GCAN Summary:

GCAN Summary: Being Gender Critical in UK Universities

In 2021, an anonymous group of British female academics invited testimony from gender critical staff and students. The Gender Critical Academia Network received over 150 testimonies, all submitted anonymously. Across these stories was a clear theme of experiences of fear and intimidation. You can find an archive of the responses and an article about the project written for the Radical Notion. The GCAN project summarised the responses below.

Tactics of Dominance

Gender critical staff and students describe a pattern of tactics of dominance employed to silence them. These behaviours were either directly experienced, or observed being directed at others. Public threats to gender critical staff and students operate as an intimidation tactic for all: careful, or you will be next.

Abuse and Threats

Shaming

I am very vocal on gender ideology. I have received death threats, abusive emails to my uni account and all the usual abuse. I have been suspended from Twitter. I had almost zero open support from academic colleagues.

Phd student in a v masculine subject traditionally and in a male dominated dept. I’m older than the average phd and no longer stay quiet. But I do stay away from the department. Why? They are fully bought into stonewall index, men have threatened the safety of women academics on campus who have spoken up, socialist and communist societies have called anyone a terf who questions current extreme gender orthodoxy.

The last motion I proposed on academic freedom was booed. I was laughed at and told that women had never been protected in law as a sex class anyway so what was I on about… I had never been disrespected and shamed in such a way by academic colleagues before, colleagues who were obviously misinformed and hell-bent on shutting up any discussion, even if it meant lying and humiliating their comrades. I fully understand why other people keep quiet about it. The pressure to conform is like nothing I have ever witnessed.

Surveillance

Ostracisation

We know some students are watching our social media. I feel like a complaint that I make people unsafe is constantly round the corner. I have no wish to make my student uncomfortable or for them to feel alienated from what we do in class. But I also don’t want to be the target of a complaint for voicing my own truth of what makes me a woman. I know this is nothing compared to what others have faced, but the stress of feeling that I am always under surveillance is horrible. I can’t afford to lose my job.

I was recently an MA student in a Scottish uni. I posted on Facebook about a convicted rapist who used self-ID to get into a women’s prison. I questioned why mainstream media had not reported on this case. I felt confident that this post would illuminate the obvious problem with Self-ID legislation and media censorship. How wrong I was! I was unfriended and blocked by many friends without discussion. Female arts academics and published authors discussed my views openly on FB -branded me a terf and cut me off. The two friends I thought I had from uni are now avoiding me.

Emotional Impacts

Intense emotional and personal impacts were described, both by staff and students.

Isolation

Fear

I feel incredibly isolated at my institution and there is a general environment of women self-censoring out of fear of losing jobs or being attacked. Several of my peers think of me as a bigot for supporting feminist concerns around self-ID, prostitution and surrogacy. I am afraid to express my views openly and constantly in a state of paranoia and self-editing. I have very low expectations for my job prospects in academia after my PhD and fear that there is no room for critical research. There seems to be little outreach and support for young feminist academics to have a go. It is mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting and constant, mostly because I care deeply about women’s rights and it is agonising to be up against such intense institutional misogyny.

I am terrified of being outed as GC so I have an old phone and a cloaked Twitter on it, that’s it. I have unfollowed every GC account on my regular Twitter because a student of mine was checking who was still following JKR [JK Rowling] and I knew that would be it for me.

I stay silent because I am afraid of the consequences to my career should I speak up. This is incredibly stifling. Sometimes I feel like I am choking. There is not a single advisor I can turn to.

Doubt

Guilt

I doubt myself on a regular basis. Is it just me? Am I going mad? I am on a fixed term contract and feel totally helpless to speak out or even question how things are.

I also haven’t ‘come out’ as gender critical (which feels far more difficult than coming out as a lesbian). This causes me anxiety and acute guilt because I’m letting other – braver – women fight a backlash that threatens women’s rights.

I feel bad too for not openly supporting those brave enough to speak up, and have such admiration for Bindel, Stock, Todd, Sullivan etc but I genuinely fear the consequences of my views being know.

Academic Impacts

As well as personal consequences, the testimonies describe ways in which the threatening climate is affecting their teaching, learning, research and future in the profession.

Disappearing Debate

Disappearing Sex

I don’t feel like I’m at a uni where ideas can be shared and discussed and problems talked about. There was a complete ignoring of the current situation when we were discussing feminism, other than the obligatory quick mention of horrible women with their opinions that don’t fall in line with the chosen university stance.

I think teaching key feminist concepts about gender as a social construct and Violence Against Women are important, but in the subsequent year I modified the lecture and added caveats to avoid complaints.

A university ethics board has insisted that I cannot ask about sex in my survey research.

I regularly see research projects about medical procedures where people are asked about gender identity but not sex – in spite of known differences around recovery/ metabolism of drugs etc which depend on sex.

Another really questionable choice from the university is the decision to tell psychology research students (when composing their ethics submission) not to ask research participants about their sex, but their gender instead.

Disappearing Women

I’ve just left a hostile department in social science. I have been shunned by colleagues throughout my department and my discipline. I have been excluded from so many opportunities. I think I’m done with academia. I have been open and I’ve paid a price. I still have one small role with a book publisher and simply because of that (I’m unemployed now and need the money desperately). I won’t give my name here though everyone in my field knows me and knows where I stand. But they are so vicious in their secretive backstabbing and bullying, they avoid scrutiny themselves despite them harassing GC scholars.

I am a PhD student in the US, and I am about to leave academia because my advisor, a straight woman caught up in Q-slur theory, told me to my face that homosexuality does not exist, and informed me that she would not approve my dissertation if I persisted in using the term “lesbian” to mean “homosexual female.” I’m a lesbian, aka a homosexual female. I exist. My advisor is the one professor in our department *least* captured by Q-slur theory. There is no chance of me finishing a PhD here. I have just lost the only career I ever wanted due to genderist homophobia.

I more or less completely withdrew from my PhD because I could not deal with the cognitive dissonance of feeling compelled to be openly supportive and affirming […] whilst feeling outraged at the sexism in the group and aware that if I said anything I would be immediately branded a TERF […] I had to give up my precarious teaching (which I was highly qualified for and good at) because of high levels of stress exacerbated by needing to manage my anger about this sexist culture.

To cite: Gender Critical Academia Network (2021). GCAN Summary: Being Gender Critical in UK Universities. CEFA GCAN Archive. https://cefawomen.co.uk/gcan-archive/summary