It had been billed as the most controversial debate of the year, with even Rishi Sunak intervening to say that Kathleen Stock, who had been invited to the Oxford Union, should not be no-platformed. But if you were sitting in the Union’s debating chamber on Tuesday evening – as I was – the huge kerfuffle seemed baffling. For an hour and a half, the former philosophy professor talked almost exclusively about toilets.

To be fair, she was given little choice. It was more of an interview than a debate, in which the president of the union fired questions at her. Roughly 90 per cent of them were about women’s lavatories. In particular, he wanted to know why she objected to trans women being allowed to use ‘the ladies’. Professor Stock patiently explained that trans activists don’t just want men who have fully transitioned to be able to access women’s spaces, including refuge centres, but any man who self-identifies as a woman, even a great hairy brute. She had no desire to ‘erase’ trans women, she said, or to deny them their rights – something the scores of protestors outside were accusing her of. Rather, this was a ‘safeguarding’ issue. It was about protecting women from predatory men who ‘self-ID’ to invade their spaces.

It seems extraordinary that this has become such a polarising issue, given that, according to the latest census, only 0.1 per cent of the population identify as trans women. No doubt the percentage among 18- to 24-year-olds is higher, and some of the protestors outside identified as trans, but still. Why were temperatures running so high, both in the lead-up to this event and on the night? As the mild–mannered philosopher set out her stall, the demonstrators made as much noise as they could, hoping to drown out her words. ‘Trans rights are human rights,’ they screamed, although no one, least of all the speaker, was denying that. Why has this generation of student activists chosen access to women’s toilets as the hill to die on?

OK, maybe I’m slightly trivialising their concerns. Their objection to Stock is that she believes in biological sex and doesn’t think we should regard men who identity as female as indistinguishable from actual women, and entitled to all the same rights. In effect, she is telling trans women that if they think they’re ontologically identical to biological women, they’re mistaken. Although Stock doesn’t want to deny men who identify as women the right to medically transition – and vice versa – she doesn’t believe adolescents with gender dysphoria should be placed on a pathway that leads to irreversible medical procedures. As she pointed out, a sex-change operation can render biological women unable to have children or achieve orgasm, and many people who have had ‘bottom surgery’ end up regretting it.

For the trans activists, this point of view is unforgivable. For them, placing any obstacle in the path of adolescents who self-diagnose as trans – refusing them puberty blockers before they’ve been properly assessed by a psychiatrist, for instance – is tantamount to a death sentence. Why? Because denying these children medical treatment makes it probable that they’ll commit suicide. To ram the point home, a protestor wearing a T-shirt saying ‘No more dead trans kids’ glued a hand to the union floor, delaying everything by 30 minutes.

But as Stock pointed out, this is an emotive argument designed to bully people into silence. It may be true that ‘trans youth’ are more prone to suicidal ideation (although perhaps not as susceptible as adolescents with autism). But to claim they’ll inevitably kill themselves if they’re not immediately provided with ‘gender-affirming healthcare’ is nonsense. They won’t. And as the research makes clear, suicide has multiple causes and any attempt to reduce it to one – and weaponise that – is highly irresponsible.

Which brings us back to the question: why have woke activists worked themselves up into such a rage about this? Why invent things to be angry about? Towards the end of the evening, Stock was asked by a puzzled student why she’d become such a hate figure, given how sensible and reasonable she sounded. After some reflection, she said: ‘I think they want me to be evil.’ And that, surely, is the nub of it. Previous generations of students have had real causes to energise them: women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights. What’s left for this lot? Not much, which is why they’ve had to conjure something up out of thin air. It’s what Douglas Murray calls ‘St-George-in-retirement syndrome’. What do progressive activists do when every dragon has been slain? They create a new one, in the form of a 51-year-old ex-professor of philosophy.