Another shipment of pestilent bullshit:

I am reading it and it is indeed horrifying. The case:

My name is Almut Gadow. For almost 10 years, I taught law at the Open University. I was dismissed for questioning new requirements to indoctrinate students in gender identity theory, in ways which, I felt, distorted equality law and normalised child sexual exploitation.

I am bringing an employment tribunal claim arguing that I was harassed, discriminated against, and unfairly dismissed because I reject gender ideology and believe in academic freedom, and that this breached human rights protections for academic free expression.

…

In 2021/22 the Open University’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion department announced plans to incorporate its political ideologies into ‘all current curriculum’.  The law degree on which I taught was redesigned around a ‘core theme’ of ‘liberating the curriculum’, reflecting these ideologies.  

Criminal law tutors were told that, to ‘liberate the curriculum’, our classes now had to introduce diverse gender identities and teach students to use offenders’ preferred pronouns. I questioned if incorporating gender identity theory might be an unnecessary distraction or even unwise. I described gender theory as hotly contested, and as recently developed in wealthy Western countries. I pointed out that (not) believing in gender identity is a protected religious or philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010, and said law tutorials are no place to promote one’s beliefs.

I also highlighted some of the implications of describing offenders according to self-identified gender in our work. I said a criminal lawyer’s role is to present facts, that sex is a relevant fact for offences involving perpetrators’ and/or victims’ bodies, and that no offender should be allowed to dictate the language of his case in a way which masks relevant facts.   I said an assailant’s language about himself and his offence should not automatically be adopted over his victim’s, and that lawyers and courts sometimes need to describe offenders in terms with which the latter might not agree – calling the innocent-identifying perpetrator ‘guilty’, or the trans-identifying male ‘he’.

When I raised these questions, in an online forum for law tutors to discuss what they teach, management had no answers.  Months later, they were cited as reasons for my dismissal. Managers spuriously alleged that my ‘unreasonable questions’ had created an environment which ‘isn’t inclusive, trans-friendly or respectful’, thus violating the transgender staff policy and codes of conduct. In fact, I had broken no lawful rule by probing the academic soundness of what I was expected to teach. 

Christing fuck. Imagine the lawyers that are going to emerge from this form of “education.”

But don’t worry, it gets worse.

I further incurred the wrath of the curriculum liberators when I asked them to define their key concepts such as ‘LGBTQ+’. It had become apparent to me that some treated ‘minor attraction’ (i.e. paedophilia) as part of the ‘diverse sexualities and gender identities’ Open University law teaching now seeks to ‘centre’.  The criminal law module culminated in an assignment in which students had to discuss a relationship between an adult and a minor. Students would gain marks by describing child and adult as each other’s ‘boyfriends’, but lose marks if they considered whether the adult was grooming the child or committing a sexual offence.

My request for clarification was spuriously described as further misconduct. Curriculum liberators complained that it had made them feel undermined, harassed, bullied and reputationally damaged. In fact, asking colleagues to explain core concepts of their output is just part of everyday academic work, but curriculum liberators were unable to do so here.

I despair. Dangerous idiots are taking over everything.