Gender-critical academics have for the past decade found life very difficult on campus. The Sullivan Review, published yesterday, is a painstaking account of the experiences of academics who were stifled, bullied and harassed for doing their jobs while believing that sex is an immutable characteristic. “Barriers to research on sex and gender” also documents the experiences of academics who believe in gender identity. While those experiences have been totally asymmetrical, like all good sociological work, Sullivan did not impose her analysis. She let her data speak.

There is page after page of personal testimony. It speaks of gender-critical academics being taken through shadowy, Kafkaesque complaints processes and of research ethics committees over-reaching their mandate to subvert the research of academics interested in sex and gender. It goes on to describe actual harassment and bullying.

I wrote asymmetrical because the Sullivan Review proves that “the toxic debate” in universities is far from a “both-sides problems” as Stonewall’s Chair suggested a couple of years ago.  Compared with the details of real-life experiences and encounters from gender-critical academics, those writing in from a gender identity perspective offered only templated answers, vague assertions, statements of feelings and few facts. The barriers to research on sex and gender do exist. But as the Sullivan Review makes clear, these originate from one side of the “debate”.

I’m not easily shocked by the less-than-professional antics of some of the academic community, but I was surprised when I got to Appendix 2. It reveals evidence of an organisation called FGEN (Feminist Gender Equality Network) attempting to subvert the process of a government-commissioned review. How? It made complaints to Professor Sullivan’s university ethics committee. It drafted templated responses for its members to use. For non-academics, a little explanation may be required. It is a problem for a group of academics to campaign to distort a Government review whose methodology relies on the collection of personal testimony. Put simply, it is an attempt to compromise the evidence.

As if detailing the bigotry faced by gender-critical academics was not enough, the report also tells us something about our universities as a whole. They have become  lawless places where adherence to a political dogma mattered more than the quest for knowledge and truth using the scientific methods of debate, discussion and critique.

For anyone who has been paying attention, the findings of the Sullivan Review should be no surprise. After all, many of us have been sounding the alarm for nearly a decade. We’ve been saying that a small but highly vocal, very disruptive group of academic activists have been using whatever tactics they can to stop any questions or critique of the (frankly) ridiculous idea that humans can change sex.

Just two weeks ago the Office for Students released new guidance on universities’ duty to promote freedom of speech. Let’s hope the Sullivan Review, with its grim details of censorship and ideological bullying, is actually taken seriously by the higher education establishment.

---

Jo Phoenix is an author and professor of criminology at the University of Reading.

JoPhoenix1

---