Gender again. Sorry!

[icowden]

As I suspected. You swallowed the lie.
She left for a new job, because that is what people sometimes do. She wasn't forced out, and was backed at all times by her employer.

So the Police advising her to stay away from the campus for her own safety and to install CCTV at her home was just incidental? And the harassment from students and colleagues had no bearing whatsoever?

After announcing her resignation from the university on 28 October 2021,[68] Stock gave a radio interview on Woman's Hour on 3 November.[20][69] She denied that she is transphobic and explained that her resignation followed attacks on her by colleagues who are opposed to her views and who foster an "extreme" response from their students: "instead of getting involved in arguing with me using reason, evidence – the traditional university methods – they tell their students in lectures that I pose a harm to trans students."[69]

Little challenge for you. Google her name. See how many pages of links you find, and where they are from, then come back and tell us whether all of this has harmed her career.

The first two pages are largely news media sites. Then sites selling her books. Then quite a few supportive academia sites.
I don't think that these will have harmed her career and that has never been suggested.

What was suggested is that there are people trying actively to silence academics due to their own closed minds and refusal to learn.

 

[multitool]

You just posted a quote of her talking about herself, on a BBC R4 mainstream show. Very silenced.

I note your use of language: "attacks" from colleagues. Stock is gently critical, questioning etc, but those who disagree with her "attack".

600 academic philosophers wrote an open letter arguing that Stock's "harmful rhetoric" contributed to the marginalisation of transgender people. Stock frames this as not using 'reason and argument'. But then of course she would. Victimhood is an essential element of culture-war griftology. "I've been silenced" she screams from BBC Radio 4, numerous broadsheet front pages, Oxford Union, BBC and mainstream TV shows etc etc.

 

[matticus]

Little challenge for you. Google her name. See how many pages of links you find, and where they are from, then come back and tell us whether all of this has harmed her career.

OK ....

Oh. I see what you mean. The Grauniad are paying her £100k/month to write a book review. She's riding the TERF gravy train! 😡 No wonder she quit her terrible job as a professor ...

 

[multitool]

I see you are reliant on hyperbole, matticus.

She just had her own show on C4, by the way. Do you think she does all these media appearances for free? And do you think all these media appearances and references are harming her book sales given they are providing vast amounts of free publicity?

 

[matticus]

do you think all these media appearances and references are harming her book sales given they are providing vast amounts of free publicity?

Now i think about it, the Trans activists protestors gluing themselves to the Union floor to stop her debate .. yup, in hindsight that WAS golden free publicity. It's a funny old world ...

 

[multitool]

Now i think about it, the Trans activists protestors gluing themselves to the Union floor to stop her debate .. yup, in hindsight that WAS golden free publicity. It's a funny old world ...

You see, just inserting that little phrase is an example of how successful the wall-to-wall bleating of 'cancel-culture' has been. The casting of the very people who seek to vilify other minority groups as the 'real victims'.

If, amongst the screaming tabloid headlines, you bothered to seek out the voice of the actual person who glued their hand to the floor you would have discovered that the express intention was not to stop the debate, but to register a protest.

I had to find her twitter account to hear her words. She doesn't get frequent invites for mainstream news shows and newspaper interviews, unlike Stock, whose speech yesterday was live-feeded by the Telegraph (soooo cancelled)

You are an intelligent chap, so how do you feel about being successfully manipulated by right-wing tabloids?

 

[matticus]

You are an intelligent chap, so how do you feel about being successfully manipulated by right-wing tabloids?

Bloody awful! You've made me cry ...

But anyway, I viewed this as effective protest:

"Earlier, about 200 protesters gathered at Oxford's Bonn Square before marching towards the 200-year-old debating society, prior to Prof Stock's arrival.

Speaking at the rally, Max Van Kleek, associate professor of human-computer interaction at the university, said transgender students suffered "so much abuse" and were "losing rights around the world".

"Let us all unite in trans solidarity and show people we are not something to fear," he said.

On banners were messages including "Trans Rights Now" and "Our Existence Is Not A Debate".

(incidentally, Bonn Square is not a big place; 200 people would be pretty impressive )
Whereas trying to stop the debate, I see as opposing free speech. See also:

There has been a row over whether Prof Stock should appear at all, with the university's LGBTQ+ society calling for her invitation to be rescinded, describing her as "transphobic and trans-exclusionary".

YMMV.

 

[multitool]

YMMV.

I see no acknowledgement that you miscast the gluing protest as "stopping the debate". I'm not suggesting it was wilful, but it is indicative that truth is lost in seductive rhetoric.

And yes, MMV on this in so far as it is not even an issue of free speech. The students of the University are well within their rights to suggest rescinding an invitation for Stock to this private club. It is their free speech so to do, and they set out their reasons. Stock has enough of a platform elsewhere ( sorry, typo, should say everywhere) for this event not to constitute a risk of her being silenced. Besides, she has no automatic right to speak there. It's a privilege, and one not afforded to you or me.

 

[newfhouse]

Oh come on. That's just nonsense. There are no victims,

It was you that framed it as victory and defeat, I think.

just people who want to suppress other people, and by doing it they enable those right wing fascists that people are so fond of mentioning support the TERFs.

I don't think I follow you. What's the opposite of opposing oppression?

 

[AuroraSaab]

It's an odd idea, that unless you are completely financially ruined and destroyed emotionally you haven't really been cancelled. It's perfectly possible to be 'cancelled' in one area, eg.driven from your job, and not cancelled in another area eg. writing articles for newspapers, or vice versa.

I have no issue with the peaceful protest at Oxford. It gave the talk more publicity than otherwise but didn't prevent it. It was properly policed and the talk took place as planned. Everybody arrived and left safely, which is just as it should be.

I haven't watched the 'Gender Wars' documentary but it sounds like it wasn't about Stock in particular and there were voices from both sides of the debate. Which again, is just as it should be.

 

[theclaud]

I haven't watched the 'Gender Wars' documentary but it sounds like it wasn't about Stock in particular and there were voices from both sides of the debate. Which again, is just as it should be.

I see that Finn Mackay says that it was substantially about Stock and that she felt she (Mackay) was misled into participating. Anyway, I might watch it later.

I think when you are supported by a free-to-read front page of the usually-paywalled major establishment broadsheet, and the Prime Minister of the nation comes out fighting your corner (I'm about as interested in Sunak's views on gender as I am in the average motorist's unsolicited opinion on where and how I should be cycling, but that's by the bye), then your claims of being silenced, cancelled etc can be taken with at least a pinch of salt. More importantly, I can't say I've noticed Stock opposing the more serious threats to free expression in universities (more serious than students letting off coloured smoke bombs ouside your window) that have lately emanated directly from the actual government. Curious.

 

[matticus]

I think when you are supported by a free-to-read front page of the usually-paywalled major establishment broadsheet, and the Prime Minister of the nation comes out fighting your corner (I'm about as interested in Sunak's views on gender as I am in the average motorist's unsolicited opinion on where and how I should be cycling, but that's by the bye), then your claims of being silenced, cancelled etc can be taken with at least a pinch of salt

Yes, things have worked out pretty well for her in the long run, she's not exactly struggling for a platform!

Perhaps it wasn't so smart to run an anonymous SM campaign at the university to get rid of her? (resulting eventually in the CCTV and police involvement.) Perhaps wiser to continue the discussion inside the ivory towers?

 

[bobzmyunkle]

She just had her own show on C4, by the way.

Yes, I saw that. Outrageous. And C4 put it out even after Stonewall objected. How dare they.

 

[Rusty Nails]

More importantly, I can't say I've noticed Stock opposing the more serious threats to free expression in universities (more serious than students letting off coloured smoke bombs ouside your window) that have lately emanated directly from the actual government. Curious.

Just as importantly I haven't noticed Stock opposing the UK's involvement in Ukraine, or giving her opinions on the government's position on fossil fuels, JSO, Starmer's moving the Labour Party to the right, ULEZ etc. Curiouser and curiouser. A bit like those JSO protectors banging on about oil all the time when they could be protesting about so many other policies.

She has been given, or sought, a voice on one topic only. That is why she has been invited to speak at events and write newspaper articles, not because of her views on all these other matters, important as they are.

Of course some people are trying to silence her, or at least make it as difficult as possible, for organisations wishing to give her a platform, and they have that right, even though they may be wrong, but, ironically the greater the protests the more publicity she gets for her platform and the more the public debate is polarised and narrowed into woke snowflakes vs terf Nazis, because of course there is nothing in between.

I haven't read any of the papers today but I am willing to bet that there has been more coverage of the protests than the content of the event, and that, like me, the Daily Mail readers and Guardianistas know less about the detail of Stock's opinions than the actions of the protestors.

 

[multitool]

If you want a gauge of just how quickly the infectious plague of transphobia has spread here is a Times article from a mere 5 months ago...