From: punditster@gmail.com   
      
   On 1/25/2026 11:49 AM, Julian wrote:   
   > This week it became clear that almost none of the adults whose job it is   
   > to teach students the truth are much inclined to do it. Even the doziest   
   > vice-chancellor must by now have twigged that gender ideology is   
   > dangerous bunk and that it lures in the most vulnerable – yet still they   
   > can’t bring themselves to speak out. This goes not just for academics,   
   > but for politicians in the education business too.   
   >   
   > For anyone minded to understand how poisonous the atmosphere in   
   > universities is, the story of poor Professor David Gordon is horribly   
   > instructive. His ordeal began more than a year ago when he invited   
   > another professor, Alice Sullivan, to give a talk to his students at the   
   > University of Bristol. Sullivan is a professor of sociology and a   
   > quantitative data scientist at University College London, and the author   
   > of an excellent review, commissioned by the last government, into the   
   > damage done when official bodies misreport data and conflate gender with   
   > biological sex. Sullivan’s just the sort of woman you’d want your daft   
   > teens to learn from, to dent their certainties, to make them think.   
   >   
   > This is not how Bristol University’s LGBTQI+ staff network saw it,   
   > though. It reacted to the news of Sullivan’s talk in very much the same   
   > way Shelley Duvall reacted to the sight of Jack Nicholson with an axe in   
   > The Shining. Allowing Sullivan to speak to students about gender would,   
   > it said, cause ‘real and enduring harm’.   
   >   
   > Professor Gordon composed a polite reply to the BU LGBTQI+ network   
   > explaining why he believed that students would benefit from the talk,   
   > but his manager (enter the villain) intervened. ‘Leave further   
   > communications on this with me,’ she said. Professor Gordon sent his   
   > reply anyway – ‘because academic freedom and freedom of speech are   
   > written into the university’s charter, because I’d organised the event   
   > and because my LGBTQ+ colleagues expected an answer,’ he told the   
   > Telegraph. And this was his apparent crime, for which he’s been   
   > suspended since 2024, unable to teach or to talk to students: he   
   > disagreed with management.   
   >   
   > If only there was some official body academics could turn to when the   
   > brainwashed Stepford students start to circle or when management goes   
   > rogue. But hot on the heels of the sorry tale of Professor Gordon came   
   > news that the long-promised complaints system for academics anxious   
   > about being hounded or cancelled has itself been cancelled – or at least   
   > put on hold. The government wants more time to mull over the wisdom of   
   > the scheme, it says.   
   >   
   > Some 370 academics have this week written to the Education Secretary   
   > Bridget Phillipson explaining how urgently the scheme is needed. For all   
   > that people like to think that woke is over, or that the trans madness   
   > is dying down in the wake of the Scottish nurse Sandie Peggie’s victory,   
   > it’s still the case that a quarter of British academics say they fear   
   > they could be physically attacked for addressing subjects such as trans   
   > ideology. Research is being skewed, students are being misled, staff are   
   > self-censoring and scared.   
   >   
   > And look at Professor Gordon: they’re right to be scared. It’s not like   
   > university management has anyone’s back. Quite the opposite. In the   
   > countryside where I grew up, gamekeepers would sometimes hang the   
   > corpses of foxes and crows along the top of a barbed-wire fence as a   
   > warning to other predators: don’t mess with the boss. A ‘game-keeper’s   
   > gibbet’, it was called. ‘Management’s gibbet’, we could call the   
   line of   
   > academics strung up like Professor Gordon, twisting in the wind. Beware   
   > oh students, this is what awaits you in just a short while in the world   
   > of work: Karen-like line managers; HR women with that haunted turncoat   
   > look. Think: who here is really on your side?   
   >   
   > ‘The complaint system has been kicked into the long grass,’ a source   
   > told the Daily Telegraph. Well, it’s getting pretty crowded in   
   > Phillipson’s long grass. Also slowly decaying in the weeds is the   
   > guidance so many desperate teachers, doctors and academics have been   
   > waiting for, which will finally make it clear to businesses and all   
   > public bodies that as a result of last year’s excellent Supreme Court   
   > ruling, sex under the Equality Act means biological sex. Once the   
   > guidance is published, schools, hospitals and universities will be able   
   > to go about their normal business teaching pupils actual reality about   
   > biological sex and keeping men in dresses from barging into the single-   
   > sex places designed to keep women safe. Management will no longer feel   
   > free to use such tactics to out their enemies. Once the guidance is   
   > published…   
   >   
   > Not at all in the long grass, but on the nicely paved path to quick   
   > implementation, is the government’s plan to employ a senior civil   
   > servant to ‘lead on trans equality’, with a special remit to look at the   
   > implications of the Supreme Court judgment, and to ‘ensure that we are   
   > able to take steps to improve outcomes for trans people in the UK’. The   
   > job advertisement posted by the Cabinet Office said the successful   
   > applicant would earn between £57,204 and £68,558 and lead on some of the   
   > government’s ‘top priorities’, which clearly don’t include any   
   return to   
   > reality on the subject of sex, or the saving of young minds from gender   
   > madness.   
   >   
   > The only glow I can see on the dark horizon is that there are a few   
   > excellent students who have managed to see though the ideological fog   
   > for themselves. Thea Sewell, a 20-year-old at Christ’s College,   
   > Cambridge, was ostracised by her peers just for owning and reading a   
   > gender critical book, Helen Joyce’s Trans. She has now set up the   
   > Cambridge Women’s Society so that like-minded young women can think and   
   > speak freely. My great hope – and it’s a long shot – is that a student   
   > or two at Bristol University might see the light too, and set up   
   > something similar. Perhaps they could even champion the cause of poor   
   > Professor Gordon, who has lost so much trying to help them.   
   >   
   > Mary Wakefield   
    >   
   For the record, I am opposed to anyone who tells me what I can, and   
   cannot do, to manage my own mind. I am opposed to mind control and   
   brainwashing of all kinds.   
      
   That said, I believe biological sex refers to physical traits like   
   chromosomes, anatomy, and hormones, determined by biology.   
      
   We studied this at community college: Biology 101 (a required course):   
      
   Sex is assigned at birth, male or female.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)