How the Oxford Literary Festival went down

Just three years after my book came out, finally a literary event dared invite me to talk about it

Last Wednesday I spoke to a full house at the Sheldonian, the largest venue in the Oxford Literary Festival (OLF). The idea of inviting me came from Gary Francione, a professor of law and philosophy (and committed vegan – that, not sex’n’gender, is his main thing). I’ve just looked back through my emails, and I was surprised to see how long ago it was that he contacted me – last July – to ask if, in principle, I’d do an event. He then proposed it to the organisers, who said Yes.

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I told Gary that I have been invited to quite a few serious events over the past few years, only for the invitation to be rescinded when the organisers realised that contrary to their expectations it was impossible to find someone suitable with opposing views to mine who was willing to share a platform. In every case I briefed the organisers beforehand that this was a distinct possibility and urged them to empty-chair the other side if it happened and go ahead. Instead they generally dropped me and gave up entirely on the event – which is obviously what the other side wanted. It has been incredibly frustrating. 

The only time I shared a platform with genuine trans-rights advocates, it was an even more depressing experience. That was at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which was launching a report written by a staff member (he’s since moved on), and I said Yes to participating under the mistaken impression that it was just me and the author (this was entirely my fault – the email said clearly they were planning a panel; I just didn’t read carefully enough). And so when the organisers got back to me to say the other participants were Freda Wallace and Peter Tatchell, I felt I had no choice but to go ahead.

I whined at significant length both before and after that event about the injustice of having to share a platform with “rent-a-gobs like Tatchell and cartoonish trolls like Wallace, who in any just world would never be platformed”. But when I had already said yes, and they had already been invited, it was too late to do anything about it. All I was able to do was brief the organisers about my concerns. The event is on YouTube, and I think it was on balance a win for Operation Let Them Speak – but I didn’t fancy a repeat. I also think we have moved past the point where serious people have to accept being paired with malevolent clowns to be able to get an audience.

DEBATE: Does transgender ideology threaten liberal values?

So I told Gary I wasn’t willing to share a platform with Wallace, Tatchell or Sophie Grace Chappell. (If you don’t know why not Chappell, read this.) I added that I would only appear with someone who had played some role in embedding gender-identity ideology in intellectual and public life, whether that is as an author, a policymaker, a politician or a campaigner. No malevolent clowns, no ignorant self-publicists, nobody whom it would be an insult to foist on an intelligent, cultured paying audience.

And then Gary started to send out invitations. To people currently and previously involved with Stonewall and other similar groups. To authors. To politicians. And they all either said No or didn’t bother to reply. Some said they were out of the country for the entire period of the festival – this was many months in advance, it’s one of the biggest and best-known book festivals in the UK, and the organisers would have accommodated literally any time slot in its nine days. In the end, they had to admit defeat on having a “balanced” panel. I would have put money in advance on this outcome.

What was eventually decided was to provide balance by offering a separate event in the same venue to one of the people who said he wouldn’t share a platform with me, philosopher Constantine Sandis, co-author of a new book, “Real Gender: A Cis Defence of Trans Realities”. Sandis said he wanted to appear with Chappell, and that was agreed. It was moderated by Diarmaid MacCulloch, an academic historian. 

I know nothing about MacCulloch. Chappell’s book “Trans Figured: On Being a Transgender Person in a Cisgender World” is atrocious – I don’t think anything of such abysmal quality would be accepted by a serious publisher if it weren’t scrabbling around for something to publish by someone trans. I’m told that Sandis has done serious philosophical work on other topics, but “Real Gender” is terrible. Audiences seemed to agree – there were apparently fewer than 100 people in their audience – around 10% capacity. My event sold out within 24 hours of tickets being released, so if Sandis had actually wanted to reach a wider audience he would have done much better to accept the original invitation. 

I can’t say I’m too sorry, because it was so much nicer being interviewed by Julie Bindel – pictured with me above, picture taken by Milli Hill – than having to rebut circular arguments and total misrepresentations of what I and other gender-critical women think (I really don’t know how he manages it, but Sandis somehow seems to think that our side are gender essentialists).

I didn’t know what to expect on the day regarding protests, either inside or outside the venue. In the event there was only a half-hearted, minimally attended protest outside that packed up about halfway through. Inside the atmosphere was joyous, and if there was anyone who loathes me they didn’t say so.

Every event I do I learn something new, often by being asked a question. This time it was a question from a young woman who asked what she could do about the cowardice and ideological capture of her university’s lecturers and senior managers. She and other young women who dissent from trans ideology, she said, are either bullied and ostracised or stay entirely silent because they know what will happen if they don’t. They know they will be marked down and sometimes even disciplined unless they regurgitate gender-identity positions. Afterwards, I talked to other young people at drinks at the excellently named Turf Tavern who said much the same thing.

I never tell young people that they should blow up their lives by “coming out” to their peers as thinking that trans people don’t change sex category. Most of those who come up to talk to me at events, or on the street, or who email me, tell me that they have never breathed a word of what they think to their peers. And judging by polling, many young people who aren’t actively outraged by trans stuff still think it is dumb beyond belief. They don’t talk about it – it mostly doesn’t arise for them, and when it does they shrug privately and ignore. 

And yet universities not only shove it down their throats, they seem to think they’re doing what young people want. It’s a classic case of preference falsification, and I don’t blame any young person who decides, quite rationally in such circumstances, not to reveal what they truly think.

There is one useful thing they can do, I said to the young woman who asked a question from the floor: wait till you’ve graduated and then write to your university vice-chancellor and head of department, and anyone else you feel was either involved in trying to indoctrinate you or should have stood against that indoctrination. Tell them that they are cowards, and don’t deserve their positions or salaries. Our institutions are infested with mediocrities and bullies who fail to defend and support independent-minded young people, so if free speech is to be won back on campus, young people are going to have to do it themselves.

Correspondents for the Telegraph and Times surprised me by both picking up my response to a question from the floor from Richard Dawkins, whom neither of them seemed to recognise. The headlines for their pieces both quoted me as saying that surgeons who perform gender surgeries on young people should be put in jail. It wasn’t really an accurate description of what happened: Dawkins asked during the Q&A when gender clinicians who had broken their Hippocratic oath would finally face consequences; my answer was “Never.” I explained that medical scandals have been tragically common throughout history, and I couldn’t think of one where those responsible were held to account, though I would be delighted if this one proved different.

Helen Webberley, who prescribes puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children younger than the NHS permits, had this to say about those writeups. I didn’t respond to her because I believe in grey-rocking, but if I had I would simply have said: “Not just surgeons, Webberley. Not just surgeons.”

She wants doctors jailed for this?! 🤯

Helen Joyce, a self-proclaimed ‘gender critic,’ has extreme views on gender-affirming surgery, despite overwhelming medical evidence that it saves lives. Dangerously crazy😵‍💫!#TransRights #LGBTQ #GenderAffirmingCare #HelenJoyce pic.twitter.com/Hd4Hq5mTTv

— Dr Helen Webberley she/her (@HelenWebberley) April 4, 2025

There’s a shorter, less personal writeup of the event in last week’s Sex Matters memo, which draws out some different points. And Julie and I recorded an episode of the Daily Telegraph’s podcast beforehand.

As I was writing this, news landed that the UK Supreme Court will be handing down its judgment in the matter of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers next Wednesday. Cue another distracting week ahead – but at least it’s before the Supreme Court rises for Easter. If we hadn’t heard that it was coming today – the court apparently always says on Thursdays what it will be handing down the following Wednesday – we would have known we would have to wait at least another three weeks.

See you on the other side!

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