Content note: This article contains mention of transphobia.

Selina Todd, a professor of Modern History at St Hilda’s College, has been given protection by Oxford University after receiving criticism from transgender rights activsts on social media.

Student activists say her views on the need to protect “women’s spaces” from trans women are unacceptable.

Todd, a researcher in working-class, women’s and feminist history, said she felt “vulnerable” and that there was enough evidence on social media to convince the university to provide protection, which includes University staff accompanying her to lectures.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday, Todd said: “Democracy is under threat. We all have to defend the right of people to have freedom of speech and freedom of debate.”

Todd argued that the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces “would take away women’s rights.”

“This might sound like a storm in a teacup and something that’s just about student activists, but students become graduates and Oxford students tend to become activists who go into things like politics, the media, the civil service, so if they are learning that no debate is the way to run a society, we should all be worried.”

Todd said Oxford’s history faculty received complaints on a daily basis from activists calling for her to be sacked. A complaint, backed by a Facebook petition, about the comments she made on social media, was previously dismissed by the University.

On Saturday, the University of Oxford said: “When staff raise concerns with us, the university will always review the circumstances and offer appropriate support to ensure their safety and freedom of expression.”

CUSU campaigns against feminist movements that exclude trans people. Last year they published a guide to spotting Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF), defining TERF ideology as “a specific form of transphobia, and more specifically transmisogyny.”

The guide explained that according to TERF ideology, “trans women are excluded from womanhood and should accordingly be excluded from women-only spaces. Womanhood is supposedly defined exclusively by ‘sex-based’ oppression, aka oppression as a result of being what terf ideology terms ‘biologically female’.

“This idea weaponises a reductive understanding of ‘biology’ to argue that ‘women’ - or those assigned female at birth - all experience gendered oppression in the same way, which erases our diverse experiences of gender as it intersects with race, class, sexuality, disability, and many other structural factors.”

Kate Litman, CUSU Women’s Officer, said: “Women’s spaces should be open to all women on the basis of self-identification. There are plenty of women’s services which provide essential support for all women including trans women, such as the Rape Crisis Centre here in Cambridge. Fearmongering about the presence of trans women in women’s spaces does a disservice to the women who rely on those services.”

“CUSU and the Women’s Campaign will always stand up for the rights of trans students. Students are welcome to collect ‘Trans women are women’ stickers from the CUSU lounge if they would like to show their solidarity with trans students.”

Oxford Student Union’s Women’s Campaign have been contacted for comment.