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Raquel Rosario Sánchez won’t be silenced Did Bristol University fail to stop trans abuse?

'You don't have to be afraid' (FiLiA)


February 1, 2022   5 mins

Raquel Rosario Sánchez should be graduating this month with a PhD from one of the UK’s most prestigious universities. Instead, she will be in court, suing the University of Bristol for allegedly failing to protect her from bullying and harassment.

Like many women in this country, Rosario Sánchez has been targeted by trans activists, some of them fellow students. Within weeks of beginning her research on men who pay for sex, she started to receive online abuse and was accused of being a Terf, scum, trash and a bigot. The campaign of vilification has continued for four years, delaying her PhD and putting a question mark over her visa, which she needs if she is to stay in this country and graduate.

Rosario Sánchez’s story would be extraordinary if it did not follow an all-too-familiar pattern. She has joined a growing list of women who have been let down by British universities: from Professor Kathleen Stock, who resigned last year from Sussex University, to Professor Jo Phoenix, who is taking action against her former employer, the Open University. What is different about Rosario Sánchez is that she is a young woman, still only 32, and a postgraduate student — albeit one with degrees from universities in Utah and Oregon State.

Rosario Sánchez is also an immigrant, who knew no one in this country when she arrived from the Dominican Republic to begin her research. “I started my PhD programme very late, at the end of November 2017, because of problems with my visa,” she says. “The only person I knew was my supervisor, who had met me via Skype. I was very isolated.”

Yet Rosario Sánchez was never going to slip through academia unnoticed. She already had an international reputation as a feminist campaigner and was soon invited to chair a meeting in Bristol by Woman’s Place UK, a feminist organisation that campaigns against gender self-identification and has repeatedly been smeared as a ‘hate’ group.

The meeting was scheduled for February 2018, but the lies and abuse began before it had even taken place. An ‘open letter’ was posted on Facebook by someone claiming to be a Bristol student, calling for the meeting to be cancelled. More than 200 people signed the letter, some of them adding abusive comments. “I cannot believe someone from the Centre for Gender Violence Research is organising this,” one student wrote. “It’s atrocious. Total TERF shit. Signed and shared.”

Rosario Sánchez was not the organiser and the meeting had no connection with the university’s Centre for Gender and Violence Research — but facts don’t matter to trans activists. In a later post, the author of the open letter boasted about wanting to “punch them terfs [sic]”. Someone else posted a link to the WPUK meeting, suggesting that “trans allies” should target the meeting with eggs. “Oh and feel free to slap a TERF upside their bigoted, hateful face,” the message continued.

Concerned about her physical safety and afraid that the open letter might lead to her losing her PhD place, Rosario Sánchez made a complaint to the university, pointing out that the posts breached its “unacceptable behaviour” policy. To her relief, the meeting went ahead without incident, but only because WPUK managed to keep the venue secret.

But it wasn’t a secret for long: days later, a motion explicitly targeting free speech was tabled at a meeting of the Bristol students’ union. Its stated aim was to “prevent future Trans-Exclusion Radical Feminist – Terf – Groups from holding events at the University”. The motion was passed; those students who objected were swiftly shouted down.

This sequence of events stirred the university into action. It issued a statement, reaffirming its “commitment to freedom of speech and to the rights of all our students and staff to discuss difficult and sensitive topics”. Ominously, however, the statement repeated false assertions about the WPUK meeting from the open letter and included this sentence: “We believe that calls for this event to be banned were largely founded on the sincere desire to show support and solidarity for transgender people in our society and in our university community.”

Unsurprisingly, Rosario Sánchez did not feel supported. Feminists are used to hearing excuses for the appalling behaviour of trans activists, but here was an academic institution explicitly downplaying threats and abuse levelled at one of its students.

“Every aspect of my life was centred around the university, which exacerbated the situation,” she tells me. She chose Bristol over other universities that offered her a place because she believed the city to be an open and welcoming environment. So the hostility from fellow students came as a shock: “In my case, it was like they couldn’t comprehend that I was a woman from the Caribbean who was not compliant. The Dominican Republic is a very conservative country politically but conservatives and religious people would never try to get meetings cancelled. The right of freedom of speech for feminists is guaranteed.”

What Rosario Sánchez didn’t know, when she arrived in the UK, was that Bristol has some of the most vocal trans activists in the country. A couple of months later, another feminist event in Bristol, attended by prominent feminists including Julie Bindel, was disrupted by masked protesters. Rosario Sánchez could not attend the meeting but she recognised the author of the open letter, known as AA in legal documents, in video footage. It allegedly shows AA trying to force entry to the meeting and being forcibly removed by the police.

Rosario Sánchez had not complained specifically about the behaviour of this individual, but AA was the only student who faced disciplinary proceedings. A hearing was scheduled for June 2018 and Rosario Sánchez cancelled a speaking engagement in Chicago so she could take part. According to her lawyers’ submission, she asked the university to consider how to protect those attending, but masked protestors turned up and intimidated her outside where the hearing took place.

During the proceedings, Rosario Sánchez was cross-examined by AA’s barrister, an experience she found “distressing, intimidating and demeaning”. The student, she says, was not questioned at all. Although the hearing was supposed to be confidential, it was followed by a barrage of social media posts against Rosario Sánchez, to the point where she became afraid of travelling alone at night.

One of her most explosive claims relates to a subsequent meeting that took place without her knowledge, when a representative of a hate crime charity is alleged to have argued that the disciplinary proceedings should be dropped because AA identified as trans. According to Rosario Sánchez’s lawyers, the university applies a policy of “not sanctioning students who rely on ‘trans rights’ activism to justify their conduct”. In July 2018, around three weeks after the disciplinary hearing where Rosario Sánchez was cross-examined, the university published a press release announcing it had signed a “pledge” in support of trans people.

The next few months were a miserable period for Rosario Sánchez, in which meetings with the university authorities were scheduled and then cancelled, causing her growing distress. She did not discover that proceedings against the student had been dropped until June 2019, when a Twitter account bearing AA’s name posted a topless photograph with this message: “The face (& nipples) of someone deciding what new hobbies to pursue, now that the University of Bristol have dropped their transphobic joke of a disciplinary case. So many options…. Eat your hearts out WPUK.”

On the same day, Rosario Sánchez was informed that a decision to drop the disciplinary proceedings against AA had been taken several weeks earlier. In December that year, her wider complaint about bullying and harassment was dismissed. And so she believed that the only course open to her was to pursue legal action. She accuses Bristol University of victimisation, indirect sex discrimination and sexual harassment, the latter on the ground that her views on sex and gender reassignment are protected under the 2010 Equality Act.

A university of Bristol spokesperson told me: “We are committed to making our University a place where all feel safe, welcomed and respected, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability or social background.” Would Rosario Sánchez agree? Since she was first hounded, she has been diagnosed with a “prolonged adjustment disorder” whose symptoms include loss of concentration, energy and motivation. “I don’t particularly like to dwell on the negative aspects,” she says, “but one of the reasons it’s so important for me to be vocal is so other women get the message.

“You don’t have to be afraid. You can endure this and survive and get on with your life. That’s what trans activists don’t want. They wanted me to see the campaign of violence and shut up forever. I decided I’m going to do the opposite.”


Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women will be published in November 2024.

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Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
2 years ago

Men in dresses threatening women and universities too craven and cowardly to stop it. You couldn’t make this stuff up. I’m totally ashamed at what Higher Education has become.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

Well said, even though my surname is actually ‘Craven’.

Andrea X
Andrea X
2 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

And I always thought you were Croatian 😀

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrea X

It always makes me chuckle when people say that.

Hilary Easton
Hilary Easton
2 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

Ha ha- you’ve blown your cover now, Richard!

Doug Pingel
Doug Pingel
2 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

Having been trained by the Navy to write up-side-down and sometimes back-to front your disguised moniker was easily sussed. As I understand it – on the waterfront it is by name but not by nature.

Charles Lewis
Charles Lewis
2 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

uoy tnod yas!

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
2 years ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

“You couldn’t make this stuff up”
On the contrary, what’s happening today is the obvious, predictable outcome of decades of feminism.

Decades of barging onto male spaces (boy scouts, sports that women take no interest in and are awful at forced to become “inclusive”) or imposing women quotas in fields like IT.
All based in the principle that there are no biological differences, and any difference in outcome (only when in favour of men, of course) is therefore “sexism.”

Men wearing dresses barging on to female spaces using the exact same arguments that feminists have used.
And plenty of women are supporting trans for the same reason they helped cover up the grooming gangs: the diversity / patriarchy swindle is hugely beneficial for useless middle- upper class women with degrees in arts and studies, and a few male rapists being allowed into female prisons is worth it for them, the sisterhood be damned.

Art Johnston
Art Johnston
2 years ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Blaming feminism is a red herring. I don’t think that you can deny the fact that women have been discriminated against in the past. And feminism was one way to try end that discrimination–yes it was flawed. (Aren’t all political organizations flawed?).
These men, are simply taking advantage of women’s desire to be allowed equal opportunity and women’s desire not to be button-holed because of their sex.
Did feminism plant the seed for this gender/trans garbage? Probably, but few, if any feminists would, at least in the past, would have allowed this misogyny and erosion of women’s rights to have happened.
But yes, it is discouraging how few present day feminist groups are screaming bloody murder about what these nasty men (and the corporations and academia that are enabling them) are doing. .

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
2 years ago
Reply to  Art Johnston

“don’t think that you can deny the fact that women have been discriminated against in the past”
If you were in the 18th century, being a woman sucked.
So did being a man though. I don’t think many women needed to go through the carnage of medieval warfare or work in soul destroying and horrendous risky industries or mines, with no safety net, to feed their families.

“These men, are simply taking advantage of women’s desire to be allowed equal opportunity”
Not equality of opportunity.
Equity.
Which means that women tennis players or footballers get paid the same, get a leg up for STEM courses even if no evidence of bias exists, and firefighters or police are forced to induct substandard women.
And yes, that’s being taken advantage of by these men.
No sympathies.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Your history is well askew. Women also worked in dangerous industries, as well as of course doing all the home drudgery and of course having no legal rights in marriage.

There is just a lot of illogic and contradiction in your arguments. You say women aren’t interested in ‘male’ sports. Well, some are and some are not, well, well! Some women want to play football; what is your beef with that? And you also seem to suggest women should not serve in the police force, an extraordinary position in 2022. Feminists do not on the whole argue that men and women are exactly the same in every respect.

It’s a pity that in arguing against extreme identity politics and ‘wokeism’, many commentators in here just become out and out reactionaries, apparently wanting a return to the 1950s or something, which the population do not want, and makes them a politically irrelevant small minority.

Blaming ‘feminists’ for extreme trans activism when at least as many men are involved – probably more – is an example of pure sexism. To suggest that the ‘grooming gangs’ were somehow supported by women and opposed by men is an outrageous implication for which you can provide no evidence. The MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, long campaigned on this very issue.

Some women are wise, some foolish, ditto men.

D Day
D Day
2 years ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

The weird, partisan acceptance by the university, of actual hate speech by activists cannot be blamed on a desire for sexual equality and good treatment of one human by another. The vitriol and threatening abuse that is at issue here is illegal; the measured, academic debate around the conflicting needs of vulnerable groups is not. The university has a duty of care to protect its students from “hate speech” but it seems to have forgotten what that is: speech that incites violence and hatred. Some of the derogatory comments on here about “men in dresses” may play into the narrative that the UK is transphobic and that therefore violent dissent is warranted, but academics like Sanchez and Stock do not. They carefully and clearly re-iterate that they support trans-rights to protection under the law etc just not at the expense of the protection of other vulnerable groups. The threats and abuse such Academics are hounded with should be judged by their university on the basis of how violence- and hatred-inciting they are, not on who says them.

Hersch Schneider
Hersch Schneider
2 years ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Savage, but f’cking great comment

David Morley
David Morley
2 years ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Spot on. Not to mention the amazing similarity between trans activists trying to shut down terfs, and feminists trying to shut down mens rights activists. All captured on video.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Carl Trueman’s book, ‘The rise and triumph of the self’ is a fascinating history of changing ideas leading to this situation.

Marcia McGrail
Marcia McGrail
2 years ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Indeed, you couldn’t make it up – next you’ll be telling me there’s a rapist turned masseuse (or perhaps masseuse turned rapist??) called Gooddewillee.

Neil Cheshire
Neil Cheshire
2 years ago

The bravery and determination of Ms. Sánchez to fight back and hold Bristol University to account is admirable. Pathetic and concerning that a few TFs (Trans Fascists) masked up in black can intimidate and influence the administration and student body of a major university.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
2 years ago
Reply to  Neil Cheshire

The few trans fascists aren’t capable of intimidating a major university in their own.

It’s the support structure- media, the existing university admin, the various “rights” groups that provide them the muscle.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Yes it wouldn’t surprise me if, like Prof Stock, that it was University employees that were leading the charge and fomenting threats of violence. That’s maybe why the University is so desperately trying to hush it up.
Go girl!

Ian Moore
Ian Moore
2 years ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

It’s not just the media, it is large sections of the general public who are probably in the main unwitting accomplices to the worst of this madness. An example of this is a viral “Dr Phil” episode that features a disagreement between trans/gender fluid people and a “normal” man, the crowd clap everything the trans/gender fluid types say, even though in the main it is utter nonsense, which I am sure they would realise if they looked critically in the cold light of day.
In my humblest of opinions it is a form of mob/herd mentality based loosely on the fact that people are in general supportive of basic minority rights, but end up being used as useful idiots to support for more extreme and dubious movements and interpretations. People just don’t know, understand or care what they are actually ending up supporting beyond the superficial.

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Moore

Yeh, but the comments on the YouTube video of that tell a different story.

alan Osband
alan Osband
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Moore

Sure they wish to seem ‘progressive’

Al M
Al M
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Moore

I suspect the crowd is a self selecting group of adherents, much like the ‘representative’ audience on Question Time. Many, many ordinary people won’t even know what they’re on about.

L Walker
L Walker
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Moore

Dr. Phil is a clown and a fool.

Penny Adrian
Penny Adrian
2 years ago

A young immigrant woman of color being viciously attacked by white boys in the name of Social Justice. If that doesn’t sum up Identity Politics, I don’t know what does.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Penny Adrian

Sadly the SJWs don’t see the irony!

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
2 years ago
Reply to  Penny Adrian

In my company’s graduate program, I have seen multiple times diligent, smart, working class white or Asian males being rejected in favour of private school educated upper class females who were so far inferior, it was scarcely believable.

That is the fun bit about identity politics, It’s all about social and justice and equality in theory, but in practice is upside down.

Last edited 2 years ago by Samir Iker
Justin Clark
Justin Clark
2 years ago

I, like many, donated to her crowdfund to support her legal case and I hope she is successful. Disgusted at how she’s been treated and Prof. Kathleen Stock etc.

SULPICIA LEPIDINA
SULPICIA LEPIDINA
2 years ago

Men who wish to masquerade as women should be immediately castrated*rather like the Galli or Priests of Cybele.**

(* At their own expense & not on the sainted NHS.)

(** An ancient pre Christian mystery cult, that all to predictably, probably originated in the Middle East.

Karl Francis
Karl Francis
2 years ago

Brave lady. Once more we see appalling bullying and abuse from the usual crowd of ‘enlightened, progressive’ thugs. Keep going and good luck Rosario!

Last edited 2 years ago by Karl Francis
R Wright
R Wright
2 years ago

Bristol seems to have more eunuchs in it now than in the 1700s.

Jacob Moses
Jacob Moses
2 years ago

I have a science PhD from the University of Bristol and was on the academic staff for 20 years. I am appalled by this treatment of another doctoral student.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
2 years ago

I wonder how the university would react were a group of old fashioned men idiots (that is those not pretending to be women) behaved is this way, that is the we associate with the some of the worst behaviour that men engage in. Like violent, intimidating strikers (or anti-strikers) or football supporters.

It’s so hard to understand how men pretending to be women can behave in a manner so aggressively unlike the way in which women usually behave.

John Riordan
John Riordan
2 years ago

Why is it that this AA person gets to remain anonymous?

Adrian Maxwell
Adrian Maxwell
2 years ago
Reply to  John Riordan

For the same reasons disclosed in the recent High Court case of Miller v The College of Policing and another. It was found that police forces were maintaining records of ‘non crime hate incidents’ whereby complaints were anonomised and ‘suspects’ (for want of a better word) were identified. This was the case where 2 officers turned up on Miller’s doorstep to ‘check his thinking’ after 1 person complained his Twitter joke was transphobic. Read the full judgement here – https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/miller-v-college-of-police-judgment.pdf

Mark Kerridge
Mark Kerridge
2 years ago

i’m just wondering if the actions of trans activists are actually increasing negative sentiments towards trans people in general. i’m guessing the answer would be yes..

Michael James
Michael James
2 years ago

Somehow we have to break the state-run university monopoly in academic research. Online rivals to the Open University may be the most promising approach.

Jane Watson
Jane Watson
2 years ago
Reply to  Michael James

James Caspian is an experienced psychotherapist who worked in Gender Identity services where he became increasingly aware of trans clients who regretted their decision and wished to detransition or had done so.

He applied to do Masters research on this subject at (I think) Bath Spa University. His proposal was initially accepted but later rejected because the University feared ‘negative publicity’. He was on TV at the time when he took his dispute with them to an EU Court. His case was lost on a technicality.

He insists that no research is being done on long term outcomes for those who transition and that The Tavistock and other GIDS do not routinely follow up their patients. So it’s not only Universities, the NHS would seem to be failing to conduct potentially important research too.

Jaden Johnson
Jaden Johnson
2 years ago

Why are these activists accorded the benefit of anonymity? Whether it’s this case or Kate Clanchy or anyone else, people making threats should be clearly identified and held to account for their actions. Who is AA?

Michael Askew
Michael Askew
2 years ago

It appears that the cowardice of university administrators knows no bounds.

mike otter
mike otter
2 years ago

Bristol is just another fake Uni that needs closed and its buildings re-purposed to be used by the homeless, the needy and local communities. Add in St Andrews, Bath, Durham, Oxbridge and Canterbury and you could do a lot of good – and that’s just the ones that spring to mind. If you dig down i expect outside of TEM disciplines way more that 50% of uni courses and therefore their degrees are fake and worthless. Notice the S has gone from STEM – this is because life science now denies women exist and physics has been denounced by its own academics as “white supremacy”.

Alex Stonor
Alex Stonor
2 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

The undergraduate degree is where you get ’em; paying a fortune to leave home (all loans bestowed). Everyone gets a least a 2:1; that way you can definitely bank on them doing an MA, which also costs a fortune (all loans bestowed) but is necessary because the degree has left the student unfit for anything in-particular and competing with others, who all have MAs.
And then there’s the accommodation: I once overheard/eavesdropped on a crane driver on a train talking about his job. He mentioned that all the rental money per foot squared, wasn’t central London, it was in all the Student blocks that he was working on.
In our family, with two offspring the student debt is £115, 000 and rising. What a monumental rip-off it is.

Rory Hoipkemier
Rory Hoipkemier
2 years ago

If all intelligent women in academia responded as Rosario Sanchez, we would not be in this appalling situation. Or maybe all intelligent people. Both Britain and the USA may need alternate higher educational systems to combat the rot, as the people with the power appear uninterested in encouraging a pursuit of the true, good or beautiful. I pray she sues the university and wins.

Chris England
Chris England
2 years ago

Good luck to her- I hope she gets fully vindicated. We need more people like this

T Doyle
T Doyle
2 years ago

She’s a hero. Frightening what’s being allowed to persist.

William Shaw
William Shaw
2 years ago

This is mostly a women against women fight.
Men with any sense will stay on the sidelines and let them go at it.
Any male involvement will only provide the sisterhood with a common enemy against which they will redirect their fury.

Last edited 2 years ago by William Shaw
Tom Watson
Tom Watson
2 years ago

One can sympathise, but ‘she has been diagnosed with a “prolonged adjustment disorder” whose symptoms include loss of concentration, energy and motivation’? Hadn’t realised being on a go-slow because you’re angry at your employer was now considered a disorder.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Tom Watson

Great joke Mr Unfeeling. Marvellous contribution to an Unherd discussion – and handy to know you’re around.

Tom Watson
Tom Watson
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

No joke, thought it was rather an interesting example of what Mary Harrington’s talking about here actually – https://unherd.com/2022/01/the-importance-of-an-angry-woman/

Feeling that your employer’s failed to take your concerns for your safety seriously? Distracted and unmotivated at work as a result? Couldn’t be that you’re angry at them and acting accordingly; you must have some sort of diagnosable mental disorder!

Mikey Mike
Mikey Mike
2 years ago
Reply to  Tom Watson

People can develop physical and psychological symptoms to psychological trauma. From what is described in the article, her experiences seem consistent with psychological trauma.

Aidan Trimble
Aidan Trimble
2 years ago
Reply to  Tom Watson

Neanderthal level thinking.