As a graduate of Leeds University (1979 Biochemistry) I am shocked at their appalling decline into dangerous left-wing craziness. Another graduate of that University, about 5 years after me, was Keir Starmer. I hope they will eventually turn things around.
I'd hope that alumni pulling their weight and writing how you have might have some impact. I am dazed by this and have worked with Leeds in recent years. I can't see how any evidence-based work they do in any department can continue in this soup of nonsense.
Wishing Connie the best of luck with her podcast, for speaking out and with her studies. It takes a free thinker to avoid being pulled into the flock with the rest of the conformist sheep. This capture of the universities worries me as these young adults then take these views into the work place. Gender ideology seems to just be waiting for the older people to retire and die off and meanwhile they are brainwashing children in schools and forcing conformity through silencing critical thought and debate in universities. It seems these institutions are no longer a place for healthy debate and challenge, developing critical thinking and growth, but factories that squash these things.
It's already there. My colleagues are quietly concerned in academia, in government and industry. It was creaking for a while, but it's now fed through a generation or two and is so noticeable in workplace culture. The most bizarre things need explaining, from the basics of 'how to be an adult in this environment'. I'm not that old, but these are workplaces not nurseries. It's like toddlers who aren't potty-trained, socialised or know what a knife and fork are.
It's total - from lecturers (and 'newer' lecturers) to students, then recent graduates who seem incapable of acting like adults in workplaces. Undergraduate degrees seem pointless as a measure of quality. It's up to middle-management and senior levels now. Gender ideology seems a good indicator to indicate that if they fall for and promote it, that they really fall for anything and have little resilience, capacity, sense or critical ability. It's all empty propaganda. It used to be you had subject-specific degree knowledge which was an entry requirement for many roles, but you might also have learnt how to think and apply yourself to new tasks, which you can use in many careers and roles. You can quickly learn how to do a role with those general skills and level of education. Then get better at it. Being given a chance and a supportive team and training helps.
I've been trying so hard to not be grouchy and impatient. I was at an event and had a conversation with someone employed in a more junior role, but who was telling me her pronouns (did I ask, why is this relevant, why would I be interested?), about her neurodiversity (aren't we all love) and her earrings. She couldn't be steered back to topic and picked up on no cues. I was gobsmacked. Zero interest in what my professional subject is or why we'd all gathered to discuss it. No curiosity. Total self-obsession. It was all just a right laugh. I was talking to a child in the body of someone in their early to mid 20s who was totally unaware and hadn't had her empty confidence or mind challenged at any point - during actual degree studies. How many years of supposed study is that? As attendees we kept having to suggest to younger staff how to hand out materials or how to tidy up materials and pull their weight without being told. I wanted to say look sharp. Try not to look bored, that's also fairly rude. No one at school suggested that? People aren't kindly telling these people that maybe this role isn't for you; they seem unsackable. Yet clearly sparky and intelligent students like Connie who should be flourishing at University are being stymied at every juncture in what were respected institutions of learning.
I was stunned at how more junior staff now have no lack of confidence, are often hugely arrogant, yet they know virtually nothing, which is where we all start, but they are staying at that stunted level, unable to learn and at a more delayed stage. It's a total inflexibility. But are thinking they're the best. That mental faculty has been weakened by what education has become. They are being coddled and allowed to be like this. They refuse to watch those around them, to pick up on norms (not allowed to have those there's no such thing as a norm now, that's an -ist something), to learn the culture, how to apply yourself, how to complete tasks. How to be an adult. Where is the humility? Are they a useful person to have around. Any opinion must now be respected and they get to give input and we have to sit through this pantomime and be 'nice'. So much time now is needed to train these people, so more time explaining, more time mentoring. Our productivity has nosedived as we all examine our navels and parent these people. It's totally disrespectful to our systems that we might have worked out, over centuries, that the way we do things might be for quite good reasons and stands up to scrutiny. But having to endlessly explain what works, and why, with evidence to apparent toddlers who are at the 'why?' stage but won't accept any answer.
Are these the same people who as children had lessons in "Emotional Intelligence" or has that been binned now? It was after my time and I am out of touch.
It does not bode well for the future. If they stay in those jobs they will move up the ladder and recruit more of the same dullards.
As a more senior lecturer myself, I feel your pain. I'm in a science faculty so I don't think we have it so bad in terms of younger faculty - they're mostly pretty on the ball, but scientific research is brutally competitive so it tends to weed out the truly snowflaky. (Full disclosure: I'm a teaching only lecturer, although I did several years of postdoctoral research). But I'm hearing complaints about this sort of behaviour in PhD students and new postdocs. And I really feel you when it comes to the student body and not being able to adult. Plus every time someone posts about "bonkers academia!" (quite rightly) with examples about stupid queer this and absurd fields of "study", I want to yell and say "Hey! Science is still a serious subject!" Even if all this stupid gender stuff is constantly being shoved down our throats, we don't teach it, and only about 3 people have put pronouns in their bio, so that's something.
From "no uterus, no opinion" to "no opinions on the uterus" in a decade. Do the English not know how to banish superstition from their monasteries anymore??
Yes — and it perfectly summarises a point I make all the time.
When Sarah Everard was killed, feminists were enraged by men saying ‘not all men’ and would reply saying, ‘how are we meant to know which men are threats?’. But this logic doesn’t apply to men who claim to be women, which is obviously ridiculous.
Do you mind if I use your formulation of the two potentially as my dissertation title?😆
As detransitioner, Richie Herron has said, it's up to us nonprofessionals to do the work the "professionals" have abdicated for political gain. Here's my latest on "Paul," a slightly confused, slightly autistic teen boy who contacted me, a trans widow, because he saw my video on child development and the fact that Piaget's stages of development don't blend at all with "born in wrong body since earliest memory." Paul (pseudonym) is doing well after a month of considering the trauma he went through as a young boy when his mother miscarried and the baby sister he'd been told about was suddenly gone, along with his reticence with his male teen cohort at an all boys school. He's exercising, eating better, reading actual books, not online so much, talking conversationally with his parents and this after just a month of a weekly email letter back and forth. Let them come and accuse me of "conversion therapy!" Movement for mind/body connection is important at all ages.
Wow, there's word inflation for you. "Trauma" is not the disappointment of someone else having a miscarriage, even if it is your mum. That's sad but very survivable. Trauma is blood and guts, unbearable pain, massive betrayal, existential loss, death and terror. Otherwise what word do we have for those experiences? Would you really put the sadness of losing a sister you never met because she wasn't born alongside something like losing your entire family in a bomb blast that destroyed your home and neighbourhood, killed your entire family and lost you your leg? That's trauma.
Glad to hear "Paul" is doing well though, and I totally agree about movement.
It's as if imagined and self-identified 'trauma' is now far more real, factual and painful than the actual thing. Delusions and pretences mix with reality in their heads and if they can imagine it, and 'identify' into it, then it's real for them, so there. So few can tell the difference, such is the weakening of so many words and meanings. But, but it's 'my truth' how dare you deny me my inner truth and inner 'identity'. How do we compare and contrast anything when everything these people experience is pushed up to 11. It's such a mass delusion and thin grasp on truth and reality. It's all just opinion.
I didn't attack you. I am disappointed with statements that appear to agree with an apparently naive and immature claim that the boy I'm writing about didn't have trauma in his childhood, when he's told me that at a middle childhood stage, he knows his mother had a miscarriage of a female fetus. He'd apparently been told about a new baby sister. I am taking the risk of doing the work the professionals abdicate and told that trauma is living through war, and giving this community information that could be useful in helping others is "word inflation." Considering I've had trolls tell me six different ways I should kill myself and I've been publicly defamed by one of my own sons, I consider saying that I was disappointed with your words to be a rather gentle reaction and a reminder that various experiences are categorized appropriately as trauma. I am soon to delicately ask Paul if he witnessed the blood of his mother's mid-term miscarriage as a 7 year old. Have a cup of tea.
I was referring to the ‘word inflation’ comment tsbbl. I regard a man bullying his wife and children into validating him as a woman, as extremely traumatic as I’m sure you’d agree. I know you’re a staunch defender of women.
For the absolute avoidance of doubt here it is the gender self-identifying lot I was referring to who have a slim grip on reality and often claim the persecutions and experiences of their actual victims. That is widely and very well known. Please don't let anyone claim otherwise as it's a very clear misreading of what I have written, and twisting it to mean something totally different. This is exhausting and a very unpleasant feature of online interactions.
Alright. I will call it childhood difficulties to make you happy. Am I allowed to have been traumatized by the betrayals of my ex husband, who now not only claims he's a woman, but claims he's me? A top psychiatrist in NYC diagnosed me with PTSD. Am I not allowed to have it, because I didn't almost die at Hamburger Hill in Vietnam? The point I am making is that it is an emerging pattern that men who have experienced grief in childhood of loss of a female relative trend into a period of "feeling female." "The "glad to hear Paul is doing well" sounds downright sarcastic. I also have the trauma that my ex husband alienated my sons from me and they do not speak to me. I do not even know where my younger son lives. Am I allowed to say this has caused me trauma? Or do I need to have had my house bombed? WTH
It is you that used the quote marks round his name, which that poster merely repeated. I am sure it was meant with good intention. Please be cautious and do not attack us here or other women, many of us also have PTSD, many through male violence and many since childhood. It is totally misdirected anger and not the first time. We know what the patterns are.
hi Connie, what a horrific but brilliantly written article. I will certainly be listening to your podcast from now on.
Also in regards to your male teacher…. i remember at uni feeling unable to question the statements of one lecturer in particular who used to say things which were frankly f-ing stupid. But i was an under grad and didn’t want him to dislike me or risk getting bad grades. A lot of us just nodded like he was profound- he was profound- a profound wanker. I’m just saying that a good lecturer doesn’t behave like this and your guy is basically an academic bully. You are clearly way brighter than i was at that age so bloody well done for taking a stand and all the best. Leeds uni, all that money the students have to cough up. Disgusting.
I'm very glad you gave popped up into the GC/Sex Realist world, Connie. I'm not a million miles away from Leeds & hope we might coincide some time. Good luck with your studies - I'd be livid if I had to put up with that shit.
hey Connie, it must be shit having your uni experience effected by all this shite. I hope you don’t mind. I’m sending you my song about pronouns as gesture of solidarity. You have had to fight this head on and massive respect to you and anyone brave enough to do so. My way has been to express my disbelief and sadness as to what is happening in lots of emails to various people but also in song- probably the least poignant line of resistance but hey!
Isn’t it time for these supposed places of learning to be ignored? I am sure there are better places to be and knowledge to imbibe without University. These academics who vomit out this sickness are not worth bothering with. Qudos to the author fur persisting.
"A Delphi study which seeks to determine expert consensus on the core components and processes of a developmental psychosocial gender identity assessment with a gender diverse young person and their family."
This is totally steeped in the "gender" word salad that signals the new bat-shit theology. I have tried to follow the ravings of these lunatics and only find myself being increasingly lured into this psychosis in which I can feel my brain starting to disintegrate. I am being deprived of words that make sense. And were I to respond to this in the terms they demand then I would be reduced to barking the content-free noises they themselves make. Life is too short.
One look at your photograph explains why all the trans identified people hate you. Just too femininely beautiful, either for the aspirants or the rejectors.
My head feels like it is going to explode from the insanity!
As a graduate of Leeds University (1979 Biochemistry) I am shocked at their appalling decline into dangerous left-wing craziness. Another graduate of that University, about 5 years after me, was Keir Starmer. I hope they will eventually turn things around.
I'd hope that alumni pulling their weight and writing how you have might have some impact. I am dazed by this and have worked with Leeds in recent years. I can't see how any evidence-based work they do in any department can continue in this soup of nonsense.
In your dreams. He has been captured, though Wes Streeting shows promise.
Wishing Connie the best of luck with her podcast, for speaking out and with her studies. It takes a free thinker to avoid being pulled into the flock with the rest of the conformist sheep. This capture of the universities worries me as these young adults then take these views into the work place. Gender ideology seems to just be waiting for the older people to retire and die off and meanwhile they are brainwashing children in schools and forcing conformity through silencing critical thought and debate in universities. It seems these institutions are no longer a place for healthy debate and challenge, developing critical thinking and growth, but factories that squash these things.
It's already there. My colleagues are quietly concerned in academia, in government and industry. It was creaking for a while, but it's now fed through a generation or two and is so noticeable in workplace culture. The most bizarre things need explaining, from the basics of 'how to be an adult in this environment'. I'm not that old, but these are workplaces not nurseries. It's like toddlers who aren't potty-trained, socialised or know what a knife and fork are.
It's total - from lecturers (and 'newer' lecturers) to students, then recent graduates who seem incapable of acting like adults in workplaces. Undergraduate degrees seem pointless as a measure of quality. It's up to middle-management and senior levels now. Gender ideology seems a good indicator to indicate that if they fall for and promote it, that they really fall for anything and have little resilience, capacity, sense or critical ability. It's all empty propaganda. It used to be you had subject-specific degree knowledge which was an entry requirement for many roles, but you might also have learnt how to think and apply yourself to new tasks, which you can use in many careers and roles. You can quickly learn how to do a role with those general skills and level of education. Then get better at it. Being given a chance and a supportive team and training helps.
I've been trying so hard to not be grouchy and impatient. I was at an event and had a conversation with someone employed in a more junior role, but who was telling me her pronouns (did I ask, why is this relevant, why would I be interested?), about her neurodiversity (aren't we all love) and her earrings. She couldn't be steered back to topic and picked up on no cues. I was gobsmacked. Zero interest in what my professional subject is or why we'd all gathered to discuss it. No curiosity. Total self-obsession. It was all just a right laugh. I was talking to a child in the body of someone in their early to mid 20s who was totally unaware and hadn't had her empty confidence or mind challenged at any point - during actual degree studies. How many years of supposed study is that? As attendees we kept having to suggest to younger staff how to hand out materials or how to tidy up materials and pull their weight without being told. I wanted to say look sharp. Try not to look bored, that's also fairly rude. No one at school suggested that? People aren't kindly telling these people that maybe this role isn't for you; they seem unsackable. Yet clearly sparky and intelligent students like Connie who should be flourishing at University are being stymied at every juncture in what were respected institutions of learning.
I was stunned at how more junior staff now have no lack of confidence, are often hugely arrogant, yet they know virtually nothing, which is where we all start, but they are staying at that stunted level, unable to learn and at a more delayed stage. It's a total inflexibility. But are thinking they're the best. That mental faculty has been weakened by what education has become. They are being coddled and allowed to be like this. They refuse to watch those around them, to pick up on norms (not allowed to have those there's no such thing as a norm now, that's an -ist something), to learn the culture, how to apply yourself, how to complete tasks. How to be an adult. Where is the humility? Are they a useful person to have around. Any opinion must now be respected and they get to give input and we have to sit through this pantomime and be 'nice'. So much time now is needed to train these people, so more time explaining, more time mentoring. Our productivity has nosedived as we all examine our navels and parent these people. It's totally disrespectful to our systems that we might have worked out, over centuries, that the way we do things might be for quite good reasons and stands up to scrutiny. But having to endlessly explain what works, and why, with evidence to apparent toddlers who are at the 'why?' stage but won't accept any answer.
Are these the same people who as children had lessons in "Emotional Intelligence" or has that been binned now? It was after my time and I am out of touch.
It does not bode well for the future. If they stay in those jobs they will move up the ladder and recruit more of the same dullards.
As a more senior lecturer myself, I feel your pain. I'm in a science faculty so I don't think we have it so bad in terms of younger faculty - they're mostly pretty on the ball, but scientific research is brutally competitive so it tends to weed out the truly snowflaky. (Full disclosure: I'm a teaching only lecturer, although I did several years of postdoctoral research). But I'm hearing complaints about this sort of behaviour in PhD students and new postdocs. And I really feel you when it comes to the student body and not being able to adult. Plus every time someone posts about "bonkers academia!" (quite rightly) with examples about stupid queer this and absurd fields of "study", I want to yell and say "Hey! Science is still a serious subject!" Even if all this stupid gender stuff is constantly being shoved down our throats, we don't teach it, and only about 3 people have put pronouns in their bio, so that's something.
I’m also a Leeds alumnus (English, 1992). God I’m glad I’m not there now!
From "no uterus, no opinion" to "no opinions on the uterus" in a decade. Do the English not know how to banish superstition from their monasteries anymore??
Is this your own quote Matt or from somewhere else?
The above statement is my original formulation but "no uterus, no opinion" was the standard retort to pro-life men for ... well, decades.
Yes — and it perfectly summarises a point I make all the time.
When Sarah Everard was killed, feminists were enraged by men saying ‘not all men’ and would reply saying, ‘how are we meant to know which men are threats?’. But this logic doesn’t apply to men who claim to be women, which is obviously ridiculous.
Do you mind if I use your formulation of the two potentially as my dissertation title?😆
Go for it Connie
As detransitioner, Richie Herron has said, it's up to us nonprofessionals to do the work the "professionals" have abdicated for political gain. Here's my latest on "Paul," a slightly confused, slightly autistic teen boy who contacted me, a trans widow, because he saw my video on child development and the fact that Piaget's stages of development don't blend at all with "born in wrong body since earliest memory." Paul (pseudonym) is doing well after a month of considering the trauma he went through as a young boy when his mother miscarried and the baby sister he'd been told about was suddenly gone, along with his reticence with his male teen cohort at an all boys school. He's exercising, eating better, reading actual books, not online so much, talking conversationally with his parents and this after just a month of a weekly email letter back and forth. Let them come and accuse me of "conversion therapy!" Movement for mind/body connection is important at all ages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz0Zy-J5OYc&t=83s
Wow, there's word inflation for you. "Trauma" is not the disappointment of someone else having a miscarriage, even if it is your mum. That's sad but very survivable. Trauma is blood and guts, unbearable pain, massive betrayal, existential loss, death and terror. Otherwise what word do we have for those experiences? Would you really put the sadness of losing a sister you never met because she wasn't born alongside something like losing your entire family in a bomb blast that destroyed your home and neighbourhood, killed your entire family and lost you your leg? That's trauma.
Glad to hear "Paul" is doing well though, and I totally agree about movement.
It's as if imagined and self-identified 'trauma' is now far more real, factual and painful than the actual thing. Delusions and pretences mix with reality in their heads and if they can imagine it, and 'identify' into it, then it's real for them, so there. So few can tell the difference, such is the weakening of so many words and meanings. But, but it's 'my truth' how dare you deny me my inner truth and inner 'identity'. How do we compare and contrast anything when everything these people experience is pushed up to 11. It's such a mass delusion and thin grasp on truth and reality. It's all just opinion.
I'm disappointed in this, TSBBL. Please watch Behind the Looking Glass and let us trans widows know if we are allowed to be recovering from trauma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frffv2sB8zE
How are we meant to win this battle when women can’t even stand up for other women.
I have no idea why I am now being attacked but it's really unpleasant. I have not attacked trans widows in the slightest it's all bizarre.
I didn't attack you. I am disappointed with statements that appear to agree with an apparently naive and immature claim that the boy I'm writing about didn't have trauma in his childhood, when he's told me that at a middle childhood stage, he knows his mother had a miscarriage of a female fetus. He'd apparently been told about a new baby sister. I am taking the risk of doing the work the professionals abdicate and told that trauma is living through war, and giving this community information that could be useful in helping others is "word inflation." Considering I've had trolls tell me six different ways I should kill myself and I've been publicly defamed by one of my own sons, I consider saying that I was disappointed with your words to be a rather gentle reaction and a reminder that various experiences are categorized appropriately as trauma. I am soon to delicately ask Paul if he witnessed the blood of his mother's mid-term miscarriage as a 7 year old. Have a cup of tea.
I was referring to the ‘word inflation’ comment tsbbl. I regard a man bullying his wife and children into validating him as a woman, as extremely traumatic as I’m sure you’d agree. I know you’re a staunch defender of women.
For the absolute avoidance of doubt here it is the gender self-identifying lot I was referring to who have a slim grip on reality and often claim the persecutions and experiences of their actual victims. That is widely and very well known. Please don't let anyone claim otherwise as it's a very clear misreading of what I have written, and twisting it to mean something totally different. This is exhausting and a very unpleasant feature of online interactions.
Alright. I will call it childhood difficulties to make you happy. Am I allowed to have been traumatized by the betrayals of my ex husband, who now not only claims he's a woman, but claims he's me? A top psychiatrist in NYC diagnosed me with PTSD. Am I not allowed to have it, because I didn't almost die at Hamburger Hill in Vietnam? The point I am making is that it is an emerging pattern that men who have experienced grief in childhood of loss of a female relative trend into a period of "feeling female." "The "glad to hear Paul is doing well" sounds downright sarcastic. I also have the trauma that my ex husband alienated my sons from me and they do not speak to me. I do not even know where my younger son lives. Am I allowed to say this has caused me trauma? Or do I need to have had my house bombed? WTH
It is you that used the quote marks round his name, which that poster merely repeated. I am sure it was meant with good intention. Please be cautious and do not attack us here or other women, many of us also have PTSD, many through male violence and many since childhood. It is totally misdirected anger and not the first time. We know what the patterns are.
As I read those essay questions, one thing became radiantly obvious:
that they were devised by a man who thinks milk comes from fridges, sock come from drawers.
When did universities stop teaching Logic, and Critical Thinking Skills?
Or should be be asking "When did universities stop teaching?"
hi Connie, what a horrific but brilliantly written article. I will certainly be listening to your podcast from now on.
Also in regards to your male teacher…. i remember at uni feeling unable to question the statements of one lecturer in particular who used to say things which were frankly f-ing stupid. But i was an under grad and didn’t want him to dislike me or risk getting bad grades. A lot of us just nodded like he was profound- he was profound- a profound wanker. I’m just saying that a good lecturer doesn’t behave like this and your guy is basically an academic bully. You are clearly way brighter than i was at that age so bloody well done for taking a stand and all the best. Leeds uni, all that money the students have to cough up. Disgusting.
I'm very glad you gave popped up into the GC/Sex Realist world, Connie. I'm not a million miles away from Leeds & hope we might coincide some time. Good luck with your studies - I'd be livid if I had to put up with that shit.
hey Connie, it must be shit having your uni experience effected by all this shite. I hope you don’t mind. I’m sending you my song about pronouns as gesture of solidarity. You have had to fight this head on and massive respect to you and anyone brave enough to do so. My way has been to express my disbelief and sadness as to what is happening in lots of emails to various people but also in song- probably the least poignant line of resistance but hey!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe_VjiBVHBE
Isn’t it time for these supposed places of learning to be ignored? I am sure there are better places to be and knowledge to imbibe without University. These academics who vomit out this sickness are not worth bothering with. Qudos to the author fur persisting.
"... which concerns best practice in clinical assessment for children with gender dysphoria. Nothing wrong with that of course...."
Everything wrong with that. "Children with gender dysphoria" is bullshit.
I mean look at this:
"A Delphi study which seeks to determine expert consensus on the core components and processes of a developmental psychosocial gender identity assessment with a gender diverse young person and their family."
This is totally steeped in the "gender" word salad that signals the new bat-shit theology. I have tried to follow the ravings of these lunatics and only find myself being increasingly lured into this psychosis in which I can feel my brain starting to disintegrate. I am being deprived of words that make sense. And were I to respond to this in the terms they demand then I would be reduced to barking the content-free noises they themselves make. Life is too short.
My hat comes off to you, Connie.
You are clearly courageous, wise beyond your apparent years (younger than I am, for sure!) and a person of uncompromising integrity.
Thanks for being one of the pioneers, in a growing group, of those vocally committed to truth.
Oh Connie!
One look at your photograph explains why all the trans identified people hate you. Just too femininely beautiful, either for the aspirants or the rejectors.
With regard to chest binding, surely theres a parallel to the ‘ancient art of foot binding’, also practiced on females?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding