What We Wanted: Then and Now

Related:

“Stonewall,” below, refers to Britain’s best-known LGBTQ+ activist organization. Kathleen Stock writes:

Academics also need to fight for robust biological-sex-based data, alongside data about gender identity, in order to properly track and analyse the multiple differences—physically, psychologically, socially, politically—currently statistically correlated with each sex. No doubt some of these differences are culturally and historically contingent, but something can be contingent, yet as obdurate as biological reality and so still be in need of study.
And she reports:
In my own case, I’ve experienced student complaints, FOI requests, campus protests, threats to milkshake me, the defacement of my office door, open letters to no-platform me, articles in the local press and student newspapers claiming I make the campus at my university “unsafe”, defamation by the Student Union Executive, an attempted smear campaign by academics at another institution, and various forms of student and public harassment. Occasionally, critics point to the fact that despite this I still manage to write and publish, suggesting that this gives the lie to any claim that I don’t have the freedom to do so. But I wonder how many gender-critical academics have been deterred from expressing their views by these tactics?

8 Comments for “What We Wanted: Then and Now”

  1. posted by Jorge on

    “Let’s recapture the Stonewall spirit (‘fight for gay rights’)”

    “Gay politics is at risk of becoming an elitist and intolerant project.”

    That sounds like a tough balance to master.

    5th July 2019
    It’s Pride, if you hadn’t noticed.

    I hadn’t noticed. I thought those rainbow flags were lazy leftovers.

    Stonewall was a popular revolt, a cry for freedom

    One can only free oneself the first time once.

    I remember my years of questioning well. And though they were secure years, I don’t really want to go through them again. But it is true that I no longer go to protests. Even though there is much that only I can do, a new mission is something I would have to find, not something that will land on my lap.

    …This gets things the wrong way round. Genuine popular change comes from the bottom-up. And it’s worth remembering that the authorities were never the friend of gays, and it was the police who stormed Stonewall.

    I find myself only in half agreement. Of course I believe social change comes from the bottom-up. I cannot agree with the author’s definition of “authorities”, for one. For another, I have long believed that “authority” ultimately arises from the people.

    It was as early as 1973 when the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, following demonstrations and internal educational panels that began in 1970. As early as 1986 when, after increasing public debate “even in Catholic circles” about homosexuality, the Catholic Church’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith deplored “violent malice in speech or in action” toward gays, and asked in relation to gay Catholics, “What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord?”

    The reason authority has “never” been a friend to gays is because it wasn’t until around Stonewall that gays decided it was time to quit petitioning authority and to be authority instead. The is the nature of rebellion.

    And now, as this article points out very lightly, we have the problems that come with having a lot of authority: the burdens of rulership and responsibility. When we act to protect or promote ourselves, people suffer who do not seem to deserve it. Wouldn’t it be better to just go off campaigning–or partying, as this article advocates–like a Donald Trump, and let someone else make the big decisions?

    Fifty years ago in New York City, pretty much the only external support the gay community had was the Mafia. Until the gay community started to fight back, it was mobsters who kept the police and the courts away, paying them off so that the Mafia-owned gay bars and clubs could remain open. Stonewall bar was owned by the Genovese family and, according to American historian Thaddeus Russell, Genoveses even funded the Gay Pride parades in New York.

    The Genovese family did important work in their day keeping the peace for the gay community and nurturing the force from which a full blown gay pride and rights movement emerged–it may be worth wondering someday how they encountered or figured out the truth. Their name also carries the taint of being a family that has carried out violence in the course of organized crime.

    Now it is our turn. Decisions by people with authority have heavy consequences. But escapism is not the answer. If good people run from those decisions, others are ready to take their place, and that may come with a price in taint and suffering that could have been avoided.

  2. posted by Kosh III on

    “and asked in relation to gay Catholics, “What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord?”

    Do? Leave the Catholic denomination because Catholicism considers being homosexual a”intrinsic moral evil.”

    • posted by Jorge on

      Being born is an intrinsic moral evil according to Catholicism. Some people have taken this belief to such an extreme they even baptized aborted fetuses.

      If such thinking is alien to you then you probably should convert to a religion that does not believe in baptism.

      • posted by Kosh III on

        I’m quite familiar with the notion of original sin as I grew up LC-MS(and got the hell out of dodge as soon as I could) but baptism is not a salvific act, just symbolic. I reject the Augustinian heresy of original sin and believe in free will.
        You can keep Pope Ratzi and his hate for gay people(except his clerics)

        • posted by Jorge on

          After all, a world in which an infant is condemned to hell for dying before being born is not to be contemplated.

          But why bother with the “symbolism”, then? Who would it “matter” to? And if it mattered, what would be the “effect”? What trauma happened or exists that makes one reach for a ritual of blessing for infants in the first place?

          The easiest thing in the world is to say that a certain modern theology can be discarded as if it came from nowhere, but yet the scars seem to continue to wound people. Choices exist in the past as well as the present, at set points and events. To look at them individually is to become a heretic, a small price to pay for one’s spirituality. This is not a lesson young people are taught.

          • posted by Kosh III on

            Exactly. Why be so fanatical about abortion? It saves the potential child from being doomed to hell from birth.
            But expecting thought and consideration from the rabidly religious is futile.

            Symbolic of a life change just as a wedding is a signal to others that two people have decided to join their lives together. It could be done privately but making a public act symbolizes the commitment.

  3. posted by Mike King & David "TJ" Bauler on

    More homocons acting like professional complainers.

    • posted by Kosh III on

      It’s so much easier to whinge and whine than to do what liberal/left gays did and work long and hard to move society and the Democratic party towards equal rights.

      Do any live outside of comfy blue enclaves?

      They should move to conservative areas* and work to convince other cons that gay people deserve life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

      Oneonta, Alabama; Scooba, MS or Fordyce, AR are good places to start.

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