You’re not there to win, you’re there to connect: how to talk to a transphobe

A Pride in Leadership session with Dr Christopher Owen, founder of Coliberate

A month after launching his consultancy, Christopher Owen was giving a keynote at a conference on workplace bullying. A question came in from an online attendee: did he think EDI managers understood equality law well enough to protect women from trans people? He described the cold that fell over the room. It was a bullying question asked at a conference about bullying. This session was his answer to what you actually do in that moment, and he was clear from the start that the answer is hard and asks a great deal of the people who try it.

Why the debate is rigged

Owen, who holds a PhD in intersectional systemic oppression, began with a concept most of us absorb without naming it: the marketplace of ideas. The premise is that if an idea is argued loudly and convincingly enough, people buy into it and it eventually shapes policy. When protest is increasingly criminalised and writing to an MP feels futile, he argued, it becomes one of the few places people feel they have influence. So debate stops being about changing society and becomes a competition for cultural capital, and people become cutting or cruel because they want to win.

Algorithms make this worse. Platforms are built to show us what we already like, and, citing the journalist Ash Sarkar, Owen noted that much of this content works less by telling us who is good than by telling us who to hate. Trans people are fed a steady stream of content about gender critics; gender critics are fed a steady stream about trans people as a threat. He cited an Amnesty International report, since withdrawn after a backlash, which counted around 17,000 anti-trans articles in five years, roughly nine a day, alongside a rise in organisations set up to restrict trans rights from three in 2017 to 51. The marketplace, he argued, rewards whoever is loudest and most vicious, and learning to bully harder is not a route to a kinder society.

The question underneath everything

The most demanding part of the session was a single question: do you believe most people are good or most people are bad? Owen traced how the answer shapes everything downstream. “If you believe that most people are good, then your aim is to improve fairness. Whereas if you think most people are bad, your aim is to mitigate risk.” One view locates harm in systems and sees justice as repair; the other locates harm in individuals and sees justice as retribution.

He asked the audience to consider that the person who has just said something transphobic may be misinformed, frightened or angry rather than evil, and that the real enemy is the politicians and the interests of the mega-wealthy driving the cost of living crisis and the division itself.

Navigating the conversation

Owen’s practical framework is built around the acronym NAVIGATE. It begins with notice and assess: is this someone you can have a civil conversation with, is anyone being harmed, is there a power imbalance, and has a line been crossed? He drew a sharp distinction between someone uneasy about gender neutral toilets and someone calling trans people paedophiles, invoking Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance. A space that welcomes everything, including hate, will in practice exclude the people that hate targets. Next comes address, guided by a second acronym, CARE: calm the space, actively listen, regulate your own feelings, and explain any limits that have been crossed. If you are too triggered to regulate, he said, you may not be the right person for this conversation.

The middle steps do the real work. Values and concerns means asking what is actually driving the person. Owen was blunt that the gender critical movement’s primary effect is to harm trans people, but argued that many within it are motivated by things trans people also want: legal protection from sex discrimination, an end to sex-based violence and exploitation, the abolition of gender stereotypes, and the ability to speak without being attacked. Motivated reasoning is a cognitive process that makes it difficult to process information that contradicts someone’s worldview. “Ignorance doesn’t mean we don’t know anything. It means we have the wrong knowledge.” From there, interests means finding common ground without hiding disagreement: “I also want women to be safe from violence. I don’t believe trans people are the cause of that.” Get perspectives means asking whether the person has personally been made unsafe by a trans person, and sharing trans experiences of harm in return. Aspire and take action turn to what the person actually wants and what they could do instead, ideally co-producing a plan, such as a campaign against violence that trans people would gladly join. Finally, evaluate means asking not “are you still a transphobe?” but what they now see differently and what harm they might help repair.

Back at the conference, the steps took moments. With an anonymous questioner, his audience was the room: he set a boundary, moved the conversation onto safety, established that he too wanted women safe, and widened it to all women, including Black, disabled and trans women.

Who should be doing this work

The Q&A sharpened the edges. Asked by Helen whether the approach differs for trans people and allies, Owen was unequivocal: asking a trans person to work through all eight steps with someone attacking them is not fair, and stepping away is a legitimate boundary. This is work for allies, understood not as people helping trans people but as co-conspirators within the movement. John asked about conversations that become a contest over who has suffered more. Owen’s advice was to hand over the accountability that comes with claiming that power: if you know best, what is your solution? And when Amy asked about people who are well informed and still hold their views, he was candid that information alone rarely works, and that someone who has done their homework and chosen “the side of violence and harm” has crossed a boundary and need not be engaged further.

He also agreed with a point raised in the chat that violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated by cisgender men. Name it, he said, but name patriarchy as the cause rather than casting any group of people as inherently evil.

Coliberation

Owen closed on the idea that gives his organisation its name: that liberation cannot be achieved alone. “In order for you to be safe, I’ve got to be safe. In order for you to flourish, so do I.” He was honest that what he asked of the audience runs against much of what we have been taught. But his argument was that the alternative, winning arguments while the conditions harming everyone go unchallenged, is no victory at all.

Dr Christopher Owen (he/they) is the founder of Coliberate, which offers inclusivity and liberation coaching, consulting, speaking and training. He holds a PhD in intersectional systemic oppression and was named a 2024 Northern Gamechanger. Find out more about Christopher’s training offer here, or at coliberate.co.uk.

Pride in Leadership hosts regular events for LGBTQ+ leaders and aspiring leaders across the UK. Find out more at prideinleadership.com.