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No.938 Friday 31st October 2025 varsity.co.uk
The Independent Student Newspaper since 1947 ▼ RYAN TEH
Uni error forces deeper spending cuts p.9 Students launch womenʼs soc excluding trans women Charlie Rowan Editor-in-Chief Students have launched the first women’s society at the University of Cambridge to be restricted to those defined as “female at birth,” a move that has been criticised by other groups as “an assault on the trans community”. On Monday (27/10), three students announced the formation of the Cambridge University Society of Women (CUSW) on X, saying the group would be the first at Cambridge to offer a
“single-sex environment for women”. The society’s constitution defines women as “adult human beings belonging to the female sex class”. The move immediately provoked backlash from across the University. The Cambridge University Labour Club (CULC) called it “the latest assault on the trans community at Cambridge,” accusing the society of promoting “transphobic rhetoric under the guise of ‘free speech’,” while several societies issued a joint statement in support of the trans community. Halligan, a 22-year-old MPhil student
at Lucy Cavendish College, told GenderBlog.net that she founded CUSW after being unable to find any single-sex societies at the University’s Freshers’ Fair earlier this term. “The signs and banners that I was seeing […] There was not a single society that was just for women. It was a combination of women-[asterisk], womxn, or women and non-binary. I left the Freshers’ Fair and I felt like crying. I stood there – it was on Parker’s Piece, which is a central green common in the middle of Cambridge city – I stood there
and thought: well, if it doesn’t exist, I’m going to make it happen.” She also described “the trans agenda” as “a form of propaganda,” adding: “Transgender ideology is the most regressive, homophobic, sexist, crucially misogynistic thing to exist in a very, very long time.” Yet, she told Varsity: “It’s the case that some beliefs and aspects of identity can come into conflict with each other – that’s why disagreeing is such an important skill,” she said. “I acknowledge [claims of transphobia] as a point of
view, but I can’t respect a view that is so clearly not factually based and that will consciously erode the rights of women to have single-sex services.” She saw the society’s creation as a way of preserving women’s rights to single-sex spaces. “If you’re a male person who seeks to enter into female spaces, that directly erodes the right of women to have a single-sex space in the first place. And that’s just bad,” she said. “Our USP, the fact that it’s women only – isn’t Continued on page 4 ▶
Inside ● Rowers vote to exclude trans women pg.3 ● A week is a long time in (student) politics pg.12 ● My date with a spiritual healer pg.20