Could Kathleen Stock bring down the Oxford Union?
by Jo Bartosch, spiked:
Intolerant students are willing to destroy a 200-year-old debating society, just to stop her from speaking.
The sight of bright young students holding forth at the Oxford Union has always brought an involuntary, chippy sneer to my thinning lips. Mainly because my only achievements as a youth were getting thrown out of school and shot-gunning cans of cider. But envy aside, it must be acknowledged that these hard-working youngsters are a part of a proud institution. For 200 years, the Oxford Union debating society has existed as a bastion of free speech. But now a bawling band of petulant brats within the Oxford Students’ Union (OSU) has put its future at risk.
This week, OSU members voted to sever ties with the Oxford Union following its decision to invite gender-critical academic and author Kathleen Stock to talk. They called her a ‘notorious transphobe’ and accused the Oxford Union of potentially being ‘complicit… in spreading transphobic rhetoric’. As a result, the debating society has been banned from Oxford University’s freshers’ fair where new members are recruited, which will put a strain on finances and potentially risk its continued existence.
I know Kathleen a bit. She is a mild-mannered and eminently sensible middle-aged lesbian. Yet, for believing that biological sex is real and that it matters, she was hounded out of her job at the University of Sussex in 2021. And, as the Oxford students’ actions show, she is still being hounded now.
Her view that human beings come in two broad types, male and female, is hardly marginal or esoteric. Indeed, it’s less an opinion and more a straightforward observation. It’s one that the vast majority of people share. Denying the reality of sex is a luxury only afforded to those young or privileged enough to have avoided clocking up ordinary life experience.
The Oxford Union has invited far more controversial speakers than Stock in the past, who have provoked nothing close to the current firestorm. In 1996, OJ Simpson apparently wowed the student audience just six months after he walked out of the LA courtroom. No warnings were offered to the easily offended about the attendance on campus of a man believed, despite his acquittal, to have murdered his wife. Yet Stock’s forthcoming visit has been condemned in statements by five Oxford colleges. And the Oxford Union itself has reportedly offered ‘resources’ to support students who attend in case they feel hurt by her words.
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