A “burn the witch” ideology
Gwyneth Rees at the Telegraph talks to Jo Phoenix:
She explains how the gender critical research network, which launched in June 2021 with just a handful of people, initially had the backing of OU. Prof Phoenix and her fellow lead, Prof Jon Pike, promoted it with a podcast and interest poured in from academics across the world. It was, she says, one of the proudest moments of her life
But then, less than 24 hours after its launch, trans activists got wind of the project and the “onslaught began”. She admits now that she was terribly naive: “I thought I was protected because I was a senior professor.”
I don’t call that naïve. The level of bullying and backstabbing that goes with being a “trans ally” is astounding. Remember when feminism was reawakened back in the 1970s and everyone who resisted was hounded out of careers and friendships? No, of course you don’t, because it didn’t happen. Why has it happened, and with such intensity, over the nonsense of trans ideology? I have no idea; I’ll never understand it. It’s not naïve to find it incomprehensible.
She had, in fact, already been drawing attention to herself for her views. In October 2018, she was one of 54 academics who signed an open letter to the Guardian voicing concern over the stifling of gender-critical research at universities.
Five months later, in March 2019, Prof Phoenix gave a talk for Woman’s Place UK where she said she did not believe trans women were women.
Both of these incidents led to fierce backlash – online and in person – from colleagues, students and trans activists. A criminology talk she had been scheduled to give at Essex University in December 2019 was cancelled at the last minute, after protesters labelled her a transphobe and the university said it couldn’t guarantee her safety.
“I spent two years being silenced, ostracised and isolated,” she says. “Colleagues and trans activists were sending emails to my dean asking for me to be removed.”
All because she knows that men are not women.
I suppose that’s why the bullying is so off the charts. It’s because the thing the bullying is defending is so utterly stupid. The bullies compensate for the childish belief system by pouring on the venom and acid.
Prof Phoenix was particularly hurt when 368 of her OU colleagues signed an open letter against her, accusing the network – and by association, her – of being transphobic. One colleague likened her to a “racist uncle”, another compared to a holocaust denier.
Pointedly, she tells me that the university never protected her, not once putting out a statement to clarify her work was valid research. “I always wanted to work for OU. They were set up to break down barriers, and with women in mind. I took a huge pay cut to move there. I have been heartbroken that it came to this.”
The Open University stopped being Open.
Fast forward to today, and she has been almost totally vindicated. This week, the tribunal judgment upheld 20 out of 22 claims against the university. It also made it clear that their discrimination against Prof Phoenix was motivated by a “fear of the pro-gender-identity section” of the university.
So not belief in the ideology, but fear of the ideologues. What an excellent situation for a university to be in.
She feels the attacks on her and other academics are nothing other than “good old-fashioned sexism” – a “burn the witch” ideology against women speaking up for female rights.
That’s exactly what it is, and it’s women carrying some of the torches. “Burn her, not me.”
Her life has, thankfully, moved on. She is now deputy head of the school of law at Reading University, which she credits for being her “safe harbour”.
As for the network, “It’s limping on,” she says, adding: “There is a chance I will set up a new gender critical research network… so watch this space.
“But that’s what this ruling does – allows researchers to know they can go about their work freely, and if they are attacked or harassed, the universities have to protect them or face the consequences.
Good.
I think so, too. The hateful bullying is striking, and so is the fact that it’s almost exclusively directed at feminist women who actually agree with trans activists on one key point: that people should be free to be gender non-conforming.
Our agreement on that point could be front and center, and then we could talk about gender (really, sex) dysphoria, how best to accommodate those who find medical transition palliative, and hash out our differences with at least a modicum of civility. But no.
They don’t go after gender traditionalists like Matt Walsh. They heap murderous scorn on women like Jo Phoenix, and Kathleen Stock, and you. Some of it is the narcissistic rage of autogynephiles, I can understand the psychological reasons they hate women who say, “No, you’re not a woman,” but not everyone who participates in the bullying is an AGP man. Nope. It’s open season on women who say, No.
Also the level of reality denial. Who would expect a university to cave in the face of protests at the statement of basic facts regarding commonly understood aspects of material reality? Would a geography professor expect their department and school to cower in fear when confronted with people howling and screaming about statements describing the sphericity of the Earth because they insist that it’s flat? Would physicists ever be worried about describing the Earth’s gravitational attraction because it could upset people who believe they can levitate? And what of biologists’ discussions of nutrition, hydration, and metabolism, harshing the mellow of Breatharians, who claim to need none of those thing to exist? These are examples that are at the same basic level of knowledge. They all contradict and refute opposing beliefs of the same degree of impossibility and ludicrousness, trans ideology among them. Who wouldn’t expect a university to uphold discussion of bedrock principals of common knowledge? This should be the default assumption, not a wildly unrealistic expectation.
This abandonment of fundamental knowledge would be like a university siding with aggressive believers of the Cottingley Fairies (a photographic hoax that famously fooled Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was predisposed to accept uncritically many “spiritualist” claims), rather than any faculty member daring to debunk them. It’s hard to believe that anyone not already a believer would have been taken in by the “fairy” photos. The “fairies” are decidedly flat, and look like 2D artwork, not fully 3D living beings, supernatural or otherwise. (Perhaps I am being harsh in my judgement of what was likely an era that was not as discerning and sophisticated in regards to photographic images. Conan Doyle apparently astounded a meeting of the American Society of Magicians with a test reel of stop-motion animation dinosaur footage shot for the movie of his novel, The Lost World. Though it looks crude now, this was cutting-edge stuff in 1922.)
The people who should know better, yet who nonetheless support the fairy tale of gender identity, have no excuse of being fooled by new, unfamiliar technology. They’re fooling themselves, and count themselves morally superior for having done so. It certainly takes a certain degree of what you might call psychological flexibilty, and strenuous mental compartmentalization. After all, knowledge of sex is as old as humanity; that’s a long “trend” to buck. But they do. Here are the very basic facts they”re determined to forget, and to supress. There are only two sexes. Sex is not changeable. So-called “intersex” people do not offer proof of a pathway that allows someone to move from one sex to the other, nor are they a third sex, or some kind of “blend” of the only two sexes there are. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. And to defend their lies, they must denounce anyone who speaks the truth. Maybe I’m naive, but the idea that universities would help enforce this new Lysenkoism is shocking. These examples they reach for aren’t proof for argument, they are smokescreens thrown up to obscure and distract the uncritical and the gullible from discovering the paucity of “evidence” on trans ideology’s side. They’ll use any “example” if it serves the purpose of shutting down further enquiry. I mean Clown fish? FFS. Get in line with the Breatharians and flat-Earthers.
“Gender identity” is bullshit, the “facts” thrown up in its defence discarded once they’ve served their purpose. At least the cardboard cut-outs used in the “fairy” photos actually existed, which is more than can be said of most of the phenomena touted by gender ideology..
‘agree with trans activists on one key point: that people should be free to be gender non-conforming’ I know people often say this is the case, but I don’t see it. ‘If this person prefers clothing/interests/activities our culture labels feminine then by definition this person must be a woman’ (or vice versa) doesn’t seem to me like allowing people to be free to be gender-nonconforming.
I agree with LM: that quoted statement is brilliant.
A statement from Professor Tim Blackman, Vice-Chancellor of The Open University regarding the recent employment tribunal judgment: