Laura's research revealed female academics are bullied into silence over their views on gender. Now, in the ultimate bitter irony, she's been silenced and ousted too

Earlier this month, Dr Laura Favaro popped into her office at Bournemouth University, where she lectures in social sciences, and was told she had some personal post.

Her heart sank: nervous that the handwritten envelopes might contain hate mail.

‘My first thought was “Oh no” but as I began to read, I realised they were lovely cards of support,’ says Laura, 42, who lives near the university with her partner and two young sons. ‘One woman said: “You’re brave and admirable and many women are outraged on your behalf.”

‘The other sent me a donation for my legal case. I was so touched. I tweeted about them, saying I will put them under my pillow and hopefully they will help me sleep better.’ Sleep is something Laura hasn’t had much of recently. Eighteen months ago, she became the latest female academic to be targeted by trans rights activists who demanded she be sacked from her then-job at City, University of London.

Among those responsible for the vicious online abuse were senior colleagues in higher education, including one female professor who had previously tweeted: ‘I have no qualms in silencing people who need to hush the f*** up. In fact, I’ve put the slog in to be able to do just that.’

Laura sought support against the bullying from the university but none was forthcoming and instead she felt ostracised. The university confiscated her post-doctorate work which had taken many months of painstaking research. Last March, she lost her job.  Her ‘crime’? Ironically, it was publishing research into the ‘gender wars’, which found that the silencing, discrimination and harassment of female academics was endemic in British universities.

Now Laura is taking City to an employment tribunal for claims including unfair dismissal, direct discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

The stress of the last year and a half has, at times, been unbearable.

‘I’d vomit with anxiety and wake up in the middle of the night drenched with sweat,’ she says. ‘I’d be sitting with my sons reading them a bedtime story and suddenly I’d feel tears streaming down my face and I’d be shaking. What I am most sad about is that I’ve lost so much precious time with my children.’

Like Professor Kathleen Stock, who was hounded from the University of Sussex, and Professor Jo Phoenix, who won her case against the Open University in January, Laura believes that her gender critical beliefs (that there are only two sexes — male and female) are at the root of why she was targeted.

‘I know that if I did believe in gender identity theory [the belief that men and women can ‘identify’ into the opposite sex], my career in academia would be thriving,’ she says. ‘But I don’t and so this is how they treat women like me.’

It was very different four years ago, when Laura — who was born in Spain — was offered the job of her dreams at City’s Gender and Sexualities Research Centre, which she had helped set up as a PhD student.

‘I haven’t known a life without feminism,’ she explains. ‘My mother was a teacher who had helped bring in anti-sexism approaches to education.’

The family spent time in the UK when Laura was younger and after leaving school she studied dance, then sociology, in Leeds.

But it was in 2015, as a fully-funded PhD student at City University, that she noticed ‘something strange’.

‘I was interviewing editors of women’s magazines who were telling me that these publications were feminist,’ she says. ‘To illustrate this, they would point to how much they were covering the topic of transgender, in particular men who identify as women like Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce Jenner).

‘It didn’t make sense to me. First, these men were being prioritised over women. Jenner even won Glamour’s Woman of The Year Award!

‘Also, all I could see were old stereotypes of womanhood — wearing dresses, make-up or heels — rather than the reality of our biology. I couldn’t find any feminism in this.  ‘I went to the academic literature and was surprised by the absence of critical discussion.

‘What was going on?’  With the support of City she put together an application for funding to study the transgender debate but was unsuccessful. Around this time she got pregnant with her first son and she and her partner — a former tennis player — returned to Spain.

But in 2019, by which time her second son had arrived, the university got back in touch to offer her a position to conduct her project.

‘It was a dream come true — I had been offered the chance to go back to an institution that had been so supportive of me during my PhD,’ says Laura. ‘Not only was I coming back to my intellectual home but also to friends.’

Laura returned to City in March 2020. She started her research but early on realised her line managers held views that seemed very pro gender identity ideology.

‘I remember showing them examples of abuse online towards gender critical women involving incitements to kill, decapitate, rape or punch them and my line managers would imply that the violence was on both sides,’ she says.

‘But the evidence didn’t show that. I went into this research with my eyes open and with a definite willingness to have my mind changed.’

Laura approached 50 academics in gender studies — from senior professors to early career researchers — to interview them about how ‘the gender wars’ had affected them. It became obvious to her that something incredibly disturbing was happening in higher education.

‘What struck me early on was the climate of fear,’ she says. ‘One professor described her working life as a feminist academic as a “continuum of hell”. More junior colleagues kept their “mouths shut” fearing their careers would not survive the “horrible backlash”.

‘Even those female academics who were in some agreement with the gender identity side described feeling depressed, alienated, and, most of all, “terrified”. They avoided the subject at all costs because they had seen how this had led to so many women being ostracised, harassed and threatened with violence.

‘Some were comparing the current situation at universities to “authoritarian regimes” and the “Thought Police”, and these well-respected scholars were stopping their gender-related research and teaching.’

She recalls one ‘exceptionally bright scholar’ crying as she told Laura: ‘I don’t want to lose my job. I don’t want to put my kids at risk. And I don’t have extreme views.’

Even some academics who supported gender ideology thanked Laura for the opportunity to have an ‘honest conversation’. These academics admitted to silencing gender critical colleagues and students.

Concerned by what she was finding, Laura decided to survey more than 600 academics — with funding from The British Academy — about the gender wars, working conditions and censorship at universities. Additionally, the Equality and Human Rights Commission asked her to produce a report of her findings.

‘But the more evidence I presented to my line managers at City, the more it seemed they didn’t want to interact with me,’ she recalls.

Was there ever a point she felt she should back off from such a controversial topic to save her own career? She shakes her head.  ‘I felt that I was recording something important, producing a record of a shameful historical moment, so I had to keep going,’ she says.

In September 2022 she published her findings in the Times Higher Education supplement under the headline: ‘Researchers wounded in academia’s gender wars.’

Inevitably there was a savage response on social media.

‘I was expecting a backlash — to be called transphobic,’ she says. ‘But the fact that the critics went for my integrity as a researcher was really painful. They called me “unethical”.

‘They accused me — again, falsely — of naming one of the anonymised participants, and lied about some of my methods.

‘One particularly hurtful tweet was saying that if I could do this to academics, imagine what I’d do to children.’

At this point Laura’s voice cracks and she breaks down in tears.

‘I was at home when this was happening all over Twitter [now called X] and I was horrified.

‘I hoped that my line managers at City would protect me. Instead, all I got was a brief email from them saying: “This has obviously become an institutionally sensitive issue and I’m sure we’ll be in touch over the next few days.”

‘That was it. I felt isolated and frightened. One work colleague who identifies as a transgender woman described my article on Twitter as “an attack on trans people”, and condemned City for allowing the research to take place. Others were demanding the retraction of my article, and of my research findings.

‘There were tweets calling for the end of my career. City investigated a formal complaint and found no evidence of ethical wrongdoing on my part.’

Amid the uproar, some of the academics who had contributed wanted to remove themselves from Laura’s research and the university attempted to persuade her to delete these interviews. ‘I pushed back, calling it Orwellian — you can’t allow people to withdraw from studies just because they don’t like the results — that would be the end of academia,’ she says, as the tears come again. ‘I was also put under pressure to return my British Academy grant.’

Laura was told by senior management that City considered her research data ‘dangerous’, and the university wanted to return her grant because it gave her ‘authority’. She says she was also told things would have been different if she believed that ‘trans women are women’.

It all took its toll: Laura was signed off sick twice with anxiety and depression.

‘It was incredibly stressful,’ she says. In March 2023, the university ordered Laura to return her interviews and survey, and to delete all her copies. A few days later, she was made redundant.

‘The university said there was no more funding for my research,’ she says. ‘But I had a permanent contract which said that, if this happened, then they would look for alternative employment for me. I offered to teach. But I was made redundant. I was very scared. We had no money.’

She adds: ‘Just weeks later, City advertised for six full-time positions within the same department.’

The Free Speech Union, which had been supporting Laura, introduced her to solicitor Peter Daly, who had helped Sex Matters founder Maya Forstater win her case after she lost her job with a think-tank for saying people could not change their biological sex.

With his help, Laura has regained access to part of her research data, and is preparing to take City to an Employment Tribunal on five counts, including the fact they failed to support her and victimised her because of her beliefs.

She has managed to raise £90,000 for her legal costs through crowdfunding but needs another £20,000. ‘The support means everything to me,’ she says.

City denies there is antipathy towards people with gender critical beliefs. Laura believes otherwise.

‘At one point all students and staff were called to “report directly to security” if they saw stickers on campus that were “designed to undermine trans people and their rights,”’ she says. ‘I asked what these so-called “hate stickers” were and they included stickers which simply had the words: “Woman: Adult Human Female” on them. Any student placing one of these stickers would be subjected to disciplinary procedures.

‘So, my case is not just about me stopping the persecution of women who have well-founded concerns about gender identity theory. It is about recovering universities as spaces of open, respectful and evidence-based debate.’

A spokesperson for City, University of London, said: ‘We are unable to comment on employment matters relating to individual members of staff. We can, however, say that we refute the allegations made against us and reject the context in which they are presented.’

They added: ‘At City, we have a legal obligation to protect freedom of expression that we take very seriously. We uphold academic freedom of enquiry in our education and research and are committed to ensuring that free and open-minded discussion can take place.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13220603/Laura-Favaro-research-revealed-female-academics-bullied-silence-views-gender-bitter-irony-ousted-too.html

***********************************

My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

*******************************