Helen Joyce replies to Pipps and Andy:

Dear Pippa and Andrew (if I may),

Well they did say their poison letter was from Pippa and Andrew, so I think we all may, and especially Helen may, being as how she is the target of their venom.

I’m writing to respond to your ignorant and insulting characterisation of me to Caius students and academics, which you must have known would be shared more widely and then become public. [The text of that email is appended to this post.]

I am of course sadly used to people who should know better—people with high-profile posts in great academic institutions—making a show of defending free speech, open debate and academic standards out of one side of their mouths, even as they say “however” out of the other. I am also sadly used to being casually defamed: such is the fate of everyone who, like me, refuses to be frightened off talking about the baleful impacts of gender-identity ideology on vulnerable groups, including women, children and same-sex attracted people.

Why are we so used to it, she asks? Because of people like Pipps and Andy, including Pipps and Andy.

You said in your email to Caius students and fellows that my views are “offensive, insulting and hateful”. Caius, you said, “should be a place for the highest quality of research to be produced and discussed, rather than polemics”. What “highest quality of research” on gender-identity issues have you or Caius produced or discussed? What about my work is polemical? Have you even read my book?

How offensive insulting and hateful is it for Pipps and Andy to make such a claim? Pretty god damn offensive insulting and hateful, I’d say.

You also say that you both work hard to make Caius an “inclusive, diverse and welcoming home for our students, staff and Fellows”, and that my event “will not contribute to this aim”. How inclusive and welcoming do you think this sort of shunning makes your college feel to students, staff and Fellows who care about sex-based rights? To those who want to attend my talk, but are frightened that there will be protests, enabled by your unwillingness to give unqualified support for free speech? To women who understand their identities as based on biology, not tired sexist stereotypes? To the people—and some do still exist in Cambridge; even if you don’t hear from them, I do—who still care about the highest ideals of academia, and watch despairingly as it is shredded?

The word “inclusive” has shifted meaning over the past decade or so: it now applies solely to people who claim to be the other sex (and mostly to the male people in that category).

You tell the little totalitarians of Caius College that you will not be attending the event on Tuesday. Why not? If you truly thought I, and what I say, are so awful, surely you’d like to point out my errors and show me up? Why not come and tell me to my face that I’m offensive, insulting and hateful? Why not critique my book and tell the world what I have got wrong?

Seriously. Why don’t they tell Helen that to her face?

I mean, it’s not difficult to think of people who really would merit such a face to face telling. Trump leaps to mind of course, and there’s Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, Rudy Giuliani – they’re all writers and polemicists as well as “activists,” and we really could back up the telling with evidence. But Helen?

If you don’t have the decency to come to the event on Tuesday, let’s meet up on another occasion. I’d like to hear from you directly, in person, why you thought it was all right to characterise me as bigoted to an entire academic community, without so much as getting in touch first to find out more about me or my work. Please suggest a few days and times.

Come on, Pipps and Andy. Either accept the request or withdraw the venomous lies about Helen and apologize. Abjectly.