A new major trans pride coalition of over 100 community activists and ten local organisations will come together to protest Kathleen Stock’s invitation to speak at the Oxford Union on the 30th May, The Oxford Student can reveal.
Oxford Trans+ Pride will be “a vocal protest for trans rights in which all of the city’s LGBTQ+ community and its allies will come together to stand in solidarity with our trans siblings who are under attack”. The event’s date coincides with notable gender-critical feminist Stock’s appearance.
Oxford Trans+ Pride has been organised by a large group of volunteers and funded by the Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society, the University’s largest student society. The event will be supported by a plethora of significant organisations, including the Student Union’s LGBT+ Campaign, the local LGBT+ pub The Jolly Farmers, and Oxford Against Conversion Therapy.
The Pride will begin in Lincoln College at 2pm, with two panels consisting of trans, nonbinary, gender non-conforming and intersex speakers.
The first panel will be titled “Between Free Speech and Hate Speech”, and will discuss the potential issues of platforming what the group calls “hateful” speakers.
The second panel will be titled “Trans+ Joy Across Generations” and will feature speakers discussing what the concept of trans+ joy means to them.
The panels will be followed by a protest at Bonn Square at 4pm, where the coalition will protest for trans rights and show support for all members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
The group will then march to the Oxford Union at 4:40pm and hold a vocal festival centred around the “joy, power and visibility” of trans, nonbinary, gender non-conforming and intersex people, with music, drag queens, dancing, and what the group has termed “colourful, unavoidable visibility.”
The decision to launch Oxford Trans+ Pride follows a controversial decision by the Oxford Union to invite Stock to speak on the 30th of May on trans rights.
The Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society tweeted a statement following the invitation, which was retweeted by Stock herself, alleging defamation. This led to over a million views of the statement on Twitter, with thousands of hateful comments being directed towards members of the society.
Reporting by the Telegraph highlighted personal details and political views of the society’s President and Vice President, Addi Haran Diman and Zoë-Rose Guy. Diman’s phone number and other personal details were also shared on the Twitter thread, which led to a higher number of threats.
Soon after Stock retweeted the statement, the society’s committee, which had been newly inducted, removed ‘Meet the Committee’ posts from social media for fear of retribution.
In a Standing Committee meeting at the Union, Union President Matthew Dick was asked about the surge of threatening messages towards the LGBTQ society. Dick responded, “I don’t feel a responsibility with regard to any wider thing”, while also repeatedly stating that he “[was not] going to rescind the invitation.”
Diman said, “[a]t a time when trans people in Oxford are under unprecedented and alarming attacks by a national movement of transphobes and trans-exclusionary radicals, we must come together to cherish trans power and celebrate trans joy. There is nothing more powerful, and nothing that transphobic propagandists hate more, than this kind of visibility.”
In comments made to The Oxford Student, Diman also revealed that they are “planning on bringing together all LGBTQ societies in a new ‘Oxford Queer Network’ which will help all [LGBTQ+] societies to get more funding, and will help publicize societies which Oxford students might not have heard of.”
With additional reporting by Daisy Outram.
