Editor’s note: This article was written before the Supreme Court ruling on 16 April.
Introduction
On 26 March the higher education regulator, the Office for Students, announced that it was fining the University of Sussex the record sum of £585,000 for “failing to uphold freedom of speech” on campus.
The fine related to the case of Professor Kathleen Stock, who resigned from her role at the university in 2021 after being accused of transphobia for her gender-critical views. In its judgement, the OfS described the university’s policy statement on trans and non-binary equality as potentially leading to staff and students being prevented from expressing opposing views. The vice chancellor of Sussex described the judgement as an “unreasonably absolutist definition of free speech” which the university is planning to appeal.
In the following opinion piece, Dr Natacha Kennedy, a trans woman academic at Goldsmith’s College, London, argues passionately against the judgement handed down by the OfS.
The recent judgement by the Office for Students (OfS) imposing a £585,000 fine on Sussex University is perverse. Sussex University was fined in part for having a policy that stated “transphobic propaganda [would] not be tolerated” and condemned for wanting lecturers to “positively represent trans people”.
One can only surmise that the OfS wants transphobic propaganda to be tolerated, and trans people to be negatively represented. It is this last one that is the most revealing – do they want us negatively represented just for existing? At root, anti-trans rhetoric is about criticising us just for being who we are, just for existing, and, from my perspective, it seems the OfS thinks that is OK.
I found the response from Bridget Phillipson, the Education Minister, even more concerning: “If you go to university you must be prepared to have your views challenged, hear contrary opinions and be exposed to uncomfortable truths.” What is the uncomfortable truth, Bridget? That I should not exist…?
Trans people are not “opinions” nor “views” – we are people, we exist and have done for millennia. I would argue that mainstream media already churns out far more transphobic rhetoric and abuse than it focuses on the perspectives of transpeople themselves. Does Phillipson think trans people have never heard transphobic opinions before? If so, which planet is she on? Maybe she has already beaten Elon Musk to Mars…?
Trans people are discriminated against and lack power
Trans people are already one of the groups that is most discriminated against. In 2023, the year a trans girl was murdered and just before, another was seriously assaulted, while mainstream media published 6500 articles about us, that’s 18 a day, most of them hostile, almost none of them written by trans people. Yet somehow the government has decided that it is transphobes who need to have more “free speech”, and trans people need to be silenced more, presumably because the transphobes’ total domination of the media – with trans people hermetically excluded – is not enough.
Organised transphobia is a top-down activity, imposed by the powerful on the powerless; just look at Donald Trump. And few groups come as powerless as trans people. In my view the OfS is part of this top-down practice, as is mainstream media and much of the political establishment. It seems to me that the goal of the OfS is to force universities to become hostile environments for trans students and academics like myself; that is real silencing.
Its actions will target one of the most marginalised groups in the country while powerful and well-funded – mostly by the far right – transphobic groups, cosplaying victimhood, use the OfS to threaten universities to make them ever more hostile for us. Why do I get the feeling that my firmly-held anti-gender-critical beliefs will not be protected by the OfS?
So why are they doing this?
In my view the underlying issue is that the “gender-critical” rhetoric that the media, the government, transphobic groups and establishment is attempting to force on society is a thin, weak and fragile set of claims. This is why trans people have to be kept out of the media and why they want us out of universities; to protect this fragile rhetoric from criticism. Their claims about us are all easily discredited, which is also why they have to continually silence us. That’s what this is all about. Hermetically excluding us from mainstream media is now no longer enough, they cannot afford any gaps.
What is more concerning however, as this article by Nafez Ahmed in Byline Times shows, is that this is the wedge end of an even wider agenda by the OfS to turn universities into places where things like ‘race science’, eugenics and white nationalism attain respectability amongst the next generation’s elite.
Transphobia is the problem, not trans people
What the transphobes want is for trans people and our allies to stop criticising them and ultimately to stop existing. Yet if trans people are to be exposed to criticism for just existing, Bridget Phillipson and the transphobes should at the very least be criticised for their anti-trans attitudes. That is the difference here. They want to criticise us for existing, while we want to criticise them for their rhetoric. Looked at that way, our criticism of them is considerably more valid as free speech than theirs. The problem is transphobia not trans people.
For myself, however, I can guarantee that I will continue to publish academic research that challenges organised transphobia wherever it comes from. I will not moderate my academic output for the OfS and will speak out against transphobia wherever and whenever I can.
The solution to bullying is always to stand up to it, even when it comes from the government.
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