Local police have identified this as a hate-motivated incident related to gender expression and gender identity. This horrifying anti-trans, anti-queer violence impacts not only those who were present in that classroom but also on the broader university and LGBT+ communities and on academic freedom in general. Such attacks deliberately engender fear in those of us researching, teaching, and studying subjects that have become part of the right wing ‘culture wars’, and particularly impact upon those who are queer, trans, racialised, or otherwise visibly marginalised scholars.
We have recent experience in the UK as well of violence from those radicalised by ‘untruthful and deliberately inflammatory rhetoric’. Days after the Home Secretary publicly disparaged ‘activist lawyers’ for frustrating the government’s plans to remove migrants, a man with a knife who was seeking to kill an immigration solicitor launched a ‘violent, racist attack’ on a high-profile London firm specialising in immigration law. Similarly, an ‘ongoing smear campaign’ falsely linking a human rights academic at Queen’s University, Belfast, with paramilitary groups and equating his ideas with Nazism have resulted in concerns for his safety.
Speech has consequences. Its consequences for those belonging to, representing, researching, or teaching about marginalised communities are sometimes severe and violent. Though the Waterloo stabbings were a shocking act of violence, it is sadly predictable that false allegations that so-called ‘gender ideology’ leads to child abuse, child mutilation and grooming would result in violence against those participating in a gender studies class. Though we may hope that academic discussions are immune to such unfounded and harmful discourse and be based instead on logic, rationality and evidence, speakers at a FRAN event last year were subjected to a barrage of hate speech from online attendees making similar allegations. It is sadly not unusual for those studying LGBT+ rights to be targeted for such abuse, especially those who are trans themselves. This is a significant threat to our safety and academic freedom. Nevertheless, our government and its supporters choose instead to characterise the no-platforming of those who would bring hate speech to our campuses as the greater threat, passing legislation to impose sanctions on universities and student unions for refusing to platform even those engaging in stochastic terrorism. The right to free speech is important but it is not absolute and should not be treated as such. It is outweighed by the right to life and the need to protect the physical safety of marginalised groups. Having academic freedom does not require carte blanche to stigmatise and stoke violent backlash against those studying gender and sexuality.
As feminist scholars we stand in solidarity with our colleagues in Waterloo.
Photograph by Ana Cruz on Unsplash
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