More than 40 academics – including Professor Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, and Professor Nigel Biggar, the theologian – have intervened in support of a planned appearance at the Oxford Union by Professor Kathleen Stock, a leading feminist, in a letter to the Telegraph. It comes after students have tried to cancel Prof. Stock’s talk, claiming that she is transphobic for disputing that ‘transwomen are women’. From the Telegraph:
The row at Oxford first erupted in April when the university’s LGBTQ+ society said it was “dismayed and appalled” that the debating society had “decided to platform the transphobic and trans exclusionary speaker Kathleen Stock”.
It accused the Union of “disregarding the welfare of its LGBTQ+ members under the guise of free speech”.
The Junior Common Rooms of Christ Church, St. Edmund Hall, St Anne’s and St. Hilda’s have backed the LGBTQ+ society and passed motions calling for her invite “to be rescinded in support of the trans community”.
The row escalated last week when Oxford’s Student Union (SU) voted to sever ties with the 200-year-old debating society, accusing it of having a “toxic culture of bullying and harassment”.
The move would prevent the Union from having a stall at the freshers’ fair, which is an important source of membership sign-ups that fund the debating society.
In a statement, the SU said “the motion was unrelated to Dr. Stock’s intended talk” and said that the professor was not discussed at the meeting.
It said it was “committed to freedom of expression and freedom of speech, and will defend the right of people to have controversial and unpopular ideas debated as an integral part of university life and the university experience”.
However, dons criticised the SU’s decision to cut ties with the Union.
Education minister Claire Coutinho has backed the dons on behalf of the Government. She said: “Student debaters shouldn’t be punished for encouraging the free exchange of ideas. Our newly passed Freedom of Speech Act will make sure that universities promote free speech and that those who have their free speech rights unlawfully restricted on campus can seek redress.”
The Union has said that the talk with Prof. Stock will go ahead despite planned protests. It will set up “welfare spaces” to help students cope with the gender debate.
Here’s the letter in full.
Sir,
We are academics at the University of Oxford, possessed of a range of different political beliefs, Left and Right. We wholeheartedly condemn the decision of the Oxford University Student Union (Oxford SU) to sever its ties with the Oxford Union (the Union) after the latter’s refusal to rescind an invitation to the philosopher and gender-critical feminist Kathleen Stock.
Professor Stock believes that biological sex in humans is real and socially salient, a view which until recently would have been so commonplace as to hardly merit asserting. Whether or not one agrees with Professor Stock’s views, there is no plausible and attractive ideal of academic freedom, or of free speech more generally, which would condemn their expression as outside the bounds of permissible discourse. Unfortunately, the position of her opponents seems to be that Professor Stock’s views are so illicit that they cannot be safely discussed in front of an audience of consenting and intelligent adults at the main debating society at the University of Oxford. If this were the case, it is doubtful that they could be safely expressed anywhere – a result that, as her opponents are no doubt satisfied to find, would amount to their effective prohibition.
Fortunately, it has become clear that the Union’s capitulation cannot be secured by the usual methods of moralistic browbeating and social censure. However, Oxford SU is now threatening its financial model by seeking to prevent the Union from having a stall at future freshers’ fairs. This is dangerous territory. Universities exist, among other things, to promote free inquiry and the disinterested pursuit of the truth by means of reasoned argument. To resort to coercion and financial threats when unable to secure one’s preferred outcome in debate would represent a profound failure to live up to these ideals.
Universities must remain places where contentious views can be openly discussed. The salient alternative to this, one apparently favoured by many of Professor Stock’s opponents, is simply unacceptable: a state of affairs in which the institutions of a university collude to suppress the expression of controversial, but potentially true, viewpoints in an effort to prevent them from becoming more widely known.
Signed:
- Dr Julius Grower, Faculty of Law and St Hugh’s College
- Dr Michael Biggs, Department of Sociology and St Cross College
- Dr Roger Teichmann, St Hilda’s College
- Professor Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology, Faculty of Theology
- Professor Jeff McMahan, Sekyra and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and Corpus Christi College
- Dr Edward Howell, Department of Politics and International Relations and New College
- Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda, Oriel College
- Dr Jonathan Price, Faculty of Law and St Cross College
- Colin Mills, Department of Sociology and Nuffield College
- John Maier, Balliol College
- Dr Alexander Morrison, Faculty of History and New College
- Dr Richard Gipps, Blackfriars Hall
- Professor Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine
- Kathryn Webb, Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training and Research and Harris Manchester College
- Dr Tim Mawson, St Peter’s College
- Edward Hadas, Blackfriars Hall
- Professor Richard Dawkins, New College
- Professor Jonathan Jones, Department of Physics and Brasenose College
- Professor Lawrence Goldman, Emeritus Fellow, St Peter’s College
- Professor James Binney, Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics and Merton College
- James Forder, Balliol College
- Clive Hambler, Lecturer in Biology and Human Sciences, Hertford College
- Daniel Villar, Department of Biology
- Yuan Yi Zhu, Research Fellow, Harris Manchester College, and Nuffield College
- Professor Richard Ekins KC (Hon), Professor of Law and Constitutional Government, St John’s College
- Professor Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair of Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy
- David Carpenter, Faculty of History
- Professor Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor of Logic, Faculty of Philosophy
- Daniel Kodsi, Trinity College
- Professor Susan Bright, Professor of Land Law, Faculty of Law
- Professor Joel David Hamkins, Professor of Logic, Associate Faculty Member, Faculty of Philosophy
- Dr Ruth Dixon, College Lecturer, the Queen’s College
- Professor John Tasioulas, Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and Balliol College
- Xenofon Kalogeropoulos, Faculty of Classics and St Anne’s College
- Jane Cooper, All Souls College
- Dr Abhijit Sarkar, Faculty of History
- Professor Edward Harcourt, Professor of Philosophy, Keble College
- Professor Michael Bentley, Senior Research Fellow, St Hugh’s College
- Professor Catharine Abell, Faculty of Philosophy and the Queen’s College
- Professor John Chalker, Department of Physics and St Hugh’s College
- Dr Sophie Allen, Faculty of Philosophy and St Peter’s College
- Professor Volker Halbach, Professor of Philosophy, New College
- Sir Noel Malcolm, All Souls College
- Aftab Mallick, Brasenose College
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How about ‘arse kicking’ spaces to make these proto-fascist little morons grow up?! When I was a student in the mid-1990s, prior to everyone having email, we all mocked student activists, who were a tiny minority, and used to deface their posters (usually writing ‘Cancelled’ on their meeting announcements!)
These deluded, emotionally stunted morons can all be rounded up and stuck in padded cells where they belong. They can go and collectively be traumatized elsewhere. It’s beyond pathetic now. ”Social contagion” indeed. Here’s a new 4min video clip of Prof Stock.
https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1658058452239806466
I’ll confess I’m a bit transphobic. I find transgenderism weird and creepy.
At the same time I wish transexuals no ill. On the contrary, I wish them only the best. Live and let live, I say.
The people I detest and wish would just crawl into a hole and disappear are the armies of non-transexuals who pretend to be champions of transexuals and seem determined to promote transgenderism in our society and make it a normal thing. They are the same kind of people that wanted everyone to wear masks, the same people that find racism lurking around every corner, the same people that want to keep changing the words we use.
Basically they are people who are pathologically drawn to bossing others around and do so by finding some moral high ground upon which they can crawl and from which they can talk down to everyone else.
They couldn’t give a shit about transexuals. In fact, they use them and exploit them and will drop them the moment they find a higher moral ground to clamber up to and preach more hate and division from.
They are destructive, despicable people.
Phobias are a class of mental illnesses and that’s the whole point of all these somethingphobic neologisms. I find men trying to appear to be women instinctively repellent. But that’s an aesthetical preference and not based on underlying state of (pathological) fear. Likewise, I also find naked men singularly unattractive (to say the least) but again, that’s not because I secretly fear them for no reason. Lastly, I don’t want to have anything to do with bearded wearers of nightgowns handing out religious text in pedestrian zones but I don’t fear them. They’re just not like me and I’m not like them.
Good point. I’ve unthinkingly adopted the word phobia when you’re absolutely right that it isn’t a fear at all. It’s more of a “no thanks”.
“The people I detest and wish would just crawl into a hole and disappear are the armies of non-transexuals who pretend to be champions of transexuals and seem determined to promote transgenderism in our society and make it a normal thing.”
Transgenderism is quite different from transsexualism.
Good words, Stewart. I wholeheartedly agree. It is this woke mob in the shadows looking to control others. They are despicable.
This kind of dispute is not new. I remember trying to get Enoch Powell cancelled from speaking at my university in 1969. I can’t remember whether we succeeded. Nowadays I side with the Richard Dawkins of this world but I don’t think it such a big deal.
So allowing debate of opinions that some people disagree with is not a big deal?
It depends on who is doing it and what exactly they are seeking to prevent. Putin preventing anyone in Russia expressing any opinion against the war is a very big deal. A bunch of students and junior academics seeking to prevent Kathleen Stock speaking at the university is a shame – mainly for the university and those who are deprived of the opportunity to hear her -but it is not comparable in its significance.
Well, different countries have different mechanisms by which speech is suppressed. But suppressing free speech is never going to lead to more happiness and prosperity in the long run.
What the Russian government does in Russia is insignificant to anyone who isn’t living there. OTOH, junior academics and students in England having the politcal power to effectively deprive others of rights they’re supposed have according to the law of the land is significant in England. They’re not a sovereign government acting on its undisputed territory but just a bunch of bullies seeking to harm others because they believe they can.
Toxic culture of bullying and harrassment is code language for People who are convinced their opinions are actually true debating them. Like everything, truth is also relative in the enlightened progressive universe: People may well believe that 2 + 2 equals 4, however, arguing about that with people who prefer 2 + 2 equals – 23 is just a form of conversion therapy and thus, to be banned.
I had a moment of clarity about this while discussing the covid hysteria, net zero and leaving the EU while staying with some old friends of the public sector metropolitan elite variety recently. I suddenly realised that I was not trying to change their mind, I was telling them why they couldn’t change mine.
“‘transwomen are women’”. Maybe if we called them exactly what they are, that would clear up any confusion. That would be men, in a dress.
Transvestites, I believe.
No. And the statement is built on ignorance.
Are any of the downtickers able to provide evidence to support their position? Sadly the reality is that even the downticks are based on ignorance.
Whatever happened to; I do not wish to hear what you say, so I will not go to your event. The bullying used by the self appointed moralistic elite, is only to be expected as it is the only way they can get attention. And by doing so, proves the very fragility of their own arguments. These actions of bullying call into question the very intelligence and qualification requirements to enter these academic establishments. Moreover, the removal of debate and reflection removes the very essence of the University’s existence.
I quite agree. By their behaviour these idiots are perfectly illustrating why they are unworthy and ill-prepared for university life. This would never have been tolerated, certainly not pandered to, when I was at uni. The problem is now that we live in a cancel culture which is stacked in favour of the snowflake generation. Unfortunately the authorities side with these radical, half-baked loonies that are evidently mentally ill ( whilst simultaneously doing a great disservice to regular trans folk who just wish to get on with their lives and aren’t all about making their transness define them ) which just enables and empowers these hysterical idiots.
Their behaviour is appalling and if the uni supports them then that is unprofessional and unforgivable, frankly. There should be blanket zero tolerance to bullying and intimidation in all universities, and this is what this behaviour amounts to. It’s like civilised society has been dismantled and is being put back together all wrong, and this obviously applies to all the worrying changes afoot that we’re seeing, which all appear to be escalating in recent years.
“whilst simultaneously doing a great disservice to regular trans folk who just wish to get on with their lives and aren’t all about making their transness define them”
Thanks for intelligence and common sense Mogs.
Good for the profs. Oxford, like most Unis, is probably beyond saving. Hopefully some rich person or firm will stump up a few hundred million to found some new Unis that believe in free speech and they can all leave and join those.
‘…students have tried to cancel Prof. Stock’s talk, claiming that she is transphobic for disputing that ‘transwomen are women’.’
Nope, transwomen are not women. No matter how long or how hard they infer or affirm that they are women, they are not. Irrespective of whatever illusion, delusion, aspiration or fantasy they labour under; irrespective of whatever they ‘identify’ as, they are not women.
Irrespective how strongly – and in some instances violently – they insist that they be known as women, they are not.
Irrespective of their desire to be seen and treated differently, they cannot force others to see them as anything but what they are. WYSIWYG – a man in a frock. Women – never in a month of Sundays…
The world-famous Oxford Union should grab the opportunity to sever ties with the grubby little cabal of pseudo-political dweebs and grifters that the Students’ Union invariably is. Move to a donation model if funds are tight, they’ll be rolling in it.
Putting a list on social media isn’t the most noble of endeavours. Anyone could do that if they wanted to push their cause. Is this a simple formulation of the argument from authority? Surely that contradicts your position at a fundamental level?
Expel all who will no doubt protest outside the event. They’re wasted in education, they already ‘know everything’
They are the equivalent of the screaming toddler sitting on the floor of a shop and throwing a tantrum. We should deal with them just as we would the toddler. But with real consequences actually followed up, not with sweeties and a kiss.
Trans women are men, especially if they keep their junk. If you’ve had the snip, I’m a bit more sympathetic, but with this constant sh¡t I’m losing even that shred of kindness. This movement needs to be utterly destroyed.
El Gato Malo makes some good points about the lack of shame these people have. They’re cosseted and have never had to self reflect on their behaviour because nobody has ever held them properly accountable in their lives.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-goldilocks-zone-of-shame
“we have enabled the age of the crybully whose cultivated infirmity and fragility bubbles over into endless demands for redress and accommodation at the expense of everything and everyone.”
Another problem is that the literature doesn’t support the intervention of surgery or taking hormones in curing gender dysphoria. Unsurprisingly the medical-industrial complex has jumped on this bandwagon and is exploiting vulnerable individuals who are in dire need of decent talking therapies and nothing else. The obvious result is that we have mentally ill young people doing irreparable damage to their bodies and actually making their existing psychiatric issues even worse. You don’t need to look far online to hear tragic stories of people who have, or wish to, detransition, but the support is not available to them and their bodies will never ever be the same again. Dr McCullough cites a study here;
”Sadly, TGD adolescents were more likely to have a mental health diagnosis (OR 5.45, 95% CI [4.77-6.24]), use more mental healthcare services (IRR 2.22; 95% CI [2.00-2.46]), and used psychotropic medications (IRR = 2.57; 95% CI [2.36-2.80]) compared to normal siblings. Diagnoses included adjustment, anxiety, mood, personality, psychotic disorders, and suicidal ideation/attempted suicide. Among 963 TGD youth (age ~18 yrs) using gender-affirming pharmaceuticals, mental healthcare did not significantly change (IRR = 1.09, 95% CI [0.95-1.25]) and psychotropic medications increased (IRR = 1.67, 95% CI [1.46-1.91]) following gender-affirming pharmaceutical initiation.
These data suggest transgender medicine makes the overall burden of psychiatric disease worse and clearly increases the costs of psychiatric care. Parents should understand that transgender medicine is not effective in handling the psychiatric drivers of gender dysphoria in their teenagers.”
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/mental-healthcare-burden-of-transgender
Welfare spaces? If it’s so traumatic then why go at all? I think this is all rather sad and pathetic.
The first female to male transgender surgery in the world was performed in the UK in 1946-9. The patient was Laura, later Michael Dillon, who wrote a series of short monographs about his thinking. I have made my own analysis of his psychological state, and that of Robert Cowell, who became Roberta with Dillon’s help, but I would be interested to see a proper study of both done by a proper psychiatrist, which I am not. To say that both were strange and tortured souls would be fair, but their milieu was much less accepting of surgical alteration than now. Liz Hodgkinson has written an excellent book about Dillon. Perhaps more people should read it.
The Labour Party wants to reduce the voting age to 16. Seeing how the minority of students are controlling their fellows, it makes a case for increasing it to 25 or even older. Why is there no objection by the students to the actions of the LGBTQ+ society? I assume this is either because our universities have a disproportionate number of people in this group, or their actions are so despicable towards people who object to them that they are frightened to try to prevent their control of student life. In addition to putting their name to this excellent letter, the professors should do more to help protect students who might agree with it. I am disappointed that students in general do not seem to value free speech or have the courage to fight for it.
The Labour Party wants to reduce the voting age to 16.
The telling thing here is that they doubtlessly don’t want to reduce the age where people may drive a car or buy alcoholic drinks and cigarettes. They’re confident that they can get people with no real life to worry about yet to vote as they’re supposed to and need them because the number of their (boombaby) peers who’ve kept the COVID! Climate Change! Critical Race Theory! (Communism!) show rolling so far will keep dying in increasing numbers and someone needs to neutralize the votes of the people they plan to harm. But they’re absolutely not confident that their lifestyle choice, were they allowed to make them, would differ very much from those of the remainder of the population.
The notion that someone can vote for a Member of Parliament before they are old enough to stand as Member of Parliament is illogical. It is a question of mature judgement and must apply to both parties. In the end only individualism and the endless variety of human nature can save us from these attempts to transform society into a Brave New World, revisited in the twenty-first century. Science is not wisdom – it needs to be kept in its proper place as a servant and help to people. Ethics and morals matter. One of the first things to meet the reader in the 1931 BNW is the sexualization of very young children – just as the WHO would wish. It is more important than ever that people should be free to exchange views and send the would-be World Dictators away to drown in their own drivel.
Age-based voting restrictions are never logical – to paraphrase Heinlein Why should a 45 year imbecile have a right to vote while a 12 year old genius hasn’t? –
it would make more sense to base this on some concept of skin in the game, eg, people with property have a right to stand in elections, people paying income tax have a right to vote. And there should still be some exceptions to guarantee a functioning state, for instance, civil servants have no right to vote because they’re not supposed to influence decisions regarding what their job is supposed to be.
Universal suffrage works best because every adult needs to be able to vote for change or to improve their circumstances – sometimes from a position of poverty or powerlessness. What you suggest is really turning back the clock. Votes for the privileged few was a truly rotten system and we cannot betray those who fought to abolish it. I have met an awful lot of geniuses with no common sense. Mankind in its infinite and imperfect variety is a safer bet than handing over to people who believe they know what’s good for you.
There is no such thing as universal suffrage and claiming that the present system of voting restrictions would be the one proven to work best is something I certainly don’t agree with as it has brought us almost nothing but slower motion and quicker motion disasters, including the wholesale abandonment of the notion that individuals would have any rights for a period of years for no particular reason except that a bunch of shady international NGOs wanted that. That was the very thing supposed to be absolutely impossible with our so-called democracy and thus, provides conclusive proof that the system is broken.
The Heinlein paraphrase is from Starship Troopers (novel published in 1959) and a rethorical question that’s part of the justifcation why the fictional state described there restricts voting to people who have served their time in the military. As such, is rather not suitable for the generic Beware! Technocracy! rant you’ve tried to attach to it.
As there are apparently people who don’t quite understand how this universal suffrage is anything but universal: In order to vote in general elections in England, a person must be of the required age, must be legally resident in the UK and must be a citizen of a Commonwealth country (this includes Great Britain).
I’ve been legally resident in England since December 2010, have paid a lot of taxes since then and have indefinite leave to remain (EU version, settled status). Because I’m German, I have no right to vote.
A student from Kenya who comes here with a student visa for the next term who didn’t and won’t ever pay any taxes in the UK and never really lives here, ie, who just finishes his studies and then leaves again, does have full voting rights the moment he enters the UK.
That’s obviously not universal and not even particularly logical.