In the United States, Dr. Lisa Littman of Brown University just got an up-close look at what the trans mob looks like when your research conflicts with their ideology—her peer-reviewed paper was pulled by the gutless bureaucrats at Brown who didn’t want to look un-woke. In the UK, a biological male (or transgender female) is the head of the mob—a lecturer at Goldsmiths University of London named Natacha Kennedy. From The Times:
A transgender lecturer orchestrated a smear campaign against academics across the UK in which universities were described as dangerous and accused of “hate crime” if they refused to accept activists’ views that biological males can be women, it can be revealed.
Natacha Kennedy, a researcher at Goldsmiths University of London who is also understood to work there under the name Mark Hellen, faces accusations of a “ludicrous” assault on academic freedom after she invited thousands of members of a closed Facebook group to draw up and circulate a list shaming academics who disagreed with campaigners’ theories on gender.
I can’t find any explanation for how a single person claiming to be a woman can also be working for the same institution as a male, under an entirely different name. No explanation is offered anywhere, and it is hard not to note the similarity of this alter-ego to schizophrenia. More:
The online forum, seen by The Times, also revealed that members plotted to accuse non-compliant professors of hate crime to try to have them ousted from their jobs. Reading, Sussex, Bristol, Warwick and Oxford universities were among those deemed to have “unsafe” departments because they employed academics who had publicly disputed the belief that “transwomen are women” or questioned the potential impact of proposed changes to gender laws on women and children.
Ms Kennedy said that the list was necessary so students could avoid accepting a place on a “dangerous” course. Aimee Challenor, the former Green Party candidate who used her father as her election agent even though he was facing charges of raping and torturing a ten-year-old girl, for which he was later jailed, was among those who responded to Ms Kennedy’s post of August 14 to the Trans Rights UK Facebook group, with suggestions of who to blacklist. All the named academics were women.
Think about that for just a moment: The academics being targeted by the trans activists were all women—and mostly feminists. What the trans activists are demanding is nothing short of the destruction of the feminine. They want to force academics to agree with their view that the category of female is an inherently subjective one that anyone can gain access to, which is why they claim it is now entirely possible for girls to have penises. Many of the feminists (who were the radicals of their day) are in shock by this bizarre turn of events:
Members of the group claimed that the philosophy department of the University of Sussex was “clearly an unsafe environment” because of the presence of Kathleen Stock, a professor who has argued against redefining the category of woman and lesbian to include men. “File a hate crime report against her, and then the chairman and vice-chair,” advised one. “Drag them over the f***ing coals.”
Rosa Freedman, an expert in human rights law at the University of Reading, had also upset activists by saying that biological males should not have access to a women’s refuge. One activist said she tried to lodge a complaint but was told that Professor Freedman had a right to free speech. “I’m replying a little more strongly and using the words ‘hate speech’ a few times,” she told the group. Another activist suggested: “Use the words . . . ‘So Reading University supports staff who use hate speech against students?’”
Note here that the phrase “hate speech” has become a nearly-meaningless term used as a cudgel by trans activists to smash people about the head until they are willing to croak out sentences they do not believe, like “Men can get pregnant!” Freedom of speech is a concept that trans activists view as a threat to their ideological agenda, and thus something that they would like to see suppressed. As tempting as it is to laugh at how ridiculous their claims are, their agenda has extraordinarily dangerous consequences for the rest of us.
Professor Freedman told The Times: “We are talking about the aggressive trolling of women who are experts. I have received penis pictures telling me to ‘suck my girl cock’. This is straight-up, aggressive, anti-woman misogyny. In no way have I made the space unsafe. I find it deeply distressing that an academic would set out to smear my name and impugn my reputation, simply because I put forward a perspective, based on robust and specific evidence, with which they disagree. That is not academia. That is silencing people.
“The idea that writing about women’s rights automatically becomes a hate crime in some people’s eyes is ludicrous. All it has done has made me more determined to write about this, in a respectful way that allows other perspectives to come through, and not just the views of those who shout the loudest.”
Professor Stock said: “What would make a philosophy department unsafe is if its academics weren’t allowed to challenge currently popular beliefs or ideologies for fear of offending. Deliberately plotting to have my department lose students, or to have me dismissed, through covert means, is surprising behaviour from a fellow academic.” Both professors praised the support that they had received from their universities…
Professor Stock said: “It is head-scratchingly bizarre how so many public organisations, many of them ostensibly progressive, have capitulated to passive-aggressive, emotionally blackmailing, and sometimes even outright threatening behaviour from trans activists, often online.”
One member of the Facebook group, Sahra Rae Taylor, stood by her contribution to the list. She said: “That way we can advise people applying that ‘if you want to study law, then don’t go to these places’. Which would allow them at least to avoid being taught (and marked, and under the influence in some way) by a transphobic douchebag.”
Ms Kennedy, who describes herself on Facebook as a “stroppy, bolshie transgirl with attitude who hates the Tories with a passion”, refused to comment. She represented Goldsmiths during trans awareness week in February. It confirmed that she was an employee but would not explain which department she worked in or why she appeared to be listed twice in the staff directory: once as Mark Hellen, in the department of educational studies, and secondly as Natacha Kennedy, who is named in equality and diversity reports. Both profiles appear to be active.
It also remained unclear why an academic paper on Ms Kennedy’s specialist subject of transgenderism in children, published by the Graduate Journal of Social Sciences in 2010, cited two co-authors: Natacha Kennedy and Mark Hellen. Neither Ms Kennedy nor Goldsmiths would clarify whether the paper was by two individuals or the same person. A spokesman said: “Goldsmiths prides itself on its inclusive community and is committed to the values of freedom of speech within the law.”
Try to work that one out for a moment: An academic paper on transgenderism in children supposedly has two authors, one male and one female, but both the male and the female name are used to refer to a single trans activist who spends much of his time attempting to corral a large mob for the purposes of persecuting those academics who do not agree with him and will not call him a woman. I’ve read a lot of insane things in my research on the trans movement, but a university permitting a single person to list himself as two people, one of each gender, as co-authors on a paper—that’s something else. There really is no floor to this madness.
I’m impressed that The Times was willing to so thoroughly expose the fact that there is a handful of trans activists working to enforce their agenda on the entirety of academia. They are not working within academia—they are infiltrating it as a hostile force with the intent of subjugating it to their will. Unless they are stopped, they will succeed. Considering the number of spines present at the average university administration meeting, I’m not particularly optimistic.
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