Kathleen Stock: Timeline


2018

July 6

Kathleen Stock wrote an op-ed in the Economist about her concerns about self-declaration being the only qualifier for someone to be labelled as a gender other than the one that was assigned at birth. Her language makes it clear that she doesn’t consider trans women women in any sense, but instead dismisses them, referring to “self-declared trans women” as “males” consistently. She sees the shift of formerly cis women-only spaces to being inclusive of trans women as being dangerous to cis women’s safety and access to resources.

October 1

Kathleen Stock wrote an op-ed in The Conversation on how she believed legally, trans women should not be catagorically the same as cis women. Her beliefs are based on how she sees trans women as still men because of their sex at birth, and she thinks same-sex spaces should exclude trans women because including them would pose “unacceptable harm” to cis women. She goes on to call intersex people a “red herring” that don’t disprove the claim that “sex is a spectrum.” She attempts to debunk the idea that cis women are more privilaged than trans women with statistics.


2019

On June 16, 2019, Kathleen Stock and a group of 30 academics wrote to The Sunday Times, calling for universities to “sever their links” with Stonewall. Stonewall is a LGBT charity, which Stock and others claimed censors education due to the charity’s opposition to transphobic material. This action is countered by 3600 academics claiming their support of transgender rights and of Stonewall.


2020

January 7

Kathleen Stock wrote in Times Higher Education that she feels targeted in her work by transgender flags being placed around her teaching room. Another professor, Alison Phipps, wrote on Twitter that she asked for the flags to be put up in response to global events affecting trans people going on, including changes in law in the UK and the USA, and the election of homophobic leaders elsewhere. Stock considers the flag to be a response to her writings about how gender is biological and not the same as self-identified gender.

January 17

The University of East Anglia cancelled a seminar Stock was scheduled to give, out of respect to their transgender students. The school said she could speak at a later date if a transgender speaker was invited for the next week. Some saw this as another step towards schools censoring speakers who may be protested by trans activists and not allowing them a platform.