#sallust

Propaganda under the cut!

Harmony makes small things grow, lack of it makes great things decay

Quid ergo dicemus, cum et silentii et orationis magna utilitas sit? *

- Sallust

What then should we say, considering that there is great utility in both silence and in speaking? *

Prof Kathleen Stock, a university professor of philosophy was hounded out of her post by trans activists for her gender critical views. In her work she tackled the relation between sex and gender identity, arguing among other things that: womanhood and manhood reflect biological sex, not gender or gender identity; the claim “transwomen are women” is a fiction, not literally true; sexual orientation (being gay, being lesbian) is determined by same-sex attraction, not attraction to gender identity; spaces where women undress and sleep should remain genuinely single-sex, in order to protect them; and children with gender identity disorders should not be given puberty blockers as minors. For holding such views she was subject to torrential abuse and subsequently hounded out of her academic position by a vocal minority of student trans right activists for holding such ‘transphobic’ views.

Stock was invited first by the Cambridge Union and later the Oxford Union to debate her views. At Oxford, trans activists tried to get her invitation rescinded on the basis that her views constituted ‘hate speech’. The Oxford Union was threatened by the Student Union to deny her a platform. To their credit, the Oxford Union held fast to their free speech principles while a petition signed by many Oxford academics, including Richard Dawkins and Nigel Biggar, came out in support for Prof. Stock.

Trans activists did their best to disrupt the event outside with a march while also offering ‘safe spaces’ for triggered Oxford students in a nearby college room complete with energy bars, ear plugs, and bottled water.

Inside the chamber, one activist, Riz Possnett, glued her hand to the chamber floor, in an attempt to disrupt Stock’s talk, until she was removed by police. The privately educated Possnett (£41,000 year private school in Hong Kong) reading PPE at Wadham College, Oxford, is no stranger to controversy as ‘they’ was known to be an Extension Rebellion activist and Republican agitator, having previously broken into Windsor Castle to frolic on King Charles’ bed with ‘their’ partner.

Prof Stock told the Union that some universities were “becoming propaganda machines for a particular point of view”. She said she did not find it “traumatic” to have protesters outside the event and said that students in her generation staged similar protests. “Generally what I find more worrying is when institutions listen to protesters and take that voice through into the institution and basically become propaganda machines for a particular point of view and then everyone else in that institution feels that they can’t say what they want to say,” she said. She said that had happened in some universities. She told the Union said it would “take courage” for people to realise that “the world does not end” when you have disagreements.

But I am very keen on amplifying the idea that by locating the foundation story of the Romans in a figure that descends from the east, the seeds of destruction are already sown within the Romans themselves. Thus, at some level, the Augustan cultural project (i.e. Vergil's Aenied) focuses on returning to the morals of the past while simultaneously creating a narrative that undermines those exact morals.