Philosophy professor Kathleen Stock’s views on the gender debate turned her into a hate figure at Sussex University. After three years of death threats and online abuse, the polarising academic resigned three weeks ago.
She talks to @VictoriaPeckham thetimes.co.uk/article/profes…
She talks to @VictoriaPeckham thetimes.co.uk/article/profes…
When the government launched its public consultation into reform of the Gender Recognition Act, Stock wrote a blog calling upon fellow philosophers to participate.
“I asked why they talk such a big game about being able to debate important things yet they can’t handle this.”
“I asked why they talk such a big game about being able to debate important things yet they can’t handle this.”
Stock believed erasing the material categories “male” and “female” had vast implications, especially for women.
“My bête noire is middle-class academics sitting around making decisions that impact on women in prison. It’s just so decadent.”
“My bête noire is middle-class academics sitting around making decisions that impact on women in prison. It’s just so decadent.”
When she pressed “send” on that blog, Stock’s life changed.
“One graduate student wrote this disgusting post about me saying something like, ‘I’m sure trans women sit around and talk about how they’d like to cut Kathleen Stock up into little pieces…’ It was really graphic."
“One graduate student wrote this disgusting post about me saying something like, ‘I’m sure trans women sit around and talk about how they’d like to cut Kathleen Stock up into little pieces…’ It was really graphic."
“I don’t think I’ve ever said I was cancelled,” she says. “The people [who are] called in to the head of department and [get] told not to say it again, and who don’t say it again, they are the ones cancelled.”
thetimes.co.uk/article/profes…
thetimes.co.uk/article/profes…
Stock was raised in Montrose, Angus, a fishing town now dominated by the oil industry. Her parents were both English academics at Aberdeen University.
“I had to develop this double identity,” she says.
“I had to develop this double identity,” she says.
Her Essex-born father discouraged her from sounding Scottish at home, but at school an English accent meant “I was called a snob [and] would get my head kicked in”.
She married her ex-husband, Gregor, at 25.
Did she realise back then that she was a lesbian? “It wasn’t at the forefront. I was already such an outsider in Montrose, and I think adding being a lesbian on top of that would have just been incomprehensible to me."
Did she realise back then that she was a lesbian? “It wasn’t at the forefront. I was already such an outsider in Montrose, and I think adding being a lesbian on top of that would have just been incomprehensible to me."
Aged 39, she found herself single for the first time in her adult life. She signed up to dating sites.
"I went on some dates with women and thought, ‘Oh my God!’ I didn’t even particularly like these women! But suddenly everything made sense. It was an epiphany.”
"I went on some dates with women and thought, ‘Oh my God!’ I didn’t even particularly like these women! But suddenly everything made sense. It was an epiphany.”
It was, she says, like taking off a mask. “It changed my whole life. The way I walked even. I’d had long hair, wore make-up every day and was really awkward and self-conscious."
Kathleen Stock, the androgynous, lesbian academic, emerged.
“So, yes, I do understand gender identity,” she says. “From the inside. I know what it is to identify as masculine, or with males, more than women.”
“So, yes, I do understand gender identity,” she says. “From the inside. I know what it is to identify as masculine, or with males, more than women.”
“If you could take me back in time, I think I would be very susceptible to a narrative that I was more male than female.”
Read the full interview here: thetimes.co.uk/article/profes…
Read the full interview here: thetimes.co.uk/article/profes…
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