I was unsurprised to hear that the decision had been made to create the Cambridge University Society of Women (CUSW). Since coming out as a lesbian five years ago, I have witnessed increasing anti-LGBT+ and particularly anti-trans sentiment being directed at my community. It brings me immense sadness that this hatred now has a home in our student community – that it can fester and be fed in a space that many use as a refuge.

CUSW has been set up as a single-sex space and claims to advocate for “adult human beings belonging to the female sex class”. The issue that most concerns the women who founded the society is the very existence of a tiny minority of the population: trans people.

The blog post used to launch the society makes for bleak reading. In it, the society’s founder states “I want women who think they’re men to join this society […] I don’t think they actually wish they were men. I think it’s actually because they wish they weren’t women”. This is a worrying endorsement of the very logics that underpin conversion therapy practices.

“These claims are so far removed from the reality of life for queer people at Newnham”

The section titled ‘Newnham, the Women’s College for Men’ was particularly jarring. In it, Newnham College is referred to as a “transition pipeline”. One of the society’s founders claims that “the majority of lesbians who arrive as freshers […] will be some flavour of trans or non-binary within a year,” a process that she argues is accompanied by a “clear decline in mental wellbeing”. Aside from a strange and misguided attempt to pathologise trans people, these claims are so far removed from the reality of life for queer people at Newnham.

Newnham’s queer community is vibrant. I know this because I served as Newnham’s JCR LGBT+ officer for a year after experiencing institutionalised homophobia and transphobia at school. Newnham has a thriving queer and trans community because generations of Newnham students have co-created an environment in which people can be curious about their identities, have the security to explore it, and can be supported by other students who share their experiences. For many people like me, university is our first experience of an education or living environment that is safe. I pity anyone who is so full of hatred that they see this space and attempt to demonise it.

I have lived the consequences of this hatred. Earlier this year, I was sexually assaulted at an LGBT+ bop at another college. While the University reporting processes for sexual violence are retraumatising, convoluted, and ineffective, CUSW have decided to focus their energy on spotlighting the ‘issue’ of trans inclusion at Cambridge. I was not assaulted by one of the many trans women in attendance that night. I was not assaulted in the gender-neutral toilets. I was not assaulted by a man who ‘dressed up as a woman’ to get to me. 91% of people prosecuted for sexual offences are cisgender men over the age of 18; they do not need the ‘cover’ of transness to perpetrate violence against women. I was sexually assaulted by a cisgender, male student wearing his university sports club tie and college scarf in a room full of people.

Anti-trans rhetoric is fuelling the anti-queer hostility which means that cisgender, heterosexual men (like the one who assaulted me) think it is acceptable to intrude on and perpetrate violence within queer spaces. The violence of my assault is not isolated. My trans and gender non-conforming friends and I have been subjected to repeated homophobic and transphobic language, physical violence, and intimidation in public while out in Cambridge. The framing of anti-trans hatred as in the interests of women and lesbians is false. As a survivor and an “adult human being belonging to the female sex class,” let me make this clear: CUSW’s rhetoric only exacerbates the danger I face in public.

“I have lived the consequences of this hatred”

The outside world knows nothing of the joy that is the queer community at Newnham. When I think of Newnham’s trans+ community I think of life and laughter. I think of my best friend who brought me flowers and ice cream the day after I was assaulted. I think of my college children and how I got to see them grow and flourish in this space. I think of how we have gathered to paint signs for protests. I think of how we have danced in the college bar, and shared dinners in the buttery, and bonded over drinks in our bedrooms. I think of our library and of the books I have borrowed from it that have opened my eyes to the true diversity of human experience. I think of the people who have taught me lessons about myself and the world. I think of the art that people have created at welfare events, of the bad singing at karaoke nights, and the captivating theatre at Butch Soc cabaret nights. Above all, I think of the witty, brave, intelligent, and kind people who lead joyful and fulfilling lives here, and I wonder why anyone would try and threaten this beautiful space.

There is no need for a society that has made its central mission the demonisation of an already-marginalised group. True feminists see that our struggle for liberation from patriarchal violence is inextricably tied to trans liberation. We would all benefit from a safer world. Hatred does not deserve a platform; the joy of Newnham’s trans+ community does.