Durham student fired after sharing ‘transphobic’ tweet
A GREEK Cypriot student at Durham University in the UK was sacked from the university’s philosophy journal Critique after a comment he made on Twitter was considered to be transphobic but he says he was just trying to start a debate.
According to a report in the Daily Mail last Friday, Angelos Sofocleous, 24, also the president of the Cypriot Society at the university, was fired from the journal just three days after taking on the assistant editor position when he tweeted: “women don’t have penises”.
Mr Sofocleous, a postgraduate philosophy and psychology student, was also forced to resign as the head of the university’s free speech society Humanist Students, and from Durham’s online magazine The Bubble, following his tweet.
It is not the first time Mr Sofocleous has faced criticism for his tweets, as in August he had retweeted an article by the British magazine The Spectator, with the title “Is it a crime to say women don’t have penises?”
In a post on Facebook, Mr Sofocleous said: “Sadly, these views were taken to be ‘transphobic’ by individuals, who cannot tolerate any criticism, either of their movement or their ideas, and are unable to engage in a civilised conversation on issues they disagree on.”
The since-deleted tweets have received backlash from former chair of LGBT Humanists Christopher Ward who claimed the posts were “factually incorrect” and not “worthy of a debate”.
Standing by his tweets, Mr Sofocleous wrote: “I may be wrong and women might indeed have penises, although I don’t believe that to be the case.
“But the backlash that took place after my comments, particularly within the organisation, convinced me that, unfortunately and surprisingly, there are certain issues within the humanist movement which are undebatable.
“No effort was made, beyond name-calling, derogatory comments, and ad hominem statements, to convince me of the truth of the other side’s position.”
A spokesperson for Durham Students Union said: “We are confident in our commitment to protecting free speech through open debate and exchange of ideas, which are central to university education […] We endorse free speech for all students and in this case, the student is still speaking and people are listening, reflecting and reacting.”