When the Daily Mail found out that I, along with other Oxford activists, had protested against Dame Jenni Murray’s Oxford Literary Festival talk because she had written that trans women are not “real women”, we were met with mockery. After all, who would dare question the views of a renowned feminist with 30 years of experience hosting Woman’s Hour?



However, this is exactly why I had to join the protest. I was angry that Murray felt she could present an unbiased history of women, and that Oxford University, home to a thriving LGBT+ student community, was willing to give her a platform unopposed.

People of different genders attended the protest, and included other students, members of the local community and academics. We hung a banner in the theatre stating that trans women are real women. This was a direct and simple statement, chosen to show solidarity with the trans community and raise awareness amongst Murray’s audience that Oxford does not welcome transphobic remarks. After security asked us to take the banner down, we moved outside and stood with placards talking to curious passers-by.

Demonstrators at Jenni Murray’s talk at the Oxford Literary Festival, March 2017. Photograph: Kat Glover

Surprisingly, attendees of the event had positive reactions to the protest. Although a few were unwilling to engage, many people were receptive to discussion and stayed to chat with us. Some raised their concerns about Murray’s remarks, and were unaware of the harm that transphobia can do. “Even just having the signs there for people to read makes a difference if it prompts people to consider the plight of trans people,” says Frey Kwa Hawking, a trans undergraduate student who attended the protest.

In her article, Murray said she was “diving headfirst into deep and dangerous water”, apparently totally unaware that trans women do not have the luxury to just opt in or out of this debate. The effects of the argument are not divorced from reality. According to studies, 38% of trans people have experienced physical intimidation and threats, and there was a 170% rise in reported transphobic hate crime reports between 2011 and 2016.

“The majority of the violence we face is because we are indeed seen as men, and failed ones at that,” says a trans woman who helped organise the protest. “When I heard that Jenni Murray had been invited to speak uncontested on women’s history, it felt like a slap in the face – a reminder that our womanhood and the violence we experience is always erased”.

Protestors outside Jenni Murray’s Oxford Literary Festival talk, March 2017 Photograph: Kat Glover

By protesting, I am questioning what kind of feminist can add to the harm and misunderstanding that trans women face. Ironically, it’s the student activists that have been portrayed as out of touch with the real world. Actually, as will become clear, Jenni Murray is on the wrong side of history. Students have historically been at the forefront of social change. Students were core members of campaigns designed to challenge public perceptions about gay rights in US universities, leading up to the Stonewall riot and the birth of the modern gay rights movement in 1969.

Oxford University’s Womens Campaign says that “trans women have lived their lives as women, just with different experiences of what it is to be a woman”. Murray has, to an extent, thought about the differences in experiences between different women, and this is worthwhile. But evidence is mounting up that we are not all shaped in the same way by the same experiences, and so there is no universal experience of womanhood that only cis women can make claim to.

Jenni Murray’s comments reflect an outdated viewpoint on gender, and should be questioned no matter what gender you identify as. Far from repressing freedom of expression, today’s student feminist activists encompass a group of compassionate and critical individuals who are challenging existing views. After all, isn’t that what university trains us to do?



This article was amended at 22:42 on 14 April 2017 to correct a grammatical error in the first sentence.

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