Hounded!

As a cover story (told by and about "gender critical" feminists)

Do you know this story?

In recent years, some “gender critical”* feminists based in universities in the UK have organised collectively to take out formal grievances against colleagues who speak out in support of trans rights.

You might not know the story because of whom it affects.

A lecturer wrote to me about how they’d been affected by a grievance brought against them by a gender critical colleague, backed by a network of gender critical academics.

“In many ways, they have silenced me. The stress placed on me during the grievance process and the fears I felt for my job security have meant that I have since kept quiet. I have stopped speaking out in support of trans rights in my workplace. I have also retreated within the workplace in general.”

The more that the people who support trans rights retreat from the workplace, the more hostile the workplace becomes for trans people.

This lecturer told me that so many grievances had been submitted by gender critical academics at their university that “they overwhelmed the UCU case worker system, almost bringing our branch to its knees, so much so that the regional office had to step in to assist.”

I have been listening to stories of complaint for many years. I shared some of these stories in a book with a pithy title Complaint! I will be sharing more stories of complaint in No is Not a Lonely Utterance. Not such a pithy title.

The new book has a stronger acknowledgement of how harassment is extended through the incitement to complain.

Many feminists who speak out about sexual harassment have had such campaigns initiated against them. Many who speak out for a free Palestine or who use the word genocide for what Israel is doing in Gaza (because that is what Israel is doing in Gaza) have had such campaigns initiated against them.

And, gender critical feminists have initiated such campaigns against trans people and trans allies [they call people like me, cis lesbians committed to trans liberation, penis panderers, paedophiles and men’s rights activists, and yes I have been called all of these by gender critical feminists].

The incitement to complain happens behind closed doors.

In the same place complaints happen: behind closed doors.

Hence the doors on the cover of Complaint.

When you complain formally you are typically told not to talk about what is going on.

The vacuum created by confidentiality creates room for rumours to flow more freely. Certain people’s points of view are more likely to be picked up. I had a conversation with a lecturer who had been harassed by a professor at her university. He was a star professor. She did not initiate the complaint against him. But he was still able to represent to colleagues that she had forced him out of his job. When her colleagues repeated his story, she remained silent.

Who controls the story of a complaint can repeat what the complaint was about.

The story off-told by the media is that gender critical academics have been “hounded out of their jobs” by “vexatious complaints” or protests about transphobia. This is the story told not just about gender critical academics but from their point of view (although that is told from their point of view is not made explicit).

Hounded is the cover story.

By this I mean: it is the story that tends to appear on the front of this newspaper or that magazine.

Sometimes but not always literally.

Cover stories are the ones judged to be more likely to sell more papers.

What sells tends to be what confirms people’s investments.

The assumption of sellability can function rather like the assumption of likability.

Regulative assumptions: creating room for some to move into.

Look up the words “hounded out” and “gender critical” and you will find many articles in newspapers with that hook; even a book.

Given some gender critical feminists have acquired large public platforms (precisely from being “gender critical”), it is hard to tell stories of how they silence other people (and not just their critics).

Some of these stories remain untold because of the use of legal threats and intimidation.

One journalist who wrote an article detailing harassment by gender critical academics told me that one academic had, in response, “threatened to publish a report (that she should never have had access to) that contained details about one of [their] source's mental health.”

That threat “almost caused the source to drop out of the article altogether.” The journalist was later advised not to include detail of that threat in the story when it was eventually published.

When threats succeed, we mostly don’t hear of them.

When a threat stops a story being shared, we need to tell the story of a threat. Or at least try to. Or tell someone else so they can.

To tell other stories means collecting them ourselves.

Some of these other stories are of people leaving their jobs silently.

There is no announcement.

No stories in the paper.

They might leave because of a hostile environment. That’s how transphobia works: to make it hard for trans people to do their work or to be at work.

One academic wrote to me,

“at least four trans colleagues I know of -- both academic and professional services -- have left [the university] over the past few years because of the hostile environment.”

These are the departures we do not hear about.

Silence about hostile environments can be a product of them.

But the problem is not just that we don’t hear about these departures.

When gender critical academics leave, typically they are the only ones who get to represent in public what happened.

Another academic wrote to me about what happened after her gender critical colleague resigned. A right-wing paper said she had forced her colleague out.

The evidence?

The accusation “was not substantiated except through tips from ‘anonymous sources.’”

The article, which named her as the harasser without any evidence, meant she was harassed even more than she had been before, receiving “another barrage of abuse.” She did receive any “support whatsoever from the institution.”

She explained the consequences of that campaign, “It was at this point that I realised I could no longer maintain a public profile on social media without severe risk to my own mental and physical health and potentially my job as well.”

In fact, she eventually had to leave her academic job.

Where was the article saying she was hounded out?

There wasn’t one.

The story of hounding held, which meant she remained the hounder.

The claim that gender critical feminists have been hounded out holds up without evidence and despite the evidence.

Another lecturer, who did not leave her post but watched what happened when her gender critical colleague did, wrote to me in frustration.

She said,

“it’s been an enormously frustrating experience, and it's been hanging over my head for years! For me, the most frustrating thing is that the grievance process silenced me, but crucially DID NOT SILENCE HER.”

The capital letters tell the story.

We end up having to shout in frustration, mostly to each other, because we know those claiming to be silenced will be given more platforms to make that claim.

Rooms to move into.

We can note that performative contradiction but it does not stop it happening.

She added,

“She shouted her story in the tabloids and broadsheets… She suffered no repercussions for breaking the terms of the agreement to keep things confidential, but in fact she was able to push her narrative whilst I was unable to tell mine.”

It is not just that the only story we hear is the one told by gender critical academics. It is not just that those who claim to be silenced are given more opportunities to speak. Their speech is how other people are silenced.

Hounded is a cover story in another sense.

The story covers over so much.

It covers over any evidence that contradicts the story.

The lecturer who had to shout in frustration worked at a university where gender critical academics were engaged in high profile activities. She said it “felt awful,” to hear the how trans and queer students were affected by this activity. She said she “hated the idea that I was working for a university that legitimised transphobia.” She wanted trans students and staff to feel supported, “I was so worried about how trans staff and students at the university felt, and so I wanted to make sure that they saw staff standing up for them.” But, when she and another colleague retweeted a trans student who used the word transphobia to describe the environment created by these activities, that tweet was taken as evidence she had created a hostile environment for a “gender critical” academic.

Retweeting someone who uses the term transphobia is deemed sufficient evidence of harassment.

When using the word transphobia is treated as harassment, transphobia is not treated as harassment.

This is no different than claiming that the term racism harasses white people, which of course some white people claim. Racism operates by making the word racism hostile, racism not.

Just as harassment stops you from naming it, a hostile environment stops you from describing it.

I have heard of people accused of bullying and harassing gender critical colleagues just for wearing rainbow lanyards or having progress pride flags on office doors.

Or for organising talks by academics or students who are critical of gender critical feminism.

Or for sharing information on trans rights on LGBTQ staff networks.

Some gender critical academics treat any effort to address or to support trans people within organisations as restrictions on what they are doing rather than what other people are doing or as impositions on their beliefs, as I noted here.

Transphobia makes it costly to call out transphobia. I have heard from a number of feminists angered by the anti-trans and anti-queer agenda of gender critical feminism, but who do not feel they can question or challenge that agenda publicly out of concern for the consequences of doing so.

Recently, I went to an event at Southbank for the release of the paperback edition of Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender.

A gender critical feminist seated in the front shouted out “penis” repeatedly and taunted “we can see you’re a woman, Judith.”

PENISPENISPENISPENISPENISPENIS PENISPENISPENISPENISPENISPENIS

That’s the hostility we are speaking of. So much hatred, spewing out, becoming nonsense.

It does not need to make sense to take up space.

Claiming to see other people, to know who they are, refusing to address them as they ask to be addressed, shouting and interrupting, ridiculing and disparaging.

And think of what that shouting out was doing.

Or what it did.

Of all the people in that audience who might had expected or experienced the relief of not having to face abuse for being trans, gender non-conforming, queer.

Those moments of solidarity, so precious, in the face of so much hostility. Hear them trying to take it away.

That’s a story.

Showing what they can do by doing it.

But still: hounded remains the cover story.

Hiding that antagonism or narrating it as going the other way.

Some gender critical feminists harass their critics publicly.

They still have the audacity to name any reaction we have to what they are saying or doing as the cause of hostility.

Yes, the gender critical feminist who shouted “penis” repeatedly at Judith Butler later said Judith’s rather polite response was an example of “misogyny.”

No, I am not saying all gender critical feminists act like that.

But that some act like that does not become a cover story.

Some gender critical feminists do not acknowledge the harassment of their critics publicly.

That does not mean they are not aware of it.

They might think it is justified.

They might even display it in front of our faces:

Have you seen this, what they said about you!

That’s been said.

Another academic describes,

“In Twitter ‘pile-ons’, I have persistently been called stupid, dishonest, narcissistic, pointless, hypocritical, cowardly, misogynistic, a rape enabler, aligned with men’s rights activism, a bully, and more. I have been told that I don’t deserve to be employed in higher education (or, indeed, at all) and even that I don’t deserve to live. Most of this harassment has been perpetrated by anonymous accounts, but some of it has come from academics posting under their own names.”

So much dehumanising language intended to ridicule and to hurt and to harm: no one should experience this. I include gender critical feminists in that “no one.”

The cover story is that “trans activists” are abusive towards gender critical feminists with the intent of stopping them from speaking.

Go undercover, and you will hear gender critical feminists being abusive towards trans people and trans allies when we are speaking or because we are speaking.

At least some of us. And in some places more than others.

Maybe the more you convincing are, the more influential, the more likely you are to end up with someone shouting “PENIS” at you.

Many have reported to me that each gender critical “success story” seems to trigger an increase in hostile activities.

One academic described how their gender critical colleagues reacted to the Forstater judgement by saying they would bring forward their plans in the hope of causing a “firestorm.”

My sense is that many of these plans are made with the intent to provoke reactions from trans people and their allies.

Why? Because to hold onto their rights, to access the health care they need, trans people have to push back. And when their rights get eroded, when their existence is not acknowledged, let alone supported, trans people have to push back even harder.

When you have to fight for existence, fighting can become an existence.

That’s a killjoy truth.

To contradict, to argue.

It can feel like talking to a brick wall.

You are talking to a brick wall.

When you have to shout to be heard, you are hearing as shouting.

Another killjoy truth.

That some people push back will be used as a confirmation of a story that sells, that those they push against, some of whom say they support trans rights whilst still only talking of trans people as dangerous or deluded (yes support can be another front), are the ones being criticised, silenced and harassed.

As I noted earlier, gender critical academics have used internal complaints and grievances against colleagues who criticise their views.

At the beginning of this piece, I quoted from an academic who’d retreated from the workplace after having a grievance made against them. The grievance included “a number of other accusations – no platforming, threatening behaviour, silencing, defamation, marginalisation, discrimination, unleashing a campaign of harassment, among others.”

It was not just a grievance from the gender critical academic that led them to withdraw into silence. The gender critical academic had used her networks to incite more complaints, more harassment.

The academic who wrote to me noted the “asymmetry of it all.”

That one complaint made against a person can have “the weight of the gender critical movement behind them.”

In other words, the gender critical academic was herself doing what she had filed a grievance against her colleague for doing.

So the story remains: hounded.

A story of a discipline.

Of feminism in the academy.

Academics in Gender Studies departments across the UK have been subjected to multiple complaints and FoI requests by gender critical academics mainly because they tend to offer trans and queer inclusive environments, teach courses that draw on multiple feminist intellectual histories, allowing the quick debunking of the populist myth that sex realism is the only feminist stance (or even that it is a feminist stance). And because many lecturers in Gender Studies are willing to speak back, to counter arguments about sex as binary and immutable, drawing on multiple feminist intellectual histories.

One academic described “another tactic of gender critical feminists, alongside complaints, is their frequent use of FOIs on what are really baseless grounds.” She explained, “I've also had anonymous complaints pertaining to be from 'concerned parents' of prospective students - saying that their child was going to study at [my university] but they have told them not to because of my presence! They are trying to hit where it hurts the University (fees) in an attempt to get them to take action.”

When she explained that I remembered how a gender critical feminist wrote that they wished I still had job so they could get me fired. Yes, that job I gave up in protest at sexual harassment. That job I don’t have because I took a feminist stand.

Anonymous complaints such as these mostly don’t succeed in the sense they do not lead to disciplinary action. They do succeed if the point is to take up our time and energy. You end up under perpetual surveillance, having to defend yourself and your work.

There are no stories in the paper about that.

Instead, the stories are just more of that, sent out as yet more accusations against which we have to defend ourselves.

So, we need to tell non-cover stories.

And so, we go undercover.

I can share some such stories with you because of how many people shared them with me. The stories also give insights into the risks of sharing them.

Still, share them, we must. In solidarity with all those complaining for a more just world.

*I usually use quote marks around “gender critical” as this work tends to be rather uncritical of gender, based as it is on an uncritical view of sex. For just to ease reading and listening, I have taken them out. For an explanation of how gender critical becomes gender conservative see my earlier blog post.

*This post draws from communications with eighteen students and academics (including interviews, written testimonies and statements). I have used pseudonyms for all participants and have chosen to refer to them only as “students,” “lecturers” or “academics” to help protect people’s identities.