February 16, 2025 - 11:30am
Progressive activists may not be entirely consistent in their beliefs, but they are at least fairly predictable in their actions.
Two years ago, when Kathleen Stock made her notorious visit to Oxford, I found myself queueing up outside the event with a friend when we noticed two blue-haired types standing next to us in the line, rummaging through a rucksack full of super glue and trans-activist literature and whispering in audible conspiracy to one another. âI donât suppose youâre planning to disrupt this event?â we asked them. âUs! No! What makes you think that?â they replied wokely, horrified to have been somehow detected. Half an hour later, a team of uniformed policemen was dutifully peeling one of our new acquaintances off the floor of the Oxford Union.
The habit of putting on a bit of improvised student theatre for visiting sex-realist feminists has become a recent, but widely-observed, tradition at Oxford. So the gender-critical writer Helen Joyce and I knew more or less what to anticipate when we sat down in the main lecture theatre of Balliol College on Thursday evening to conduct an open-ended Q&A for a student-run philosophy society under the title: âEverything you always wanted to know about sex (and gender) *but were afraid to askâ.
Joyce, of course, is a proponent of the allegedly-controversial theory that women are adult human females. That view is arguably the natural default position in the philosophy of sex and gender. The notion that it is not only false, but so dangerous that it cannot be safely expressed, is one of the silliest ideas to have gripped public life in recent years. It is even more shameful in philosophy, a subject in which people have founded entire careers by denying the existence of numbers, causation, material reality and knowledge itself, but many clearly find it much harder to countenance the non-existence of male women.
In a spirit more of hope than expectation, Helen and I publicly urged her opponents at the university to turn up on Thursday and, against habit, present their own arguments, as is the disciplinary norm in philosophy and academia more generally.
Naturally, that is not what happened. Instead, in the run-up to Helenâs visit, the usual dynamic of kitschy overreaction, heavy-handed preference falsification and self-implicating moralism kicked into life. The view, itself harmful and false, that Helenâs beliefs are harmful and false was widely propagated. Cherwell, Oxfordâs student newspaper, issued us a right of reply to a long, solemn news story about the ânegative reactionâ the event was âprovokingâ. Students wrote to the college accusing it of transgressing the Equality Act by permitting the event to occur on its premises. Another very long and rambling petition, signed by over 600 people, made the ominous recommendation that Judith Butler should be invited to the event in Helenâs place.
Come Thursday evening, I had barely thanked the audience for gathering to engage in the spirit of civilised debate when, falsifying my optimistic appraisal of them with faultless comic timing, two dozen or so disguised protesters rose to their feet. There was a brief display of pride flags and homemade signs, and hurried distribution of some anti-Helen pamphlets, before the troop exited the building, pausing only to bang for a minute on the windows of the lecture room.
This was all very nostalgic. But there was something disarmingly underpowered about it, too. Some of the signs â âHelen Joyce is not an expert at allâ, read one â seemed almost comically half-hearted. Our remaining audience had been left a little thinned-out, but also on average better-dressed and more attentive. As the last of the protesters shuffled out, the event was already continuing as if nothing of note had happened â perhaps because everyone realised that, in an important sense, nothing had.
Not for the first time, I wondered how it was possible that, just a few years ago when I was an undergraduate, an entire university cohort had been held ideologically hostage by a comparable faction of vividly lame people. What seems so striking now, looking back, is the collective opportunity cost in time and intellectual energy accepted on behalf of an ideological minority whose basic instincts were so plainly antisocial.
That Helenâs visit this week ultimately went smoothly is an encouraging sign that the unduly censorious mood which has lately possessed academic life may soon come to seem like a short-lived and eccentric blip in its recent history. That said, universities have a way of allowing, even encouraging, bad ideas to live on well past their sell-by date. The regrettable fact remains that someone like Helen Joyce is an example of a figure too little seen within universities these days: a truth-teller. Free speech is an important regulatory norm, as some know and most concede. But it is only really valuable when someone uses it to express important truths.
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SubscribeFor so long as children are taught ‘gender’ in school and are taught to prioritise ‘gender’ over sex then of course that is what they believe.
Why is this so difficult for people to understand?
I am so sick of feminist censorship of Unherd comments, I have requested a 50% refund on my annual subscription. They are guilty of breaking the trades description act. I copied my most recent comment to be held back until interest in the article waned and it has not appeared.
I am trying to interpret the downvote. Does it indicate disbelief or does it indicate support for the censorship or does it indicate Unherd is not guilty of violating the trades description act?
If it wasn’t just women censoring you, would you ask for a 100% discount?
Many men claim to be feminists. I did not specify sex. I appreciate good and intelligent humour even at my expense. I read some where that a significant percentage of men claiming to be feminists do so because it increases their chances of sexual liaisons with women. Basically, they are creeps, which to a great extent accords with my own experience. I think it was Jordan Peterson who was discussing the different tactics men use to increase their chances of mating.
If it turns out most of the supporters of trans are in fact women, can we stop blaming the patriarchy?
Hint: that petition mentioned in this article, has a list of those who signed.
Apologies for piggybacking Richard but I want to be heard.
Feminism vs transgenderism. Research has shown that in general females are more subject to social influence and constraints than males. A certain Unherd writer was heterosexual and then became homosexual. She lectured at two of the wokest universities in the country where until recently being female and homosexual placed a person at the top of the hierarchy. It was very advantageous. Woke universities cannot stand still and must constantly evolve to attract their target market. Feminism evolved into transgenderism and consequently was mostly supported by feminists. Feminism had successfully separated sex and gender. Previously, sex was biological and the roles associated with a particular sex were known as gendered. By separating biological sex and gender, and replacing the term sex with gender, gender then became associated with those behaviours considered feminine. Consequently, anyone could be a woman if they exhibited stereotypical feminineâ behaviours. The argument for late onset homosexuality and transgenderism was the same: had always felt that way but was ashamed to express the behaviours. Old style Feminists are happy to talk about social contagion when pointing the finger at the transgender community but do not question their own homosexual members. Research has found that female sexuality has a greater social component than male sexuality which would explain why the vast majority of trans women have intact genitalia. It is far more likely to be a sexual perversion. The offspring of woke actors are far more likely to claim to be transgender and be supported in their claim, they are a kind of fashion accessory for their parents. In an episode of absolutely fabulous, Edwina is absolutely delighted when she hears she is to be the grandmother of a mixed race child, the latest fashion accessory. She had initially been horrified to hear she was to be a grandmother: fashions change.
I agree with most of that.
“Consequently, anyone could be a woman if they exhibited stereotypical feminineâ behaviours. ”
This is the Queer agenda, began by Judith Butler. Her endgame is while this goes on it will break the very idea of what it is to be a man and a woman, in her terms, break the binary. Thereby releasing women from their oppression by men. Because there won’t be any women left, just a mixed bag of people with genders. Horrifyingly she is succeeding in the UK. The price is permanently confused children and adults who have no idea what is going on, no idea what the Queer project is.
In the U.K. the word sex was replaced by gender on forms sometime between 1973 and 1980. The first womenâs studies course taught was in the US in 1965 and the first womenâs studies department was established at the at San Diego State College in 1970. Womenâs studies had âan equal focus on study and political actionâ. There was a sense of moral superiority. They were being trained to judge society. I remember when I was a student, womenâs studies was looked down upon. It was said, the women were allowed to create it so the feminists would stop complaining. Of course it had the opposite effect. Womenâs studies transitioned into gender studies and infiltrated almost every area in the universities and permeated bureaucracy. The left consider themselves to be morally superior and consequently the right is identified, by the left, as morally reprehensible. It demonstrates why religion and politics should be kept separate. Politics is about self interest and promoting various different groups. No group should be perceived to be morally superior to any other. Religion is in the business of moral judgement
I was teaching a year 10 boy. We were analysing Browningâs My Last Duchess. It was a poem I had studied for A level. When I had the studied the poem, the brilliant lecturer I was blessed to be taught by attempted to help us understand how people thought in the past. The idea was to understand the past as well as identify themes in the poem and understand Browningâs reasons for writing the poem: the points he was making. The boy I was teaching was disconcerted because I didnât mention the patriarchy. He was concerned if he didnât mention the patriarchy he would lose marks. He had been taught the Duke is a representative of the evil patriarchy. I told the boy, I hoped he wouldnât be downgraded but I couldnât be sure.
This article, although well meaning, is a damp squib of an article.
It describes an event, in itself also well meaning no doubt, although I imagine the people who attended it leaving quietly and sadly, self-defeated, as they shuffled out of the room.
The only way to remove ‘gender’ from our current discourse and from England entirely, is to attack it head on, reveal it, hold it up for everyone to see, refute it and reject it.
Oh for the day when someone is allowed to do this in the mainstream media and that message could reach into every parent’s home, arming them with the knowledge and right to reject ‘gender’ and force their local school to remove ‘gender’ from their classrooms.
If that doesn’t happen the English, descibed here, and the student writer, will continue shuffling feebly from one student event to another, achieving nothing.
At least they’re doing something, what have you done?
I would like to do just what I have said above. Explain what ‘gender’ is, why it is being taught to school children, and how it is taught, and explain to all parents why it has to be rejected, and how it can be rejected, for the wellbeing and mental health of all children.
Go ahead, but this isn’t the forum for it.
I’ve had a long and successful career, which helped others and enabled a good living. I’m now embarked on another, in a different sphere. What have you done, apart from bore the f*ck out of us?
Get out there and do what you think you need to do. Don’t waste your time on here.
I’ve really tried to help you, by pointing you towards articles you claim don’t exist. If you’re going to do anything worthwhile with your life at all, get one.
Lost Boy’s back. Stop tagging onto my comments.
I’m beyond your pathetic rhetoric. Seriously, i’m trying to help you, because you have great enthusiasm and some of your comments are really good.
Why not put that to use in the real world? Posting on here, when you’ve achieved nothing, is contemptible. Go on, prove me wrong.
Lost Boy. I don’t know what you want. I can’t help you ok.
Stop tagging me.
No.
I want you to get a life. Look at your hero, Tommy Robinson: he put himself out there, and now finds himself ‘inside’. But at least he’s doing something. What are you doing? What difference have you made to anything?
Have you got the bottle to put yourself on the line in difficult real life circumstances?
I have a lifetime of achievement behind me, which is why i can tell you that you’re not going to achieve your aims on this forum.
Take heed, or fail.
Lost Boy. I’m not your friend ok. Please just stop tagging me.
Just ignore him. He will be busy collecting upticks.
I am afraid you will not get any sensible engagement out of RL. He is only interested in littering the comment columns with obsessively repetitious comment often of little relevance to the article. You will only receive puerile responses from him.
He sees himself as the self-appointed Prefect of UnHerd. A real pain in the ar*e.
The modesty is endearing.
To be honest, just a little humility on the part of ideologues would help. We donât actually know yet to what extent personality and behavioural differences between the sexes are hard wired genetically – though the smart money is on it being significant. Probably with genes accounting for more than 50% of the difference. We really donât know if we can distinguish gender from sex.
On this basis the sex/gender binary should never have been used as the basis of teaching in schools. At most it should have been presented as a feminist belief and contrasted with science – that is with a science which is uncertain rather than fixed, but tending against the feminist belief.
Obviously intellectual damage has been done by teaching a belief as established truth. Whether even greater damage has been done by leaving children confused about their identity seems likely.
As a child I learned that gender was a feature of language. It had nothing whatever to do with self-perception or emotions. As with so many âprogressiveâ movements, practical inoffensive terms have been stolen to satisfy the philosophical post-modern agenda that led to victimhood as a moral imperative. I just hope that in my French and Latin lessons not too many inanimate objects werenât offended by perceived âmisgenderingâ!
I was one of the first cohort to take a sociology O level. Back then, it was taught, there is sex: male and female, and there are gendered roles associated with the two sexes. Feminists disliked the notion and sought to separate roles from sex. Gender ideology is the separation taken to extremes and inverted.
What are you saying? Feminists disliked what notion? And what is your understanding of sex and gender. Are you saying they are the same thing?
I am saying the meaning of the word gender changed. Those roles which were associated with a particular sex were gendered roles. For example child raising was considered one of the roles of women. It was gendered. On forms the question would be: what is your sex? and there were two options: male or female. The start of the creep of gender ideology was between 1973 and 1980. By 1980 the word sex had been replaced by gender.
“Feminists disliked the notion and sought to separate roles from sex. ”
Which is a rather stupid idea to begin with, but on top of which, to make it even more ridiculous , they were also rather selective about it, depending on what was convenient for them.
This situation does not exist in any other country.
Thanks for reporting on this event, Unherd. Most of your subscribers wouldn’t have known it’d happened otherwise, and i agree with the author there’s been enough of a shift in attitudes that the posturing of those captured by the trans hype seems more pathetic now than dangerous.
Still plenty of work to do, as those who’ve passed through the system whilst these ideas held absolute sway move into the workforce and positions of influence. An entire generation, in fact, with the potential to continue denying biological reality for the rest of their lives, although i’ve no doubt some will come to their senses.
The over-riding impression it leaves is one of dismay at how easily supposedly intelligent people can be influenced by the herd. This used to be a psychological phenomenon most in evidence in the realms of the wilder end of religious beliefs, such as “End of Days” adherents. The mindset is the same, the difference being only the degree of capture.
Just for once, I agree with Mr. Lad. Being influenced by the herd is, I have observed, a strong neurotypical trait. It leaves autists like me flummoxed. We happen to think that reaching conclusions, based only on the evidence available, is the same way to go. Alas, we are only a very small minority…
This situation does not exist in other countries. To pretend otherwise is to normalise it and make what is peculiar and self-destructive in English culture and then to go on to deceive oneself by trotting out “it is not so bad, it happens all through the West”.
No. It is weirdly English. The English teach ‘gender’ in school. They teach their children gender confusion.
In Australia the word âgenderâ has replaced the word âsexâ in law, ironically in a law called the Sex Discrimination Act. This has been so since 2013, a change made under the government of Julia Gillard.
But is ‘gender’ taught in Primary and Secondary schools? That is where the UK is. To be more specific starting in Primary School children will be asked to describe ‘girl characteristics’ or ‘stereotypes’ and then be told they can apply to boys and girls and if for example a girl feels she has the character of a typical boy then she is told she is a boy, and that is her gender. And vice versa for boys. Obviously many will become very confused as to what they are. This is the typical material and method used in LBGT classes (the Trans part). Are children taught this in Australia?
‘Stereotypes’ exist in literature, but not in real life. As William Blake said: “To generalise is to be an idiot.” It’s time the idiots stopped calling the tune.
Surely itâs the same in the US
Queer is a religion that has replaced Christianity in the minds of these youngsters. It’s a bit of a war machine too, so it’s no surprised that these activists also work with Islamists for (broadly) shared aims.
It’s not that difficult to understand.Obsessive doctrinal,cult beliefs have always appealed to a certain class of people.I don’t recall the Moonies etc ever flogging their wares outside any factory gates or football matches,just where easily led “intelligent” people congregate.
A certain class of people with considerable conceit attached to their perceived ” intelligence”. An indicator of such “intelligence” being the ability to see past established logic and reason and recognise concepts lesser beings cannot understand such as how adult males can be women. Their degree of “intelligence” already established by the fact they managed to get into university, the gender ideology is a ready packaged opportunity for them to exhibit their “intelligence” plus of course their wonderful compassion for those poor souls/heroes “persecuted” for their preferred gender identity. Those attending football matches tend towards a different concept of what demonstrates status and a self preening exhibition of “intelligence” barely registers. As far as what a man and woman is they know that they know and don’t need some high faluting know it all to tell them.
By the time Captain Albert Ball was twenty years old he had won the VC, DSO and Two Bars, MC. The affluence and safety enjoyed by the middle classes since 1960 has produced considerable number of spoilt brats. These people remains spoilt brats well beyond their teen years. University humanities departments appear to have a far higher proportion of spoilt brats than any other organisation.
Nothing new in this though. Here are feminists closing down Christina Hoff Sommers:
https://youtu.be/Ha2E5aQ7yb8?si=aQiVtJ7C9hTqlx4a
Interesting as itâs on the cusp of feminists adopting the trans cause, with trans added to the end of the traditional feminist rant as a kind of postscript.
Simple explanation – they’ve all migrated to the Palestine movement. Trans is old news.
I am posting this comment here because it was effectively censored when I previously posted it. It was a response to a question as to whether Kathleen Stock had leftist tendencies.
âShe still has leftist tendencies. She was a lecturer at Essex university and then Sussex. Two of the wokest universities in the country. She was quite happy in her political cocoon until leftist ideology moved on and left her behind.â
The feminists are as bad or almost as bad as the trans ideologues.
This happens frequently. There are censors at Unherd who hold back a comment until they think interest in an article has sufficiently waned. They definitely do not believe in freedom of expression when the expression does not agree with their prejudices. Trans ideology was a natural progression from feminism and consequently it is to a great extent feminists who support it.
The natural progression theory makes no sense. Please explain the dots you have connected.
I will but in response to a previous comment.
I have posted a comment at the top if you would like to read it.
I am so sick of feminist censorship of Unherd comments, I have requested a 50% refund on my annual subscription. They are guilty of breaking the trades description act. I am being censored now. I copied the my most recent comment to be held back until interest in the article waned and it has not appeared.
Actually think itâs slow moderation rather than censorship, but it is annoying. I also think some people flag strong arguments they disagree with to make them disappear until everyone has moved on. Some posts appear, disappear, then come back.
Progress.
I know that Iâm going to get hate for this, but could it be that this attitude from the trans side has always been overstated by their opponents.
At the height of feminist censoriousness, not so very long ago, youtube was full of feminists closing down free speech, often by perfectly reasonable speakers. Some of these feminists (trigglypuff, big red) even achieved a kind of fame.
Perhaps the algorithms just arenât sending as much trans intolerance in my direction. Iâve heard about lots of it from the other side, but Iâve yet to see much of it on YouTube, and Iâm wondering why.