I remember how it was -- JR
Edinburgh University’s new rector must save it from gender ideology
Simon Fanshawe has been installed as the rector of Edinburgh University. The arrival of the comedian and Stonewall dissident to the post will hopefully bring to an end a dismal episode in the life of one of Britain’s greatest academic institutions. But don’t bank on it. The campaign by transgender activists and others to uninstall Mr Fanshawe is already underway – and they know what they are doing.
For the past decade a collection of campus zealots has been allowed to run rampant in this supposed seat of higher learning. They have threatened the health and livelihoods of lecturers and banned freedom of speech – often with the tacit acquiescence of the university authorities.
One of Mr Fanshawe’s predecessors as rector, the Labour Party activist and feminist Ann Henderson, became afraid to appear on campus following her intimidation by trans activists, annoyed that she wouldn’t utter the dogma that ‘transwomen are women’. With the endorsement of the University and College Union (UCU) these activists have been allowed to prevent the showing of films like ‘Adult Human Female’, which was regarded as transphobic because it questions gender ideology. James Kirkup shed light on this in The Spectator as the editor of Edinburgh’s student newspaper wrote about why she stood by her decision not to cover the film’s screening.
This academic institution has been invaded by the curious quasi-religious belief that people can change sex by an act of the imagination.
Liberal minded academics like the social scientist Dr Neil Thin have faced attempts to hound them out of their jobs. In Thin’s case, it was for simply making wry observations about student groups claiming to be anti-racist yet holding events that excluded white people. Dr Thin also criticised the lamentable decision by the University Court to cancel the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume on the basis of an allegedly racist footnote to an 18th-century essay.
At the height of the recent campus culture war, university authorities shamefully agreed to rename the Hume Tower after they received a petition from students claiming that it offended the international student body. They couldn’t bear the pain of attending lectures in a building dedicated to such a racist, even though Hume was a lifelong opponent of racism. They were reportedly going to rename it the Julius Nyerere tower, until someone pointed out that the Tanzanian dictator and Edinburgh alumnus was a rampant homophobe. It is now called after its address, 40 George Square – which was built in 1766 and bears the name of the monarch, George III, who vastly extended the British Empire. It would take a stone not to laugh.
Mr Fanshawe will find no shortage of comic material in Edinburgh University campus but the campaign against him is no joke. The black-balling bigots are well versed in the arts of covert intimidation and until now have gone largely unchallenged by a supine university administration that seems incapable of defending its own staff let alone freedom of speech.
So who are these people? Edinburgh University Labour Students have leapt to condemn Fanshawe’s election because of his alleged views on transgenderism. An open letter has been set up by an anonymous user on Organise.com that accuses the new rector of being a transphobe and a bigot.
Fanshawe is neither. Nor has he threatened ‘the legitimacy of trans people’ as has been alleged by Jonathan MacBride of the University’s staff pride network. Fanshawe was one of the founders of the LGBT campaign group Stonewall and has been a lifelong campaigner for the rights of sexual minorities. His crime however has been to be openly critical of Stonewall’s insistence on promoting the idea that ‘transwomen are women’ and demonising anyone who disagrees. He has also spoken in favour of ‘women’s sex-based rights and protections’, rather in the manner of the author JK Rowling who has been one of the biggest donors to the University in the past. Certainly, the group Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom can hardly believe what has happened: ‘We’re over the moon’
The fact that the lecturers’ trade union, the UCU, has supported the curbs on free speech and thought in Edinburgh University, for example with the Adult Human Female showing, tells you all you need to know. This academic institution has been invaded by the curious quasi-religious belief that people can change sex by an act of the imagination.
I am myself a former elected rector of Edinburgh University and I have been bewildered and appalled at what has happened to this institution since I stood down in 2012. I could never have imagined that this flight into obscurantism could have happened here of all places. But as Sir Tom Devine, emeritus professor of history at Edinburgh, said: ‘A sinister culture had been allowed to develop in Scotland’s greatest university.’ Hopefully Fanshawe, an open-minded rector and chair of the university court, will be able to guide this addled institution back to something resembling sanity.
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Drag as Subversive Education
One element of the LGBTQ+ assault on childhood is Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH), in which children are entertained by fat men dressed as prostitutes. These events have become common across the country in libraries, bookstores, schools, and (God help us) church.
Since no child has ever asked to be read to by a freakish man bursting out of a spandex dress, woke parents presumably expose their children to DQSH to advertise their own progressive bona fides. Drag is, indisputably, “adult” entertainment for a hardcore sexual subculture, but the woke narrative maintains that the raunch is toned down for the kiddies. “It’s innocent fun!” “Kids love dressing up in bright colors and glitter!” “There’s no explicit stuff, so what’s the harm?” “It’s an entertaining family atmosphere!”
But Big Drag (yes, DQSH has turned into an industry) is a bit more honest about what’s going on than are the welcoming venues and complicit parents. The home website crows that DQSH “captures . . . the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids . . . unabashedly queer role models. . . .” Presenting gender fluidity as an established fact and offering “queer role models” to children suggests that the goal isn’t just to entertain but to accomplish something that starts with “gr” and ends with “ooming.”
And Big Drag’s aspirations go far beyond the occasional event at the local library. Academic literature from the realm of K-12 education now argues that drag should be considered a valid part of a child’s schooling. That literature, buried in journals the average person will never read, removes any doubt about what DSQH’s “family-friendly fun” is actually up to.
A good example of the academic infusion of drag into schooling is a 2021 paper published in the journal Curriculum Inquiry and entitled “Drag Pedagogy: The Playful Practice of Queer Imagination in Early Childhood.” The paper is co-authored by a Canadian education professor and a New York drag queen who goes by “Lil Miss Hot Mess.” (Yes, that’s the name under which he published this supposedly professional paper.)
This paper promotes “queer and trans cultural forms as valuable components of early childhood education” and describes drag as one of these components. Drag, it argues, is a way to teach children to be transgressive, to break rules and deconstruct norms. DQSH is thus part of what the paper advocates as “drag pedagogy” that “offers one model for learning not simply about queer lives, but how to live queerly” (emphasis in the original). “This approach,” the paper says, “can support students in finding the unique or queer aspects of themselves – rather than attempting to understand what it’s like to be LGBG.”
So drag helps children learn not just to empathize with people who identify as LGBT, but to live that way themselves. Further, this shattering of norms must extend beyond sex roles and behaviors to disruption of the racist, white-supremacist capitalist system itself (what the paper calls “coloniality and racial capitalism” that imposes “gender normativity” on children who just want to be free – to “live queerly”).
The paper repeatedly emphasizes drag as a vehicle for deconstructing all aspects of normal society. While learning through play is a staple of early-childhood pedagogy, this paper argues that drag is an even better form of educational play because “it ultimately has no rules – its defining quality is often to break as many rules as possible! . . . [D]rag is firmly rooted in play as a site of queer pleasure, resistance, and self-fashioning.” The drag queen’s presence announces that the focus will be on “bending and breaking the rules” with “a premium on standing out, on artfully desecrating the sacred.” He will “foster collective unruliness” so that children will learn “strategic defiance” of all limits and norms.
The paper also promotes what it calls “camp curriculum” – “embrac[ing] failure and shame.” For example, the picture book The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish “encourages kids to move their hips in ways often coded as effeminate.” (This book was written by Lil Miss Hot Mess, of whose literary talents there apparently is no end.) And drag has a strong element of critical theory, encouraging the analysis and deconstruction of culture through a queer lens.
An arresting admission in the DQSH paper occurs as a brief mention in the Conclusion section. Normal people are constantly assured that children are safe at LGBTQ events such as DQSH and pride parades because those events are designed to be “family-friendly” (see here, here, and here, for example). Is DQSH in fact family-friendly?
"It may be that DQSH is 'family friendly,' in the sense that t is accessible and inviting to families with children, but it is less a sanitizing force than it is a preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship. Here, DQSH is 'family friendly' in the sense of 'family' as an old-school queer code to identify and connect with other queers on the street," the paper offered.
In other words, DQSH isn’t intended to offer children wholesome entertainment free of sexual imagery or innuendo; rather, it aims to welcome kids into the greater queer “family,” where they can shake off all conventions, norms, and values - including those of their parents. This “old-school queer code” is being used to snooker naïve parents into handing over their children to a very different, and very dark, world.
From the queens’ point of view, perhaps the greatest advantage of DQSH is the simplest: It gives them physical access to innocent children. The paper agrees that “many queens reflect that DQSH allows them to build relationships with young people that otherwise might not be possible.” What is meant by “building relationships” is left unsaid.
If woke parents understood what DQSH advocates are actually trying to accomplish, they might let their kids spend their free time playing in the back yard. But given the cultural lure of appearing more progressive than thou, maybe not. In any event, DQSH has a mission, and that mission extends far beyond bright colors and glitter.
https://townhall.com/columnists/janerobbins/2024/02/20/drag-as-subversive-education-n2635455
*************************************************A Teacher Was Filmed Cross-Dressing at School. Here's What Happened Next
A Texas teacher who was filmed cross-dressing at school was placed on administrative leave after a video of his extravagant Valentine’s Day outfit was circulated by Libs of TikTok.
The teacher, Rachmad Tjachyadi, teaches chemistry at Hebron High School in Lewisville.
According to the New York Post, Tjachyadi wore an “all-out pink dress and cowboy hat” on Valentine’s Day at the school. A video of the outfit was posted on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Libs of TikTok claimed that the teacher has a fetish for wearing women’s clothing.
In an email to parents, Hebron Principal Amy Boughton said, “the staff member has been placed on administrative leave while the district reviews the situation.”
“It would be natural for our families to have questions about this situation, but because this is a personnel matter currently under review, there is no additional information the district can share,” Boughton added.
Students at the school have created an online Change.org petition demanding that he be allowed back to school. So far, it has over 12,000 signatures.
"Recently, Mr.Tjachyadi was put on blast on twitter for wearing a pink dress for a spirit day. He is being called a pedophile, among other names, however, this is NOT the case and he is beloved by many students at Hebron. He is a great teacher, he explains chemistry very well and has created a very fun and safe environment for his students. He does not deserve to be defamed and lose his job,” the description stated.
“He has been an inspiration to many students, and has created a space where everyone can feel valued and safe. He is in no way a pedophile or publicizing a "fetish,” it added.
Reportedly, Tjachyadi has been teaching in Texas schools since 2002.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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