Why University of Melbourne must shut down No Conflict They Said website

Public funds and platforms using taxpayer resources should not be used by small self-interested groups to spread bigoted hate and transphobia.

Holly Lawford-Smith. Picture: David Geraghty

Women who only want to be with other women are coming into conflict with men who are turning into women.

University of Melbourne Philosophy academic Holly Lawford-Smith, who started a website called No Conflict They Said, is offering a transphobic portrayal of transgender people as not real women.

She wants sex to be defined according to biology, not gender identity.

This turns the clock back on decades of hard-won reforms by the LGBTQI+ community.

Transgender people are among some of the most disadvantaged, marginalised and misunderstood in our community and the last thing they need is an anonymous hate space.

The website, says Lawford-Smith, is “worried about the impacts on women of men using women-only spaces”.

“Please tell us how your use of women-only spaces has been impacted.”

To date, only three people have taken up Lawford-Smith’s challenge.

One was a woman who objected to a man “in no way presenting as female and his very large male track-suited frame felt slightly intimidating” attending a women’s only Narcotics Anonymous group.

“This man spent his time talking about his feelings as a woman and how his acceptance by everyone there validated his womanliness.”

The woman who wrote it said she was “a bisexual woman and have a previous partner who has since transitioned who I fully support in their choice” who has also “dated both butch and femme lesbians and I’ve known quite a few trans-identified people in my time”.

Well, you’d think she’d be a bit more understanding then, wouldn’t you?

The second – who mentions she has a friend who is a trans woman - talks about an encounter with “a rather badly passing trans woman, possibly transvestite, aggressively threaten me and my friend” in a bathroom.

This sort of characterisation is highly offensive to members of the trans community.

The third talked of how a man with a split personality called “Tinkerbell” violated her women-only drug treatment facility.

The site also has links to other groups calling for transgender men to be kept out of women’s sport, the “Coalition of Biological Reality” and the Victorian Women’s Guild which objects the children being given puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria.

It’s a rag-tag mob of misfits spreading misinformation and distorting truths.

Public funds and platforms using taxpayer resources should not be used by small self-interested groups to spread bigoted hate and transphobia.

The university should act to have Lawford-Smith’s website removed because it is a clear contravention of its appropriate workplace policy.

I also hate to think how vulnerable young trans students would feel if they came across a website like this.

This is no scholarly work – it’s a hateful attempt to shut out some of the most marginal people in our community.

Men who are transitioning don’t magically appear one day as perfectly formed females.

There is often an uncomfortable period of transition where they don’t fit into either gender category.

They need support and understanding, not hate, particularly from those who are part of their own community.