Big news!

An English university is set to be fined a record £585,000 over allegations it failed to uphold free speech and academic freedom, in a landmark ruling in the debate over student rights on campus.

England’s higher education regulator found “significant and serious breaches” of free speech and governance issues at the University of Sussex, according to a draft press release seen by the Financial Times.

The Office for Students press release, to be published on Wednesday, said policies intended to prevent abuse or harassment of certain groups on campus had created “a chilling effect” that might cause staff and students to “self-censor”.

It didn’t help that “abuse” and “harassment” were defined so broadly in one sense and so narrowly in another. Anything short of passionate agreement that Joe is now Josephina is abuse & harassment, while promising to beat up or rape or silence women who know men are not women is just obvious simple justice. Naturally people self-censor.

The OfS report marks the end of an inquiry that began more than three years ago. It was spawned by the case of Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor who said she was forced out of the university in 2021 by a three-year campaign of bullying and character assassination.

Like lots of us, I’m familiar with the bullying and character assassination approach, albeit on a much smaller and less important scale.

The ruling by the OfS, which was established in 2017, will send a strong message to higher education institutions trying to balance the prevention of “hate speech” on campus and the defence of free speech.

The university, ranked joint 26th out of 104 UK institutions in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024, has reacted furiously. Sasha Roseneil, the university’s vice-chancellor, said the regulator had decreed “free speech absolutism as the fundamental principle” for universities.

Roseneil claimed the regulator had “refused to speak to us” and that the fine imposed was “wholly disproportionate”. She said the university had defended Stock’s right to pursue her academic work and express her “lawful beliefs”.

She added that the ruling made it now “virtually impossible for universities to prevent abuse, harassment or bullying, to protect groups subject to harmful propaganda, or to determine that stereotyped assumptions should not be relied upon in the university curriculum”.

And yet what did Sussex University do to prevent abuse, harassment or bullying of Kathleen Stock? And by “stereotyped assumptions” does she mean the “assumption” that men are not women and women are not men? Because if she does, she’s arguing for nonsensical assumptions to be relied on in the university curriculum.

Originally a comment by KB Player on In the wake.

I absolutely don’t get this. In our imperial days (British variety) we were known as perfidious Albion for betraying our allies (actually we were no more perfidious than France, the Habsburgs, Russia, or any of our rivals) but we were polite to them before stabbing them in the back. It’s sheer prudence to be so, just in case perfidiousness is no longer in your interest. This blatant rudeness serves no purpose at all.

If you have vassals – and we in Britain have been a servile vassal to our imperial overlord – there’s no point in humiliating them unnecessarily. Humiliate them in deed if it serves your purposes, but why humiliate them in word and gesture? (If you have ever watched that appalling film in Love Actually, there is a scene where the British PM tells off the nasty American president – that’s what the British would love to do, but of course are not in a position to do so.)

In our jobs we know where we are in the hierarchy. I know I have to do what my bosses tell me to do – but they ask me to carry out my tasks in a civil and friendly way – which doesn’t cost them anything and means I am a more cheerful underling.

And it’s so unAmerican. Americans (except for the immigration officials) are usually polite and friendly. Do they get this snarling from Marvel movies?

Personal emotions – resentments, cockiness – seem to be replacing the normal courtesies of dealing with foreign powers. There is no advantage in it at all except to infuriate people who might be useful to you at some point, to put it at its lowest.

I listened to a podcast from three American security experts (Christopher Preble, Zack Cooper, and Melanie Marlowe), which was recommended as being from the informed right . They were trying to find some kind of rationale behind Trump’s attitude towards Ukraine – perhaps trying to prise Russia from China, though that was probably mistaken and there was a lack of long-term thinking. Now these people are far better informed than me but except for mentioning Trump’s desire for a Nobel peace prize, they missed out the personal grudges, petty vindictiveness and spite which animate Vance, Trump and Musk, the admiration for the strong man Putin; the affront that the annoying little David (Zelenskyy) is not bowing to the grand Goliath (Russia). Trump is always going on about how he “likes” this dictator or other – it’s all personal to him – there is no strategy, no acting in American interests – it’s all real estate and vanity.

From the NY Times Ethicist column, currently provided by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah:

44 year old woman has been unable to conceive.

After three years of trying and multiple I.V.F. attempts (fortunately covered by insurance), my doctors have said that, at 44, I won’t be able to get pregnant with my own eggs. My husband and I have decided to pursue egg donation, which, unlike adoption, is covered by our insurance.

Ah right – they want to go the cheaper route.

I’d like the donation process to be as open as possible, ideally knowing our donor so our child could have a relationship with her. Most clinics, however, still use anonymous donation. Private donor-egg agencies that facilitate communication are beyond our budget. I did ask a distant cousin, but she understandably declined.

That’s quite the thing to ask a distant cousin. It’s quite the thing to ask anyone. “I want to have a baby so would you please have surgery to extract an egg to give to me?” It’s so compassionate and generous of her to admit that the distant cousin understandably said no. She understands saying no but she felt ok asking.

Spoiler: she shouldn’t feel ok asking.

My husband and I are professors, and I have a former student with whom I’m fairly close. We think she’d make a great donor, but I worry it would be inappropriate to ask her.

Well worry no more, it would be horrendously inappropriate to ask her.

Where do people get this idea that it’s ok to make such requests?

Europe just isn’t one of the cool kids any more.

The European Union is, in many ways, the antithesis of the principles that Mr. Trump and his colleagues are championing. The bloc is built around an embrace of international trade based on rules. It has been at the forefront of climate-related regulation and social media user protections.

Well rules are for peons. The best people do whatever they want all the time, because they’re the best people. Regulation and protections are horrible things, because they hinder the best people for the sake of peons.

If the relationship between the United States and Europe were merely transactional, it would be relatively easy for Europeans to just spend more on the military and give Mr. Trump some sort of victory, said François Heisbourg, a French analyst and former defense official.

But in Mr. Vance’s speech attacking European democracy in Munich, let alone in the newly public exchange, the distaste for Europe is about more than transactions. “Vance was quite clear: We don’t share the same values,” Mr. Heisbourg said.

But (dropping the sarcasm for the moment) that’s not US v Europe so much as it is Trumpians v less horrible people. Lots of us do have values that align with European democracy.

Just not quite enough of us to keep those monstrosities out of government.

Let’s zoom in on that 37 second chat with former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, now the Secretary of Defense in the Trump regime. The reporter asks him about the grotesque security breach (or rather annihilation) and he reacts with a smirk and a chuckle and

You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called “journalist” who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again, to include the, I don’t know, the hoaxes of Russia Russia Russia, or the fine people on both sides hoax, or the suckers and losers hoax – this is a guy that peddles in garbage [sic], it’s what he does.

What. a. scumbag.

He’s asked about a massive security breach in his department and instead of answering he spits out a pack of lies about the guy who reported the security breach.

What a specimen.

The plaudits are rolling in.

And speaking of “so-called journalists” – what qualifies Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense?

Oopsie.

Nope, not kidding.

Nooo, it’s snappy dresser hire, a looks the part hire, a sir yes sir hire. Trump picks people based on how they look on tv.

I can’t disagree. They don’t come across as seasoned or wise or careful or responsible. They come across as…I dunno…kind of frat boyish?

Well I’ll say one thing about Trump: there is no insult too petty for him to make.

For more than 100 years, people in Stanstead, Quebec have been able to walk into Derby Line, Vermont to enter the border-straddling Haskell Free Library and Opera House – no passport required.

But municipal and library officials said on Friday that U.S. authorities have unilaterally decided to end the century-old unwritten agreement. Coming at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries, the decision is prompting an outpouring of emotion in communities on both sides of the border, which in places has been marked simply by flower pots.

Throw out those sissy flower pots and install some guys with machine guns instead. Libraries are socialism!!

Once inside the library, Canadian and American citizens have been able to mingle freely across the border line drawn on the floor – as long as they return to the proper country afterward. In 2016, then-president Barack Obama hailed the symbolic importance of the library, built in 1901. “A resident of one of these border towns once said, ‘We’re two different countries, but we’re like one big town,’” Obama said.

A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP, confirmed that the divide is about to become more pronounced. Starting in the coming days, only library card holders and employees will be able to cross over from Canada to enter the building through the main door on the U.S. side.

Libraries are hotbeds of smuggling and subversion as any fule kno.

Updating to add: I took a look at the library via Google maps. It’s a very nice building – two stories with a cupola third story. There are border signs and warnings around it so I don’t know, maybe it is just an ordinary border issue more than it is Trump being a bully.

The charm offensive isn’t working.

Over the past 24 hours, the Greenlandic government has dropped its previous posture of being shy and vague in the face of Mr. Trump’s pushiness. Instead, it has blasted him as “aggressive” and asked Europe for backup. And the planned visit may only strengthen the bonds between Greenland — an ice-covered land three times the size of Texas — and Denmark.

Better the colonial power you know than…Donald Trump.

Even the dogsled race has reacted coolly. The organizers of the race — the Avannaata Qimussersua, Greenland’s Super Bowl of dogsled races — said on Sunday of Ms. Vance and her son, “We did not invite them,” but added that the event was open to the public and “they may attend as spectators.”

Now that’s a snub.

Greenland says we didn’t invite them, we don’t want them, we’re not going to party with them, we think they’re rude to show up uninvited, we wish they would take a hint.

Greenland’s politicians have condemned plans for high-profile US visits, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s threats to take over the island.

Second Lady Usha Vance will make a cultural visit this week, and a separate trip is expected from Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

Outgoing Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede described the plan as aggressive, and said the duo had not been invited for meetings. Meanwhile, the island’s likely next leader accused the US of showing a lack of respect.

What’s a “cultural visit”? Especially one from a spouse of a government bigwig? A spouse who was not invited?

Waltz’s trip was confirmed by a source who spoke to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News. He is expected to visit before Mrs Vance and to travel with Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to the New York Times.

Outgoing PM Egede described Waltz’s visit in particular as a provocation. “What is the security advisor doing in Greenland? The only purpose is to show a demonstration of power to us,” he told Sermitsiaq newspaper.

Speaking to the same paper, Greenland’s probable next PM Jens-Frederik Nielsen accused the American officials of showing the local population a lack of respect.

If it’s any comfort, they show everyone a lack of respect.

Ugh.

Today:

I thought it was true for a few minutes, until I looked for more sources.

Nobody died. It’s the old “he’s dead to me.” His kid fell for the gender idiocy, and that’s a terrible thing, but it’s also a terrible thing – it’s a worse thing – to tell the world your kid is dead when what you mean is he went in a direction you can’t stand.

I don’t blame Musk for hating the direction, and I don’t blame him for being furious about the gender idiocy. I do blame him for turning that on the kid.

Mind you, it probably does feel like that. The kid he knew is gone, and that has to be brutal. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But still the kid is not literally dead. Estranged is not dead. Estranged is terrible, but it’s still not dead.

Vivian Wilson, a 20-year-old college student who was born Xavier Musk, swung back after her estranged father expressed his anguish over her gender transition and blamed the “woke mind virus” for fueling the surge in young people identifying as the opposite sex.

“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything, and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Ms. Wilson told NBC News in a Thursday phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.”

Ms. Wilson, who legally changed her name and gender identification in 2022, said her father was largely absent during her childhood, calling him “cold,” “quick to anger,” “uncaring” and “narcissistic.”

Other than that he’s a real mensch.

Men who pretend to be women are not examples of “female leaders.” Ever. They’re the negation of female leaders. They’re men who shove their way into women’s everything and thus shove women out. Flattering and rewarding them for doing so is just another notch on the Comprehensive Attack on Women belt.

What credentials does Sam he/him have? What credentials are there? What is the body of specialized knowledge that qualifies people to talk about the alphabet people?

Sarah Ditum reviews a book by one of the tame feminist crowd:

The Guilty Feminist started in 2015 as a place for [Deborah] Frances-White to share lightweight material for women who liked the idea of the “feminist” label but weren’t sure about the detail. When Donald Trump arrived, though, Frances-White’s audience — and her self-perceived importance — ballooned.

…

You could argue that in the 2010s progressives began behaving like a cult: obsessed with internal obedience, utterly dislocated from the outside world.

Many people have made that observation about the left before now. What’s surprising about Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have is that Frances-White has joined them (she knows a thing or two about cults, having spent her adolescence in the Jehovah’s Witnesses). This book is her plea for progressives to rediscover critical thinking.

“The important thing,” she writes, “is that we stop and smell the analysis.” Leave aside the maddening question of who “we” refers to here (Frances-White’s first problem with “conversation” is that she clearly struggles to imagine a reader who doesn’t think like her). She happens to be correct.

…

I agree with her, but I’m not sure that she agrees with herself. Because ultimately, Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have is a mealy-mouthed imitation of robust intellectual inquiry. It is a coward’s idea of what bravery looks like. It is a conversation in the same way that shouting into a well and listening to your own echo is a conversation.

Frances-White attempts to tackle the cancellation of problematic historical figures, the limits of comedy and the question of whether history has a “right side”, among other topics. But, in light of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis farrago, let’s start with trans issues as a test of whether she’s actually evolved.

Also, frankly, let’s start with trans issues because they are so very often and regularly and predictably the place where otherwise thoughtful people plunge into a dark tunnel of confusion and lies.

These are addressed in a chapter called The Conversation About Gender Nonconformity. Even that title tells you Frances-White has decided the issue in advance: this isn’t “The Conversation About Whether We Should Give Teenagers Sterilising Medication” or “The Conversation About Whether It’s a Good Idea to Put Male Rapists Who Say They’re Women into Women’s Prisons”.

Not to mention the fact that trans ideology is the exact opposite of gender nonconformity. It’s all about gender conformity, and enforcing it: if you don’t gender conform you must be trans so you’d better admit it right now or you’ll be labeled internally transphobic.

The Cass report into the NHS’s provision of gender identity services for children has come out, as have several alarming cases of male sex offenders abusing gender self-identification. Frances-White can no longer simply call the other side bigots and otherwise ignore them. But because she’s working backwards from her conclusion that “the cis feminist and trans communities must align”, pesky reality still has to be put in its place.

So we are told that the Cass report has “raised concerns”, although conveniently those concerns are too extensive to be summarised by Frances-White. “A deep analysis would require its own chapter or perhaps book.” You’ll just have to take her on trust. Take a deep breath and revel in the distinctive scent of no analysis whatsoever.

…

Perhaps most embarrassingly, she claims that “it is difficult to find historical examples of public campaigns that target individuals or call for censorship from the left”. Which revises Stalin out of history in a way that Stalin himself could only admire.

Stalin and his global band of Stalinists. The internecine wars between Trots and Stalinists in the 1930s make even the terf wars look tame. (No axes to the head so far.)

I won’t be reading this book but Sarah’s review is a treat.

The stats are all every which way.

From a GP agreeing to change the documented identity of a baby because its mother was raising it in the “gender” of her choice to male sex offenders being recorded by the police as “women”, data and official statistics have been “corrupted” by extreme gender ideology, a report found this week.

The government-commissioned investigation by Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology and research specialist at University College London, revealed that public bodies – including the NHS, the police and even the military – have been collecting information on gender identity rather than biological sex since 2015. As a consequence “robust and accurate data” have been lost.

The NHS, for instance, lets individuals or their parents change the sex on their records.

In the Sullivan Review, one paediatrician and safeguarding expert who was consulted for the report gave a shocking example of a mother who changed the gender identity of her child when it was still a baby. “The child had been brought up in the preferred gender of the mother which was different to their birth assigned gender. She had gone to the GP and requested a change of gender/NHS number when the baby was a few weeks old and the GP had complied. Children’s Social Care did not perceive this as a child protection issue.”

Jayzus. How twisted is that? Not even the radically individualistic “I get to choose what sex I am” but the radically individualistic by proxy “I get to choose what sex my existing baby is.”

But patients can also be affected another way. The General Medical Council recently admitted that more than 60 doctors in the UK had changed their gender. There have been several cases where a member of medical staff has claimed to be one sex, but is in fact, another. This has raised questions as to whether – for example – a female patient can consent to an intimate examination by someone she is told is a woman doctor, when in fact the doctor is male.

And it’s not even just that. The pretend woman aspect is horrific but so is the wacko doctor aspect. Excuse me doctor but I don’t want a doctor who is deranged and/or confused enough to think she/he is the sex she/he is not, or one who is self-absorbed and entitled enough to live out this lie on the job. We want our doctors to be reasonably sane and in touch with reality, don’t we? And we want them to be aware of our needs, don’t we? We want doctors who are there to fix our ailments and promote our health, rather than to play out their kinky fun-loving fantasies about themselves, don’t we?

The article goes on to discuss the consequences for the police, schools, government and the military. Havoc everywhere.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Shared realities.

The book in question is called Open Play: The Case for Feminist Sport, by Sheree Bekker and Stephen Mumford. One of the blurbs quoted on its Amazon page says:

“Sport has been in desperate need of a fresh, nuanced approach to gender, one which has women, nonbinary, and trans people at its core. Open Play challenges the patriarchal system that has dictated women’s participation in sport around the world. Its philosophy is simple yet revolutionary amongst the status quo of so-called ‘feminist’ approaches to sport. This book is not just a must-read, it should become foundational in the future of women’s sport from the grassroots to professional levels.” — Flo Lloyd-Hughes, sports writer and broadcaster

Sport doesn’t need any approach to gender, desperate or otherwise. Someone wanting to introduce this kind of “nuance” into this topic wants to see men on women’s podiums, and in women’s changing rooms. It’s not gendered souls out on the track, it’s not one’s innermost, true self doing laps in the pool, we’re not seeing how high a bar someone’s “identity” can clear, it’s sexed, physical bodies of flesh, blood, and bone that are reliably known to actually exist, that are competing. The concept of “gender identity” can’t muster enough substance to hold the kind of Gordian Knot that gender ideology, to the exclusion of all others, claims to be able to unravel. Please. You can’t tie a knot in either jello or smoke, and they’re both more real than “gender identity” will ever be.

It is not possible for women, and nonbinary, and trans people to be simultaneously at the core of anything. There’s no room at the inn, and trans identified males want to play Jesus and hog the manger. In practice, attempts to do this have always centered men’s wants and desires over women’s rights and needs. Women get shunted to the side whenever “gender” has to be taken into consideration, which, unlike sex, is a completely invisible, immaterial, undefinable, unmeasurable “entity” that is likely nothing more than an aspect of personality. Do we segregate sports by whether someone is an introvert or an extrovert? No. That’s not a salient criterion. Sex is, and no amount of handwaving is going to hide that fact.

“Nonbinary” females and trans identified females are still female; nothing that they do can change that. Hormone “treatments” that render them ineligible for participation in female sports are not the concern of female sports leagues; it’s a completely understandable consequence of the choices they’ve made, and nobody is obligated to make any accommodation for them whatsoever. Find a team or league that will accept you as you are, assuming you can make the cut. Similarly “nonbinary” males and trans identified males remain males. If the “treatments” they have chosen to subject themselves to result in their no longer being good enough to play on a men’s team, that’s too bad; join the billions of other men not good enough to make men’s teams. Don’t expect women to admit you to their leagues, because you’re not women, and never will be, however much you suppress your testosterone levels. Women are not just “men with low testosterone.” It’s insulting to women to pretend they are, and that monkeying around with T is all you need to do to become female.

It looks like the authors are trying to portray women’s sport as some kind of patriarchal ghetto to which women have been unfairly and unjustly “confined”, rather than a precious refuge which they have had to carve out for themselves against centuries of opposition, ridicule, and hostility. The basic physiological differences between male and female bodies (whatever the degree of overlap there may occasionally be within some parameters when comparing men and women) are real. They are not “cultural constructs” that can be overcome by women trying “harder.” It is not in any way “victimizing” or “infantilizing” women to acknowledge these physiological differences between the sexes. These differences call for separation of sport by sex, to ensure safe, fair competition, particularly for women. This is not a punishment. It is, to use the terminology of gender identity, an actual safe space for women, and a hard won space at that. But if you don’t know (or worse, refuse to acknowledge) what a woman even is, you’re not going to be able to understand (or you’re going to pretend to not understand) this need. Any “inclusive” definition of “woman” is solely for the benefit of men. They’re going to pretend to be “liberating” women from these patriarchal “cultural constructs” of imaginary physical differences between men and women in order to let men into women’s sport. That’s the only point of all of this, and there’s nothing in it for women. They can only lose.

Its philosophy is simple yet revolutionary amongst the status quo of so-called ‘feminist’ approaches to sport.

Uh-oh: “SO-CALLED ‘FEMINIST’ ALERT”. Presumably meaning the boring kind of feminism that wants to reserve women’s sport to women. How shameful! They want to “exclude” non-women from women’s sport, like Lammy’s feminist “dinosaurs” who were “hoarding rights.” The authors of this book are the fun, intersectional kind of “feminist” (see, we can use scare quotes too), who want to prevent women from having anything of their own demand inclusivity above all. Tell me: which group of feminists actually has the real interests and safety of women in mind as their first and only priority? Not the one who thinks that “gender” needs to be at the “core” of sports.

Are we sleepwalking?

Eviscerating the federal government and subjugating Congress; defying court orders and delegitimising judges; deporting immigrants and arresting protesters without due process; chilling free speech at universities and cultural institutions; cowing news outlets with divide-and-rule. Add a rightwing media ecosystem manufacturing consent and obeyance in advance, along with a weak and divided opposition offering feeble resistance. Join all the dots, critics say, and America is sleepwalking into authoritarianism.

I don’t think sleepwalking is the right word, on account of how we’re not asleep. It’s more that we’re helpless. We would stop him if we could, but we can’t.

The 45th and 47th president has wasted no time in launching a concerted effort to consolidate executive power, undermine checks and balances and challenge established legal and institutional norms. And he is making no secret of his strongman ambitions.

Trump, 78, has declared “We are the federal law” and posted a social media image of himself wearing a crown with the words “Long live the king”. He also channeled Napoleon with the words: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” And JD Vance has stated that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power”.

Trump quickly pardoned those who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, placed loyalists in key positions within the FBI and military and purged the justice department, which also suffered resignations in response to the dismissal of corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams after his cooperation on hardline immigration measures.

The president now has the courts in his sights. Last weekend the White House defied a judge’s verbal order blocking it from invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law meant only to be used in wartime, to justify the deportation of 250 Venezuelan alleged gang members to El Salvador, where they will be held in a 40,000-person megaprison.

…

Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, noted that Democrats and their allies have filed more than 125 cases against various attacks on the rule of law and obtained more than 40 temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions.

“We’re in the fight of our lives,” he told the Guardian. “This is not a two week, two month or even two year fight that we’re in. This is going to take us many years to defeat the forces of authoritarian reaction and the Democrats are rising to the occasion.

“If you look at he way democratic societies responded to fascism a century ago, it just takes time for people to realign and refocus and mobilise a concerted and unified response. Are we there yet? No. But are we going to be in a place where we can stand together and defeat authoritarianism in our country? Yes, we are going to get there.”

Here’s hoping.

What I’m saying.

What is belief, what are views, what is a concept?

From The Times:

As a scientist at Porton Down developing technology to secure Britain’s defences, Peter Wilkins never imagined he would be considered a threat because of a belief in biology.

But when he stated his gender-critical views and support for the concept of immutable sex, Wilkins was reported for his “ideology” and labelled by colleagues as transphobic, “sad and pathetic” and “a rubbish employee”.

It’s all so weird. What is a “belief in biology”?

Knowing that men are not women is not a belief, it’s just awareness of an obvious and ubiquitous reality. Humans come in two sexes; one of each is required for the manufacture of all humans. That’s not a belief, it’s how things are. We don’t need any effort from the organ of belief to be aware of this fact. It doesn’t involve prayer or faith or an odd costume or weeks of fasting or a holy book.

An employment tribunal has found there was a “clear hostile animus” towards gender-critical beliefs at the top-secret Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL). It found that an intimidating atmosphere resulted in the harassment and discrimination of Wilkins, 43, who was forced to leave as a result.

That is, a clear hostile animus toward the truth at a science and technology lab, which forced a scientist to leave because he was aware of the (obvious, familiar, part of the fabric of life) truth. Bully the scientists out because they’re cognizant of basic facts. Much sensible.

Speaking after he won a two-year legal battle with DTSL, Wilkins still appears slightly bemused that he had to have the argument. “It’s a scientific organisation,” he said, “so it shouldn’t be unacceptable to use the phrase biological sex.”

My point exactly.

“And it was pretty hurtful, really, having spent 15 years working for DSTL on some things which were high-security, to be told that we think you’re a security risk because you have these fairly normal, run-of-the-mill, factual beliefs about sex and genders.”

Not so much fairly normal as utterly completely absurdly normal. So normal that it’s laughable. Did a woman and a man make you? Or did a miracle occur? Which “belief” is more wack?

The case underlines how parts of the civil service have been affected by the debate, with abuse of gender-critical philosophy waged on an internal blog that DSTL employees would use to discuss the issue, often during work time. At least one other person has left the ­organisation over “spats” on the blog.

Oh gosh, Porton Down sounds like the UK branch of Pharyngula.

Wilkins had worked for DSTL for 15 years, including secondments to support operations in Afghanistan and a role attracting innovative technology into defence. In August 2021, when the neuroscientist Sophie Scott was awarded the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday prize, a DSTL employee wrote on the internal blog that it was “pretty disheartening” given that Scott was “well known for her non-inclusive views on trans and non-binary people”. Another wrote that it emboldened transphobes.

Yep. Pharyngula goes to Wiltshire.

Wilkins complained to moderators that this was “deeply unfair” to Scott, who had simply applied her scientific expertise to her views. It left the implication, he warned, that anyone with gender-critical beliefs should not receive public recognition for their work.

His concerns were not properly acted upon. In the following months a string of blog posts demeaned people with such views. One DSTL employee wrote that explicitly stating gender-critical beliefs was “abusive”. Another describ­ed gender criticism as bigotry and one said those who supported gender-critical views led “sad pathetic little lives”.

Been there, seen that.

Paul Kealey, head of counterterrorism at Porton Down, was singled out for criticism. He told Wilkins that while staff were permitted to hold gender-critical beliefs, it was “not OK to express such views in the workplace”.

It’s not ok to express, in a scientific workplace, “views” that men are not women and women are not men. It is ok to express in a scientific workplace that men can be women and women can be men. How does that make sense?

Wilkins resigned in November 2022, citing a hostile, intimidating and ­degrading environment. The tribunal concluded that he was constructively dismissed.

For the crime of knowing which sex is which.

Erm…

As a few thousand people are pointing out, it’s not really a brilliant idea to send babies and toddlers and young children off to a swim night that’s “inclusive” of adults. It looks more like procurement than like jolly splashy fun with your friends.