TRIGGERnometry - Kathleen Stock - Hounded Out for Trans Views

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Professor Kathleen Stock, an expert in analytic philosophy, resigned from the University of Sussex after facing death threats and accusations of transphobia. Get TICKETS to TRIGGERnometry Live with Ayishat Akanbi here: https://leicestersquaretheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873621622 Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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What are these terrible views that you hold and that you express that caused students to be protesting about you on campus and so on? Well, it's mainly about categories. So I don't believe that trans women are literally women. I don't believe that trans men are literally men. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson.

And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today has been in the news quite a bit recently. She is a British philosopher and writer who has recently left the University of Sussex, where she was a professor, Kathleen Stock. Welcome to Trigonometry. Hi. Nice having me. It's good to have you.

I imagine there's been quite a time for you, and we'll talk about that. Before we get into that, just tell everybody a little bit of who you are, how are you where you are, what has been the journey through life. that leads you to be sitting here. Okay, well, I'm originally from Scotland. I was a philosophy lecturer at the University of Sussex, which is in Brighton and the south coast of England. And for most of my career, I was pretty uncontroversial unless you specialised in very abstract theories of fiction. And then I got very controversial very quickly because I started speaking out about gender identity and proposed legal and policy reforms

and the costs, as I saw them, for women and girls in particular, and lesbians. I'm also a lesbian, so it was relevant to me. And then things went on from there, and I have been hounded out of my job. You have. And as I say, I'm sure it's been a difficult time. But before we get into what's... happened to you. Can we start by some of these controversial opinions? The trans issue we've explored quite a bit on the show. What are these terrible views that you hold and that you

express that caused students to be protesting about you on campus and so on? Well, it's mainly about categories. So I don't believe that trans women are literally women. I don't believe that trans men are literally men. I think the categories of women and men are useful conceptual categories to pick out adult human females and males respectively. I also think that that has consequences for policies because biological sex is really important in a number of ranges, human, sorry, across a range of human domains.

And medicine is one, sport is another. Single-sex spaces are really important because of the relationships between men and women in terms of susceptible. to sexual assault. So I, that's it really. I think you can't change sex. Right. Trans women aren't women. Trans men aren't men. Gender identity is not more important than sex and gender identity certainly shouldn't determine things like access to sporting teams, same sex spaces, resources and so on. You're talking a little bit sort of academic language.

Am I? You're not, in the sense, the conversations that we have on the show are kind of like that. But I think for just a normal person who's tuning in going, who's this professor who's got whatever, basically what you're saying is people with male bodies shouldn't be in female sports, people with male bodies shouldn't be in female prisons, people with male bodies shouldn't have access to other women's spaces. And you can't change your sex just by saying words. Yeah.

I mean, those things, whether you're... you've got a male or a female body makes a difference to all sorts of other things. Females are on average, smaller, weaker, slower than males in a world in which most people are heterosexual, you know, males have a sexual interest in females. As we know, sexual assault statistics tell us that females are much more likely to be sexually assaulted than males, and they're much more likely to be assaulted by males than by females. So a progressive society puts in, at a minimum, places where women and girls get undressed or sleep,

gives them their own spaces or tries to. And the current orthodoxy that's coming out of LGBT organisations is that that is somehow prejudicial to trans women and not just trans women, but anyone who, any male who says they feel like a female should have access to those spaces. So, yeah. Now, to me, Kathleen, what you've just said, just smacks of common sense. Why has that become so controversial? Well, I mean, that's a good question. I think there's multiple causal background factors here. But in universities, it's controversial to say the things I'm saying.

that's partly, I think, because of the disproportionate influence of certain academics in the humanities, coming out of philosophy, gender studies, who have quite radical utopian style views about what gender is and the idea is that we need to just queer everything, break down all these boundaries. Even the biological boundaries between men and women are really social, not natural. so that means they can be changed and they're malleable. So really, progressive societies should be enacting policies that disrupt those boundaries rather than entrenched them. So, you know, that is never going to fly outside universities,

but you'd be surprised or not surprised to know that in universities, quite extreme ideas can flourish. There's also the influence of lobbying groups in the UK like Stonewall, is historically famous and rightly so for defending gay rights, but it's now got a new agenda in the last five or six years, which is about gender identity, affirmation of gender identity, and Stonewall is in nearly every British university and also a lot of other UK institutions as well.

So with Stonewall pumping out propaganda that says you should get rid of any reference to sex biologically, in your policies, in your resources, in your spaces, and also having all this stuff about bullying and harassment and how talking about sex is automatically suspect. And if you get it wrong, you know, if you misgender somebody, then that's bullying, stuff like that. It's not really surprising then that universities,

young, impressionable people in universities have come to start believing all this stuff. So I think that's the kind of story of how they got there. and it's also in schools, you know, and the teachers are agreeing. So it's a bit like a kind of religious indoctrination program, and it's worked really well. And, Kathleen, what was the moment for you? Because we all have a breaking point with this stuff. With me, it was when after Brexit,

people were demonising old white men as being racist, stupid thick, etc. And my father is an old white man who married a woman of colour back in the 70s. That upset me. That was a moment where I thought, no, enough's enough now. When was that moment for you? I mean, it was in 2018, and it was, I mean, I can't say that it was one moment, but there was just a series of things in 2018, which I just noticed. One was that the government, the British government, were consulting on whether we should change getting a gender recognition certificate, which gives you, changes your legal sex, they were consulting on whether that should just become purely a matter of self-ID, just saying, I feel like I'm a female signing a form, basically paying a small amount of money. At the moment, it's a kind of gate-kept, medicalised process and it has certain conditions

built in, but Stonewall and other organisations were heavily pushing to go to self-ID, and I was looking around for the academics who would be saying, hang on a minute, there's a lot of problems here. if you're just going to open up this sort of privilege, really, to anyone who says they feel like a woman, and that will give them all sorts of access to spaces and resources and so on, potentially. So we need to think about this. And yet it was a wasteland. You know, there was just nobody really talking about that. And anyone that outside of universities were trying to talk about that,

then they were being shouted down and called they were transphobic. I mean, I'm actually exaggerating because there were a few people in universities trying to talk about it, but they were having an obviously terrible time. So that started to really annoy me because I'm a philosopher. And my training tells me that I'm supposed to be able to talk about things, argue, use reasons, evidence, and that I'm allowed to disagree with people without it being a personal flaw. So that annoyed me. And then the other aspect, I suppose, is that I am gay. And part of this new orthodoxy is that you can identify your way into lesbianism as well. So, you know, males with male bodies and penises calling themselves lesbians and being accepted by LGBT organizations as lesbians,

when the whole point of being a lesbian is you're not interested in male-bodied people with penises. So it just seemed like upside-down world that this was being pushed by gay or, you know, traditionally gay rights organisations is just absolutely bonkers. Still, I think, is bonkers. And we'll touch on the lesbian thing, because one of my best mates is a gay woman. And she was talking about this stuff right before it became a mainstream issue. And I was saying to assume,

why is it that Europe's so upset? And she was saying that there are lesbian spaces, which men would then come into say, I identify as a woman, and then they would just have to be accepted. Yeah. I mean, one thing I think, certainly back then that a lot of people didn't grasp, because the stereotype of a trans woman, I think for many people, is somebody who's had surgery, taken hormones,

and is probably attracted to men. So probably gay originally, like a gay man who then has surgery and hormones. But actually quite a large, percentage of trans women are heterosexual and all bisexual, but they're attracted to women. They're sexually attracted to women. Now, if you are a trans woman and you identify as a woman and you're attracted to women, then, you know, it would be, presumably it would be quite challenging to your own identity if you went after straight women because they're straight and they're supposed to be interested

in men. So lesbians are the group that get the attention, because it's supposed to somehow follow from the logic of who they are. They're attracted to women, so they must be attracted to trans women because trans women are women. It's this kind of weird calculus that goes on. And I think that's why lesbians early on were aware of this pressure and sort of the weird consequences of this logic earlier than most people. Because it doesn't really affect straight women the same way,

and it doesn't affect straight men or gay men that way. although sometimes now apparently trans men will try and convince gay men that they should be sexually interested in them because they're men. So yeah, I think lesbians were sort of onto the issues earlier. Can I ask you something? I mean, it's going to sound a bit primitive this question,

but Francis and I sometimes, you know, we've talked to about this issue a lot. And every now and again, we just look at each other and go, do you not think this is just fucking mental? Like what you've just had? had to explain. Do you know sometimes just like pinch yourself and go, really? Yeah, of course I do. This is the conversation we have? I have to write a book about it. I know. Material girls and a very good book it is. Right. Do you...

Yeah, well, yes. I mean, I did not... I have made the joke before, but I did not see my lifetime sort of contribution to philosophy to be writing a book that explains there are two sexes and the gay people exist. You know, but here we are. I just think it shows how susceptible to flashy sounding ultimately mad ideas human beings can be in the right circumstances. So I think it's sociologically interesting how so many of us seem to have gone along with this, despite the obvious terrible consequences for children, for gay women, for women in sport and so on. We seem to unable to put all these pieces of the puzzle together. So it does show So it takes away a bit of the hubris of supposedly rational people that we are where we are.

But yes, it is as I met a woman not that long ago and she said, I'm from the East End. We call this fucking nuts. I mean, it's hard to disagree at this point, which brings us very much onto, look, we've charted the three of us, how bigoted we are with our evil opinions. So let's talk now about your situation. You were talking about how in 2018, very few people in academia particularly felt able to. to speak out against this. What is it that you did that caused all of this, assuming that you did anything? Well, I didn't do anything other than say the sorts of things I've just been saying.

Alongside other things which I also believe are true, which is that trans people should be protected in law and policy. And if possible, and I think it is possible, we should find creative ways to meet their needs too. But what we can't do is just collapse the categories of women and men legally. because they're there for good reason, because women and men are different in reality, and nothing we say in language or in policy will change

the fundamental differences between men and women and then the impacts that that has. So all I said was things like that. But there's this, I suppose it goes along with the sort of fucking nuts element of it, that if somebody is saying something that's fucking nuts, then they've got a really strong interest in stopping it. any rational scrutiny of that. So alongside extreme trans activism goes this kind of cult-like structure which says anyone who disagrees with us is a hater. They could only be coming from

a position of bigotry and dislike of trans people, which is absolutely not the case in my case, or really hardly anyone I know across the gender critical movement. And of course, the gender critical movement includes trans people who also say this is fucking nuts and, you know, hang on a minute, my name. So, yeah, I don't know. So you started saying all of this? I started saying that, yeah, I wrote some blog pieces, and then I kind of graduated. I started being asked to write things for publications. I mean, originally it was just on medium. Then I did a talk, public talk, an organization called Women's Place, which is a grassroots feminist organization raising these issues on the left.

And, you know, colleagues at Sussex, students, colleagues in philosophy across the world, members of the public, a lot of them just kind of went into action to try and start getting me either fired or get me to shut up, basically, because obviously what I was saying was threatening to their position. And by saying trying to get you fired or trying to get you shut up, what do you mean by that specifically? Well, I mean, in 2018, the Times ran an article where, I mean, I didn't know anything about this until I read it in the Times, but they had been in Facebook groups of trans activists who had been working out how to use, I think they were like saying, let's use the Equality Act to get her accused of a hate crime and, you know, let's lobby the vice chancellor. So right from the start, there was kind of organised moves to get me either censored or fired, I suppose. Students have done various things at various times. There's internal complaint systems in universities for good reason, but they can be used vexatiously and they were used vexatiously against me. So I was put through quite long, prolonged internal investigations for things I'd said online that were perfectly fine.

as it turned out and I was exonerated of all charges but you know it's a the process is the punishment to some extent um protests at my talks I've been not de-platformed um a couple of times uh big petitions against me uh using the internal mail of sussex to put out various communications that are highly prejudicial and misstate my position I mean that's the thing my position is never accurately conveyed by these people. It's always conveyed in the sort of most lurid, uncharitable way, and they'll seize on tiny little aspects

and blow the off to big, massive, meaningful things. So it's been a bit of a battle, really, just to kind of deal with all that because it just comes at you kind of relentlessly. And why are you, Kathleen? Well, I mean, it's coming, not just coming at me, is coming out at anyone who says the sorts of things that I say. I don't think I'm special in that respect.

I think the only thing that perhaps makes it more intense in my case is that I was at Sussex University, which is in Brighton. And Brighton is the heart of... It's the Portland of the UK, is there? Yeah. I mean, I like Brighton or did like Brighton. I used to live there even, but it's, you know, it's got a long history going back to the 17th century of gay people being there and in recent times it's, you know,

queer culture central in Brighton's lots of young kids there who came there for that reason and they went to Sussex for that reason. So I think it was probably important to shut me down, even more important to shut me down, because it was quite symbolic that I was saying all this stuff whilst at Sussex University. I mean, I'll be honest you, Kathleen. When I first came across your story and I was reading about it,

I was like, good on you. Good on you for speaking up. Good on for saying your truth. And then, or what is the truth, I should say? And then I sort of saw that you did it in Brighton, and my first thought was, she's fucking mental. Yeah, I know. Well, yeah, yeah. But I mean, I wasn't going to not say it because I lived in Brighton. Yeah. It's just an accident. I got a job at Sussex. I could have got a job at like Hull or somewhere. Maybe this wouldn't be gone the way it did. But, I mean, I, I, I, That talk I referred to was for a woman's place, and that was in Brighton, and that was in 2018.

And I did think this is a bit mental. Why, you know, that was, because the previous Women's Place meetings, the one before that had had a bomb threat, and the one at Oxford had been really aggressively protested. And at that point, there wasn't the public understanding of our position at all. So I think it was just really easy for members of the people. the general public to think they must be transphobic. Why else would they be going on about this? So it really felt like a hostile environment and we were doing this event in Brighton. And it was quite intense. You know what I find odd about all of this, Kathleen, is that at the same time as government organizations are ceasing to take advice from some of these

activists that are lobbying for easier transition and all of this other stuff, at the same time that clearly people are starting to realize that they'd gone too far. We're still having conversations like in your case where people, you know, when you go on the mainstream media, there was an article in The Guardian this morning misrepresenting what happened to you, right? Like, I don't understand how we have these two simultaneous things happening. On the one hand, people are realizing that maybe in the name of diversity and inclusion and whatever else and being compassionate, which I think is what motivates a lot of people to support this position. we just lost sight of the truth and what's important,

while at the same time people like you are being demonized right alongside that. That doesn't make any sense to me. Well, it's not the same people in every case, obviously, but I think what it shows is how embedded this ideology is in our institutions that people are still finding out about it, or they're finding out that what they thought was a kind of harmless, inclusive, kind stance has repercussions for other. other protected groups or for free speech or for children.

So it is really well embedded and so it's going to take quite a lot of sustained action to get it out basically. And I don't think we're even halfway there yet because there's been some focus on Stonewall recently, but there are other organisations in Britain that we need to focus on like mermaids, which is the child-centered gender identity affirming, organisation who regularly misuse suicide statistics to scare parents into going along with medicalisation of their children. And there's a whole set of issues we could go into there. But we need to think about that. We need to look at it. The public needs to know about it. And just keep getting the message out. And partly the problem is, or has been,

that there are media organisations that just won't talk about it or won't. talk about it fairly or objectively. Now that's starting to change, hopefully, because the BBC of Left, Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme. But other media organisations are still in there, and The Guardian has a long way to go. What a surprise. But one thing I'm always fascinated with your story is you're getting all this flack. You're turning up at work every day. You're getting complaints made about you, which are not based in any type of fact whatsoever. They're just done as a way to essentially wear you down, drag you down. Why didn't you give up? Why did you not think, you know what, life's too short, I've got this wonderful career at a great university,

I could just shut my mouth and I could just carry on with my work. Why didn't you do that? I mean, I don't really know, obviously, except that there's just something that is, I've never yet reached the stage where I think the cost to me is too great. I think the issues are really important. I think they're really, really, really important. Like, sex non-conforming children, their bodies are being irrevocably changed, their fertility is being irrevocably compromised

because of this idea that there's something inside you that is much more important than the material facts about you and that somehow it's innate as opposed to changeable. So, yeah, those things keep me that issue and the women's space issue, keep me hooked in. And I just think partly it's my philosophical brain that will not accept inconsistency, you know, even to my own detriment to some extent. I just can't have it. So, but of course I go through periods where I'm like, oh, this is just too much. And then I kind of,

you know, make a mental resolution to kind of step back. But then I read something that annoys me. I get back right in again. Yeah. And then you get back. So let's go back to the story. You're working in Sussex. It's 2020, 2020. What was a moment for you where you thought, I can't do this anymore? Oh, right.

Well, so term started this academic year in the end of September. And there'd been a few things, you know, this year that had happened already that had really upset me at the time. but, you know, I came back to campus. Everyone was back on campus because the COVID sort of distancing had stopped at Sussex. So it was all face-to-face teaching. And the first two weeks didn't feel great.

I knew that I was, you know, a bit of a pariah on campus. I could tell that I was. But then this campaign started. The first thing I knew was I went to the loo. were stickers on the back of the toilet door, talking about the transphobic shit that comes out of Kathleen Stock's mouth. And obviously that's not very pleasant. So, but I had no idea as part of a campaign. I actually thought that was just a one-off. I thought it was sort of relatively emboldened student. And then the next day, as I walked into work, there were posters all the way

over the main entrance with my name on them, saying Kathleen Stock's a transphobe. We don't pay £9,000 in fees for transphobia via Kathleen Stock. So that was quite difficult to say the least for me. I felt very, very exposed and frightened, I suppose. Definitely distressed. But anyway, I went home and realised that there was this. now this manifesto up online, full of, you know, quite intimidating language,

telling readers to get really angry, to get angry, stay angry or, you know, angry enough to do something about it. We've fucking had enough. She's a spiteful boot licker, transphobic, etc., etc., and saying, until she's fired, you'll be seeing us around. And then they'd taken pictures of this guy all in black with a sort of dress like Antifa kind of stuff,

holding a big sign saying stock out with flares going off, standing on the University of Sussex sign. And that was on the website as well. And from then on, it just, you know, every day there was a new action. So they took all the posters down. They all went up again the next day. Graffiti started going up. There was about 10 of them arrived on campus unannounced one day,

all with signs saying stock out. fire stock. And then leading up to this open day protest where about 100 people were across the campus, the main sort of square of the campus, whilst parents and potential applicants were coming in, they were all standing there with their masks on and their banners. Actually, some of the banners apparently said quit stock.

So clearly, you know, it's like either saying I should be fired or basically trying to get me to quit, which obviously they did eventually. So all of that was shit, obviously. And I was teaching from home at this point on Zoom because the police had told me not to go on to campus and had opened an investigation into it. Why did they do that? Why did they say it shouldn't go on to campus?

Well, because I would say, I mean, it's a clearly intimidating, harassing atmosphere. And Sussex is a campus university set in the Sussex Downs. It's not like you can just sort of slip in and slip out again. Once you're there, you know, every 10 to 10 to the hour, everyone moves lecture theatre. There's just hundreds of people streaming across campus, including me, had I been there, it would have exposed me to potential risk. So they were concerned about your safety is what I'm getting at. Yeah.

I mean, the language of the manifesto is clearly aggressive. I'm not saying that everyone involved in this was aggressive. I actually think lots of people that got involved, especially in the big protest, probably had no idea what they were doing, except that it seemed like quite a fun day out. But I think that the ringleaders of this are very focused on me, quite obsessively focused on me, and calling me, you know, spiteful boot liquor or whatever,

the language they were using and the imagery they were using and the idea that their website was called anti-Turf, Sussex. So it's like Antifa. So I'm the fascist and they're the Antifa. And that's the dynamic they're trying to set up, right? So, yeah, I was definitely not going to wander around on campus and I'm not a martyr. The reason that I hone in on this point

because what you mostly described sounds like a football manager at the end of their tenure, you know, stock out, queer, all of that stuff. And the argument that people have made, this is going to sound cruel and uncaring, but I'm Russian, so it's part of my culture, is you believe in free speech. These people were expressing an opinion about you. They didn't like your views. They didn't want you to be around. They expressed that.

You weren't physically assaulted, as far as I know, right? So isn't that there free speech to say stockout? well, I mean, if they were just saying stock out, then obviously that would be their free speech, but they weren't just doing that, were they? I mean, it's not, I'm not, it's not up to me to decide where the borderline of legal definitions of harassment fall, but as far as I can see, the police think it's conceivably within that.

I think universities are interesting places, because yes, there is such a thing as, academic freedom and in fact I think it's very important and I'm on record as saying that but it's also a workplace and it was my workplace right so I think that the people that at this point strategically move to the free speech defence I always think it's quite interesting because these are not traditionally people that give a shit about free speech but all of a sudden they do and yet they're also the people that quite often often will complain about things like Twitter pylons or, in fact, we're actively complaining about

me saying things like trans women are male. Generally speaking, not, you know, now this is posters with my name on it. Every single communication is a direct reference to me. I'm not an elected politician. I don't represent a large corporation. My speech is within the law and demonstrably within the law, and moreover, I'm a moderate. So I don't think that's acceptable. And I also think it sends a terrible message to anyone else who thinks like me within the university. So it's chilling of free speech. So we've got these clashes, or alleged clashes, when free speech gets shut down, it's usually by other speech, right? You know, it's not, because that's how human beings communicate through speech. So we need to be able to work out what the difference is between the kind of speech

that ultimately shuts speech down and the kind of speech that doesn't. And as far as I'm concerned, posters, flares, saying I should die alone, etc., that falls on the side of that's chilling. And how were the University of Sussex, were they supportive to you? I think once the student harassment campaign started, they became supportive of me. Yes. So you ended up leaving in spite of their support rather than due to lack of it? Well, yeah. I mean, the final straw as documented is that the my, the Sussex UCU branch, which is a university and college union at Sussex, then put out a statement, which is basically in support of the students, and condemned the institutional transphobia

of Sussex, allegedly, by which they could only mean supporting me. So at that point, I mean, that's the problem. If it had just been a bunch of students going rogue, I could probably have handled it if I'd felt that there was some sort of clear understanding this was unacceptable behaviour. But there's no clear understanding amongst my colleagues that this is unacceptable behaviour.

A certain group of colleagues think it's absolutely brilliant behaviour and went online immediately to say how they applauded it. So once you've got the grown-ups cheering the children on, as it were, it was just not an environment I want to be in anymore. Hey, Constantine, do you like Christmas? No. In USSR, we cancelled Christmas and we had Lenin Fest instead. What's that?

We celebrated glorious leader and rewrote story of Jesus to make it better. Really? Yes. In our story, three wise men were killed and gifts meant for Jesus redistributed to glorious workers of the Soviet Union. Jesus was put on Gulag for having wrong opinion, as we call it in Russia, happy ending. Right. Well, if you do want to celebrate the festive season, then there's only one way to do it. Grab yourself a ticket to our final live show of the year at the Leicester Square Theatre on Saturday, December the 11th. Yes, it is discussion with one of our favorite guests, Aisha.

Akanbi, she's almost as good philosopher as Vladimir Lenin. Yeah, exactly. Our two previous shows sold out completely. And this one will as well. Grab your ticket now before it's too late. Click on link below. During interval, there will be special entertainment. I will ride bear with my shirt off.

I didn't realize we were going for that demographic, mate. Oh yes, we are. Excellent. Was there any communication between you and some of the the people who were coming after you because, you know, we've had Jordan Peterson on the show. We've had our friends Brett Weinstein and Heather Hanging on the show. And I know that they, they, when they were essentially forced out of their campuses, they made attempts to communicate with the students.

In Jordan's case, I think he went outside and tried to talk to them and they shouted him down. In Brett and Heather's case, they ended up with students roaming the campus with baseball bats looking for them. Were you ever in any dialogue? with people who were trying to... Well, when you put it like that, I can't think why. Yeah, yeah. No. Well, way back in 2018, I wrote an email kind of as a standing invitation to all

philosophy students, which I then put on my website saying, if anyone wants to discuss with me at any time, come to my office hour, you know, here's my position, and I've always made it clear that I would not expect students to agree with me. you know, I will put stuff on the reading list that disagrees with me. I do that anyway for anything I'm teaching and most philosophers do. So I've kind of communicated that way through the standard pedagogical methods, and I've gone out of my way to make it clear that I'm open to dialogue. And occasionally people have taken me up on that.

But no, once this started, I'm not, you know, I'm not a mug. I'm not like, what am I supposed to do? I'm not like, I don't think I'm some sort of Messiah figure to go out there and like overcome this. These are, the people running this are wankers and have no desire to talk to them. Yeah. Well, look, people are going to accuse me of victim blame and all sorts of things, but it's my job as an interviewer to have the conversation and to prod at the seams of what we're talking about. Because I guess the real question underpinning this line of discussion for me is,

where is the line between their free speech and harassment, intimidation, things that are actually against the law or against what a workplace should tolerate? Do you see what I'm getting at that? Yeah, I understand. I mean, that's a standard philosophical question. Yeah. And where do you think that is? When did they cross the line with you, do you think?

Well, I mean, I don't, I'm not necessarily that. clear in my own head about where exactly the line is. In my experience, in philosophical thinking generally, lines are blurry and there is no line. And I'm an sort of Aristotelian, I think context is always relevant. That's quite a controversial position. What? Contraversial position is important. Well, not for some philosophers, it really isn't very important. So I don't think he was talking about philosophers, but it doesn't matter. But I think from the minors, I think from the it they put them out, well, the posters, I personally, that crossed my line, you know, I think,

again, there's this sort of failure of empathy defensively from my critics who just can't, I think they would not put up with that in their own workplace, was it directed at them, but they expect me to. But I also think the manifesto, the language of the manifesto, is threatening and it's not, you know, rational debate or even sort of vociferous, disagree. It's actually, I don't think they even know what I think on half these issues. It's just get her out. It's more like get the witch out, right? So we're not, I don't think people should be in any doubt that this is some sort of like,

you know, academic dispute gone a little bit wrong. There's nothing academic about this. There's something pretty primitive about this. It's like get that heretical figure out of our environment. You know, people are holding up signs saying we were meant to be safe here. and yet nobody can explain why I made them unsafe. And I've been teaching trans students, you know, with that as far as I know,

perfectly appropriately and professionally throughout this whole thing. So I'm not making anyone unsafe. And the whole thing is based on a massive misrepresentation of me, my character, my views. There's no evidence ever really provided that's going to, you know, convince anyone who isn't already ideologically up to their neck in it. So, yeah, I don't know what to say.

It's not up to me either to convince people that this was, you know, take it. If you don't think, if you look at this stuff and you think this isn't a problem, all right, I can't change your mind on that. For me, my line was crossed and I was going. Part of the reason that this story is so powerful is because when I look at it, it's for me, the story of a person who stands up and says something which is rooted in fact, rooted in science, common sense, something that we all know, a tiny minority of people then felt emboldened to go and destroy them and we are where we are. And that's what we all fear. We all fear it. Everybody feels this fear now in society,

whether they're going to get dog-piled on Twitter, whether they're going to have their careers, their reputations tarnished, etc., etc. It's very much a story of our time, isn't it? I think so, yeah, and you're right about the tiny minority. I mean, it's not representative of the majority at Sussex, I know that, and I know most students don't think like this. Even amongst those students who disagree with me on the specifics, they wouldn't think this was the right way to go about it, and I think most colleagues are horrified. And yet, in every institution, partly because of social media,

a small number of people can have a very loud and powerful chilling effect. And you do become frightened. Social ostracism is a very powerful, weapon like I think it's probably hardwired into us to fear it right because being a part of a tribe strengthens you and being out on your own clearly weakens you so yeah people fear it well in the primitive condition being ostracized from the tribe would mean you would die 100% and so of course we fear it and by the way I have a lot of empathy for your situation again I was asking the questions to get to the bottom of the argument no but I feel it needs to be said because even people

who watch this show, which is people who are intelligent and are approaching this conversation from a sort of more enlightened place, even they sometimes, oh, you said this, we've become very black and white in society, which I think speaks to your case as well. And I think Francis is right, and you're right, when you say that this is really you're the head on the spike to tell everybody else not to do this. Don't speak now. Yeah. And to some extent I have you know, I did leave, so I do worry that I've effectively made it easier for similarly motivated people to act this way in other universities. I mean, academics are in this quite strange position,

which they always were in, but I think it's supercharged by social media and the ability of students now, small numbers of students to organise really quickly. So we are there to basically say what we think. That's built into our job description. Academic freedom is a value. It's written into the mission statement of every British university. But at the same time, universities are now in competition with each other for students. So they're trying to massage their images and make themselves look as attractive to students as possible.

And the students are right there. you know, in your face. So it's a bit like a school, although it's not a school. And of course, they're adults, but they're young adults and they're still finding their way in life, a lot of them. So it can be quite a volatile mix if you're saying something that some numbers of students really object to. So I think that's an interesting aspect of this. It's not, you know, now in a way, through leaving, I've become freer to say, like I just said that, I thought the ringleaders were wankers. And I do.

But I couldn't really have said that, I don't think, and my pedagogical role. But I'm not a teacher anymore, so I can say that. But I think we've got people left in universities, to get to my point, who are increasingly exposed to this. And this has set an example, which, so I hope, basically universities have to help these people. They have to support them in, in, um,

in expressing controversial views. But didn't they do that with you? They supported you and still you were forced out. They supported me quite late on. Right. I mean, I think if you're going to, I think for a university to support someone in my position, ideally, you would identify quite early on that they're a risk

and that they are being isolated and you would move various structures in to psychologically support them. you would also look at your social media policies. Now, this is where you might say, this is an incursion to free speech again. But, you know, when you've got academics, sometimes more senior to you,

on social media saying, this person is a bigot for saying this, like no evidence, no argument, just transphobe, bigot, they're like a racist, they're like an anti-Semite, etc. churning that out to students, and I think universities should look,

at that and say, okay, our social media policy should not allow people to just defame others in the institution. So, and that's not just for the sake of it, it's because it has this effect on the whole institution becomes paralysed because they're frightened that it's going to happen to them. It's a complicated interactions between the speech of this lot and the speech of that lot. I do, I'm not underplaying that at all. It's really a mess to sort out, but it is a problem we have to address? The thing that I just can't get my head around it.

This entire hashtag be kind while screaming epithets at the opposite side, wishing to shut them down, effectively destroying their lives. Let's just call it what it is. It's just trying to destroy someone. It's trying to destroy their lives.

Yeah. It's trying to destroy their lives. Yeah. Yeah. But how does that work? Well, it works. Partly because kindness, is not a transparent value, is it?

Like, there's a saying, you've got to be cruel to be kind, you know? So, like, how exactly you are kind should be an open question. But kindness as a value tends to be adopted by really narrow-minded people who interpret it in ways that sort of are self-serving, basically. So it's like a figly for their own will to power, basically. So I found it quite amusing at various times to see that my biggest, most vociferous, aggressive sneering critics usually have like hashtag empathy in their bios. But the whole, I mean, again, a complicated story, but activism, social justice activism is now

being rewarded professionally in universities. Like you can say, oh, I'm on the equality, diversity and inclusion group in your promotion application and that will be a good thing. And, you know, there's all these little power structures being folded into the bureaucracy that allow individuals who are not empathic or kind to use that language to cloak their own ambition or envy or desire to get ahead or whatever it is. So, yeah, be kind, be inclusive.

These are very nebulous, vague, vaguely defined terms that can be interpreted in lots of different ways, can they? Well, once you've decided that your opponents are Nazis, than the kind thing to do for society is to destroy them. Exactly. Now, here's a question which is quite controversial, and I'd love to get your opinion on it, which is how much responsibility,

because I'm all about responsibility, should the gay rights movement take for this when it comes to things like Stonewall? They did a lot of great work in the 70s, 80s and 90s when gay people, as you know, better than me, discriminated against. We've now come to this point where, gay marriage, widely celebrated, and now we've come to where we are now.

How much responsibility do you think that people like Stonewall, etc, should take for this? Well, I don't think that the original founders of Stonewall should take any responsibility for what's happened now, because they're not involved anymore. I mean, these organisations have a rolling kind of membership, as it were, in the trustees and the management. And actually, you know, at least one of the original founders, Simon Fanshaw, has been very, very critical of the direction that Stonewall has taken. But the current incumbents and the recent ones like Ruth Hunt, I mean, they've just set a bomb under LGBT solidarity

because they have tried to redefine what being lesbian and gay is in terms of gender identity, not attraction to the same sex as you. And they did that and then wrote hashtag no debate. So lesbians, like I just said, are being told you, you know, if you don't consider trans women as potential dating partners, you're prejudiced. You need to think about that. You know, you need to examine your prejudices. Like, no, the whole point of being a lesbian is that you don't fancy men, males. That's the point. So now that's the ordinary person's understanding of what gay is. But that's not. the understanding that Stonewall has anymore. So they're in these multiple contradictions. And yeah, like I say, because of their influence in British institutions,

they are very responsible for a lot of this. They really, you know, the t-shirts, trans women are women, get over it from, I don't know what, 2015 onwards, trying to change the law around sex by deception. That's one thing they've been trying to do. so that it's not a crime or in any way wrong, not to divulge your own sex in sexual relations with a partner. That's in one of their manifestos. So, you know, that raises all sorts of questions.

People want to know who they're going to bed with. Sorry, to interrupt, just to put it into ways that people can just see what you're talking about. If you go out on a night out and you meet another woman and she happens I fucking hate this you meet another person who claims that they're a woman and has a penis

and you go home with her and doesn't tell you like that's what you're talking about that situation so if that proceeded in certain directions that would count as sex by deception I mean there are laws that

prohibit that and that you are supposed to disclose your sex and that it's there are there's precedent cases where people have not disclosed their sex, they pretended to be of the opposite sex in a sexual encounter,

and when the victim found out that they were very traumatized because that's not reflective of their own sexual orientation. And what I'm saying is just one example of Stonewall's sort of massive radical ambitions that in the 2015 document of vision for change, which has sort of set the agenda for the next so many. years, changing the sex by deception laws was one of the things that they said they wanted to do, because they want to protect the privacy of trans people is how they put it. So they're putting the privacy of trans people construed as not having to explain who you are, biologically, above how the partners might feel about that interaction. That's just one example of the sorts of things they were trying to do. So yes, I do hold Stone responsible. And then they say,

said hashtag no debate. So it's just really, really, I don't even know if they knew how radical the things that they were saying were. Let me ask you another possibly even more provocative question because I was struck how at the very beginning of our interview, you were talking about biology, you were talking about how men and women are different, you were talking about the consequences of that. And those are things I agree with entirely, and I've always agreed with, but those are the things that there was a period of time at least until the trans issue started coming to the fore where there was a portion of feminists who were very much attempting to undermine those very things you sort of I'm happy for you to challenge me on that no no I think you're right

what do you make of all of that so I think um I mean I do talk about this a bit in in my book but there was a time in feminism in the late 20th century where some feminist, academic feminists in particular, would try and argue that womanhood was not the same thing as being female. And they weren't doing that with any kind of trans-inclusivity in mind. They were doing that because they were trying to avoid fruitlessly, I think, the threat, the political threat of what was called biological determinism,

which is this view that your biology sort of determines what your aptitudes in life are and whether you're good at housework, education, whether you should stay home and look after children. And that was, you know, that's a conservative position that still exists in lots of places. But they thought they could get sort of avoid that threat by saying, aha, but women aren't female.

or they're only contingently female but you know it's an accident womanhood is a social role that isn't necessarily attached being female though quite often the patriarchy forces us to do this because that's what men want so that that was one part of it that were radical feminists who said that that exactly that that sort of the the femaleness itself was a construct and maleness were constructions of patriarchy and then there was the sort of post-reliquist structuralist version through Judith Butler that said that heterosexuality was the construct was a social construction of patriarchy or of heteronormativity and you know I mean I've now moved definitely moved into academic language but the idea that is that you know the things

that evolution basically hardwired into our species are not in fact hardwired they're they're socially produced and because they're socially produced we could change them if we wanted so there's nothing natural about males and females and there's nothing natural about heterosexuality being the dominant sexual orientation for humans, they would say. So insofar as feminists went along with all that, then yes, they did. Maybe they didn't foresee that it would go this way, but they laid down some of the groundwork for this now, because it is the idea that everything's inherently fluid and flexible, except when it's innate.

You know, I mean, it never makes any sense, really. I bring it up, Kathleen, sorry to interrupt, is I think to me that's a textbook example of why you should never pursue political advantage through lying. Why it's important to look at the facts, even if they are uncomfortable or unpleasant to you in that moment, because it will end up being used against you at some point. Well, I mean, I'm sure it's true. You shouldn't, but I don't think they thought they were lying. I mean, they thought they did believe that everything was socially instructed. They had arguments that led them to those conclusions. The arguments were terrible. And ignored the data. But they believed them. Well, they ignored the data, but it also

they did have a story about how the data was not the thing they should be paying attention to because science itself was a construction, you know, on this view. So everything's a construction. So they can become very skeptical about when people say, oh, evidence has shown us, because they think that that's political as well and politically constructed. So I mean, I know what you're saying and I agree with you, but I do also don't like the collapse. It's part of the polarization in this area. People could be wrong

without lying. It's true. It's true. And by the way, I'm not actually trying to make it like, ah ha ha ha, the feminist got at all. I just, to me, truth is a sacred value. It really is. Yeah, but they think they're saying something true too. I know, but

you've got, the problem is that yes, they thought they were saying it, but the system they created pre-support the non-existence of truth by default. If everything is the patriarchy, then nothing is the patriarch and nothing is true. Okay, well, you're going a bit fast, but yeah, I will concede that they would think the notion of truth itself was suspect. Mind you, if you say it's sacred, it makes it sound like you're adopting a kind of quasi-religious

attitude towards it, and that's not necessarily great either. It's an interesting philosophical argument. Do you mind if I carry on with this? No, no, no, you're correct on, mate. So what I mean when I say it's sacred is I mean that it should never be sacrificed for other things, in political discourse at least. We should never say that something is true, but because it's unpleasant, uncomfortable, difficult, it leads us down past. We don't want to go down. We should therefore pretend it isn't true. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I see what you're saying. Absolutely. I mean, I do think, I'm not sure I agree with you. I just don't know exactly where I stand on there, but I know there are plenty of truth that's sort of uninteresting, boring.

And then there are some truths, so this is where I probably differ from you, but there are some truths that I can see why if we focused on them exclusively, and particularly with certain sort of interpretive slants, they would cause a lot of harm. So given the wider context, like I said, everything's in a context. So you can't just take one particular truth. You have to look about how it's going to be disseminated, who's going to hear about it, how they're going to interpret it, what else is going on. and, you know, truths can be co-opted into politically detrimental strategies,

and that's why people are worried about the things that I say, but it's, I don't think you're going to find an all-or-nothing position on this. I think it's quite obvious that we need to talk about biology, quite obvious, because it's just so important across a range of domains. But that's why I'm making a point of this, Kathleen, because I think that is where the trans issue comes from, as you just said, It's the desire to achieve particular political objectives or social objectives by, okay, maybe the people who went after you thought that they were on the side of truth and right and whatever, right?

But you've got to get to a point where you're not willing to sacrifice what is objectively true for the sake of your political ideology. It's less the case when I'm, you know, I agree with you about focusing on a particular truth that paints the picture. that you want to paint. What I mean in this case is sacrificing truth deliberately in order to achieve a political aim. I mean, I don't disagree with you. I talk in my book about fiction, because I think it's a fiction that you can change sex. And I say, well, look, there's a role for fiction in people's lives at an individual level. We pick up books. We go to the movies. We imagine ourselves. We daydream. You know, fiction is a totally normal, natural part of human life. And for some people who have profound gender dysphoria, it's helpful to engage in the

fiction that they are of the opposite sex. But where the problems come in, I mean, problems come in at the range of children, which we can talk about separately, but where problems come in is where we're compelled institutionally to basically go along with that fiction. And at that point, truth has been sacrificed and then we have all the problems that we are now seeing. And we are where we are, where truth is being sacrificed. What do you think is going to be the future for universities in academic institutions? There's a big question that. I don't know.

I mean, I think it's an interesting time, and I want to see how they respond to this sort of problem. My worry is that they just don't see that they've got a problem because they're in a kind of crouched position. And a lot of the values in the name of which this is being all being prosecuted, as we've said, are things like kindness, inclusion, equality, and they all sound great. So the danger is that university managers, who are not deep thinkers quite often at the best of times, think, well, how could this be wrong? And basically, the whole HR sector within universities is becoming moralised in very narrow directions through lobbying groups, through benchmen, marks through kite marking schemes, through, you know, all these kind of boxes that H.L.

want to take in order to establish that they are a good place to work and a good place to study. So I think academic managers really have to get a handle on how that might be having an effect on what could be permissibly said within those institutions and what ideas may permissibly be had and explored. and ideally just get any kind of overt moralisation out of management and out of the bureaucracy because it would just free up a lot of space because we've got like vice-chancellors participating in Stonewall

activities, you know, that just sends a message right across the whole university that gender identity is to be affirmed because that is Stonewall's position. Kathleen, it's been an absolutely brilliant interview. Before you ask the last question. I've got a couple more, a couple more quick ones, not the philosophical ones, actually, but more sort of societal and also personal.

What have you learned from this experience? And what should we learn as a society from this experience that you've had? What have I learned? I've learned so much about human nature, that's for sure. I've learned, well, I've learned that, I've learned what solidarity is. in the sense that women in particular across the UK and grassroots organisations have supported me and kept me going. And if it wasn't for them, I could never have done any of this.

But I've also learnt what solidarity isn't within institutions. And I've learned that it's really, solidarity is really important. If basically other academics had come out much earlier and stood beside me and either said we agree with her because lots of them do, or at least she should have a perfect right to say all this, we wouldn't be where we are. But basically ostracism, the mechanisms for ostracism destroy solidarity.

And those two things are antithetical to each other. So with more demonstrated solidarity amongst people, there would be less ostracism, but ostracism will thrive where there's no solidarity, if that makes sense. So I've just learned the important of basically standing up and saying, yeah, I'm with her or him at crucial times because it sends this message.

And if people don't do that, then you really are on your own. Well, I've said this a lot of the time. You know, the cancel culture thing only really works because they go after people who are vulnerable. I say many of the same things that you say and no one goes after me because they can't do anything to me. Well, exactly. And now I'm out of universities.

Like I said, I am aware of that. that, I mean, I'm not saying that I'm not still really annoying, but what can they do now because they've done it? So they've shot their bolt. But while I was there, and, you know, it's not a coincidence. They go after women far more than they go after men, because there's plenty of men within universities even that say, some of the things I say anyway and don't get half as much flack.

So, yeah, the whole, we're all set up to work out. I'm sure that's hard why too. Who's the most vulnerable person? Who's the weakest? Who can we pick off? And we know we can just. judge. So yeah, that's why it's crucial for men to get involved, actually. And I think a lot of men think that they shouldn't, that it's not their business, that somehow they haven't got any skin in the game and they don't want to be accused of mansplaining. I say, come in.

We love mansplaining. Man sprain away, for God's sake. What a great note to end the interview on. Kathleen, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure. Obviously, you know, I've been through a sort of public thing. much smaller level than you, and I know how painful and difficult that is. So all credit to you for conducting yourself with the calm and the sort of gentleness as well that is needed not to inflame things and just to get your message across and to be reasonable and to be calm and to be rational. Really, really commend you for that.

Thank you. And thanks for coming on the show. We've got just one more question for you before we go to our locals' questions. Which is, what is the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be? I don't know. I'm afraid. I think I've said it all. Okay. All right. Fantastic. Kathleen, if people want to find you online, where is the best place to do that?

Well, I've got website, Kathleenstock.com, which basically just lots of links to lots of interviews and stuff I've written. And I'm on Twitter. Dock stock with 2Ks at the end. Excellent. And people should get your book, which is Material Girls. Yes, I have a book. Material Girls. And it's been outstock, but it's been reprinted. so it's now back on, back in the show. Back in stock. Yeah. Good. I'm sure you've heard that before.

Look, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you guys for watching and listening at home. We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And if you want your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. We hope you've enjoyed this incredible interview. Remember to subscribe and hit the bell button so that you never miss another.

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