UCL academics liken fight for women’s rights to eugenics movement

A conference on women’s activism has been compared to the promotion of eugenics by lecturers at University College London (UCL).

Dr Simon Lock and Dr Xine Yao, co-directors of an LGBT study network at UCL, criticised conference organisers for inviting groups which they claimed promoted “anti-trans and anti-queer views”.

Organisations running workshops at ‘Education for Women’s Liberation’ included Fair Play For Women, Sex Matters, For Women Scotland and MurrayBlackburnMackenzie.

Transgender activists

Lock and Yao complained that inviting speakers on campus who endorse women’s rights “invalidates” the work UCL had done to combat “the legacy of eugenics” and “anti-Semitism”.

They added that to entertain “positions that hurt, or worse question the validity of marginalised peoples, places UCL in the position of once again enabling the likes of the eugenics conferences that ran on campus through 2017.”

The idea that believing that sex matters is somehow comparable to eugenics is grotesque and defamatory.

On the day of the conference, activists for transgender ideology held a protest outside UCL and allegedly sought to disrupt the event and intimidate attendees.

‘Grotesque’

Responding to Lock and Yao, conference speaker and Professor of Sociology at UCL Alice Sullivan told The Daily Telegraph: “The idea that believing that sex matters is somehow comparable to eugenics is grotesque and defamatory.”

Fellow participant Prof Jo Phoenix, criminology programme director at the University of Reading, said: “To compare feminist ideas and debate, to the ideology that led to the murder and sterilisation of millions worldwide is both supremely anti-academic and, quite frankly, disgusting.”

supremely anti-academic and, quite frankly, disgusting

UCL responded: “We view the right to debate and challenge ideas as fundamental to the nature of a university, and are committed to ensuring that free and open discussion can take place in an atmosphere of tolerance for different viewpoints.”

In 2021, following an independent inquiry into the history of eugenics at UCL, the institution expressed “deep regret” for ‘legitimising’ the harmful idea “that varieties of human life could be assigned different value”.