To ensure she is not attacked
Remember Selina Todd? She was told by students last year that there was going to be a campaign to have her sacked from her job being a professor of modern history at Oxford. More here and here and here.
Now she has to have a security detail.
Prof Selina Todd, a historian who specialises in the lives of women and the working class, said that she has now been provided with “routine security” to ensure she is not attacked.
The academic – who has been accused of being a “transphobe” for her involvement in women’s rights advocacy – was told by her students that she was potentially in danger.
“Two students came to see me and said they were very worried that threats had been made to me on email networks they were part of,” Prof Todd told The Telegraph.
Isn’t it funny how feminism has never been known for issuing threats against people who oppose feminism?
“The university investigated the threats and came back to me to say their intelligence on them is such that they are providing me security for all of my lecturers for the rest of this year. They said ‘you’re having two men in the rest of your lectures’.”
At her most recent undergraduate lecture, a handful of students arrived in trans activists T-shirts, who she believed had come to cause trouble.
She figures the burly guys standing in the back may have persuaded them to skip the trouble-causing.
Prof Todd said that transgender activists started making complaints about her on the basis that her teaching of feminist history was “transphobic”.
“My research suggests that women who posed as men in the past were often lesbians seeking to protect themselves, or because they want to do jobs that were only available to men,” she said.
How dare women focus on women instead of on men who say they are women. Men matter, women do not.
Prof Todd said that the history faculty now receives “daily” complaints from activists calling for her to be sacked, which has left her feeling unnerved.
…
Prof Todd urged the university to take a stronger stance in disciplining students who are making threats and malicious complaints against her.
Oh they couldn’t do that; that might look transphobic.
Merton College was accused of adopting a “draconian” stance over its plans to host a discussion about transgender issues which bans “language which denies the validity of trans identity”.
Do colleges ban language which denies the validity of pretend-astronaut identity? Do they ban language which denies the validity of pretend-movie star identity? Do they ban language which denies the validity of pretend-Nobel prize winner identity?
No. In other contexts people are expected to act like adults and not try to force their fantasies on other people. Sex is the one exception; that fantasy has to be humored, and permitted to threaten non-believers.
My god that’s scary. A sweet harmless academic flanked by guards for discussing women’s history. How bad do things have to get before people wake up? This is beginning to take on shades of Islamist extremism. Will we end up with another Salman Rushdie or Theo Van Gogh or Charlie Hebdo before people start to take this seriously?
(Then again, even after the Fatwa and the murder of Theo and the terror of Charlie Hebdo there were pusillanimous little shits on the Left who sneered at the whole thing while posturing as defenders of progressivism, so… I don’t know where I’m going with this except it makes me feel very defeated sometimes.)
The final part of the linked Telegraph article is rather telling:
As the Daleks would say, “Eradicate. ERADICATE, EERAAADIICAAAATE!
Jesus H. Christ.
If there’s a credible threat requiring serious security measures to counter it, it’s a criminal matter and the police should be involved, and if there’s enough evidence there should be prosecutions. It’s clear the University authorities want to avoid that, but really they need to be properly robust in protecting their Professors from attempts to intimidate them, for all sorts of reasons too obvious to need spelling out.
Yeah but misgendering someone is literal violence so it’s all justified.
Has anybody started a pool yet as to when we get the first TrannyBomber?
Artymorty @ 1 – “Sweet.” “Harmless.” That is the language you use to talk about women? Makes you as bad as the other side, is what I say.
Pffft, no it doesn’t. I think that was just typing in haste, which we all do at times. I think the idea was “non-violent peaceable non-combatant” academic – a civilian in the trans wars, so to speak. “Sweet” meaning benign, meaning not belligerent and trigger-happy like these lunatics threatening her.
Artymorty can correct me if I’m wrong of course but that’s my guess.
By “sweet” and “harmless” I didn’t mean to come off like I’m saying women academics are “sugar and spice and everything nice” or whatever. I meant more like, she’s an academic talking about history and hardly an angry, hostile militant. I admire academics; I especially admire historians; more and more I think the field is extremely relevant and powerful and influential to our crazy times. But you’re right; even immediately after I pressed ‘send’ I thought the language I used didn’t come off like I was trying to colourfully evoke how non-violent and non-dangerous a professor of history is (which was what I was aiming for) and instead it came off a little patronizing and sexist — indeed, that’s how you’ve read it, quite reasonably — and I should have rephrased it. I’m sorry for that.
Ms. Benson and Artymorty – thank you both so much for your replies. I may well have been too quick in my judgement, but seeing the words “sweet” and “harmless” applied to women rankles. Artymorty, I agree that real historians ought to be granted much greater status in our public discourse, especially in the fields of Professor Todd’s work. The targeting to which she has been subject proves the importance of her work, and it is fucking, fucking infuriating that that targeting is happening.
Well such things generally rankle me too but I also take yous guyses’ wider histories into account. Also “as bad as the other side” was awfully harsh for two words!
How about “peaceable” instead of “sweet”? That has more of an academic whiff.
Yarp, and yarp again – “as bad as the other side” went too far.
It’s difficult – academics, including historians, ought to be able to be firebrands in the name of what’s true, or at least a better, closer description of what’s true. I believe that Professor Todd should not have to be “peaceable” in her defense of the rights of women, and in defense of fact. But I also recognize the position, and the difficulty, A firm “peaceable-ness” might be the better approach.
Oh well I was thinking of it as vocational – academics are a peaceable bunch because that’s the nature of their work. (Engineers and similar perhaps excepted.) I didn’t mean bashful or quiet, just not running around with machetes, unlike some.
Or baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire that get displayed as works of art. Unlike some.
Quite so.