Hostile response
James Kirkup has more on the persecution of Kevin Price:
Mr Price is now facing the sort of ‘hostile response’ he spoke about – calls for his employer to dismiss him from his job, because of his thoughts on sex and gender and ultimately, because of his reluctance to say the holy words.
According to Varsity, a student paper, the Union of Clare Students has condemned him and demanded the college authorities act against him. By discussing issues of policy and law at a council meeting, Mr Price had jeopardised the ‘safety’ of the college’s trans and non-binary students, the union suggested in a statement.
Varsity further quotes one Clare student as saying Price is ‘unfit both to hold public office and to be in a position of responsibility over students.’
Now, I didn’t go to Oxbridge and I’m not much for Marxist analysis of society as a class struggle. But I know enough about both to suggest that there’s something both distasteful and revealing about a bunch of Cambridge undergraduates threatening the livelihood of a man employed to serve them because he refuses to share their opinions and adopt their language.
In light of the recent revelations, the Union of Clare Students (UCS) released a statement affirming that “trans people deserve to feel safe and valued within Clare”, and that “our priority is to protect the welfare of Clare’s trans and non-binary community, ensuring that they feel not only safe but also empowered by the College they attend”.
Condemning Price, who is currently continuing his duties at the College, the UCS stated that Price has shown “a brazen contempt for the rights and dignity of trans and non-binary people”. They reassured students that “the UCS and MCR are currently in communication with the College on how best to resolve this situation while centring trans and non-binary students”, and that “the Senior Tutor is meeting with Price personally”.
So the UCS doesn’t pause at lying about Kevin Price. He didn’t show “a brazen contempt” for the rights and dignity of anyone.
The UCS’ LGBT+ Officer Frankie Kendal emphasised that “at Clare, we have a small but vibrant trans and non-binary community that should not only feel safe but feel celebrated”, furthering that for as long as Price continues to perpetuate transphobic views, “trans and non-binary students should not have to interact or rely on him for support in any way”.
In other words he should be fired.
Kendal, who is also a Trans and Non-Binary Rep on the Cambridge SU LGBT+ Campaign, furthermore highlighted that “the handling of this situation highlights that transphobia runs much deeper than a singular Twitter feed”.
Kendal denounced the College’s failure to make students aware of Price’s conduct when his Tweets were unearthed last month, alongside Council members mourning Kevin’s resignation “but not denouncing his transphobia” and “the way CULA used his original comments as a partisan campaigning tool”. Kendal affirmed that all these instances show a continued “failure to centre trans people”, alongside the fact that trans students “are not being prioritised as they should be”.
Why is there a need to “center” trans people? Why should trans students be “prioritized”?
Victoria Longstaff, former SU Women’s Campaign Trans Rep and Clare student, commented that Price is “unfit both to hold public office and to be in a position of responsibility over students” in light of his views. She added that transgender students relying on him in his position as a Clare porter is “a potential risk”, furthering that because of this she “must support either his resignation or his suspension from his duties at the college”.
There you go. Take his job away; ruin his life; persecute him for failure to Center and Prioritize trans people.
It’s disordered personalities run amok.
And this is the mantra that will be used from now on. Any request for evidence of this will be TUMBLEWEED’D or referred to Google, just as it was with JK Rowling. “I’m not here to educate you, Google it.”
The possibility that the brazen contempt doesn’t exist does not itself exist in the minds of these fanatics. They don’t need to see the evidence themselves, they ‘know’ it must be out there somewhere. That’s enough to have someone punished (note that they are not doing the punishment themselves) for doing an exceptionally honourable thing.
Since when are schools there to celebrate their students? I never felt “celebrated” when I was in college (or before or since, except on my birthday). College should make you as uncomfortable as hell; it should challenge your assumptions, and make you think about what you believe is true, question what you hold dear. If you come out on the other side of college with your beliefs intact, it should be because the process of critical thinking and analysis supported holding those beliefs.
Yes, of course, college never does that to perfection. But most of us can point to at least one instructor who led us down that path, made us squirm in our seats, sent us to the library (it would be Google now, of course) to prove him/her wrong, and came back humbled…or, in a few cases, proved him/her wrong. Those are the professors I remember best, and with the most fondness, those who forced me to look beyond myself and recognize that there were things I didn’t know and was overlooking in my formulation of my childhood beliefs that I desperately clung to and tried to carry into adulthood unscathed. My goal when I go to class is to make at least one student doubt something they believe, and learn how to evaluate it in the process. I’ve shaken up many a student. Those who remain complacent through college, who remain “safe” (in the way it is used here, not in the way of managed to come out the other side without having been shot, raped, or run over) are the ones who are not getting what they deserve from their education.
The continued use of the word “safe” in the context of college students continually brings up the word “coddled” in the context of toddlers.
When my children were babies and I joined a mother’s group — we took turns meeting in our homes and talked while the kids played — I noticed a difference among us (well, several, but mentioning this one.) All the toddlers, from time to time, would fall, bump themselves, or otherwise experience some minor injury or surprise, as toddlers do. And then they’d immediately look at Mom.
Some of us would cry out and rush right over to comfort them while the child subsequently sobbed. And other mothers would smile reassuringly, and say something like “whoops! You’re okay!” Because if they had to check in to see what to do instead of going into full-blown scream, then they were okay. It was no big deal, and one has to learn to self-sooth. Get up, dust off that diaper, and continue going for that Fisher-Price turtle: Mommy’s socializing.
I get the feeling that trans-identified individuals either had the first kind of mothers, or watched them enviously and wished they did. The world is unsafe — and they should be centered.
Definitely one area where the “conservatives” really have a point… mostly for the wrong reasons, but still valid.
I’ll bet that these “activists” who feel so “unsafe” around Mr. Price would be perfectly fine for women and girls to risk grievous bodily harm or death playing with TIMs on the rugby field.
That’s because women and girls aren’t real people, silly; they’re either NPCs (and thus just a bunch of stereotypes) or playable characters for the real people to use. Everyone knows that there are no women or girls in gaming; just men opting to play as female characters (or not). So, obviously, it’s the same in real life. Duh.
tigger, interesting comparison. I have a young TiM friend who believes that the crap he got playing while female means he understands the crap women get in every aspect of existence and can’t check out of because it’s our real goddamned life. Yeah. Try being a woman that can’t take off the woman face when you’re tired of making less money, making coffee, or having men grab your ass.
I shall be very interested to see how this plays out. The porters are as much part of the College as the undergraduates are – indeed more so, as they are there for longer. They’re a closely-knit group who ensure the day-to-day smooth running of the College. They could bugger things up a lot if they chose. Also the College has a duty of care towards them, and allowing bullying is not part of that. And the University Council recently approved a statement on free speech principles – https://freespeechunion.org/letter-to-vice-chancellor-of-cambridge-university/ – which puts it firmly on the side of Mr Price.
The sense of entitlement of the Union of Clare Students is truly gobsmacking. Even at the high-water mark of English snobbery undergraduates respected the porters, perhaps because they would get into trouble if they didn’t. The College has a duty to stand up for its long-term employee and to put the undergraduates in their place. Whether it will do so is perhaps in question, in the current climate. But they certainly can’t dispense with the services of Mr Price without (i) creating a case for an employment tribunal, (ii) attracting more media attention (which they absolutely loathe), (iii) pissing off their alumni (if my college sided with the TRAs against the porters my direct debit would be reduced by three orders of magnitude) and (iv) risking serious practical problems when the other porters show solidarity with their colleague.