From: fedora@fea.st   
      
   On Sun, 25 Jan 2026 13:07:02 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
      
   >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):   
   >   
      
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