From: fedora@fea.st   
      
   On Mon, 23 Feb 2026 19:18:34 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
      
   >On 2/23/2026 10:54 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   >> On Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:53:03 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> On 2/22/2026 7:46 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   >>>> On Sun, 22 Feb 2026 18:25:37 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
   >>>>   
   >>>>> On 2/21/2026 8:46 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   >>>>>> On Sat, 21 Feb 2026 16:22:54 +0000, Julian    
   >>>>>> wrote:   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> Earlier this month, an SOS dropped into my inbox. It came from a   
   student   
   >>>>>>> at the University of Sussex. Lest her repressive professors punish her   
   >>>>>>> for what I am about to report, let’s call her ‘Emma’. ‘I am in a mild   
   >>>>>>> state of despair,’ she wrote.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> You must feel sorry for those poor conservatives, they feel despair.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>> Not sorry. There are only two biological genders: male or female.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> I say that your and my beliefs in the matter do not influence what   
   >>>> other people believe.   
   >>>>   
   >>> Some people are highly susceptible to suggestion and are very prone to   
   >>> suggestibility. They sometimes believe things they read on social media.   
   >>>   
   >>   
   >> But you and I know better than to do that, don't we?   
   >>   
   >Most of the things I know I learned in elementary school starting in   
   >grade three. Two genders. Then, later in Biology 101: Anatomy and   
   >Physiology. Two geners confirmed.   
      
   I learned at university that all sorts of genetic variations are   
   possible (but not common).  hermaphroditic, multiple pairs of mammary   
   glands in females, whatnot.  The prof's comment was that nature is not   
   nearly so obssessed with gender as we are.   
      
   You really can't get an education in a jr college.   
      
   >>> Your data is all over the internet. Good work!   
   >>   
   >>>>>> Kathleen Stock resigned from the University of Sussex in 2021   
   >>> following   
   >>>>> intense backlash, protests, and accusations of transphobia regarding her   
   >>>>> published views on gender identity and biological sex.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> She argued that biological sex is immutable and not synonymous with   
   >>>>> gender identity, particularly in the contexts of law, policy, and   
   >>>>> women-only spaces.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> "This week alone I have been told that the history of kinship theory   
   has   
   >>>>>>> been, up until now, ‘Eurocentric and cisgendered’, and another   
   >>>>>>> anthropology module must be viewed through a ‘queer and trans lens’.   
   The   
   >>>>>>> word ‘decolonisation’ comes up in almost every lecture. If university   
   >>>>>>> campuses represent a microcosm of the greater society, then I fear we   
   >>>>>>> are doomed."   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> I’m not surprised. After all, Sussex was the university that so failed   
   >>>>>>> to protect the coolly reasonable, gender-critical philosopher Kathleen   
   >>>>>>> Stock from a sustained campaign of vilification by students, aided and   
   >>>>>>> abetted by some colleagues, that it destroyed her faith in academia and   
   >>>>>>> drove her to resign. While the university was fulsome in its posthumous   
   >>>>>>> regret at her leaving, it has yet to give any explanation – no matter,   
   >>>>>>> make a confession – of its own astonishing failure to defend her.   
   >>>>>>> Indeed, it’s currently litigating against a fine imposed by the Office   
   >>>>>>> for Students for failures to uphold free speech.   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> Sussex had moved onto my radar before Emma’s email for two other   
   >>>>>>> reasons. One is Alan Lester, the professor of historical geography who   
   >>>>>>> has made it his mission in life to discredit me, lest anyone should be   
   >>>>>>> seduced by my utterly moderate views of Britain’s colonial record. He   
   it   
   >>>>>>> was who wrote a 15,000-word takedown of my book, Colonialism: A Moral   
   >>>>>>> Reckoning, in which he could find nothing positive to say either about   
   >>>>>>> me or the British Empire. Zilch. Nada. He then organised the   
   >>>>>>> counter-publication of a collection of essays; every one of them   
   >>>>>>> targeted at me. Emma reports that, judging by the amount of classroom   
   >>>>>>> time he devotes to debunking me, I now live ‘rent-free in his head’.   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> The other instance of Sussex I’d encountered is Gurminder Bhambra, a   
   >>>>>>> professor of social theory. Two weeks ago, she was on the other side of   
   >>>>>>> the table in a recorded discussion about empire staged by the Doha   
   >>>>>>> Debates in Qatar.   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> Like Lester, Gurminder simply cannot credit the British Empire with any   
   >>>>>>> positive achievement. When the moderator put the topic of the Empire’s   
   >>>>>>> benefits on the table, she immediately issued the rhetorical challenge:   
   >>>>>>> ‘What benefits?’   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> Flying in the face of obvious historical data, this is a main symptom   
   of   
   >>>>>>> the ideological character of her view. Her thinking is determined by a   
   >>>>>>> theoretical axiom – that empire and colonial rule are totally unjust –   
   >>>>>>> that will not countenance any contrary evidence. Not the fact that the   
   >>>>>>> British Empire was among the first states in the world’s history to   
   >>>>>>> abolish slavery and then led the world in suppressing it from Brazil to   
   >>>>>>> New Zealand. Nor that it introduced liberal institutions of a free   
   >>>>>>> press, independent judiciary, and representative government to parts of   
   >>>>>>> the world that had never experienced them.   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> Similarly, nor that it made India the largest producer of steel outside   
   >>>>>>> of North America, Europe, and Japan by 1935, and gave her 47,000 miles   
   >>>>>>> of railway against China’s 17,000 by 1947. Nor that, between May 1940   
   >>>>>>> and June 1941, it offered the massively murderous racist regime in Nazi   
   >>>>>>> Berlin the only military opposition – with the sole exception of   
   Greece.   
   >>>>>>> In Gurminder’s eyes – implausibly – none of this counts for anything.   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> Behind this stubborn defiance of historical fact lies a more basic   
   >>>>>>> axiom, namely, that colonialism was fundamentally about economic   
   >>>>>>> ‘extraction’. In support, Gurminder invoked the argument that, since   
   >>>>>>> India produced 25 per cent of world output in 1800 but only 2 to 4 per   
   >>>>>>> cent in 1900, it follows that the British had plundered the country.   
   Not   
   >>>>>>> at all.   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> It only shows that industrial productivity in the West increased four   
   to   
   >>>>>>> six times during that period, reducing India’s share of global GDP. The   
   >>>>>>> same fate befell uncolonised China. The neo-Marxist view that   
   >>>>>>> colonialism was essentially about the predatory extraction of colonial   
   >>>>>>> surplus owes much more to dogma than empirical data.   
   >>>>>>>   
   >>>>>>> Over 25 years ago, the leading historian of imperial economics, David   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)