Literary festival criticised for including straight gender-critical speaker in LGBTQ+ section

The Oxford Literary Festival has been criticised for advertising a heterosexual, cis, gender-critical campaigner as part of its LGBTQ+ line-up.

Helen Joyce, the author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality and a director at gender-critical campaigning organisation Sex Matters, is slated to appear at the festival, sponsored by The Telegraph, on 2 April 2025.

During an hour-long event, titled Trans: Gender Identity and the New Battle for Women’s Rights’, she is due to discuss her book with fellow gender-critical campaigner Julie Bindel, who is co-founder and co-director of The Lesbian Project.

The event description states: “Gender-critical journalist and feminist campaigner Helen Joyce talks about her Sunday Times best-selling book on the transgender debate.

“Joyce offers an analysis of a world in which biological sex is no longer accepted as a fact of life. Joyce says she accepts that trans rights should mean compassionate concessions that allow a suffering minority to live in safety and dignity. However, she argues against gender-identity ideology, the idea that people should count as men or women depending on how they identify, rather than their biology.”

Both Joyce and Bindel have made contentious claims over the years, with the former making headlines in 2022 by saying: “While we’re trying to get through to the decision-makers, we have to try to limit the harm and that means reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition.

“That’s for two reasons: one is that every one of those people is a person who’s been damaged. But the second one is every one of those people is basically a huge problem to a sane world.”

A number of people have taken to social media to criticise the Oxford festival for including Helen Joyce in a list of “LGBTQ+” speakers, with some even calling for a boycott.

Lecturer Dr Natacha Kennedy described it as a “Mickey Mouse event” and noted that no trans people were scheduled to speak.

Trans woman Sophie Molly, who stood as an independent candidate at the general election in July – winning more votes than another anti-trans campaigner, Posie Parker – revealed that she had written a letter of complaint to the festival organisers, in which she labelled Joyce and Bindel’s rhetoric “hostile and hurtful.”

Molly went on to say: “The Oxford Literary Festival prides itself on being an inclusive and progressive event that celebrates diverse voices and fosters an open dialogue. However, by offering a platform to individuals to actively engage in transphobic discourse, the festival risks undermining its commitment to inclusivity and equality.

“The presence of such individuals can contribute to a climate of hostility and further marginalise already-vulnerable communities.”

She called on the organisers to reconsider the inclusion of Joyce and Bindel.

Calling for a boycott, Tom Coates said people such as Joyce and Bindel “do not represent our community” and pointed out that there are high levels of support for transgender men and women among LGB people.

“If you were planning to go, or asked to speak, please take the opportunity to call them out, register your disgust and protest in person,” he urged. “The more cis people who stand up before their talks and make it clear they stand with trans people, the better.”

Meanwhile, LGBTQ+ activist and doctoral researcher Thomas Willett wrote: “Helen Joyce is not an expert on trans issues and gender identity. Her background is in mathematics, and she authored a book filled with conspiracy theories. Non-experts shouldn’t be given large platforms when trans people and experts are de-platformed from sharing their expertise.”

Several other social media users also expressed their dissatisfaction with the line-up.

One said it is a “shameful and disgusting maligning of our community” adding that Section 28 has long been abandoned and “someone should tell Oxford Literary Festival [that] LGBTQ+ people can speak for ourselves”.

Another complained: “I don’t what’s happened to @oxfordlitfest over the [past] few years, but having a panel on trans people that is exclusively made up of cis conspiracy theorists is really tasteless.”

PinkNews has contacted Helen Joyce, Julie Bindel and the Oxford Literary Festival for comment.