‘It’s frightening that women can be just shut down’
She has been no-platformed, trolled and threatened, but Selina Todd refuses to be silenced by the transgender activists lobby. She talks to Judith Woods
Set across the River Cherwell, amid Oxford’s dreaming spires, stands St Hilda’s College. Established in 1893 as a women’s hall, it only admitted men as recently as 2008. Its motto is “Excellence and Equality” and staff are justifiably proud of its achievements in promoting female voices and furthering female ambitions – things we now take for granted.
Yet it is here, on the eve of International Women’s Day, that a battle for 21st‑century women’s rights and freedom of speech is being fought, the likes of which we have never seen before. Modern history professor and bestselling author Selina Todd, who specialises in the history of the working class, women and feminism in modern Britain, stands at the centre of an astonishing – frightening – witch‑hunt.
She has been branded “transphobic”, found herself no‑platformed, aggressively trolled and threatened with violence. Two security guards have been drafted in by university bosses to protect her during lectures. Why? Because militant trans activists are targeting female academics who dare to disagree with their world view; namely that sex is not a valid descriptor and should be abolished as a legal identity, to be replaced by self‑described gender.
“The focus of my research is women’s history,” says Prof Todd. “I believe in robust evidence and have come to the conclusion that I agree with the legal and traditional definition of men and women according to their biological sex.
“Throughout history women have been treated differently because of their actual or potential roles as mothers. They have been discriminated against in ways that men are not; biology matters. If we don’t define women and men as separate sexes then how do we categorise them?”
Prof Todd, who was born in Newcastle and state‑educated, looks like an academic straight from central casting: charismatic, energetic, slender as a letter opener, with neatly bobbed hair, she is the very opposite of strident. When she speaks, it is with soft urgency and measured reasonableness.
Her study is lined with bright cards offering her support, bearing legends such as “Don’t let the bastards grind you down”, and a picture of the statue of suffragist Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square (erected after a Telegraph‑backed campaign), holding a banner that says: “Courage calls to courage everywhere”.
“I am not transphobic,” she says matter‑of‑factly. “I have students who are transgender and I have great sympathy for the difficulties they go through as they grapple to work out their gender identity.
“Everybody has the right to be who they want to be and I completely understand that there’s a huge amount of pain and hurt around this whole subject. But I passionately believe in free speech, and social media name‑calling and hurling of abuse are no substitute for careful, considered debate about how we negotiate women’s rights and transgender people’s rights.” Ominously, free speech is being curtailed. Last week, transgender campaigners demanded that her invitation to speak at an event being held as part of the Oxford International Women’s Festival be rescinded or they would boycott the occasion and mount a protest outside. It was the evening before the event; the organisers quiesced. This may sound like a storm in a scholarly teacup, but make no mistake, it is a full‑frontal assault on wider democratic freedoms. This week Amber Rudd, the former home secretary, was also no‑platformed by Oxford University students, who cancelled the UN Women Oxford society event she was due to speak at without telling her.
She had planned to deliver a speech encouraging young women to get involved in politics. But her links to the 2018 Windrush scandal caused such outcry that the organiser pulled the plug – too late to let Rudd know. Humiliatingly, she turned up to an empty hall.
‘The onslaught can be upsetting and isolating’
“I find it very frightening that there’s this new idea that women can be just shut down, silenced,” says Prof Todd, who is married to Andrew Davies, professor of social history at Liverpool University. “That should worry us all.”
For her part, Prof Todd has links to the campaign group Woman’s Place UK, which was recently labelled a “trans‑exclusionary hate group” by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights, despite the fact it welcomes transgender people to its meetings.
Yet another disturbing fact about her no‑platforming was that she wasn’t due to speak on transgender issues, but was none the less barred, reflecting a worrying trend that sees perfectly mainstream views being condemned as dangerously phobic.
Last December, JK Rowling drew fire for publicly supporting tax expert Maya Forstater, who was sacked after expressing her view that “men cannot become women”. A landmark employment tribunal ruling found that no one has the right to question whether a transgender person is a man or a woman.
This sparked the hashtag campaign I stand with maya and prompted the Harry Potter author to post: “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #Istandwithmaya #Thisisnotadrill.”
Transgender women, who were born male, want the legal right to use female‑only facilities – loos, changing rooms, women’s refuges and prisons. In an argument free of nuance, anyone who is not with them is deemed to be against them.
They also want to compete in women’s sport, which is why rugby chiefs, for example, are examining their transgender policies in a bid to provide clarity. Some increasingly noisy sections of the transgender lobby insist that self‑identification, rather than medical treatment,
‘Social media abuse is no substitute for careful, considered debate’
is sufficient for someone to be deemed female.
It was this sort of strident insistence that fed into the catastrophic decision by prison authorities to send Karen White, who was legally still a man and hadn’t undergone any surgery, to a women’s jail. A convicted paedophile and on remand for grievous bodily harm, burglary, multiple rapes and other sexual offences against women, White went on to sexually assault two other inmates.
Such instances are extreme examples, but they reflect an alarming tendency among institutions to succumb to the pressure exerted by the few – which can undermine the safety of the many.
“In a democracy, we recognise that sometimes fairness is hard to achieve, and compromise is always necessary,” says Prof Todd, whose next book, Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth, will be published later this year.
“The issue of transgender identity is relatively new and we need to talk about it; it can’t just be down to women suddenly being expected or forced to relinquish their hard‑fought‑for safe spaces.
“Unfortunately, there’s not much substance behind the shouting that’s going on from the no‑platforming lobby.”
It’s an emotive subject and boundaries are being pushed. For the average citizen it can be hard to understand why long‑held principles are being disputed. Take British journalist Fred Mcconnell, born a woman, who transitioned to become a man but kept his reproductive organs in order to conceive a child and give birth. He recently lost a lengthy court battle to be recognised as the father of his son, rather than the mother, and plans to appeal the decision.
In the current climate, it’s a brave commentator who would question his motives or mindset. It’s that sort of creeping self‑censorship that Prof Todd and her peers are seeking to challenge. She is due to appear at further events, including one at the University of Kent, which has already met with opposition, again from trans activists, even though she would be discussing her biography of the late pioneering playwright, Shelagh Delaney.
“This has all been difficult,” Prof Todd admits. “The onslaught from keyboard warriors on social media can be upsetting and isolating, but I am proud to belong to a history faculty that supports women’s history.
“I’m just the latest generation of a feminist movement that leads back to Mary Wollstonecraft and our strength comes from being part of a collective. I need to speak out, to keep speaking out.”
It is in all our interests that she does.