From a place of critical thinking, to an autocratic conveyor belt. Universities now hinder learning, and have more in common with cults than cultivation
It’s so depressing..check out the BTL comments on Daniel Finkelstein’s column in the Times today when he (though sympathetic?) dismisses a reader’s negative views on Ed Davey and the LDP’s attachment to gender ideology!
I'm a gay man, and I agree with every word of your article. The amazing thing to me is how far the bad trans ideas have reached into society. I'm 75, and I don't remember all of society flocking to our side when we gays started campaigning for our rights in the late 1960s. Not even the liberals flocked to our side. Although the worst of us (the "maps") sought to be normalized too, they weren't successful. The rest of us gays just wanted the same rights that everyone else had. Trans people, however, feel compelled to make a holy stink in society. I think there are a few reasons for this:
-- First, there is an exhibitionistic quality to trans people. Unlike gays, who want to be invisible as much as possible, being trans is all about being seen. I mean, what good is it to transform yourself to the opposite sex if no one notices? Consequently, they feel more comfortable creating a social uproar.
-- The weakness of their arguments led them to decide that they would get the best results if they waged an offensive social campaign. This meant selling their raft of bad ideas aggressively in an attempt to "re-educate" the public. This is the same thing every con-man does: the bigger the lie, the more people will fall for it, simply because the lie is so implausible as to seem possible.
-- An early experience with a man who felt like a woman gave me the impression that their desire to change sexes is very intense. What the reasons for this are, I don't know, but it means that they are very motivated to get what they want. If that means being loud and stirring things up in society, so be it.
-- As we all know, the trans movement has turned into a fad, and that portion of the movement is now being fueled by young people with psychological problems they don't want to deal with. For a lot of these young people, "changing sexes" looks like a great way to "start over" and leave their problems behind, although we know that doesn't work.
As for the liberals who have adopted these bad ideas, I think the thought of people feeling tortured by their own bodies feeds right into the "bleeding-heart" side of their characters. Liberals are anxious to feel sorry for people in pain, the more pathetic they are the better. As I've said in other comments, I also think liberal whites have been feeling guilty because they didn't support blacks very well, and many liberals didn't support gays very well. (I'm a liberal too, by the way, but not a stupid liberal.)
Some of the lies from trans activists have been particularly persuasive to liberals, such as the images they've created of young children living in existential torture because they feel like the wrong sex. We all know that many of those kids outgrow those feelings, and the others are usually willing to wait for adulthood to "transition". Large numbers of trans kids are not, in fact, committing suicide over this.
When I look at that picture of the marchers holding the sign that says "Trans women are real women", I just want to kill them all. To see such self-righteousness in support of a lie just gets me stirred up. Their reach into society has been so long that they have even caused problems for a retired person like me.
I'm off to bed. I'll come back and fix my typos later.
Judith Butler claims the right of trans-'women' (men) to be placed in female prisons because in male prisons - (“they will be raped and they will be hurt”) - whereas in female prisons - instead it will be they who will be doing the - "raping and hurting" - and since the "women" who will be "raped and hurt" count less than "men" in Butler's openly misogynistic world view - everything will be just fine and as it should be with this arrangement. One suspects Kafka would be shocked at such depraved madness.
Queer theory appears to be the reaction to gay and lesbian liberation, rather than its successor, because it insists on pushing boundaries to ensure that 'the community' remains marginalised and despised. The most extreme manifestations of human sexuality and sexual violence are being force-teamed with socially assimilated lesbians and gays.
I suspect that's because happy gays and lesbians are unlikely to volunteer to become cannon fodder in the revolutionary vanguard. They want you to be angry, and have no regard for your own future or safety.
Once the revolutionaries gave up on the working class in general, they agitated among black communities and students, sacrificing lives in riots and in protests, including Kent State in 1970. During the 1980's, the death toll from HIV made gay activism existential, but medicine has mitigated that threat in the affluent West.
Now it's the trantifa and the anti-ICE contingent putting their lives on the line for the omnicause, dependent on presumed existential threats such as 'trans genocide' and 'the new Hitler'. But whereas HIV was a genuine threat to gay men, the current crises for the Western revolutionaries are paranoid and conspiratorial, not to mention statistically refutable.
It’s all about the university making money from these courses aimed at public servants. It’s likely that many students will get paid time off (study leave) to complete the course. I am not sure, but some departments may even pay the tuition fee.
Love your spotlight on Australian unis, Julie. Am watching my own children sucked into it at Monash Uni (in Melbourne) and University of Tasmania. Relentlessly pushed.
Thank you Julie Bindel. I still cannot believe we are in a world where a woman can be punished for saying a man can never be a woman. I also cannot believe we are in a world where the desires of men (transwomen) are put ahead of woman's own desires and wants. It is bonkers!
Well I can see a swag of employers screaming out: "About time, we've been crying out for suitably qualified LGBTQIRASOLE+ people for ages" or not. The only likely employer for such graduates will be government departments and associated hangers-on. All the same, I wonder what the fees will be? Shouldn't be more than, say, about $100 as the course should only take half a day to complete.
I quite agree that the material that you've just produced Julie does raise serious questions, but to damn whole universities over it is almost as pre-critical as the people you're rightly criticising. The AstraZenica vaccine which so cut deaths from Covid 19 was designed and built at Oxford University to take but one example, and designed and tested in record time.
Still universities do participate in what's fashionable. So it took Harvard University until 1969 to get rid of its quotas on the numbers of Jews who could be students at any one time.
Your analysis would be much helped if you found out whether its the same departments across universities that specialize in the problems that you discuss - sociology and literary criticism? And I wonder how women's studies departments fare in this situation?
Women's studies departments were overtaken years ago. There aren't any anymore. They are now Gender Studies, many of them headed by men. Anthropology and Social Sciences have also be captured as have History departments, all intellectually disabled by post-modernist theory. I know less about Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering. It would be interesting to investigate what, if any, influence may have shown up there.
Walking past the colleges in Oxford, and viewing the number of 'Progress Pride' flags on display, it might be easier to count the departments which haven't been captured. Don't they have some sort of policy regarding flags on College premises?
Hi Middle and Daniel, Thanks for your replies. The only place where I can think of any remotely post-modernist effect in any of the natural sciences is in speculations about multiple universes. Since we've no direct evidence in favour of such beliefs we have a perfect post-modernist relativism of one text amongst many different texts, and with no premature closure. I doubt if anyone could ever prove that there are, or there are not such universes, seems to thus be an eternal post modernist position.
Scientists though will not be much interested, since science has not so far been much interested in questions which cannot be refuted by an experiment. It would not be scientific question, but a metaphysical one. This is the situation so far re string theory, which is not of much interest as again it makes no new predictions, but gives a conceptual unity to quantum mechanics and Einstein's work.
For my part I believe racialism to be universally false. So a universal, which apparently post-modernists could thus not affirm, since they seem not to accept any universals.
One area, I would assert, where practice that is based in natural sciences has been heavily captured by postmodernist ideology is the medical profession as regards paediatric trans healthcare. There is insurmountable evidence that harmful practices and damaging interventions have been carried out to the detriment of the patient. This has been based on coercive advice to parents based on false information.
Thank you too for yours. Medicine likes to project the image of white coated science, but actually is an art. Doctors actually use their intuition, which is why in France its very common, I'm told, to seek a second opinion.
But the NHS has been a scene of much wrangling around toilets and changing rooms, and your material adds to this.
A book which is very critical of medicine, but carefully written, is 'Worse than the disease' by Diana Dutton, CUP, 1988. Her chapter on Genetic Engineering brings out questions of risk, and the so called 'lab-leak' theory of the origin of the Covid 19 pandemic is that of a genetic engineering lab in the city of Wuhan where covid first appeared.
Although I've seen little discussion of this in terms of genetic engineering.
It could be a coincidence that covid 19 first appeared in a city with a lab that worked on viruses. But I think the probability of that is a good bit less than 50%. China's government has been noticeably reticent about all this.
If “trans women are real women” what on earth are real women?!
They are not women and we should stop pretending- trans-identifying men are men. Humans cannot change sex
Australia is pure embarrassment at this point.
I’d say it’s a race between Oz and Canada with the Uk running a not too distant third…
Not out of the woods in the UK. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/queer-by-nature-what-animals-teach-us-about-gender-and-sexuality-df-2026-tickets-1981943621725
"Whilst making no comparisons to human identities or human sexuality", right. Why call themselves 'queer scientists', then?
It’s so depressing..check out the BTL comments on Daniel Finkelstein’s column in the Times today when he (though sympathetic?) dismisses a reader’s negative views on Ed Davey and the LDP’s attachment to gender ideology!
Bravo, great piece, Julie!
I'm a gay man, and I agree with every word of your article. The amazing thing to me is how far the bad trans ideas have reached into society. I'm 75, and I don't remember all of society flocking to our side when we gays started campaigning for our rights in the late 1960s. Not even the liberals flocked to our side. Although the worst of us (the "maps") sought to be normalized too, they weren't successful. The rest of us gays just wanted the same rights that everyone else had. Trans people, however, feel compelled to make a holy stink in society. I think there are a few reasons for this:
-- First, there is an exhibitionistic quality to trans people. Unlike gays, who want to be invisible as much as possible, being trans is all about being seen. I mean, what good is it to transform yourself to the opposite sex if no one notices? Consequently, they feel more comfortable creating a social uproar.
-- The weakness of their arguments led them to decide that they would get the best results if they waged an offensive social campaign. This meant selling their raft of bad ideas aggressively in an attempt to "re-educate" the public. This is the same thing every con-man does: the bigger the lie, the more people will fall for it, simply because the lie is so implausible as to seem possible.
-- An early experience with a man who felt like a woman gave me the impression that their desire to change sexes is very intense. What the reasons for this are, I don't know, but it means that they are very motivated to get what they want. If that means being loud and stirring things up in society, so be it.
-- As we all know, the trans movement has turned into a fad, and that portion of the movement is now being fueled by young people with psychological problems they don't want to deal with. For a lot of these young people, "changing sexes" looks like a great way to "start over" and leave their problems behind, although we know that doesn't work.
As for the liberals who have adopted these bad ideas, I think the thought of people feeling tortured by their own bodies feeds right into the "bleeding-heart" side of their characters. Liberals are anxious to feel sorry for people in pain, the more pathetic they are the better. As I've said in other comments, I also think liberal whites have been feeling guilty because they didn't support blacks very well, and many liberals didn't support gays very well. (I'm a liberal too, by the way, but not a stupid liberal.)
Some of the lies from trans activists have been particularly persuasive to liberals, such as the images they've created of young children living in existential torture because they feel like the wrong sex. We all know that many of those kids outgrow those feelings, and the others are usually willing to wait for adulthood to "transition". Large numbers of trans kids are not, in fact, committing suicide over this.
When I look at that picture of the marchers holding the sign that says "Trans women are real women", I just want to kill them all. To see such self-righteousness in support of a lie just gets me stirred up. Their reach into society has been so long that they have even caused problems for a retired person like me.
I'm off to bed. I'll come back and fix my typos later.
Great piece julie. Just a wee fact check. Mardi Gras parade isn’t cancelled, the after-party is.
Judith Butler claims the right of trans-'women' (men) to be placed in female prisons because in male prisons - (“they will be raped and they will be hurt”) - whereas in female prisons - instead it will be they who will be doing the - "raping and hurting" - and since the "women" who will be "raped and hurt" count less than "men" in Butler's openly misogynistic world view - everything will be just fine and as it should be with this arrangement. One suspects Kafka would be shocked at such depraved madness.
Queer theory appears to be the reaction to gay and lesbian liberation, rather than its successor, because it insists on pushing boundaries to ensure that 'the community' remains marginalised and despised. The most extreme manifestations of human sexuality and sexual violence are being force-teamed with socially assimilated lesbians and gays.
I suspect that's because happy gays and lesbians are unlikely to volunteer to become cannon fodder in the revolutionary vanguard. They want you to be angry, and have no regard for your own future or safety.
Once the revolutionaries gave up on the working class in general, they agitated among black communities and students, sacrificing lives in riots and in protests, including Kent State in 1970. During the 1980's, the death toll from HIV made gay activism existential, but medicine has mitigated that threat in the affluent West.
Now it's the trantifa and the anti-ICE contingent putting their lives on the line for the omnicause, dependent on presumed existential threats such as 'trans genocide' and 'the new Hitler'. But whereas HIV was a genuine threat to gay men, the current crises for the Western revolutionaries are paranoid and conspiratorial, not to mention statistically refutable.
Hard to know whether to encourage kids to get themselves into debt to go to uni these days, where they'll be subjected to this sort of propaganda :/
Wow , WTF a post grad course in this mental illness ideology am truly lost for words and can't believe that their is a course for this !
It’s all about the university making money from these courses aimed at public servants. It’s likely that many students will get paid time off (study leave) to complete the course. I am not sure, but some departments may even pay the tuition fee.
Love your spotlight on Australian unis, Julie. Am watching my own children sucked into it at Monash Uni (in Melbourne) and University of Tasmania. Relentlessly pushed.
Thank you Julie Bindel. I still cannot believe we are in a world where a woman can be punished for saying a man can never be a woman. I also cannot believe we are in a world where the desires of men (transwomen) are put ahead of woman's own desires and wants. It is bonkers!
Well I can see a swag of employers screaming out: "About time, we've been crying out for suitably qualified LGBTQIRASOLE+ people for ages" or not. The only likely employer for such graduates will be government departments and associated hangers-on. All the same, I wonder what the fees will be? Shouldn't be more than, say, about $100 as the course should only take half a day to complete.
Excellent essay, Julie.
Have restacked the hell out of it, with excerpts.
I quite agree that the material that you've just produced Julie does raise serious questions, but to damn whole universities over it is almost as pre-critical as the people you're rightly criticising. The AstraZenica vaccine which so cut deaths from Covid 19 was designed and built at Oxford University to take but one example, and designed and tested in record time.
Still universities do participate in what's fashionable. So it took Harvard University until 1969 to get rid of its quotas on the numbers of Jews who could be students at any one time.
Your analysis would be much helped if you found out whether its the same departments across universities that specialize in the problems that you discuss - sociology and literary criticism? And I wonder how women's studies departments fare in this situation?
Ian
Women's studies departments were overtaken years ago. There aren't any anymore. They are now Gender Studies, many of them headed by men. Anthropology and Social Sciences have also be captured as have History departments, all intellectually disabled by post-modernist theory. I know less about Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering. It would be interesting to investigate what, if any, influence may have shown up there.
Walking past the colleges in Oxford, and viewing the number of 'Progress Pride' flags on display, it might be easier to count the departments which haven't been captured. Don't they have some sort of policy regarding flags on College premises?
Great point!
Hi Middle and Daniel, Thanks for your replies. The only place where I can think of any remotely post-modernist effect in any of the natural sciences is in speculations about multiple universes. Since we've no direct evidence in favour of such beliefs we have a perfect post-modernist relativism of one text amongst many different texts, and with no premature closure. I doubt if anyone could ever prove that there are, or there are not such universes, seems to thus be an eternal post modernist position.
Scientists though will not be much interested, since science has not so far been much interested in questions which cannot be refuted by an experiment. It would not be scientific question, but a metaphysical one. This is the situation so far re string theory, which is not of much interest as again it makes no new predictions, but gives a conceptual unity to quantum mechanics and Einstein's work.
For my part I believe racialism to be universally false. So a universal, which apparently post-modernists could thus not affirm, since they seem not to accept any universals.
Ian
Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
One area, I would assert, where practice that is based in natural sciences has been heavily captured by postmodernist ideology is the medical profession as regards paediatric trans healthcare. There is insurmountable evidence that harmful practices and damaging interventions have been carried out to the detriment of the patient. This has been based on coercive advice to parents based on false information.
Thank you too for yours. Medicine likes to project the image of white coated science, but actually is an art. Doctors actually use their intuition, which is why in France its very common, I'm told, to seek a second opinion.
But the NHS has been a scene of much wrangling around toilets and changing rooms, and your material adds to this.
A book which is very critical of medicine, but carefully written, is 'Worse than the disease' by Diana Dutton, CUP, 1988. Her chapter on Genetic Engineering brings out questions of risk, and the so called 'lab-leak' theory of the origin of the Covid 19 pandemic is that of a genetic engineering lab in the city of Wuhan where covid first appeared.
Although I've seen little discussion of this in terms of genetic engineering.
It could be a coincidence that covid 19 first appeared in a city with a lab that worked on viruses. But I think the probability of that is a good bit less than 50%. China's government has been noticeably reticent about all this.
Ian
Bring down the bonds market. I’m convinced that triggering The Financial Crisis is the only way to remove these degenerates from power