The first effort to “no-platform” me caught me by surprise. It wasn’t until the day before I was due to speak at King’s College in London that I was made aware of a petition, signed by staff and students, calling on the university “to retract her invitation, cancel the event and publish a public apology.”
The petitioners claimed that I was “someone who opposes women, trans and non-binary people and their well-being and survival,” and so there was a “high risk” my advocacy for freedom of speech would result in “attacks on transgender people.”
I am critical of modern-day feminism. I have questioned the promotion of transgender issues among young children and I have challenged the idea that men should be legally recognized as women simply because they declare themselves to be women—what is known as “self-identification.” However, I was not planning to talk about any of this. My lecture was supposed to be a scholarly overview of the history of academic freedom. Yet in the eyes of campaigners, defending free speech today is tantamount to calling for violent attacks on vulnerable individuals. I needed to be silenced. And it seems I am not the only one.
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In a very short space of time, it has become controversial to say what people have taken for granted since time immemorial: that humans are born either male or female. The newly correct view, enforced at every turn, is that gender is located in brains rather than in bodies. According to this way of thinking, cruel doctors jump to conclusions at the moment of a child’s birth and parents and teachers then force children to dress and behave in line with a misguided assumption about whether they are a boy or a girl.
Transgender activists argue gender is something we need to discover for ourselves and then reveal to a readily accepting world. Going along with this may seem like a small act of politeness, but it has huge consequences for how we organize society and, in particular, women’s place in it.
We routinely restrict access to public restrooms, healthcare provision, jails, sports, and some other educational and leisure activities according to sex. Often, this is just common sense. Men do not need midwifery services. Sometimes it is a question of safety. Vulnerable women looking to escape a violent male partner need a female-only refuge. Women and girls may not want to undress in unisex changing rooms. Sometimes it is a necessity. Segregation in sports allows women to compete and not have their place taken by taller, stronger, biological males.
Much is at stake if gender self-identification replaces biological sex. Yet those who so much as question this new orthodoxy rapidly find themselves denounced as heretics and transphobes by a new generation of activists. The upshot is that major social change is occurring in the absence of debate.
