Two Woman That Can't Be Bullied
The Rise Of Cancel Culture And The Erosion Of Free Speech
The Rise Of Cancel Culture and the Erosion of Free Speech. Woke Activism in Academia.
“It is undeniable that there are consequences to publicly identifying yourself as someone who is not willing to go along with the ideological tenets of diversity and inclusion.” - Lindsay Sheppard
Gender Ideology and Trans-phobia
Trans Criticism Equals Trans Hate
The year is 2017. The setting is Canadian university Wilfrid Laurier. The story is one of attempted “cancellation”. The protagonist, ultimately receiving some exoneration, none-the-less incurred a rather insane ordeal resulting in lasting harm. As facts surrounding the case rose to the surface, the unfairness in this relatively early and high profile example of Canadian cancel culture was obvious to anyone paying attention.
But before we get into the seedy details, I’d like to qualify the following statement as being consistent with the traditional backdrop, or standard operating procedure, of western centers of knowledge production regarding academic freedom. That is until this basic notion has itself been targeted for cancellation.
The notion is this; Academics should stick to evidential based truths and displaying notions in a neutral and unbiased fashion.
What some consider a basic premise of academic priorities was being put to the test by a 22 year-old graduate student/teaching assistant named Lindsay Sheppard who made the mistake of showing her communications students two short controversial video segments produced by the TVOntario current affairs program The Agenda With Steve Paikin. The video clips involved scholars (among them Jordan Peterson) debating the highly contentious Bill C-16.
some background. In 2016 when University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson famously spoke out against The Canadian Liberal government's Bill C-16 (An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code), the back-lash was particularly severe. Dr. Peterson argued that the bill makes the use of gender pronouns, as they relate to political correctness and identity politics, into compelled speech.
Many academics and legal professionals among them Bruce Pardy, Professor of Law at Queen's University, publicly supported Dr. Peterson’s assessment saying Bill C-16 does indeed compel speech. Charges of trans-phobic hate predictably exploded, but In Dr. Peterson’s case, the pile-on seems to have been the thing that propelled his stardom by introducing him to new audiences of millions.
“Rarely has a man's sworn enemies worked so hard and so effectively to make him rich.” - Canadian journalist Chris Selley referring to Jordan Peterson
Back to Wilfrid Laurier. Some days after Linsay Sheppard showed the TVOntario clips to her students she was summoned to the University’s Diversity and Equity Office. In what would prove to be a very smart move, Lindsay secretly recorded the meeting.
The recording is hard to listen to. Lindsays’ superiors make outrageous claims, like that presenting a Jordan Peterson speech neutrally is like presenting a Hitler speech neutrally. The whole recording is a god-awful cringe-fest of Woke overreach, false claims and pure nonsense.
The Diversity & Equity “police” told her “at least one” complaint about the class in question had been raised. Accused of creating a “toxic climate for some of the students,” she was informed she would need to submit lesson plans for approval prior to each class. Not exactly “cancelled,” but unfairly treated and a step taken toward that end.
After releasing the recording to the media an independent fact-finder hired by the university reported that the meeting should never have taken place, that no formal (or in-formal) complaint had been registered and that Lindsay did nothing wrong by showing the clips. But even the facts of the investigation couldn’t fully halt the online accusations of “transphobia”, “white supremacy” and “right wing extremism” that Lindsay all too commonly faces.
In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Lindsay explains that even though the investigation uncovered that not one student had complained about the Jordan Peterson video clips, apparently someone had overheard students discussing Lindsay’s class and “snitched” to the Rainbow Centre (the on-campus LGBTQ collective), who “took it upon themselves to complain” to Lindsay’s professor and the Diversity & Equity people.
“I was neutral” in the class, says Lindsay, explaining how she didn’t have a position regarding the subject matter of the video clips. She points out that if she had taken the view that Jordan Peterson was evil or wrong, then there would not have been an issue. In North American universities, it is considered white supremacy and radical right wing extremism to hold opinions or make arguments that contradict the Woke ideology of the authoritarian left.
Lindsay became the target of the universities Diversity & Equity “thought-control centre” and the Rainbow Centre “gender ideology police.” And even though the independent investigation has “cleared her name,” she is cautious to claim a full victory pointing out that the school’s written apology states the “need for enhanced TA training.” This demonstrates the contradiction that, while Lindsay didn’t do anything wrong, more training for TA’s is necessary...for what exactly?
If she hadn’t recorded the meeting with her superiors we would never have heard about it. Once-in-a-while a culture war battle has minimally disastrous results, but in cases that ultimately see exoneration, I wonder if too little too late is enough for some.
Lindsay’s story is indicative of the overall rot of cancel culture. In her case she wasn’t actually fired from her position at Wilfred Laurier and she did eventually complete her masters there. Witch hunts of woke activism can hurt their targets in more ways than just termination of present employment.
When Lindsay was offered a seasonal instructor position at a small college in early 2020 (over three years after the Wilfrid Laurier ordeal), she had her contract cancelled before she even got started when a Social Justice Warrior faculty member discovered who she was. Few people can emerge from a woke pile-on unscathed, even those lucky enough to get investigations and exonerating apologies like Lindasy.
In a tweet from June of 2021 Lindsay Shepard writes:
“The funny thing about Canada is the more of a patriot you are, the less likely you are to obtain a position where you represent the country in an official capacity (e.g. public service, government). Canadian officials self-flagellate.”
An interesting development occurred in June of 2018 when Jordan Peterson filed two defamation lawsuits; one against Wilfrid Laurier, the other against the three university administrators recorded in the infamous meeting where, among other libelous pejoratives, they falsely claimed Dr. Peterson was involved with radical right-wing extremism.
Lawsuits have both been filed against Lindsay Sheppard by the trio of Diversity & Equity interrogators, and she has filed suits against them. What a Mess! As of this writing there is no further public information regarding any of these cases.
Rebecca Tuvel - Rhodes College, Memphis
Rebecca Tuvel, associate Professor and Chair, Philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, was accused of “epistemic violence” in a 2017 online pile-on for writing a philosophical paper that discussed and compared trans-racialism & trans-genderism. Regardless of Rebecca’s intent, which in her words came "from a place of support for those with non-normative identities," an open letter full of ridiculous false claims and laughable misrepresentations of Rebecca’s work circulated social media with vociferous support from the anti-free speech activist mob, along with a shockingly complicit group of virtue signalling academics.
Many voices have expressed support for Rebbecca Tuvel. A 2017 article in NYMag breaks down the contents of Rebecca’s paper as well as the claims asserted in the open letter.
From NYMag:
“...what’s disturbing here is how many hundreds of academics signed onto and helped spread utterly false claims about one of their colleagues, and the extent to which Hypatia, faced with such outrage, didn’t even bother trying to sift legitimate critiques from frankly made-up ones. A huge number of people who haven’t read Tuvel’s article now believe, on the basis of that trumped-up open letter and unfounded claims of “violence,” that it is so deeply trans-phobic it warranted an unusual apology from the journal that published it.”
Hypatia is the feminist journal that published Rebecca’s paper (later apologizing for it in an about-face of intellectual cowardice) after their standard double-blind peer review process.
From NYMag:
“there’s such a stark disconnect between what Tuvel wrote and what she is purported to have written. This whole episode should worry anybody who cares about academia’s ability to engage in difficult issues at a time when outrage can spread faster than ever before.”
Far from being confined to Universities and scholarly research, the transgender issue (like other woke causes) is one where free speech “problems” result in a level of tension and conflagration that spreads out of academia throughout Western societies like a destructive mind-virus we’ve never before experienced.
This is the fifth installment of “The Woke West: The Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, Radical Activism And Forbidden Knowledge Dividing The West...And What You Can Do About It!” - A book by James Pew, published serially to The Turn Substack.
Thanks For Reading! Next up, Protecting Children From The Woke: Gender Ideology, Free Speech and Children