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Cancel culture? Trans-inclusive writers say they face abuse and censorship [1]
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Date: 2023-09
When her OBE was announced in December 2020, Kathleen Stock – then a philosophy professor at the University of Sussex – said she was “delighted to get this award in recognition of my attempts to open up academic discussion on important issues around sex and gender identity”.
Stock had been a specialist in aesthetics, with relatively little public profile, until 2018. A blog post opposing Theresa May’s promised reforms to gender recognition legislation changed that, gaining her attention within wider academic circles. She has since become a fixture of media discussions about free speech in academia, arguing that so-called ‘gender critical’ voices are being suppressed.
But Stock’s commitment to free speech – and that of her allies – has been questioned by students at Sussex and beyond, who have found themselves subject to online abuse, facing legal threats, and risking their careers in academia after criticising ‘gender critical’ views as transphobic.
Sussex English undergraduate Katie Tobin was among the first to experience such a backlash when she wrote an article in late 2018 for the Sussex branch of The Tab, a student newspaper conglomerate with a presence on dozens of UK campuses.
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Tobin’s piece concerned an email Stock had sent the entire Sussex philosophy cohort defending her views on trans rights. In her article, Tobin said Stock’s email had “created a hostile and unwelcoming atmosphere” for trans students, and that her comments about trans issues had been “extremely detrimental” to their welfare.
When the article was published, Stock responded on Twitter: “This is not OK @TheTab. I will be seeking legal advice.” In a tweet that Stock ‘liked’, a supporter of hers wrote: “Tobin is clearly a homophobe and misogynist”, and called the article “slander”.
At that point, Tobin said, she started getting a “flood” of “horrible messages”, including death threats. She filed a complaint with the university about Stock instigating a pile-on against her.
Sussex concluded that Stock was not responsible for the abuse Tobin had received, and that she had not been unprofessional or engaged in bullying. Tobin was, however, given £250 as compensation by the university.
Meanwhile, at the request of Stock’s lawyers, The Tab removed the article, published a retraction and paid her a small amount of compensation, which was donated to charity.
Stock told openDemocracy any abuse Tobin had received was not her responsibility as she had not tweeted her complaint about The Tab at Tobin directly, nor mentioned her online by name.
“After a thorough examination of all evidence provided by Tobin, I was completely exonerated and she was somewhat admonished,” she said. She added that Tobin “has not respected the [university’s] request for confidentiality, though up til now I have” despite having tweeted about the dispute in 2021.
The university’s response to Tobin appeared to set a precedent, In October 2021, when students put up posters reading “IT’S NOT A DEBATE. IT’S NOT FEMINISM. IT’S NOT PHILOSOPHY. IT’S JUST TRANSPHOBIA AND IT’S NOT ON. FIRE KATHLEEN STOCK”, an art history lecturer at Sussex tweeted that “security rushed to remove them at 8am”.
Stock resigned a few weeks later. Then-vice-chancellor Adam Tickell expressed sorrow over the “bullying and harassment” Stock had received, and said: “I would like to make it very clear that it is unlawful to discriminate against someone on the grounds of sex and of philosophical belief. Her departure is a loss to us all.”
But Tobin couldn’t help but compare her treatment by the university to Stock’s. “I struggled a lot seeing the university being so willing to support her when she’d received [online] threats of violence and death threats, knowing that was the fate she’d willingly subjected me to,” she said. Sussex University did not respond to requests for comment.
Stock told openDemocracy: “The claim that I ‘willingly subjected’ Tobin to abuse, when I did not mention her at all in any public intervention, seems to be a fantasy which she has been trying to get people to listen to for five years now.” She added, “As far as I know no evidence was offered by Katie at the time of death threats.”
Tobin, however, says she told the university that the online abuse was making her life “a living hell” and said Stock “couldn’t seem to care less”.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/anti-trans-views-academia-kathleen-stock-sussex-university-brian-leiter/
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