Freedom of Expression in Academia and Employment - formerly the Trans Issues.

[mongers]

I am not please with my name being associated with this - it is very much NOT AT ALL what I was talking about.

Unfortunately the thread has focused on one issue, rather than the topic of freedom of expression especially in academia, which is what the first news item I posted in the OP, instead most people have focused on the 2nd and an aspect of that, rather than say being allowed private' opinions outside of a work environment.

As you wish I'm more than happy to retitle the thread, what about -

Freedom of Expression in Academia and Employment - formerly the Trans Issues


CC got why the thread mentioned you:

Berkut has always been a spirited defender of freedom of expression.  This case has nothing to do with that issue.  In fact the Tribunal found that if her expressive rights have been in question she would have had a case.

[merithyn]

...or a trans man wanted to have a child, realized current medical technology hasn't reached a point where he can do so as a man and instead had to do so as his sex assigned at birth.  He stopped taking Testosterone to allow his body to better give birth, and then resumed the medication that aids him to better access and present his gender identity.  There is no insanity involved but there is some nastiness in declaring it as such because you don't understand it, "man".

I guess my mistake came from having obsolete assumptions on the ability of bearing a child being strictly in the domain of female identity, and therefore I could not understand how a male would both be wanting to be a male AND utilise the womb he was born with but not before he turned from a she to he AND be considered mentally sound.

My bad.

Well yeah, Tamas, it is your bad.

A person wanted a child so the person did what was necessary with medications in order to have a child.

This happens every day all over the world. Because it doesn't meet with your understanding of gender identity doesn't make it wrong, nor does it make that person mentally unsound. That you can't adjust to it doesn't make them the problem. It makes you the problem for refusing to bother to try to understand. Not to mention shows you to be an unsympathetic git.

[DGuller]

I don't know what Berkut was talking about, but this is something I was definitely talking about.  I haven't seen it stated anywhere on the Internet that she was planning to impose her views on the way she did her work.  Unless I am mistaken about this factually, then firing her (or non-renewing her contract, same shit) for expressing her views is unconscionable.

[Eddie Teach]

...or a trans man wanted to have a child, realized current medical technology hasn't reached a point where he can do so as a man and instead had to do so as his sex assigned at birth.  He stopped taking Testosterone to allow his body to better give birth, and then resumed the medication that aids him to better access and present his gender identity.  There is no insanity involved but there is some nastiness in declaring it as such because you don't understand it, "man".

I guess my mistake came from having obsolete assumptions on the ability of bearing a child being strictly in the domain of female identity, and therefore I could not understand how a male would both be wanting to be a male AND utilise the womb he was born with but not before he turned from a she to he AND be considered mentally sound.

My bad.

Well yeah, Tamas, it is your bad.

A person wanted a child so the person did what was necessary with medications in order to have a child.

This happens every day all over the world. Because it doesn't meet with your understanding of gender identity doesn't make it wrong, nor does it make that person mentally unsound. That you can't adjust to it doesn't make them the problem. It makes you the problem for refusing to bother to try to understand. Not to mention shows you to be an unsympathetic git.

Raowww.

[merithyn]

I don't know what Berkut was talking about, but this is something I was definitely talking about.  I haven't seen it stated anywhere on the Internet that she was planning to impose her views on the way she did her work.  Unless I am mistaken about this factually, then firing her (or non-renewing her contract, same shit) for expressing her views is unconscionable.

Maybe I misunderstood things, but I thought she declared that she would refer to all of her students always as the gender that she determines they are, regardless of how they may prefer to be called.

That strikes me as pretty problematic and outright disrespectful to any trans students in her class. I know that I'd be fired if I refused to refer to my coworker as "he" because I decided he was "she".

[crazy canuck]

@ DGuller - you are missing some of the facts.

She was fired because she told her employer that she would never address someone with a salutation consistent with a self identified gender different from what she, in her wisdom, believed their proper gender should be.

I have said this three times now, but you might have missed it.  The Tribunal specifically ruled she was certainly entitled to say the legislation allowing people to self select was daft.  No problem at all with her saying that on social media to her heart's content.  If she had been fired for expressing those views she would have had a case.

edit: ie what Meri said.

[DGuller]

@ DGuller - you are missing some of the facts.

She was fired because she told her employer that she would never address someone with a salutation consistent with a self identified gender different from what she, in her wisdom, believed their proper gender should be.

I have said this three times now, but you might have missed it.  The Tribunal specifically ruled she was certainly entitled to say the legislation allowing people to self select was daft.  No problem at all with her saying that on social media to her heart's content.  If she had been fired for expressing those views she would have had a case.

edit: ie what Meri said.

I've seen you post it, but I googled her name and went to four links, and none of them deviate from the original BBC story.  Can you point me to a link that goes into the relationship between her views and her action at her place of employment?

[DGuller]

And just to confirm, are we all talking about the second case?  I was.

[Berkut]

This is actually a pretty interesting case.

I think she has every right to have an opinion, in general, about gender identity. She even has a reasonable right to express that opinion (subject to reasonable restrictions around the suitability to those expressions in the context of her job - some computer science prof who spend their class time railing about gender studies is not the same as some actual gender studies prof doing the same).

Note: I don't care about the First Amendment issue. I think this goes beyond what is strictly legal, and what we as a society want to encourage, not just what strictly is a technical violation of the First Amendment. I think we should want to encourage free expression in a manner that goes far, far, FAR beyond what is only the minimum allowed subject to not running afoul of the First.

But there is having an opinion about a relevant political or social debate, and then there is how do you interact with actual, specific human beings who are your students. We are going from the general, to the particular, and from a question of free exercise of ideas to showing mutual respect, and showing respect between non-peers. There is a concern, a legitimate one, on the part of the university to want to create an environment where students will not feel like they are being personally attacked by their professors.

On the other hand, freedom of speech, if we value it, ought to be valued even when it does in fact result in some people being made to feel uncomfortable. After all, what is the value of the right to speech if it is limited to only speech that is easy, and safe?

But on this issue, I think the employer does, or ought to, have the right to demand that their employees treat their customers with a basic level of respect, especially when the context of how they are addressed is in fact totally outside the actual confines of the debate. There is a interesting argument to be made about gender identification, and what it really means. But this person is insisting that they have the right to basically bring that argument up personally and constantly, even completely outside the confines of any actual argument about gender identification. They insist that not only do they have the right to argue that "Hes" (in their view) ought to be called "hes" instead of "shes" they are arguing they have the right to bring that argument up every single time they have to refer to someone in simple, polite conversation.

Why? What is being imposed on them by this requirement that is so onerous? They are not being asked to stifle their views in general, just to show basic courtesy to other people in a fashion that has become common.

[The Minsky Moment]

Unfortunately the thread has focused on one issue, rather than the topic of freedom of expression especially in academia, which is what the first news item I posted in the OP, instead most people have focused on the 2nd and an aspect of that, rather than say being allowed private' opinions outside of a work environment.

I didn't find that story that notable.  People sent threatening messages to a professor, which is obviously a bad thing, and the university provided protection, which seems pretty sensible under the circumstances..  Not sure what inferences we are supposed to draw from those events.

[mongers]

Unfortunately the thread has focused on one issue, rather than the topic of freedom of expression especially in academia, which is what the first news item I posted in the OP, instead most people have focused on the 2nd and an aspect of that, rather than say being allowed private' opinions outside of a work environment.

I didn't find that story that notable.  People sent threatening messages to a professor, which is obviously a bad thing, and the university provided protection, which seems pretty sensible under the circumstances..  Not sure what inferences we are supposed to draw from those events.

That people associated with the student body or some students themselves are trying to constrain and define acceptable speech on campus and by academic staff.

[crazy canuck]

@ DGuller - you are missing some of the facts.

She was fired because she told her employer that she would never address someone with a salutation consistent with a self identified gender different from what she, in her wisdom, believed their proper gender should be.

I have said this three times now, but you might have missed it.  The Tribunal specifically ruled she was certainly entitled to say the legislation allowing people to self select was daft.  No problem at all with her saying that on social media to her heart's content.  If she had been fired for expressing those views she would have had a case.

edit: ie what Meri said.

I've seen you post it, but I googled her name and went to four links, and none of them deviate from the original BBC story.  Can you point me to a link that goes into the relationship between her views and her action at her place of employment?

The article gets it wrong - read the actual decision.  But maybe we might be talking about different cases - unsure.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I mean this gender identity stuff is just extremist de-platforming. Everyone knows these people have a biological sex and we have social conventions for referring to that, transgenderism is a mental illness on par with various other body dysphorias that are uncontroversially mental illnesses (like the dysphorias that lead people to want to amputate healthy legs for example.)

Point being--big difference between asking someone to respect ordinary things, it's quite another when you're asking an academic to encourage someone's mentally ill delusion.

[crazy canuck]

You have a perfect right to say that and hold that view, as wrong as it is.  But your employer is also allowed to tell you to respect a person's gender self identification.

[Valmy]

You have a perfect right to say that and hold that view, as wrong as it is.  But your employer is also allowed to tell you to respect a person's gender self identification.

Would an employer be allowed to tell somebody to not respect a person's gender self identification?