The demonisation of Kathleen Stock

It had been billed as the most controversial debate of the year, with even Rishi Sunak intervening to say that Kathleen Stock, who had been invited to the Oxford Union, should not be no-platformed. But if you were sitting in the Union’s debating chamber on Tuesday evening – as I was – the huge kerfuffle seemed baffling. For an hour and a half, the former philosophy professor talked almost exclusively about toilets.

To be fair, she was given little choice. It was more of an interview than a debate, in which the president of the union fired questions at her. Roughly 90 per cent of them were about women’s lavatories. In particular, he wanted to know why she objected to trans women being allowed to use ‘the ladies’. Professor Stock patiently explained that trans activists don’t just want men who have fully transitioned to be able to access women’s spaces, including refuge centres, but any man who self-identifies as a woman, even a great hairy brute.