Professor Kathleen Stock: ‘I will not be bullied into silence’
from Mail on Sunday:
I was proud to be given an OBE in the latest New Year Honours List. I was delighted for my profession, too – it’s rare for philosophers to get much attention. It might sound strange, then, to say I felt a pang of anxiety when I first heard the good news towards the end of last year, and again when it was made public on January 1. I knew there might be a price to pay for getting such a public honour. And thanks to the trans lobby and its increasingly aggressive behaviour, I was right.
The OBE came as a result of my campaign for academic freedom and, in particular, the freedom to examine the demands of influential trans pressure groups such as Stonewall.
So it was no surprise when, just a few days ago, I opened my emails to find that more than 600 people had signed an open letter denouncing me.
These were not hardened campaigners or activists – rather, the letter had been signed by fellow philosophers who pronounced themselves ‘dismayed’ that the Government had chosen to honour me for my ‘harmful rhetoric’.
The letter accused me of ‘transphobic fearmongering’, of helping to ‘restrict trans people’s access to life-saving medical treatment’ and of serving ‘to encourage the harassment of gender-non- conforming people’.
It was incredibly distressing to see blatant lies promoted as fact. But the letter also demonstrates what a disastrous mess we are in when it comes to talking about sex and gender.
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