwise it just looks like City, University of London, bowed to pressure from an orchestrated pro trans lobby and stifled legitimate research because they were afraid of what it said.

 

[monkers]

Not all of the 50 women interviewed were gender critical feminists. 14 were apparently.

We don't know if Favaro's work met the usual standard of academic research because the university won't give her her own research data back so that she can complete and publish the material. Only at that point can it be peer reviewed and her methodology analysed and critiqued if appropriate.

What's a 'valid' response? The research is about people's personal experience. Every response is valid.

As usual, this is simply about shutting down the discussion because even asking whether academics are afraid to voice gender critical views is considered transphobic by some.

Maybe Favaro is an incompetent researcher. Maybe her methodology is poor. Let's see the research published and review it. Otherwise it just looks like City, University of London, bowed to pressure from an orchestrated pro trans lobby and stifled legitimate research because they were afraid of what it said.

Well I'm remembering Kathleen Stock's open 'call to arms' letter that she sent out to academics in the field of philosophy. They strongly disagreed with her and in kind responded by open letter to tell her so. She went on to say she was being silenced. She wasn't. she was sent a strong message that her ideas constituted bigotry, did not match the required standards for academic freedom, and that they certainly would not be lending her project their name.

It caused a terrible stink it academic circles. I'm sure this university will be well aware of that.

In an open letter, signed by more than 600 philosophers, the academics say they are concerned about a “tendency to mistake transphobic fearmongering for valuable scholarship, and attacks on already marginalised people for courageous exercises of free speech”.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/01/06/kathleen-stock-obe-transphobia-open-letter/

 

[AuroraSaab]

Your link is to an 'open letter' - in effect a petition that anyone could sign - moaning about Kathleen Stock getting an MBE for services to higher education. It's the usual 'We believe in free speech, we just think you shouldn't say things we don't like'. When you frame every discussion on women's rights as bigoted and transphobic practically everything discussed will be 'something we don't like'. No wonder academics are scared to voice their opinions.

 

[monkers]

Your link is to an 'open letter' - in effect a petition that anyone could sign - moaning about Kathleen Stock getting an MBE for services to higher education. It's the usual 'We believe in free speech, we just think you shouldn't say things we don't like'. When you frame every discussion on women's rights as bigoted and transphobic practically everything discussed will be 'something we don't like'. No wonder academics are scared to voice their opinions.

Well others can follow this link and decide what appears to be true, and what appears to be false ...

We are professional academic philosophers committed to the inclusion and acceptance of trans and gender non-conforming people, both in the public at large, and within philosophy in particular.

https://sites.google.com/view/trans-phil-letter/

 

[icowden]

Well others can follow this link and decide what appears to be true, and what appears to be false ...

Even the people objecting to Kathleen Stock stopped short of calling for cancellation:-

“We do not say Stock should not be permitted to say the things she does. We believe in the principles of academic freedom, and note that objecting to someone being lauded or honoured for their speech simply does not conflict with those principles.

If the people calling for academics to be silenced have nothing to fear from what the academics are researching, why silence them?
Oppression starts by preventing freedom of speech.

The road of "you can say what you want as long as I approve" is a slippery slope.

 

[monkers]

Even the people objecting to Kathleen Stock stopped short of calling for cancellation:-

If the people calling for academics to be silenced have nothing to fear from what the academics are researching, why silence them?
Oppression starts by preventing freedom of speech.

The road of "you can say what you want as long as I approve" is a slippery slope.

Having the right to free speech is not the same as having the right to demand that people listen to you. If people want to ignore you, they should be able to. When students at university pay fees for let's say a computer science degree, and a person who asks to come to the university to give their opinions about something as unrelated as opposition to trans rights, then they are entitled to say that they don't want to hear it.

People only say they are being silenced when the group they wish to vent to say, 'sorry but we don't want to hear it'. So-called 'no platforming' is just the people who were the target audience, saying 'yeh, thanks but no thanks'. That's called prerogative, not 'no platforming'.

 

[AuroraSaab]

'If you don't like it then ignore it' is fine. But that isn't what's happening.

Driving people like Kathleen Stock from their jobs isn't 'no platforming', it's bullying. Preventing women from meeting together lawfully isn't 'choosing not to listen', it's actively denying them the right to assemble.

Framing any discussion on women's rights as anti-trans is just an excuse to justify using violence and intimidation to prevent women gathering. It's nobody's perogative to stop others meeting together peacefully within the law.

 

[icowden]

Having the right to free speech is not the same as having the right to demand that people listen to you. If people want to ignore you, they should be able to.

They aren't ignoring her. They have confiscated her research, withdrawn support, she has been bullied and harrassed, data has been withheld from her, prevented from publishing data, had her email account locked and been dismissed through a fabricated redundancy.

The assault on academic freedom is a significant threat to society. I wish for an academia thriving on evidence, innovation, critique and debate, which is tolerant and diverse, where we can ‘agree to disagree’. An environment that fosters groupthink is not just undesirable in itself but ultimately dangerous for us all.

If you can't get your head around this, imagine if she was a transman doing the same research. Do you think the result (in terms of being shut down) would have been the same?

Of course not. Those of us sticking up for women's rights tend to be the people who stick up for freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Yet we are often told that we are allied with the Facists. There are extremists on both the right and the left trying to capture both movements. People like Kathleen Stock and Laura Favaro are not trying to hurt people, cause "trans genocide" or any of the other ridiculous things that they and JK Rowling get accused of. They are asking that we have a discussion and that we consider women's rights as well as trans rights, because in some areas, these are not compatible.

I saw another thread this week from a lady who is disabled. She has no sensation from the neck down and is totally reliant on carers 24/7 for feeding, personal care etc. Why should she lose the ability to specify that she only wants carers who are female? Why is it not her right to manage her own personal care and decide who she finds threatening and who she would prefer helping her in her most intimate daily routines? But no. She is "transphobic".

You can keep on pretending that the gender ideology movement poses no threat to women. There are however, a number of women who disagree with you whether they are coming second in elite sport or being sidelined by men.

 

[theclaud]

Can you clear something up for me, Aurora (or @icowden)? Is this a "women's rights activist"? It's not a trick question - Googling is allowed.

 

[multitool]

View attachment 3686

Nominative determinism at play here

 

[AuroraSaab]

I haven't googled her but as she's pro-life in that screenshot I'd say she's not a feminist. Just because her views on some things might correlate with feminist views doesn't mean feminists should abandon those views for fear of being associated with her wider opinions.

I think you demand a level of political purity from gender critical feminists, and an insistence that they avoid guilt by association, that you don't demand of others in politics.

 

[icowden]

Can you clear something up for me, Aurora (or @icowden)? Is this a "women's rights activist"? It's not a trick question - Googling is allowed.

She would appear to have many and conflicting views suggesting that that she is somewhat of a stranger to critical thought. As such I don't think I would describe her as a feminist. She appears to have a number of different platforms:-

• She believes that women should have the freedom to speak and discuss their concerns.
• She appears to be a fervent cloud-being believer who doesn't think women should have autonomy over their own bodies.
• She doesn't believe that other people should be allowed also to speak and discuss their concerns.

She would appear to be a person who has inherent thought problems caused by the toxicity of religion and wants both freedom and censorship simultaneously.

On the one hand I don't find this acceptable:-

A recent example of this went viral on Twitter, where footage of a drag queen calling himself “Mistress Onya Becks” went viral. In the clip, he strips a blow-up doll allegedly portraying a female conservative Christian activist and mother of two and then mimes raping her for the cheering crowd.

On the flip side:-

This incident prompted me to look more closely at drag queens as children’s entertainment. I looked at the abomination that is Drag Queen Storytime. These events have become extremely popular in Northern Ireland and are known for having minimal safeguards for the children in attendance.

I do find the whole "Drag Queen storytime" thing a bit tiresome. If you don't like it and don't want your children to see it, then don't take them. If people don't want to watch it it won't happen. If people do, then it will. I'm a strong believer in letting people get on with whatever they want to do. It's a bit like that Council banning Roy "chubby" Brown. If you don't like his jokes, don't go and see his show. It's quite simple.

I do however fervently oppose the silencing of any group. Let them speak. Learn about what they are saying and engage in positive discussion.
Maybe you and @multitool are right and women have nothing to fear from reforms that allow men to state they are women without any checks or balances. If that is the case why is it "trans genocide" to discuss the topic, or to point out that a good term for "people who menstruate" is "women"?

 

[theclaud]

She would appear to have many and conflicting views suggesting that that she is somewhat of a stranger to critical thought. As such I don't think I would describe her as a feminist

LOL do you want to hedge a bit more on this?