As a student body, we object to the University of Oxford’s decision to platform transphobic speakers, such as Helen Joyce during LGBTQ+ history month and throughout the academic year. By inviting anti-trans campaigners to speak to the staff and student bodies, Balliol College and the University contradict their own policy ‘to ensure that…steps are taken to avoid the occurrence of discrimination, whether direct or indirect’ against transgender people and gender minorities.

Helen Joyce’s views and professional activities are inherently and grievously harmful to the transgender community. Her past publications have denied the existence of transgender people, asserting that trans identity is the product of indoctrination by ‘gender ideology’, which she compares to a ‘godless neo-religion.’ Joyce refuses to recognise transgender identity and regularly refers to trans men as ‘trans-identifying women’ and trans women as ‘men’. Joyce opposes the legal and social recognition of transgender people, and any legislation, which outlaws discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment. She further opposes access to transgender healthcare, arguing that it is ‘conversion therapy’ and that ‘they’re sterilizing gay kids’.

In a speech for Genspect, a pro-conversion therapy lobby group, Joyce called for 'reducing' the number of trans people. Joyce regularly conflates transgender people with crime and sexual violence, and has engaged in antisemitism, claiming that the global agenda on trans issues is shaped by Jewish billionaires, George Soros and Jennifer Pritzker.

She states on her social media profiles that ‘Shame needs to switch sides’, implying that individuals should be ashamed of being transgender, but not of promoting anti-trans prejudice.

The event will undoubtedly be defended using an appeal to 'free speech', but we take issue with this for a number of reasons. First, it does not encourage free speech as the University defines it. Joyce’s rhetoric and views clearly ‘give rise to an environment in which people will experience, or could reasonably fear, discrimination, harassment, intimidation…on account of their…gender reassignment’ and thus provides grounds for objection under the University’s own policy. While the event planner’s have provided no counter-speaks or opposition to balance Joyce’s views, Joyce’s transphobic views are so vehement that any potential transgender speakers would be exposed to an unacceptable level of personal and collective discrimination.

Second, Helen Joyce is not just a controversial or inflammatory speaker, but also one who is widely discredited. She has actively spread disinformation about the trans community, such as her suggestion that trans women actively benefit from patriarchy. In fact, transgender women are at high levels of risk of both physical and sexual assault from cisgender men. The event is subtitled, “everything you always wanted to know about sex (and gender)* but were too afraid to ask: in conversation with Helen Joyce.” We must ask why Joyce has been invited for this event, when she is a mathematician by trade and she has not participated in academic conversations on gender, whether in journals, or conferences, or any other medium of discussion. Why invite Joyce then, when there are far more qualified and respected individuals in the field, such as Judith Butler, Jack Halberstram, Susan Strkyer, Paisley Currah, Sophie Lewis, Ben Nichols, and many others? It is not only extremely harmful for the University to be providing legitimacy to such a hateful individual, it is also exceedingly embarrassing for this elite institution. Just as climate-change deniers are not invited to teach us about meteorology, we should not invite someone who’s work on the topic has been described as an “incoherent set of vapid polemics,” to explain sexual difference. Can the University of Oxford, purportedly the best university in the world, do no better?

We must remind the University that transphobia is a dangerous ideology which promotes hatred, mistrust and fear of gender minorities. The fundamental conviction at the heart of Joyce’s campaigning is that transgender people do not exist and any individuals identifying as trans should be excluded from public, academic, and professional life. Inviting Helen Joyce to expressly promote her anti-trans views, not only frames fearmongering and harassment as permissible, but creates a toxic atmosphere of paranoia for the transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming students and staff, who use single-sex spaces on a daily basis. Furthermore, it is especially important for transphobic views to be countered not just through dissociation with anti-trans campaigners and networks, but through the active hosting of trans and non-binary speakers. It adds further insult to injury to place such transphobic events under the banner of LGBTQ+ history month.

The decision to host a speaker is not apolitical and ‘freedom of speech’ is not a catch-all defence for conspiracy theories, hate, and prejudice. As University policy states: ‘not all theories deserve equal respect.’ Helen Joyce treats transgender people as if they are a ‘theory’, we are not. Transgender people study and work as members of the University everyday. We deserve to exist peaceably without seeing that very existence up for debate and erasure.

We demand that Oxford University and the colleges

• Cancel the upcoming talk
• Commit to not hosting any more transphobic speakers
• Commit to providing a safe environment for transgender and genderqueer staff and students