The Times- Inside the ‘cloak and dagger’ campaign against Kathleen Stock
Inside the ‘cloak and dagger’ campaign against Kathleen Stock
Activists calling on the University of Sussex to sack the trans row lecturer hide their identities to protect against an online backlash
Trans activists at the University of Sussex are waging an anonymous campaign against Stock, the philosophy professor, who has been advised that she may need security on campus as a result of the row.
The campaign, led by a collection of student groups, has posted flyers around the campus demanding she be fired and members have posed in balaclavas alongside a banner that read “Stock Out”.
Organisers of a protest planned in the centre of campus have advised attendees to “conceal your identity to protect yourself and others”. One of the campaign leaders said that activists did not want to reveal their identities for fear of opening themselves up to abuse or potential defamation claims.
“We try to keep as much anonymity between each other as possible. You never know who’s who, and also it’s plausible deniability as well,” said Rio Jacques, 23, a second-year history student at the university.
Jacques, who is the first activist from the campaign to speak openly, added: “It’s very much cloak and dagger, but that’s not the way we want it to be. The masks — it’s not meant to be threatening. It’s just for the protection of the people that want to be vocal.
“No one wants to lose their place at university, but at the same time we don’t want to sacrifice our right to defend ourselves with our words.”
Jacques, who is transgender, is one of the leaders of Reclaim Sussex and is involved with Anti Terf Sussex, the two most prominent groups spearheading the campaign.
He explained that his role in the campaign was in part motivated by the struggles he had with his parents when he told them he wanted to transition. He said that his parents’ initial negativity was informed by articles they had read on the internet written by Stock.
Jacques said that Stock’s trusteeship of the LGB Alliance, a charity that advocates the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people, aligned her with the “far-right”. The charity has been described as “trans-exclusionary” and a “hate group” by Labour MPs. It insists “disagreement does not equal hate”.
When asked if he had any sympathy with the toll that the campaign was taking on Stock, Jacques, who wants to either go into academia after graduation or become a lawyer, responded: “I recognise it must be overwhelming to see your name attached to such a big topic. But the degradation in mental health that occurs to trans people throughout their lives — she adds to that.”
Jacques said that the campaign was “in no way violent”. However, in the last week, Stock has said she has been advised to install CCTV outside her home and hire a bodyguard while on campus.
In response to Jacques’ comments, she said: “I sympathise with my critics’ fear of online abuse and misrepresentation, a reality I am highly familiar with.
“It’s not ‘hate’ to believe you can’t change sex, or to worry about the effects of life-altering drugs on kids, or to think that inner identity should not determine a male’s access to women’s changing rooms, refuges, prisons, or sports. These continue to be my beliefs, argued for in my research, and I am entitled to hold them.”
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In recent years, there have been a series of high-profile campaigns at the University of Sussex, including rent strikes and demonstrations opposed to police presence on campus. A student involved with the campaign, who did not wish to be named, said that Sussex had a “proud history” of student-led activism.
The current campaign to oust Stock was started two months ago by another unnamed student who began “dropping into Whatsapp groups” and inviting others to get involved.
Anti Terf Sussex was then formed with the aim of demanding Stock’s resignation. The group is made up of around 15 students, both postgraduate and undergraduate, the majority of whom are transgender. It was members of Anti Terf Sussex who were involved in the poster campaign and balaclava incident.
Reclaim Sussex was previously involved in the protest against police on campus but has channelled its resources to the Stock this academic year.
In its manifesto, Anti Terf Sussex describes Stock as “one of this wretched island’s most prominent transphobes, espousing a bastardised variation of radical feminism”. It claims she is harmful and dangerous to trans people adding: “We’re not up for debate. We cannot be reasoned out of existence.”
The group’s suggested reading includes an essay by Christa Peterson, a PhD student at the University of Southern California. For the past two years years, Peterson has led a Twitter campaign against Stock, culminating in the essay published earlier this year.
She has launched similar broadsides against other philosophers. She wrote on Twitter “f*** Brian Leiter”, referring to a philosopher at the University of Chicago.
Earlier this week Stock wrote on Twitter that a letter from the University and College Union, which failed to denounce the attacks on her, had “effectively ended her career”. Peterson mocked the tweet by posting pictures of different letters and saying that they had ended her career.
Peterson said that while she had been a vocal critic of Stock, she had not called for her resignation. She said: “I believe what protesting students have said about Professor Stock’s impact on the climate for trans students, and I think the university is obligated to find ways to mitigate it.”
MPs, academics and members of the UCU, have written in support of Stock over the “aggressively-expressed, repugnant and cowardly calls for her resignation [she has received] as a result of her beliefs about women’s rights”.
In the letter to The Times, the 78 signatories, who include Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP, Julie Bindel, the feminist author, and Dr Emma Hilton, the biologist and UCU member, condemnded the UCU’s failure to criticise attacks on Stock.
They wrote: “If UCU refuses to condemn the bullying and intimidation of female academic staff and instead seeks to legitimise and diminish it as “protest” then we feel that it is no longer an effective union to represent female members.”
Lord Winston, professor of science and society at Imperial College London, sought to defend Stock on the BBC’s Question Time. Warning the show’s producers that they would likely have to edit the programme, he told viewers that “you cannot change your sex”.
He continued: “Unfortunately, you can’t say this publicly, but this is one of the big problems. People saying this on this programme undoubtedly will resolve in me getting a huge amount of hate mail — it always does.”
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