Dear Editors and Delegates of Oxford University Press,

We write to you as members of the international scholarly community with a relationship of some kind, or several kinds, to Oxford University Press: as authors of books and journal articles; as reviewers of books, series, and journal articles; as series and journal editors; as translators; as instructors who order your books for our courses; and as readers. We have always valued these relationships, and we value the immense contributions the Press has made, and has enabled us to make, to scholarly conversations worldwide.

We write to express our profound disappointment at OUP’s forthcoming publication of the book Gender-Critical Feminism by Holly Lawford-Smith, a high-profile anti-trans-rights activist whose academic credentials have been thoroughly eclipsed by her public mobilization of transphobic rhetoric and bigotry with the explicit objective of denying trans people the right to live freely or to exist at all. We note that an earlier open letter to the University of Melbourne about Lawford-Smith’s anti-trans activism rightly raised “serious questions about research integrity.” In her public interviews and on her website, Lawford-Smith repeatedly describes trangender women as “men,” states that only transgender people have “gender identities” and that gender identities are not real, dismisses the transgender population as “fashionable,” and expresses support for conversion therapy, as well as other scientifically and ethically unconscionable views. Meanwhile, Lawford-Smith, through her YouTube channel and other outlets, has publicly dismissed gender-inclusive rhetoric as “propaganda” and maintained that the defense of biological sex is, in fact, a key rallying point of “gender-critical feminism.” Just last week, her home institution announced that it had to “counsel” her in response to a transphobic post on her social media account that ran “counter to the views and values of the University of Melbourne.”

The very title of her forthcoming publication with OUP is an anti-trans dog whistle: a turn of phrase designed to sound academic that serves instead as a rallying cry for people who believe that trans people do not and should not exist. This sleight of hand has allowed the anti-trans movement to claim that any refusal of their bigotry is an attack on “freedom of speech” or the “free circulation of ideas” in public and in the academy.

Responses like ours are nothing of the kind. “Gender-critical feminism” is not a scholarly field, but a coordinated polemical intervention, unsubstantiated by peer-reviewed research in the fields of gender, sexuality, queer, and trans studies, that promotes itself by the deliberate sowing of public “controversy” without being held accountable for very real and dangerous consequences of these discourses for entire demographics of human beings. By responding to the book’s forthcoming release, we do not “censor ideas” but stand firmly in support of trans people’s right to live freely, without harassment, abuse, or terrorization.

"Gender critical" discourse attempts to deny transgender rights under the guise of scholarly inquiry. While the philosophy of gender is a rich and robust field animated by legitimate disagreement, whether or not transgender people deserve the right to exist as people at all is not a matter for philosophical debate. Transgender rights are a matter of urgent political attention internationally, as policies targeting the right of trans people to live freely or at all are being drafted and passed at alarming rates. In the United States, where many of us live and work, as well as around the world, family courts are removing transgender children from their parents, citing “child abuse” using language and arguments concocted by “gender critical” discourse. This week, as part of the largest national wave of anti-transgender legislation to date, Alabama lawmakers passed a sweeping law criminalizing lifesaving, gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth—a case that will establish a model and precedent for other nations. More than a dozen states are currently considering such proposals to ban these forms of health care described by the American Medical Association as “medically necessary” and “evidence based.” News headlines alone provide staggering evidence against the outrageous “gender-critical” claim that trans people are afforded greater social status and legal protections than cis women.

The UK, where OUP is based, is known globally as an epicenter of anti-transgender policy and rhetoric. Lawford-Smith states in public interviews that she feels Australia, where she lives and works, is several years behind the UK in its approach to transgender rights, and hopes that the UK will be a model for her home country. The adoption of anti-transgender policies by UK media outlets with a legal requirement for unbiased reporting have shifted discourse away from an ethical discussion of transgender rights and towards a discourse where transphobic “gender critical” discourses can flourish. In 2020, the UK courts voted to remove access to lifesaving medication from transgender children—a move that has so far only been adopted by the most conservative of US states. A survey of 1000 employers in the UK found that only 8% believe transgender people have the same right to employment as a cisgender person. The UK government has also recently excluded trans people specifically from their proposed ban on conversion therapy. We bring these points forward to illustrate how from a national perspective this book may appear more normative within the current social discourse than it will present to a global audience.

In Australia, the government’s recently-withdrawn Religious Discrimination Bill was an attempt to enshrine in law the right to discriminate against trans people. Although this bill was withdrawn, conversion therapy remains legal in several Australian states. Trans Australians face discrimination in housing, employment, education, and healthcare. And Australian media is increasingly working to build opposition to trans rights in imitation of the UK situation.

We are deeply concerned, based on our familiarity with the widely debunked tropes of “gender critical” discourse, that Lawford-Smith’s book promotes such distorted and unsubstantiated claims. Our previous experience with Oxford University Press leads us to wonder by what possible processes of in-house review, peer review, Editorial Board review, and even copyediting an entire book under the title “Gender-Critical Feminism” could have made its way to print. As it is being marketed under both Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities on the OUP website, in the fields of Philosophy, Politics, and Sociology and specifically in the interdisciplinary fields of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, we would expect a press of OUP’s reputation to incorporate the expertise of a wide range of specialists in feminist theory and gender and sexuality studies. Is this book positioned in productive conversation with, for example, OUP’s own recent Gender: What Everyone Needs to Know, and were its authors Laura Erickson-Schroth and Benjamin Davis, invited to participate as peer reviewers? Erickson-Schroth is also the editor of Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource by and for Transgender Communities, a second edition of which is scheduled for publication in April. OUP has published the work of transgender authors in the past, and has connections to academic experts in this community should they choose to reach out. Especially given the direct invocation of trans studies in the title of Chapter 5, “Trans/Gender,” we would expect the due diligence of consultation with experts in that field, as well as rigorous copyediting by someone familiar with the editorial style guides developed by trans communities to ensure that published language does not reproduce forms of rhetorical violence directly connected to forms of systemic and material harm. Barring that, we might even simply ask, how is this text in alignment with OUP’s style guidelines for acceptable language, which asks authors to ensure that: “No form of language or expression has been used that could be interpreted by a reader as racist, sexist, derogatory of a particular religion or creed, or otherwise offensive?”

We are deeply concerned that the appearance of this book in OUP’s catalogue amounts to the Press lending its name, its reputation, and its long record of outstanding scholarship to a work and a movement that have no scholarly rigor, and that intentionally target vulnerable populations. The pattern of this emergent trade in “controversial ideas” is by now familiar. We anticipate that upon its publication, the book will be promoted by those already invested in its claims, be panned by those who bother to read with a critical eye, and sell well for reasons that have nothing to do with the furthering of serious scholarship. Meanwhile, no meaningful actions will have been coordinated to ensure the safety and well-being of those with the greatest stake in these exchanges, namely trans people. We hesitate to call these exchanges “a debate” given the questionable scholarly soundness of one side, the extreme power differentials in play, and the real risks posed to trans communities. Moreover, we cannot help but wonder how this book can be reconciled with OUP’s commitment to equity, justice, and inclusion as a member of the Association of University Presses, of which OUP President Niko Pfund was President as recently as 2020-2021. As the largest university press in the world, and the second oldest, OUP occupies a unique leadership role.

We therefore request, as people whose names and intellectual labours are associated with Oxford University Press and its reputation, a clear and detailed account of what measures have been taken to ensure the scholarly quality of this forthcoming publication (while being mindful of the need to maintain reviewers’ anonymity), and what further steps the Press is taking to make itself accountable for the consequences of its publication should the book go forward to print. Measures the press could undertake to offset the harm done by the publication of this work might include soliciting and publishing trans-affirming scholarship by transgender authors, updating the house style guidelines to include specific guidance on language around transgender rights, donating a portion of the book’s profits to supporting transgender rights organizations, and/or developing editorial guidelines for the submission of works that challenge the human rights of any marginalized group. We recommend that these steps for accountability be undertaken in consultation with transgender rights activists and transgender scholars. We hope that this process can help guide OUP in editorial directions that affirm trangender peoples’ humanity and rights.