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  Suicides should never be a political weapon For some trans activists to accuse me of causing the deaths of troubled teens shows how toxic this debate has become Janice Turner Saturday October 20 2018 , 12.01am, The Times L ast weekend the trans activist Helen Belcher resigned as a judge of a journalism prize because, against her wishes, I reached the shortlist. She announced that: “Since  The Times  started printing such [transphobic] pieces, starting with one by Turner in September 2017, I have heard of more trans suicides than at any point since 2012. These have mainly been of trans teenagers.” When probed on Twitter she said: “I have heard reports of four trans suicides in the past few months, two in the past month. The media reporting was referenced in three of them.” Later, trans activist Paris Lees added that she held “individual journalists who stigmatise trans people personally responsible for the suicides of young trans people in this country”. No further detai...

Kathleen Stock: professor in trans row splits Labour and Tories October 14th 2021 Kathleen Stock says fake Twitter accounts had been set up to attack her Nicola Woolcock, Education Editor | Eleni Courea Wednesday October 13 2021, 12.00pm,  A senior Labour figure has criticised an academic at the centre of a transphobia row while the Conservative universities minister has condemned abuse of her as “illiberal madness”. Taiwo Owatemi, a shadow women’s minister, criticised Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at Sussex University, for her involvement in the LGB Alliance, a charity which says it “defends the rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals whose rights in law are based on sexual orientation not gender identity”. Owatemi agreed with the University and College Union, which has backed students who accuse Stock of transphobia. The students have called for Stock to be sacked. In a letter to a feminist group in Coventry, Owatemi said that the lecturers’ union had made ...

October 15th 2021 Study philosophy at Sussex University and, in your first year, you may read John Locke. The Enlightenment thinker is celebrated today for his “Letter Concerning Toleration”, in which he argued that to compel men “by fire and sword to profess certain doctrines” was not only immoral but pointless: the only true persuasion is the “inward persuasion of the mind”. If the students and staff denouncing Kathleen Stock, a professor in the philosophy department, are familiar with Locke’s argument, they seem unmoved by it. Since term began protesters in balaclavas and masks have been denouncing Professor Stock’s “transphobia”. They have let off flares next to signs saying “Stock Out” and put up posters reading “We’re not paying £9,250 [$12,600] a year for transphobia—fire Kathleen Stock”. One group stated that: “Our demand is simple: fire Kathleen Stock. Until then, you’ll see us around.” Police have advised her to install cctv cameras at home and implied that she ma...

200 academics tell of death threats and abuse as battle rages for free speech  17th October 2021 Dr Shereen Benjamin, a senior lecturer in primary education at the University of Edinburgh, has been compared to a eugenicist and a white supremacist. Complaints have been made about her classes. A speaker at a panel debate she organised was attacked by a protester. Benjamin, in her late fifties, has spoken about the need to protect women-only spaces such as refuges, prisons and hospital wards. Her views brought her into conflict with students and staff who saw her opinions as transphobic. “The time leading up to that panel discussion was the most difficult four weeks of my working life. I had been called a bigot. I had no right of reply,” she said. She prefers to work quietly, but this weekend she is one of 200 academics from prestigious universities speaking out about the abuse they face on campus. Academics from top universities tell of how they have faced death threats, masked prote...

Failing to use the word 'woman' puts lives at risk  October 16th 2021 "Upon the controversial advice of the charity Stonewall, the Scottish government is obliterating the words “woman” or “mother” in its literature in order to please the transgender lobby. Maternity leave policies no longer speak of mothers, but of “employees having a baby”, and recent public health information urged “people with a cervix” to go for smear tests — despite the fact almost half of women are unfamiliar with the word cervix and uptake of tests has been dropping. Wholly in agreement with the campaign group For Women Scotland that the best way to deal with such idiocy is in kind, I did what they suggested: emailed my MSP. Please advise me, I said. I don’t know if I’ve got a cervix. The reply came not from Evelyn Tweed, a SNP MSP, but her office manager Scott. Poor bloke, I bet he took the job never expecting to discuss women’s bits. He advised me to write to my GP, kindly offering to do so on my ...

How dare the BBC teach children that there are ‘100 genders’? CELIA WALDEN 9 SEPTEMBER 2019 • 7:00PM 'Gender-neutral' uniforms at Priory School in Lewes, East Sussex, after “concerns” were raised over the length of girls' skirts, and to cater for transgender pupils “What are the different gender identities?” asks a little boy in one of the nine new BBC Teach films put out to support the personal, social and health education (PSHE) curriculum in schools – to which his head teacher replies: “That’s a really, really exciting question…” A ctually, it’s not. And the answer is still less exciting. Which is perhaps why rather than give the boy a bald, biological and distinctly boring fact – “two” – the video cuts to a Relationships and Sex Education teacher, hopped-up on her own gaping-mindedness: “You know, there are so many  gender identities ,” she enthuses. “We know that we have got male and female, but there are over 100, if not more, gender identities now.” Even by today’s E...