controversy
Humboldt University catches up on gender talk
«Human biological sex is binary, there are male and female people. We are born male or female and retain our gender until the end of life.” Photo: Jens Kalaene/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
what is scientific Is there a cancel culture here? The cancellation of a gender lecture at Humboldt University caused the debate to foam. Now he will be caught up. What is the argument about?
The deletion of a lecture on sex and gender at Berlin’s Humboldt University sparked a heated debate in early July.
Today (5 p.m.) the lecture is to be made up for. The university is then planning a discussion with Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (7 p.m.), among others.
The controversy is about gender and identity, about science and freedom, about accusations of ideology and ignorance. Stakeholders on all sides feel hurt or intimidated. But the dispute goes far beyond the personal level – and is quite confusing.
The canceled lecture
The lecture “Sex is not (gender) sex, sex, gender and why there are two sexes in biology” by the biologist Marie-Luise Vollbrecht was planned for the Long Night of Sciences at the Humboldt University. After a protest call by the “working group of critical lawyers”, the university canceled the presentation for security reasons. Vollbrecht kept her on YouTube instead. In the “Zeit” she described her central thesis: “Human biological sex is binary, there are male and female people. We are born male or female and retain our gender until the end of life.”
The lecturer
The 32-year-old doctoral student became known at the beginning of June as a co-author of an article in the “Welt” entitled “How ARD and ZDF indoctrinate our children”. The authors write that public broadcaster coverage “aims to give a voice to calls by trans lobby groups to change one’s biological sex.” This is a “threatening development”: “It is unacceptable that a small number of activists with their ‘woken’ trans ideology undermine the ÖRR,” the text said.
The critic
The “Welt” contribution triggered violent reactions, which are now playing a role in the debate about Vollbrecht’s lecture. This is explained in detail in a statement by the HU student representatives, the so-called Referent*innenRat. He complains about discrimination against “trans*, inter* and *non-binary people (TIN* for short)” and calls Vollbrecht an “openly TIN*-hostile person”.
Vollbrecht shows solidarity with “a movement that denies the existence of TIN* people”. She is close to the “Trans Exclusionary Feminists (TERFS)”, who, among other things, oppose the access of trans people to spaces for women. Vollbrecht told T-Online: “If I say as a woman that I don’t want to be in the situation where I meet an individual with a penis in the changing room or in the shower, then that’s my right.”
The criticism of the criticism
After the cancellation of the lecture, the Humboldt University in particular was sharply attacked. This has done academic freedom a disservice, said the President of the German University Association, Bernhard Kempen, at the beginning of July. “Science thrives on freedom and debate,” said Science Minister Stark-Watzinger (FDP) of the “Bild” newspaper. “Everyone has to put up with it.” A comment from the “world” spoke of a “crass case of cancel culture”. The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” wrote: “It is the house and court ideology of the universities that has come to the outside in Berlin: gender is nothing more than a social construct.”
Opinion Free or Silent?
Vollbrecht himself expressed understanding for the university’s security concerns, but also wrote in “Zeit”: “Biologists who try to educate about dual gender (are) now openly and regularly attacked. The question of gender and biological gender binary has long since become a theater of war for the Kulturkampf.” The biologist relies on purely scientific findings.
But so do their critics. The Speakers’ Council writes: “Academic freedom is not a cloak for the spread of inhuman ideologies and propaganda directed against the acceptance of scientific knowledge – the earth is not flat, evolution is not a conspiracy myth and the differences between people have more than two sides.”