At the beginning of June, as a result of the introduction of the Higher Education Act, Professor Arif Ahmed of the University of Cambridge was appointed as the Office for Students “First Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom”. This move was welcomed with a level of tentative hope by academics in the anxious corridors of UK universities, where the freedom to speak has been a tenuous and fragile concept for many years — on the issue of sex and gender in particular. Some female academics, who have been brave enough to speak out on the trans issue, will see it as a vital move that, sadly, comes too late for them and their academic careers.

Prof Ahmed feels his new role is essential to ensuring democracy, saying:

There are urgent threats to free speech and academic freedom in our universities. We must use all means necessary to address them. New legislation means universities and colleges must promote, and take steps to secure, academic and free speech within the law. Free speech for one side is not free speech at all. Free speech for all benefits all sides.

Meanwhile, just a week later at Oxford University, Professor Matt Cook was appointed the first Professor of LGBTQ+ History. Cook promptly declared that the appointment of Arif Ahmed is simply “fanning the flames of the culture war”. Professor Cook thinks the role of Professor Ahmed, which guarantees that other academics will be able to espouse views he may not agree with, is undesirable and unnecessary.

The future envisaged by Matt Cook as inevitable is anything but

Cook even implies that there is no issue for anyone in being able to speak freely other than for a “tiny fraction”. “It’s only a tiny fraction of cases where people actually don’t speak,” he says. “So my sense is that it’s not a huge problem.”

The tiny minority of cases of free speech curtailment which Matt Cook dismisses as irrelevant appear to be almost solely women. It seems that if Matt can’t hear dissenting women in large numbers, it must be because they aren’t really interested in speaking, and all the others must simply agree with him. As Victoria Smith said of Cook, “he’s like the man who thinks the toilet cleans itself”.

Ahmed and Cook have both stated they don’t want to engage in the “culture war”. Both of these professors need to acknowledge that the battle against aggressive trans activism isn’t a war over culture; it is a defence of women’s rights according to UK law. Women aren’t a “culture” — we are a sex. Our rights are not “cultural”; they are essential to our safety, privacy and dignity as female people.

Cook takes the view that our current situation, debating women’s rights and the inevitable clash with demands for trans rights, will be seen as a curiosity ten years from now. His argument is a version of the popular chant “you’re on the wrong side of history”. I don’t think Matt has been keeping up as history is being made for women. I don’t think he has seen the integrity and determination of many of the women fighting back. Change is coming, and the future envisaged by Matt Cook as inevitable is anything but.

Cook offers the example of Kathleen Stock as a woman who did get to speak and without difficulty. Professor Cook feels this demonstrates the fact that any woman can speak on the topic of gender identity. He neglects to consider how many women have had to campaign relentlessly alongside Kath Stock, for many years, to ensure her right to speak. Silence, self-evidently, is not loud or boastful. You don’t hear silenced women. Not every woman with Stock’s views can stride into a university surrounded by burly security guards enabling her right to speak. Sometimes women cower, heads bowed in seminars, afraid to raise their voice against the trans activist bullies making themselves very comfortable there. Some of these women are poor, working class — possibly also black or minority ethnic, too — and they know that they will be paying a hefty financial price in their future for a vital degree to help them escape their roots which were bound in poverty and discrimination. They look at what happens to women far more rich, powerful and protected than they are, and they think twice before saying anything at all on the topic of sex and gender identity.

Who can blame them? Arif Ahmed will need to work hard to ensure there is a political change in universities so that those women can say what they really believe and say it with the certain knowledge that they will not be penalised or bullied. Cook’s point is the equivalent of pointing to Beyonce and saying there are no obstacles to wealth and success for any black woman. It is utter nonsense. He simply doesn’t know the names of the thousands of women in academia, both students and academics, who are hounded into silence.

Cook would be right in saying that some of us aren’t silenced, but he doesn’t seem to understand the risks we take — risks to our physical safety, our financial stability, our employment and our personal relationships. Many women have had to be incredibly brave challenging their own institutions, employers, political parties and social groups. These women have moved the national position on debating trans rights, from the oppressive “no debate” to a “tiny fraction” of women being able to speak and write on the issue. Suzanne Moore was chased from The Guardian, and Hadley Freeman followed her. These are fabulous writers with views deemed “transphobic”. Kath Stock was bullied out of her university. Women watch all of this closely before deciding it is prudent to hold their tongue.

Matt Cook has also neglected to consider the power of the UCU on this topic. If an academic or student would like protection for expressing their view that single sex services for women according to the Equality Act are essential and that trans-identified men are not women, it would be a foolish woman indeed who relied on the UCU to defend her freedom of speech. Jo Grady the secretary is a staunch advocate of trans rights. Their current policy is heavy-handed and inflexible, rather than balancing views that would protect a woman’s right to believe differently than Grady herself does.

These examples keep hundreds of other women silent and afraid

Cook seems determined to obfuscate, even deny the importance of, some very concrete examples of targeted silencing in academia today of women with views he doesn’t agree with. Perhaps he needs reminding of them and why these examples keep hundreds of other women silent and afraid.

Professor Selina Todd was sufficiently threatened by trans activist bullies, who targeted her for speaking out, that Oxford University appointed security guards to protect her during lectures as they couldn’t guarantee her safety. A woman was unable to do her job because people didn’t like what she believed about gender identity. It is unfathomable that Matt Cook would see this as something to dismiss. It is essential that women like Selina have advocacy within academic institutions and that other women are aware of it.

Professor Jo Phoenix of the Open University resigned from her post. She is taking her employers to tribunal as she alleges she was bullied from post for expressing her views on sex and gender and for seeking to conduct appropriate research. Jo is a Professor of Criminology with a specialism in sex, gender and justice. She told me:

… the idea that there is a tiny fraction of examples is part of the problem. The “tiny fraction” to which Matt Cook refers are most likely some of the most egregious and clearly unlawful examples there are. As my experience demonstrates — both at Essex University and The Open University — what is being attacked is anyone who disagrees and anyone who asks genuine, research driven, questions about whether sexed bodies might matter more than gender identity in social life, governmental and social policy.

Dr Shonagh Dillon, a women’s sector professional with over 30 years’ experience working with women who have experienced male violence, successfully defended her PHD thesis in 2021, titled “Terf/Bigot/Transphobe — we found the witch burn her!”. Subsequently 19 academics at Portsmouth University signed a letter of complaint about her award and attempted to have her PHD questioned on ethical grounds. She was not informed of the accusation. These grounds were dismissed, and Dr Dillon was vindicated in the validity of her degree research methods and ethics. She told me:

My experience of doing my PHD was to keep a very low profile so as not to enable trans activists to prevent my research. Instead, they came for me after being awarded my doctorate, with the overt tactic of targeting the academics who had supported my right to academic freedom. The lengths ideologues within academia will go to, in order to prevent dissenting views being expressed, is utterly chilling.

The Grande Dame of being silenced, including in academic circles, is the esteemed journalist and women’s rights campaigner Julie Bindel, who scoffed angrily when I asked about Matt Cook’s assertion that there really isn’t an issue of no-platforming on the trans issue. Bindel has spoken on the clash between women’s rights and trans demands for twenty years come next January. She reminded me she has been no-platformed more than twice a year since she first spoke out. She estimates she has been prevented from publicly speaking at least 50 times. That doesn’t include all of the dis-invitations, the rescinding of invitations publicly, the pickets and horribly violent demonstrations she has had to walk through on the rare occasions when organisations didn’t cave to the trans bullies.

Julie Bindel was on her own for many years, feeling isolated, threatened and ostracised. She carried on regardless, withstanding some appalling manipulation from trans activists at times. Women willing to publicly speak out now number in the thousands but imagine being a young female student, who hasn’t yet connected with other dissenting women, in a packed lecture theatre full of be-pronouned, blue haired, non-binary loud mouths chanting the mantra “trans women are women” — and at that point daring to raise your hand. Hopefully Arif Ahmed will do more than pay lip service to the need to guarantee that student the right to say “hang on, I don’t agree with that”. She needs a union who will back her right to do so.

If Matt Cook doesn’t know that women are being studiously quiet within the walls of academia, it is because he is not interested in hearing them speak. That makes him no better than the bullies who try to prevent them if they do.