Brought to attention

Warwick Pride Issued a Statement the other day – which is to say, it wrote a public post on Facebook. It’s quite a surprising document.

STATEMENT REGARDING EXTERNAL SPEAKER NADHIM ZAHAWI

That is, Facebook post regarding external speaker Nadhim Zahawi.

TW: Transphobia, SA, abuse, homelessness

SA = sex abuse, right? So why isn’t it either “SA, A,” or “sex abuse, abuse”? Or indeed “abuse, sex abuse” – it’s more usual to start with the general and go on to the specific.

Picky picky.

It has been brought to our attention over the past few weeks that the Warwick Conservative Association is running an external speaker event, inviting Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education, to campus on Friday the 27th of May.

It’s very pompous, that “It has been brought to our attention” – makes it sound as if they’re so important and powerful and busy that they don’t have time to keep track of events, and as if they have armies of sycophants eager to bring things to their attention.

Towards the beginning of this academic year Nadhim Zahawi said the following regarding former Sussex University Professor Kathleen Stock, a notorious transphobe that is a signatory to the WDI (Women’s Declaration International formerly known as the WHRC) “Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights”, that published the transphobic book “Material Girls”, that is a trustee of the LGB Alliance:

What’s up with saying “that” instead of “who”? Three times? Is it deliberate, to indicate that Kathleen is a thing rather than a person? Or just illiterate?

“It was unacceptable that a scholar of her calibre should be hounded out of university. For me that was just a terrible stain on the history of that great university.”

The WDI declaration argues for the legal elimination of transgender people. Quite frankly, Kathleen Stock’s behaviour as well as the university’s reaction is the only real “stain” on Sussex University concerning this incident.

That makes it sound as if the WDI Declaration argues for genocide. It’s as malevolent as it is stupid, and that’s saying a lot.

There are about 15 more paragraphs of the usual spite and blather. I miss the good old days when lefty students campaigned for workers and women and people of color and lesbians and gay men.

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