Helen Tissington

Biological reality AND let's all be fabulously non-conforming.

"All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility."

[TERFTimes @TERF_Times]

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[Prof Jo Phoenix @JoPhoenix1]

So at Reading we have an hours based system of allocating work to academics. We have 40 hours pa for first supervisor. This would mean that a workload which contained 15 first supervisor PhD students would equate to 600 hours ie 40% of a full time workload. This is the same amount that most FT academics are given to do research. 40/40/20 being the standard division ie 40% of one's time to do research (unless bought out by a grant to do more), 40% teaching which often includes PhD supervision and 20% administration such as course leader, diversity representative, deputy head etc etc.

I know things are different across different universities and Cambridge may have some archaic practices but Arday's maths do not work.

Also in 30 years of experience anything more than 8 PhD students at a time is, well, 'frowned upon' for reasons Alice sets out below. PhD's are not extended essays. They are THE apprenticeship into the discipline and rigour of creating knowledge (not just spinning arguments or proving one's own prejudices are right). They also form the only real credential into the profession.

I simply cannot believe that anyone can do their job correctly and professionally if they have a group of 15 PhD students *in a discipline like sociology* unless they are cutting corners. Perhaps like not understanding the difference between creating knowledge and plagiarism....

Just saying.

[Sex Matters @SexMattersOrg]

When political leaders say they will not enforce the law, they are telling women: “you do not matter.”

@DerryBanShee joins @JuliaHB1 on @TalkTV to discuss councils and public bodies refusing to follow the law on single-sex spaces.
📺 https://t.co/cthIox8yIy

[Jennifer Sey @JenniferSey]

I was just on @CBSNews The Takeout with @MajorCBS. I was there to talk about the WNBA - what else.

I was introduced as the head of @xx_xyathletics, "an advocacy organization."

Correction 1: We are an athletic clothing brand. We are not a non-profit. We are a business. A brand. And brands influence the culture. Nike takes all sorts of positions. The difference between us and Nike is we mean what we say. We stand up for women when it is hard. When there is no upside in it for us. Nike takes their supposed stances as a marketing play ("woke capitalism"). And they go the opposite direction when the wind blows that way.

He then said our mission was to "keep trans out of women's sports."

Correction 2: No. Our mission is to stand up for female athletes, not just pretend to like Nike -- a brand that makes money off of "championing" female athletes while treating them with astonishing disregard. (See: Mary Cain, Alyson Felix for examples.)

We don't care if women who identify as trans (think they are men) play in women's sports. We don't care if women who declare a non-binary identity play in women's sports. Women like Nikki Hiltz. Or Layshia Clarendon. They are women. It's all good!

We don't want men in women's sports. Not "trans identified" men. Not DSD men. MEN. No men in women's sports.

80% of Americans agree with us.

This isn't culture war stuff. This is 80% of Americans being normal and 20% living in a misogynistic fantasy land where men can declare themselves women and take our privacy and opportunities away.

Thank you for having me but just needed to correct the record on my intro.

[Mia Hughes @_CryMiaRiver]

For decades, gender clinics blindly followed WPATH's Standards of Care — that represent nothing but the opinion of fanatics.

And now those fanatics have been forced to admit so in court.

Kids have been sterilised, had healthy body parts chopped off, lost their sexual function, been robbed of the ability to breastfeed because a gang of True Believers on an ideological quest thought it was a good idea.

Nothing could ever repair the devastation these ideologues have wrought upon the world, but at least now the truth is coming out.

[Laura Ingraham @IngrahamAngle]

🚨 If You Can’t Define a Woman, Don’t Lead the WNBA

@sagesteele: “If the commissioner of the WNBA refuses to stand up for women—to define a woman—she probably should not be leading a women’s basketball league… No leadership… They deserve all of the criticism that they are receiving for simply refusing to stand up for women.”

[Robby Starbuck @robbystarbuck]

Big news: Enes Kanter has officially sent the WNBA her formal letter declaring for the @WNBA draft. Congrats to Miss Kanter, the strongest, bravest young woman I know! 🏀⛹️‍♀️@EnesFreedom

[Colin Wright @SwipeWright]

Stunning bravery. Women's sports have a long and regrettable history of policing black and brown women's bodies rooted in Western, hegemonic, colonial, heteronormative notions of femininity.

Enes is a woman with more masculine features due to naturally higher levels of testosterone. But she is still 100% woman.

[Jennifer 🟥🔴🧙‍♀️🦉🐈‍⬛ 🦖 @babybeginner]

She does it again!! Brilliant examination of the gish gallop you’re likely to run into. So well done!! She’s amazing!

[Reem Alsalem UNSR Violence Against Women and Girls @UNSRVAW]

Rape is a grave, systematic, and widespread human rights violations in international, regional and national law, that could also amount to torture.

While victims of rape can be of any sex or age, rape continues to be committed on an wide scale against women and girls, and is therefore also a specific form of sex and gender based violence against them.

There is no doubt that allegations of rape should be investigated swiftly and impartially to determine if rape has occurred; and that victims should be provided with access to effective, trauma-informed and victim centered reporting, assistance and justice mechanisms.

However, that most certainly does NOT turn rape into a spectrum nor should it ever be spoken of in those terms.

ّInsinuations that acts of rape could fall on a spectrum, risk undermining the important progress we have made around the globe in criminalizing rape, which - as my mandate has argued- should cover rape against all persons, including marital rape and all acts of penetration of a sexual nature, with the lack of consent at its center. (which should include a rigorous analysis of the context in which consent may have been given or withheld).

My predecessor dedicated a whole stand-alone report to examining the issue of rape, which I share here again for those interested:
https://t.co/v2ieKi6oY1

[spiked @spikedonline]

Enes Kanter Freedom – the 6’10” male basketball player – is eligible to play in the WNBA under its gender self-ID rules. Trans ideology makes a total mockery of women’s sports, says Jo Bartosch
https://t.co/C0sb0TW5Hj

[Kara Dansky @KDansky]

Go @RoarWomenNYC!

To think the @WNBA needs a freaking committee to work out what a woman is!

[Professor Alice Sullivan @ProfAliceS]

Jason Arday and his co-author Chantelle Lewis gave a keynote at the 2024 European Sociological Association conference.

It is embarrassing to listen to.

It's easy for serious social scientists to protest that we have no connection with this kind of thing. But isn't it time to start talking about what we can do about standards in sociology?

https://t.co/h2WoLO9khp

[ScienceGuardians @SciGuardians]

🚨 How Fraudulent Actors Are Created and Curated in Academia

“Did Jason Arday’s PhD examiners actually read his thesis? And did the electors who appointed him to a Cambridge professorship read his work?”
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins)

⚠️ The answer points to a deeper systemic failure. Fraudsters such as Jason Arday, Elisabeth M. Bik, Theo Baker, and others do not rise and remain protected by accident. They climb the ladder for far too long because reckless, compromised journalism creates a powerful conformity, which in turn produces a protective layer of complicit academics.

📌 This is precisely what the classic Asch conformity experiments (1951–1956) demonstrated.

In those studies, ordinary people abandoned clear evidence and conformed to a false majority view simply to fit in. The same psychological mechanism now operates in academia. Despite layers of evidence documenting fraud, lies, deception, hypocrisy and conflicts of interest involving figures such as Jason Arday, Elisabeth M. Bik (@MicrobiomDigest), Lonni Besançon (@lonnibesancon), Ivan Oransky (@ivanoransky), Theo Baker (@tab_delete), and Holden Thorp (@hholdenthorp), most of them continue to survive serious scrutiny — while even the partial consequences faced by Arday came only after prolonged institutional resistance.

Academics become complicit for two main reasons:

1. They want to fit in with the mainstream narrative manufactured by reckless, compromised journalists.

2. They overestimate how informed those journalists actually are, and therefore refuse to question the approved story.

The result is a self-reinforcing system in which clear evidence is ignored, whistleblowers are attacked, and fraudulent actors are protected and elevated. Until this conformity is broken, the cycle will continue.

@SciGuardians
🔱 Empowering the Academic Community 🔱

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

NHS trust tells trans staff they can use women’s toilets. It cost NHS Fife a fortune in tax payers money to be made to follow the law. Why aren’t heads of trusts being sacked for opening their trusts up to legal action, potentially costing the tax payer? https://t.co/jkOgzlLwqq

[Susan Dalgety @DalgetySusan]

Polanski: claimed he could increase the size of a women’s breast through hypnotism; Chapman: children as young as 8 should be supported to “change” their sex; Manivannan: rape is on a spectrum; there are “modes” of consent. Creepy people; creepy party.

[Mark Higgie @MarkHiggie2]

Cambridge’s vice-chancellor has been in crisis talks after the Jason Arday affair. Very funny.

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[Genspect @genspect]

Well played by Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White. They didn’t argue against gender ideology, they just accepted its claims and took them to their logical extreme.

The WNBA must now either accept self-ID or acknowledge that biological sex matters.

[Wesley Yang @wesyang]

The meeting is happening because under New York City law, where the league is headquartered, these men really can sue if they are excluded. If these exact same men had grown their hair out and begun demanding to be called women two years ago, every trans activist and ally attacking them today would be cheering them on. The law makes no distinction.