An 18-year-old British student was hounded out of school for daring to challenge a visiting pro-transgenderism politician’s viewpoint.
The unnamed student was in the sixth form, the equivalent of grades 11 and 12 in the United States, at a private girls’ school in the United Kingdom.
According to an account by John Rickards, a teacher at the school, during an after-school question-and-answer session with a stridently pro-transgenderism member of the House of Lords, the student asked the baroness if she had ever gotten into any debates or arguments over transgender issues with another well-known member of the House of Lords who holds opposing views.
“The language she was using was implying critical theory took precedence over biological reality in defining women,” the girl told The Times of London. “When I questioned that, she said it wasn’t an issue of semantics. She said trans people don’t have basic human rights in this country. Afterwards I spoke to her and said I’m sorry if I came across as rude.”
However, as Rickards pointed out, “It was probably somewhat naive of her not to realise that this [transgenderism] is indeed ‘an ideology’ and one with which you’re simply not allowed to disagree, however respectfully. To question its basic tenets is simply heresy and heretics in one way or another need to be exposed, attacked and gotten rid of.”
Sure enough, shortly after her conversation with the baroness, the girl “was surrounded by up to 60 pupils who shouted, screamed and spat at her,” she told The Times. “She escaped and said she collapsed, unable to breathe properly.”
According to Rickards, word quickly spread throughout the school that the student was a “transphobe” — despite the fact that “she has a close friend who[m] she respectfully refers to as ‘they/them’ as her friend identifies as non binary.”
“What happened in the 6th form centre, known these days as a ‘woke pile on’ is an example of where narcissistic rage masquerades as righteous anger in the form of ‘gleeful outrage,’” he wrote. “Here, otherwise perfectly nice and agreeable individuals collude and congregate to show that they are on the moral high ground and ‘on the right side of history.’ Also any waverers will be getting the clearest message of what will happen to ‘them’ if they don’t conform.”
Initially, teachers were supportive of the girl’s right to speak her mind, but they soon capitulated to the mob. Rickards reported that the head of sixth form delivered a prepared speech to students in which “she apologised … for failing to maintain a ‘safe space’ and for being seen to spend so much time giving support to her (the student) who had been isolated to the library (for her own safety).”
After a few weeks of being forced to stay in the library and to endure bullying by other students, the girl left the school and began studying at home.
When author J.K. Rowling, who is well-known for opposing the trans lobby’s attempts to define women out of existence, caught wind of the girl’s story, she wrote on Twitter that it was “utterly shameful.”
“Add this to the tottering pile of evidence that people in education and academia who’re supposed to have a duty of care towards the young have succumbed to an outbreak of quasi-religious fanaticism,” she added. “The girl’s crime? Saying ‘sex exists.’”
“Sadly,” observed Rickards, “this sort of affair will be repeated again and again if we fail to see what this ideology is and the way that it operates.”
The good news, he penned, is that “some of those fired up students on that day have in hindsight somewhat changed their position.” He said he spoke to one of the leaders of the mob, who “admitted that they’d gone too far and that she regretted it. She also, without any prompting, added that she thought that there is a lot of ideology around the issue and that they should be properly debating these things.”
While her change of heart came too late to undo the damage to her former classmate, it suggests that there is still hope that upcoming generations will eventually toss wokeness aside — preferably before it destroys what remains of Western civilization.
