Academia, Free Speech

TERF War: Artist Canceled at Northeastern University over Gender Identity Views

“Today I was supposed to speak to an animation class via video. College I’d never heard of, teacher I’d never heard of, small thing, figured they knew who I was. Made plans, blocked space in my calendar. Barely an hour before I’m supposed to log onto their zoom link, I get this . . . I will never accept another speaking invitation unless they promise not to do this. Every time I think, ‘good, they don’t care, it’s blown over,’ and EVERY TIME this happens.”

Paley has been a critic of transgender ideology since 2017 and posted this explanation:

“A few years ago, when I shared this article about Caitlyn Jenner and another one  about Rachel Dolezal, many angry liberal friends called me “transphobic,” and told me to “educate myself.” They apparently didn’t know I had spent many years deeply involved in various queer scenes in San Francisco, and had trans friends, and was gender dysphoric myself (it resolved in my mid-20’s, which is not unusual.) Since I couldn’t “educate myself” much more on trans people and queer theory, I considered what I really hadn’t educated myself about: radical feminism. Like everyone else, I had been denouncing “TERF“s without reading anything they’d written. So I started reading, and quickly realized I was a gender-critical radical feminist. (If you’re wondering why, I suggest you “educate yourself” about radical feminism. This video is a good place to start.)”

Again, from a free speech perspective, the issue is not the merits but the defense of the diversity of viewpoints needed in higher education. Many of us would have the same objection to a pro-transgender artist being cancelled, though that is far less likely in today’s academic environment.

 

 

45 thoughts on “TERF War: Artist Canceled at Northeastern University over Gender Identity Views”

  1. Thankfully, I am at the stage of my career where I am no longer involved in hiring new personnel If I were, I would be hesitant to hire graduates from some of these institutions. I have hired many people over the years and all I cared about was their work ethic, willingness add to be taught, and their personality. Get it done. No whining. No drama. It is not about them. It is about the work at hand that needs to be done. Hard work and those who work hard.

    I heard Walmart is considering finding potential employees with the “right stuff” and simply training them in their own programs instead of looking to college grads.

    What this country needs is a good crisis, where people have no spare time, where jobs are scarce and there is little to no government handouts. Where those with the privilege to attend university know it and work hard to make the best of it, where people with jobs are thankful. Where there is little to no spare time to go off the rails into the abyss of the bizarre.

    Students and faculty have too much time on their hands. They have gone over the cliff. Now they have been programmed to be mindless Marxists and live lives of mindlessness, with no regard to the real world.

  2. Nina Paley is friends with Corinna Cohn who wrote the following op-ed in WaPo regretting undergoing transgender surgery at age 19.

    What I wish I’d known when I was 19 and had sex reassignment surgery
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/11/i-was-too-young-to-decide-about-transgender-surgery-at-nineteen/

    I once believed that I would be more successful finding love as a woman than as a man, but in truth, few straight men are interested in having a physical relationship with a person who was born the same sex as them. In high school, when I experienced crushes on my male classmates, I believed that the only way those feelings could be requited was if I altered my body.

    It turned out that several of those crushes were also gay. I

  4. Who cares? Owen Shroyer is in jail for exercising his 1st amendment rights, nobody knows where in the jail or what’s happening to him. Let these leftists eat their own. Professor Turley, maybe you could feign interest in something that actually matters once in a while. Just a thought.

  5. “Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.”
    – Shirley Chisholm

    The Democrats/Left hate women, especially the ones they can’t control. I left them when I finally accepted that fact.

  6. So as 100 staff members at Harvard complain about Hamas supporters not having a right to speak across town another school bans a woman for having a benign opinion about trans folks. Life in Doublestandardstan.

    1. hullbobby! LOL…That needs to be on a bumper sticker…….
      something like: Liberals in Power=Life in Doublestandardstan

  7. Higher ed my ***. These students don’t even possess the decency or maturity of five year-olds – little kids tend to not be so judgmental before they are spoiled, and their temper tantrums are fleeting, not the foundation for social contagion. It’s gone far beyond absurd, and that faculty and administration are happy to enable it are totally unacceptable. That parents don’t seem to care is equally unacceptable. This is not a salvageable situation as things stand, these places need to be wholly defunded, but then again, due to the fact that activist billionaires are already seeding them, that might not matter.

    Our modern left and its adherents are a societal cancer, enough is enough. We are absolutely dealing with an elitist regime, and we are close to the point where attempts at reasoning will no longer suffice. There is very little remaining to distinguish the mentality of such people from Nazi Germany or plain old mental illness – we have created a bloody mess, it will *already* take generations to fix. To be fair, the people on the right saying somehow their kids who are equally low, and though perhaps inversely, ignorant (lousy parenting is lousy parenting, and it is generationally, socioeconomically, and ideologically rampant in 2023), will somehow be our saviors are kidding themselves, no pun intended. We have officially transcended politics in these matters into the realm of simple sanity vs. its opposite. 😐

    Very grateful for the Professor and his team, and all of the thoughtful people in this community. We are pretty much the last vestiges, and even these comments and the freedom to share them are monumentally important in this day and age.

  8. American higher education has a lot of damage to repair. Fifty years ago Northeastern was Boston’s “safety school” for kids who couldn’t get admitted to MIT, Harvard, Boston College or Boston U., all “Top 50” schools. Expansion into other states and countries like a fast food franchise resulted in their rise in rankings for no palpable reason. One wonders where the money for all this came from. If they can’t raise the bridge, they lower the river, IMHO. I foresee a bubble bursting not unlike crypto currencies.

  10. Trans/homosexual, bisexual, or simulated gender (i.e. sex-correlated attributes)? Trans/social (e.g. men in feminine chic)?

  12. What I find fascinating about the trans vs terf war is the obviousness that it is the trans person’s rage when their cognitive dissonance becomes unbearable. A normal trans individual sees both the benefits and the dangers of the trans movement and does not freak out and rage and cancel when they increase awareness of some of the dangers.

  14. “Many of us would have the same objection to a pro-transgender artist being cancelled, though that is far less likely in today’s academic environment.”

    Far less likely? Doing so would be a firing offense at nearly all U.S. universities.

  15. As much as I personally oppose Nina Paley’s views, I do agree that we must stop excluding people from academia, or the public square, because we disagree with them. It happens to me when I seek to speak or talk about our transgender and gender-diverse veterans. No one wants to listen to me and our stories, unless they are in the same echo-chamber as us already. We learn or gain nothing by shutting down those conversations either on campus, in government, or in public.

    Cassandra Williamson
    Executive Director
    Transgender & Diverse Veterans of America (TDVA, http://www.tdva.online)
    Transgender & Diverse Veterans of America Action Group (TDVA Action Group, (www.tdva-ag.com)

    1. “No one wants to listen to me and our stories…”

      Except it’s pretty much all we ever hear about. Funny that.

    2. “We learn or gain nothing by shutting down those conversations either on campus, in government, or in public.”

      Agreed.

  16. The astounding thing is, these privileged little know-it-alls actually feel they have earned the right to shout down and exclude anyone with whom they disagree. It’s no longer higher education folks, it’s lower education. Welcome to Amerika……

  17. “TERF” When are people going to overthrow this tyranny of words used by the prog/left to intimidate, castigate and shame people for the sole purpose of control. If we even give an inch by utilizing their symbols, words, acronyms and twisted usage of common language we are giving them power over us. I’m not even going to read the article because, as a degreed Art Historian this sort of picayune use of language as a weapon has nothing to do with art and totally involved in cultural manipulation. What a waste of university funds to even consider these topics when the average freshmen need remedial english and math just to function at a freshman level. What a farce.

    1. Soooo SPOT ON! Amazing to me how almost universally the left’s lexicon of the moment is adopted. The conversation is lost before any exchange of ideas even takes place. Accepting the designation Assault Rifle is an example! How about calling it a semi-automatic rifle and debating the capabilities and propriety of the firearm from there? Another example (and I say this as a retire police officer) is the use of the term “Choke Hold” when NO police departments have ever authorized such a technique. A choke constricts the windpipe, while a Carotid Restraint temporarily restricts blood flow, long enough to take a suspect into custody without using more traumatic means. Homophobia is another example. Who is really phobic (irrationally afraid) of people who are homosexual? Nobody I know! Great Points Whimsicalmama!!

  18. If the current support for Hamas and Osama Bin Laden at colleges and Tik-Toc aren’t enough to stop this hate America First crowd, what ever will?

    1. JG, there is so much misunderstanding about what Hamas’ mission is. This video might just clear things up. Enjoy!

        1. S. Meyer….On Wednesday, I teared-up several times just observing the peaceful and determined Jewish demonstrators, and listening to the speeches……..The experience was overwhelming.

          1. Cindy, I know what you mean. I’ve been to a fair number of demonstrations, but these are special as we see how the left has turned into a bunch of killers whose kissing cousins throw LGBT off the roof and beat their wives. They don’t care about who the terrorists kill, whether it be unarmed Jewish women and children or Arab women and children used as shields.

            1. S.Meyer…….somehow, someday, if it’s possible, honestlawyer and I would very much like to hear about your wife’s incredible journey.

              1. That would be nice. We visited her country and found her oldest friend. In the yard was the bicycle my wife left when she escaped.

                Her friend’s mother had a fantastic story about her escapes during the war and her friend had a unique story about her husband’s falling in love with her. I am lucky. I had a boring life. 🙂

                1. S. Meyer…….gosh! Her bicycle, still there, Fascinating history.
                  Oh, I doubt your life has been dull!

    1. CONGRESS HAS NO POWER TO TAX FOR OR REGULATE EDUCATION

      The entire communistic American welfare state is unconstitutional including, but not limited to, admissions affirmative action, grade-inflation affirmative action, employment affirmative action, quotas, monetary welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, rent control, social services, forced busing, public housing, utility subsidies, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, TARP, HHS, HUD, EPA, Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.

      Article 1, Section 8, provides Congress the power to tax ONLY for debt, defense, and “…general (i.e. all, the whole) Welfare…,” omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for individual Welfare, specific Welfare, particular Welfare, favor or charity. The same article enumerates and provides Congress the power to regulate ONLY the value of money, the “flow” of commerce to preclude bias, and land and naval Forces. Additionally, the 5th Amendment right to private property was initially qualified by the Framers and is, therefore, absolute, allowing no further qualification, and allowing ONLY the owner the power to “claim and exercise” dominion over private property.

      Government exists, under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to provide maximal freedom to individuals while government is severely limited and restricted to merely facilitating that maximal freedom of individuals through the provision of security and infrastructure only.

      1. Good ol’ George. We love you George but your obsession is doing you no good and it takes up necessary electrons on the Professor’s blogosphere. Many of us agree with you. But we recognize that you are pissing upstream. Yes, it is theoretically possible that we can go back to the Constitutional government we had in 1832, but it is so much more productive, and so much more fun, to focus on today’s battles and on the future.

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