Why I’ll continue to fight against the trans ‘heterodoxy’ on campus

Transgender activists gather outside NSW Parliament House last week.

Almost a month ago, I wrote to the vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Duncan Maskell, and asked him to do something about the poster and sticker campaign being conducted against me on campus.

It had been going on for close to two months, with the only word from the university’s senior leadership coming from the dean of arts, Russell Goulbourne, whose earlier email to all staff might best be described as pouring petrol on an already blazing fire.

My sin was to attend a women’s rights rally, hosted by charismatic British women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen. This rally was subsequently described by a majority of media outlets in Australia as “anti-trans”. I refused to denounce Keen – and still do – or accept the rally had anything to do with the National Socialist Network members who showed up in the same location, probably to hijack the media attention garnered by the rally and counter protest.

Like previous years – I have been the university’s accused “transphobe” for more than four years now – the poster campaign targeted my second-year philosophy course, titled Feminism.

Holly Lawford-Smith. Picture: David Geraghty.

But unlike previous years, the current campaign has targeted me personally by name, and targeted any student who might consider taking the course, with the imperative: “Do not support fascists and bigots/Boycott this subject.” Students taking my classes were forced to walk past these posters, into the buildings and lecture theatres where I teach.

Despite my request for help, Professor Maskell did nothing, except pass my email along to the provost, who in turn also did nothing. But an act of vandalism against university property last Thursday night finally proved a step too far, prompting a sternly worded email from Professor Maskell to the university community, including the line “this type of behaviour is completely unacceptable and stands in direct opposition to the values we hold as a university”. Activists had smashed several glass walls in the front of the Sidney Myer Building on Swanston Street, accompanied by graffiti The Australian earlier reported as “words to the effect ‘Trans – we are not safe’ ”.

But they are safe, actually. In fact, they are trans in one of the most supportive university campuses, in one of the most supportive states in a country that is comparatively advanced when it comes to LGBTQIA+ rights. Indeed, Victoria has statutory self-identification for change of legal sex, laws prohibiting attempts to change or suppress a person’s gender identity, anti-discrimination protections for gender identity, and is now poised to introduce new anti-vilification laws for transgender people in the next year and a half.

Duncan Maskell

And yet there is precisely one “out” gender-critical feminist on campus, and there is precisely one subject dealing with sex/gender issues in a way that focuses squarely on female people. There are many more who take the “gender studies” approach, focusing on everyone affected by what tends to be called, non-confrontationally, “the gender system”.

On Monday, the University of Melbourne branch of the National Tertiary Education Union sent an email out in support of the window-smashers, saying: “To those who take a stand against transphobia, you have the unequivocal support of your union. Protest and activism have been the catalyst for change throughout history.

We would not have the rights we have today without people who were willing to stand up and act”. But the “transphobia” described here is simply believing that gender identity doesn’t supersede sex for all purposes. It doesn’t involve fear, or hatred, or discrimination against trans people. It doesn’t involve denying rights and protections to trans people. It involves pointing out that your gender identity is something distinct from your sex, and that distinction matters. That’s not something anyone needs to “stand up and act” against. On the contrary, the NTEU email borders on incitement, vilifying ordinary people who want to see a reasonable compromise to the conflict of rights between sex and gender identity, and encouraging further aggressive actions in the name of an unreasonable cause.

So far, the activists have not succeeded in having the Feminism course withdrawn, or having me removed from my position. In fact, there have been more new enrolments than withdrawals since the poster and sticker campaign began. My lawyers have helped me fight off spurious and unjustified complaints. But having to supply security to ensure a course can run is surely unappealing to a budget-conscious upper management. This comes as the university recently announced an LGBTQIA+ Inclusion Action Plan that gives students greater pathways to lodging grievances against curriculums they don’t like – so the writing may be on the wall for my course.

It’s hard to guess how many staff and students have watched what’s happened to me this semester, noted the failure of the senior leadership to take any serious action and made the decision to suppress their own views, lest they confront similar treatment. It’s also hard to assess the damage this could do to people’s trust in the university as an institution, whether that is the trust of members of the university community, or members of the wider public following the reporting of these events.

Anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen leaves the Let Women Speak rally.

In my view academic freedom exists for a reason. Part of that reason is to offer protection to those who would critique prevailing orthodoxies, even when everyone around them maintains those orthodoxies as the absolute and incontrovertible truth. It has been harder to see this in the case of trans activism, because it styles itself as a progressive heterodoxy, fighting against a “cisnormative” orthodoxy. Trans activism may be heterodox, but it is not progressive.

It is the old misogyny and homophobia in a new dress. I’ll continue to use my academic freedom to expose it. My hope is the university I work at allows me to do so.

Holly Lawford-Smith is an associate professor of political philosophy at the University of Melbourne.