trans panic

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Talk: lambda nordica symposium, Göteborg

In mid-April I will be travelling to Sweden to speak at the University of Gothenburg. I will provide a keynote address at a symposium titled Academic Freedom and Collegial Solidarity in Times of Pressure, hosted by the academic journal lambda nordica. I am really looking forward to again meeting Swedish colleagues, and learning with them, after an extremely productive visit to Karlstad, Uppsala, and Linköping last year.

logo for lamda nordica

My talk, “From Birth Parents to Backlash”, takes the Trans Pregnancy Project as a starting point for thinking through how and why academics are facing specific types of social and political backlash, what this looks like in practice, and what we can do about this.

It will build on material I have previously delivered at events such as the BSA Medsoc annual conference, and last year’s Standards of Evidence workshop at the University of Lausanne. I will be linking long-term trends to more recent events, thinking through how recent attacks on academic freedom build on phenomena such as the international trans panic and debates over the teaching of critical race and gender theory within universities.

The public portion of the event will take place on Thursday 16 April, and details can be found here.

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PDF zine: But what can I do? How to fight the trans panic

This is the latest version of a zine I have distributed at wormboys gigs over the last couple of years. I’ve recently updated it to address recent events, including the April 2025 Supreme Court ruling.

The zine is written particularly with allies in mind. It provides some background information on the UK’s anti-trans moral panic, and offers some suggestions for easy things people can do. These include: changing the conversation in everyday settings; making complaints or compliments; writing to politicians; introducing pro-trans policies; refusing to comply with anti-trans policies; supporting small trans organisations; and supporting trans creators.

This zine is intended to be freely copied and distributed. Please feel free to download and share the PDF. If you want to print it as an A5 booklet, simply select “print as booklet” and print onto A4 paper, then fold it in half.

Cover image for the zine, but what can I do? How to fight the trans panic. It contains various images of transphobic newspaper headlines behind the title text.


But What Can I Do? PDF download

You can also download a more accessible simplified version here, which is text-only and will hopefully work with screen readers:

But What Can I do – May 2025 accessible

I am once again distributing the zine at wormboys shows in coming months, as well as queer bookshops such as Category Is Books in Glasgow. However, if you want copies in your area, the best thing to do is to download the PDF and print some off.

Tell your friends!