Student Editor Fired for Daring To Believe 'Women Don't Have Penises'
The United Kingdom is a bit like a canary in a mine-shaft: Throughout history, trends that impacted our British friends have served as warning signs for the United States.
It was Churchill who warned the world about the rise of fascism years before we entered World War II, and it was conservative British voices who sounded the alarm about unrestricted immigration sweeping through Europe ahead of the same thing beginning to happen in North America.
If the Brits are still the early warning system for major shifts, Americans better start paying attention. A disturbing trend involving the rejection of free speech and common sense is impacting the U.K. … and it could have dire consequences if it continues unchecked.
A student in England was just removed from his position as editor of a university journal. His “offense?”
He re-tweeted an article which stated that women don’t have penises.
“But wait,” you might say. “Women don’t have penises. Actually, having other equipment is the defining characteristic of being a woman. That’s according to science, elementary biology, plus even the leftist loons who go to protests wearing pink hats and vagina costumes.”
You’d be right. But common sense is becoming shockingly uncommon these days.
“Angelos Sofocleous, 24, was pushed out of his role with Critique, Durham University’s philosophy journal, after his retweet of an article in The Spectator outraged students on social media, who claimed he was harming the transgendered,” reported Breitbart News.
That article, ironically enough, was titled “Is it a crime to say women don’t have penises?” To which the answer in the U.K. is apparently “Yes.”
How does a re-tweet of an article from a major magazine harm transgender people? Here’s the answer: Stop asking questions.
The 24-year-old Sofocleous confirmed the situation in a tweet earlier this week.
“After being forced to resign as President-elect of Humanist Students and fired as Assistant Editor of (Durham Undergraduate Philosophy Society) Critique Journal, I have now been fired as General Editor of (Durham University magazine) Durham Bubble, simply for believing that ‘women don’t have penises,'” he posted. “Has the world gone mad?”
https://twitter.com/Sofocleous_A/status/1041729763289821186
According to Breitbart, the student’s re-tweet of The Spectator article triggered a backlash of users on Twitter. One of the offended respondents was Christopher Ward, former chair of a group called “LGBT Humanists.” He ranted that believing women did not have penises was “factually incorrect” and “not worthy of debate.”
Yes, apparently liberals can now arbitrarily declare which topics are “worthy of debate” or not, all while throwing thousands of years of basic biology out the window.
Ward called the mere posting of The Spectator article “horrific transphobic s–t.”
In a post that would be satirically hilarious if it weren’t also so alarming, the president of the Durham University Philosophy Society explained that the 24-year-old student had been removed from his editor position because of the school’s commitment to “equality and diversity.”
Nothing says “diversity” quite like ostracizing people who state their opinions about basic biological facts.
The student — Sofocleous — could have backed down, but instead he found his voice and pushed back against the insanity.
In a tweet on Monday, he pointed out that posting an article for discussion in no way “threatens (the) existence” of trans people. Writing an Op-Ed piece in the very Spectator magazine that got him removed from his editor position, Sofocleous pointed out the absurdity of everything happening.
“The reaction against me was extreme, yet it was far from exceptional. On campus, the subject of gender is now off limits for those who fail to fall into line with the new orthodoxy: that being a man or a woman is fluid,” he said.
“Anyone who says otherwise is liable to find themselves hounded into silence,” the student declared.
That last point is perhaps the most important. While it’s easy to just sit back and laugh at the clearly confused, perpetually offended crowd who can’t even figure out which bathroom to use this week, there are serious implications here.
Being “hounded into silence” is an increasingly real possibility for people who are in academia, or increasingly, the everyday workplace.
We are fast approaching a cultural tipping point where routine and widely-accepted statements — like “men have penises, women have vaginas” — can get someone removed from their job or facing a small but powerful mob.
Maybe it’s fitting that George Orwell was English.
He seemed to know in advance that this kind of thought crime enforcement was on the horizon for Great Britain … and now anyone who values free thinking and discussion should pay attention to the very Orwellian trends happening right now.
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