Donors are disgusted

Pippa Rogerson still dealing with blowback from her venomous attack on Helen Joyce:

Prof Rogerson joined Dr Andrew Spencer, the college’s senior tutor, in vowing to boycott the talk. They emailed all of the students  stating Ms Joyce’s views were “offensive, insulting and hateful to members of our community who live and work here”.

The intervention by the college chiefs – before Ms Joyce spoke – led to donors telling The Telegraph they were “embarrassed, appalled and absolutely disgusted” and would not give any more without a retraction and apology.

Pardon me while I interrupt myself for a moment, because an idea about this has occurred to me. It’s about fragility, in particular fragility used as a cudgel. As I read what Spencer and Rogerson said, again, I wondered for the millionth time why there’s so much heavy breathing about offensive insulting n hateful in connection with this one set of people (aka “community”) when there never has been for other oppressed sets of people. Why are trans people talked about as if they were made of crystal or bone china? Why is it all so maudlin, why does it all depend so heavily on fragility? Millionth time, as I said, but the new bit is thinking feminism and anti-racism didn’t work that way, why is that? Well why is that? Because fragile is the last thing we want to be or appear to be or claim to be. It’s degrading. It pulls against equality and ordinary inclusion in public life. So…why is it so appealing to “the trans community”? Why do we hear so very very much about it?

I don’t know. I’d love to know. Is it for a kind of gotcha? Men are stronger than women therefore haha we’ll punish those pesky feminists by pretending men are more fragile?

End of interruption.

But in her letter, Prof Rogerson refused to apologise, instead telling alumni “we expressed our personal opinions – as is our right”.

Nonsense. They weren’t purely personal opinions, they were opinions in their roles at Cambridge University. They used their roles at Cambridge to get their opinions heard. They used their roles at Cambridge to bully and demonize Helen Joyce.

She said a cancellation of the event was not considered and “free speech is fundamental”, but added pointedly: “I hope it is possible for reasonable people to disagree and that freedom of expression is available to everyone, including me.”

Including freedom to use her Cambridge position to cast aspersions on a guest speaker? That’s not so much freedom as it is an abuse of power.

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