Academics slam government for awarding an OBE to ‘anti-trans’ professor

DUK Editor Team January 8, 2021

5 minutes read

A group of academics have criticised the decision to award an OBE to a prominent philosophy professor who advocates that women should not be made to share toilets and changing rooms with transgender women, saying it is ‘transphobic’.

Dr Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, has been outspoken on gender identity issues and argues an individual should not simply be able to ‘choose’ their legal gender.

Professor Stock has also publicly criticised LGBTQ charity Stonewall, saying censors debate on gender identity and suppresses academic freedom. She has also decried the shift of many UK universities towards becoming ‘trans activist institutions’.

In an open letter titled ‘Open Letter Concerning Transphobia in Philosophy’, 600 of her peers from institutions including the LSE and MIT criticised the decision to recognise her services to higher education in the 2021 New Year Honours.

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They claim that while the OBE ostensibly recognised Professor Stock’s services to higher education, it is also a show of support for what they deem to be her ‘transphobic’ views and ‘harmful rhetoric’.

In an open letter, 600 of her peers from institutions including the LSE and MIT criticised the decision to recognise her services to higher education in the 2021 New Year’s Honours, saying they are ‘dismayed’ the British government chose to ‘honour her for this harmful rhetoric’

The letter reads: ‘Stock is best-known in recent years for her trans-exclusionary public and academic discourse on sex and gender, especially for opposition to the UK Gender Recognition Act and the importance of self-identification to establish gender identity, and for advocating that trans women should be excluded from places like women’s locker rooms or shelters.’

It continues: ‘Trans people are already deeply marginalised in society, facing well-documented discrimination, ranging from government policy to physical violence.

‘Discourse like that Stock is producing and amplifying contributes to these harms, serving to restrict trans people’s access to life-saving medical treatments, encourage the harassment of gender-non-conforming people, and otherwise reinforce the patriarchal status quo.

‘We are dismayed that the British government has chosen to honour her for this harmful rhetoric.’

Professor Stock, pictured on GMB in June 2020, has voiced concerns over the suppression of academic debate and censorship on issues of gender identity

In 2018 Professor Stock spoke out publicly against proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Then Prime Minister Theresa May wanted to make the process of acquiring a Gender Recognition Certificate more ‘streamlined and de-medicalised’.

Who is Professor Kathleen Stock?

Professor Stock was educated at a comprehensive school in Scotland before studying for a degree in French and Philosophy at Oxford.

She went onto obtain a M.Litt. in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, and a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Leeds.

Professor Stock spent two years teaching at the University of Lancaster and the University of East Anglia respectively, before being appointed by Sussex in 2003.

The professor’s current main research is ‘philosophical questions about sex, gender, and sexual orientation’, according to her profile on the University of Sussex website.

Professor Stock was among those who disagreed with the idea that self-identification should form the basis for establishing legal gender identity and warned it could put women at risk.

Writing for The Conversation, she said: ‘We need to sort out female-based oppression first. If we don’t, it will simply be transferred into whatever brave new world we’re constructing.’

Professor Stock claimed that removing protections for women such as single-sex changing rooms would put them at an even greater disadvantage.

‘There’s no reason why females should – as a sexist society regularly expects them to – be the only group to sacrifice their interests in favour of others,’ she added.

More recently Professor Stock has accused leading gay rights charity Stonewall of censoring debate on gender identity and suppressing academic freedom.

She was one of 20 professors, researchers and lecturers who signed a letter in 2019 criticising the charity for providing UK universities with a template on transgender issues.

According to the letter, this template does not allow dissenting views or criticism from academics who think differently.

Pictured, a selection of Tweets from Stock in which she drew attention to the relationship between universities and LGBTQ charity Stonewall, branding UK universities ‘trans activist institutions’

Professor Stock returned to the issue in a series of tweets shared in the wake of her OBE being announced.

She wrote: ‘Honoured to have been given OBE for services to higher education.

‘I want to use this opportunity to draw further attention to suppression of critical thought about gender identity ideology and trans activism in UK Universities.

She went on: ‘And yet academics and students in Universities urgently need to be able to discuss the social importance of biological sex, and to criticise gender identity ideology and trans activism.’

Signatories of the ‘Transphobia in Philosophy’ letter agreed academics should be free to ask ‘important questions about sex and gender’ but argued Professor Stock’s contribution to the discourse has been ‘transphobic fearmongering’ rather than ‘valuable scholarship’.

Open Letter Concerning Transphobia in Philosophy

We are professional academic philosophers committed to the inclusion and acceptance of trans and gender non-conforming people, both in the public at large, and within philosophy in particular. We write to affirm our commitment to developing a more inclusive environment, disavowing the use of professional and cultural authority to further gendered oppression.

Last week the UK’s Conservative government designated Kathleen Stock, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sussex, and a prominent critic of trans-inclusive stances and policies, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. This award was ostensibly given for services to higher education. Stock is best-known in recent years for her trans-exclusionary public and academic discourse on sex and gender, especially for opposition to the UK Gender Recognition Act and the importance of self-identification to establish gender identity, and for advocating that trans women should be excluded from places like women’s locker rooms or shelters. She used the occasion of her OBE award to post on Twitter, calling for UK universities to end their association with Stonewall, the prominent LGBTQ+ rights charity, describing its trans-inclusive stance as a threat to free speech.

Trans people are already deeply marginalized in society, facing well-documented discrimination, ranging from government policy to physical violence. Discourse like that Stock is producing and amplifying contributes to these harms, serving to restrict trans people’s access to life-saving medical treatments, encourage the harassment of gender-non-conforming people, and otherwise reinforce the patriarchal status quo. We are dismayed that the British government has chosen to honour her for this harmful rhetoric.

We do not say Stock should not be permitted to say the things she does. We believe in the principles of academic freedom, and note that objecting to someone being lauded or honoured for their speech simply does not conflict with those principles. Academic freedom comes with responsibility; we should not use that freedom to harm people, particularly the more vulnerable members of our community. Conflating concern about the harms of Stock’s work with threats to academic freedom obfuscates important issues.

By no means are we suggesting that there aren’t deep and important questions about sex and gender, or that philosophers should not pursue them. Indeed, an open letter from 2019, written and signed by feminist philosophers who have worked on these questions, has made this very point. Rather, our concern is that some — apparently including the British government — have a tendency to mistake transphobic fearmongering for valuable scholarship, and attacks on already marginalized people for courageous exercises of free speech.

We stand against prominent members of our profession using their academic status to further gender oppression. We denounce transphobia in all its forms, and hereby publicly commit to working to create a more inclusive culture, in which people of all gender presentations and identities are able to thrive and be respected for who they are.

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