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The Oxford Union has hosted Holocaust deniers, terrorists, murderers, Nazi appeasers, neo-Nazis, black supremacists, communists, porn stars… but women who deny that men can be women are beyond the pale. Apparently they have to draw the line somewhere — and women who assert biological facts are it.
In its 200-year history the Oxford Union has hosted the good, the great and the odious on its way to cementing itself as one of the world’s most prestigious debating societies […]
But now several university groups are cutting their long affiliation with the society, and up to 1000 protesters are preparing a campus picket in a dispute over the decision by the Oxford Union to invite the feminist professor Kathleen Stock to give a talk on gender on May 30.
Dave Chappelle shocked Hollywood when he had the temerity to say out loud the “unwritten and unspoken rule of show business”:
“You are never, ever, allowed to upset the alphabet people”
As is too often the case, the rules of the Hollywood elite are the template for privileged sheep of the university class.
Stock – described recently as a “mild-mannered and eminently sensible middle-aged lesbian” – resigned as a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex in 2021 following what she described as “bullying and harassment” in response to her views on gender identification and transgender rights. The controversy revolved around her belief that a person’s self-declared gender identity does not outweigh their biological sex, “particularly when it comes to law and policy”.
Upsetting the alphabet people comes at a price.
In April, the Oxford University LGBTQ+ society called for Stock’s invitation to speak to be rescinded, claiming she was “transphobic and trans-exclusionary”. It also accused Oxford Union of disregarding the welfare of the society’s members under the guise of free speech.
Earlier this month, Oxford’s student union passed a motion to cut financial ties with the Oxford Union. Seventy-eight per cent of those present voted in favour, preventing the Oxford Union from having a stall at the freshers’ fair, causing a reduction in membership that will likely put a strain on the debating organisation’s finances. It is the first time such action has been taken.
Several Oxford colleges including St Edmund Hall, Mansfield, St Anne’s and St Hilda’s have also passed motions condemning the talk, calling for Stock’s invite “to be rescinded in support of the trans community”.
What’s the old saying about who you can or can’t criticise?
The drama comes amid a spate of free speech rows at universities featuring speakers with gender-critical views – including attempts by the University of Bristol to ban the public from a feminist society talk and activists at the University of Edinburgh preventing a screening of a women’s rights documentary.
Notice the pattern, here? They’re all privileging autogynephilic men over women. Transgenderism is truly the most misogynist ideology this side of Islam.
Thankfully, some academics are prepared to remind the Red Guards of the New Cultural Revolution what universities are supposed to defend.
The Stock affair last week sparked one of the most significant interventions by academics in recent controversies over free speech on campus. More than 40 academics – including Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, and Nigel Biggar, the theologian – have intervened in support of Stock’s appearance.
The group, ranging from well-known professors to younger lecturers who have recently graduated, were united by the belief that the right to free speech is sacred and must be defended, warning that students and administrators at the university were bowing to increasingly hysterical activists who use social media to create outrage.
In a letter to The Telegraph, they said they possessed “a range of different political beliefs, left and right”, but were united in their belief that “universities exist, among other things, to promote free inquiry and the disinterested pursuit of the truth by means of reasoned argument”.
Sydney Morning Herald
Does anyone really believe that, any more?
