Another day another letter.

I haven’t been able to find the letter in non-image form so I’ll just have to proceed with this one. The very first sentence is odd – colleagues at the University of Kent have recently been informed that the university “has chosen to uphold the invitation to Selina Todd” – as if there were something shady about inviting someone to speak and then not withdrawing the invitation. As if the university were supposed to withdraw invitations to external academics upon request. As if the university deserved rebuke for “choosing to uphold” such an invitation. Funny kind of academics these are.

Todd is a “self-proclaimed” [nonsense – that’s a loaded way of putting it] gc feminist “who has been widely criticised” [by people like us] “for her arguments against trans people’s – particularly trans women’s [i.e. men’s] right to self-identify.”

Yes, and? There is no such thing as a “right to self-identify.” Suppose you come to my door right now and “self-identify” as a friend of mine and invited to lunch. Do I have to “validate” your identity and give you lunch? I do not. Suppose I go to your children’s school and “self-identify” as a physics teacher; does the school have to let me teach classes? It does not. There is no such right.

Blah blah blah. Third paragraph – “The power dynamics” of letting Selina Todd (a historian of working class women) speak puts trans and non-binary people in the position “of having to defend their right to exist.” No it doesn’t. Why? Because no gender critical feminist is saying such people should not exist, or anything like it. Because no gender critical feminist is a threat to anyone’s existence. Because it’s not about existence. This constant framing of gender critical feminists as genocidal is both ludicrous and intensely insulting.

Then they quote Sara Ahmed saying “some at the table are, in effect or intent, arguing for the elimination of others at the table.”

The elimination – in other words the genocide. Again.

Todd’s views, they say, in a powerful surge of reasoning, “refuse to acknowledge that trans women ARE women, and that trans women’s rights ARE women’s rights.” Oh well ok then, if you put it in all caps there is nothing left to say.

Then they say it doesn’t matter that she wasn’t invited to talk about trans issues, she’s infected all the same. These are academics, remember.

Then they say there is precedent, because look, the University of East Anglia postponed a seminar with Kathleen Stock. Good argument: hit this person, because we hit that other person before. (Also, last I heard, the UEA didn’t postpone that seminar, nor did it cancel it or object when Kathleen refused to agree to a different format at their request.)

What a gang of craps these “academics” must be.