The Times Higher on what it’s like to be a gender critical academic:

“It is quite a strange situation to work somewhere where people make it clear that they loathe you,” reflected Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, on the backlash she faced for her views on gender identification.

Some of it is just hot air.

In late November, a failed campaign to bar her from speaking at the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s annual debate generated 6,300 likes on Twitter, but just five emails from outraged complainants.

And the campaign failed. Did I mention it failed? It failed, you know.

But it is at traditionally left-wing Sussex where Professor Stock has encountered some of her biggest critics: students have made several formal complaints against her, while some colleagues have made it obvious that she is not welcome, Professor Stock told Times Higher Education.

“I’ve found it quite a hostile environment – [some] have claimed my position is bigoted and I should be sacked,” she explained. Recently, she was asked to teach in a different academic building and arrived to find numerous transgender pride flags hanging from office doors near her teaching room. “It is a grey area where, in apparently being kind [to one group], you can get away with some very targeted behaviour,” said Professor Stock.

Sussex may be traditionally left-wing as the THE says, but if it thinks trans ideology is left-wing it’s tragically mistaken. The ideology is deeply reactionary.

Avoiding controversial issues because of such sensitivities is anathema to Professor Stock, she admitted. “I was always encouraged to discuss fundamental things like identity and social kinds, but now we are being told to accept a highly ideological view that a person is whatever they feel they are,” she said.

Highly ideological and also highly absurd. Trump “feels” he’s a great man, and very very smart and tuff and shrewd and good at everything. Hypertrophied ego is not the straight road to certain knowledge.

While unpopular closer to home, Professor Stock’s views are seemingly striking a chord with a larger audience outside academia – with 24,000 accounts following her on Twitter. Last month her blog on the employment tribunal ruling against Maya Forstater, the tax expert who lost her job after claiming that transgender women could not change their biological sex, was liked by more than 3,300 people.

…

While unpopular closer to home, Professor Stock’s views are seemingly striking a chord with a larger audience outside academia – with 24,000 accounts following her on Twitter. Last month her blog on the employment tribunal ruling against Maya Forstater, the tax expert who lost her job after claiming that transgender women could not change their biological sex, was liked by more than 3,300 people.

However, while some hailed 2019 as the year that gender-critical feminism reached the mainstream “thanks to the tireless efforts of many women”, Professor Stock was less optimistic that colleagues were listening. “Most academics only read the BBC or The Guardian which refuse, in general, to talk about these things, so the issue is still badly understood in academia,” she said.

There’s an irony there. It’s the highly educated people who think people can become whatever they like just by thinking.