Trans Activists’ Reactions to Charlie Kirk’s Murder

Last week, a Canadian academic named Florence Ashley became infamous for declaring that Charlie Kirk was a “Nazi,” and for suggesting that Kirk’s murder was a welcome act of “magic.” If the name is familiar, it might be because the same scholar—a biological male who self-describes as a “transfeminine activist, academic, and slut”—was widely ridiculed after instructing pet owners to stop “gendering” their dogs and cats, lest they “normalise bioessentialist conceptions of gender.” Ashley has also exhorted social-media followers to “be gay and do crimes,” and has written about how “glamorous and provocative” it feels to have one’s genitals “bulging through a tight dress.”

Other public comments that have alarmed Ashley’s students include: “I just don’t get why anyone would consider ‘Jesus clearly gave mind-blowing blowjobs’ to be blasphemous”; “I love hummus… It tastes like pussy”; and “If Mother Nature wants to make me cum, she should use her hands.” Under the rubric of “Gender/Fucking,” Ashley (who once wrote a poem to refute the idea that “I get boners from wearing lace”) interprets his autoerotic adventures as profoundly illuminating “sites of knowledge.”

Well, so what? you may say. For years now, academics have been insisting that “autoethnography” (basically, diary entries larded up with academic jargon) comprises a valid means “to identify and interrogate the intersections between the self and social life.” It was only a matter of time before flamboyant autogynephiles took this trend to its logical conclusion by seeking course credit for their late-night porntube sessions.

Except that Ashley isn’t some random postgrad, but rather a well-known professor (and former Supreme Court of Canada clerk) who’s received a long list of academic honours.