Mick Hartley

Thea Sewell in the Telegraph:

I came to Cambridge because I wanted to learn how to think, not what to think: how to weigh arguments, test premises, spot evasions and follow a thought wherever it leads, even when it becomes uncomfortable. I did not come to be preached at, or for slogans. I expected the university – which for generations has jostled for position as the best in the world – to be a place where everything was up for discussion. Although I had long-held settled views on the sex-gender debate, they were not something I dwelt on.

That changed over the Easter holidays last year, when I attended a talk featuring the writers Julie Bindel and Helen Joyce. I met women that day who changed the course of my life. Not because they proselytised, or demanded loyalty, but because they spoke plainly, without fear. It became impossible to remain comfortably disengaged. I read Joyce’s book – Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality – and returned to Cambridge with it, as well as Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls. Both women, as well as Bindel, have been pilloried (that’s putting it mildly) for stating the truth: that biological sex and women’s rights must trump gender identity.

Back in college, I showed the books to a friend. I had been self-censoring on this subject for some time: trimming sentences and avoiding questions. I believed that a careful, private introduction to these ideas would be safe. I was wrong. Soon after, I was systematically ostracised by people I had considered close friends. Many told me they could no longer speak to me because of my views. I was branded a Terf (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and the word was scratched into the board on my door. I was told that buying books written by bigots was morally equivalent to being one. Argument was unnecessary; association enough to convict.

What unsettled me most was not the anger of the ideologically committed, but the quiet retreat of those who were neutral or privately sympathetic. Friends told me they still cared about me but could no longer be seen with me in public: the optics were wrong, the risk too great. This is how fear now operates at universities. Not through violence or explicit threats, but through social exclusion, which works especially well on young women. Silence perpetuates silence.

It’s the Red Guard mentality. Abuse and shaming for those who don’t follow the group-think.

Theoretically, Cambridge now has robust free speech guarantees. Much of this is thanks to Arif Ahmed, the Government’s free speech tsar, whose work has led to new legal protections. But it must be practised, not just protected. On campus, the practical reality still includes intimidation, blacklisting and taboo. The victory exists on paper; the culture has yet to catch up.

Our opponents’ responses are almost always slogans: rehearsed phrases and ritual denunciations. It is lazy thinking. Ideas only deserve allegiance if they can survive scrutiny, but this is impossible when you are stuck in mantra-mode. One of these mantras is “no debate”. Only last Friday, the university’s Labour club organised a protest demanding the de-platforming of a guest speaker – the Reform Party’s adviser Jack Anderton – at the Conservative association. The logic was protective, but the effect is infantilising.