Kathleen Lowrey

Kathleen Lowrey, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, discusses her dismissal from an administrative post as Undergraduate Programs Chair in her department after student complaints about her opposition to gender identity ideology and her criticism of trans activism.  Discussing how trans activists “use a familiar language of structural injustice” through “aggressive male entitlement,” Lowrey analyses how calls for politeness are weaponised against women by both the the gender lobby and many gender-critics in order to silence the “less polite” women who push back against this ideology. Lowrey examines the paradox of “bad faith” within this ideology—from its focus upon women who are forced to accomodate men, the rehashing of old-world sexism, to the exhortations of women to “be kinder” to men while men are expected to do nothing. Observing how transgender ideology and its conterminous activism advances extremely conservative narratives, Lowrey notes how identitarianism fails to address class issues and imperialist wars as universities are becoming a space of advancing neoliberal ideological purity.