Should I attend an event featuring a speaker accused of transphobia?

A well-known pioneer of feminism was recently invited to speak at a local event, but she’s been accused of making transphobic remarks online. Some of her other ideas are progressive, but I feel conflicted about giving her a platform. Should I attend, protest or stay away?

—Carefully Considered

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Dear Carefully Considered,

When harmful words are aimed at a group already under pressure, the weight of that accusation falls on you. Your principal question, accordingly, is this: should you go to the event or stay away?

Before answering, we must first turn our attention to those who are demeaned or disparaged. When someone’s humanity is threatened, it is our responsibility to treat that person with humility and care. In this case, it is trans people who are under threat. Truly listening to them means centring their experiences while seeking to understand them.

It is also important to acknowledge that none of us are pure or uncomplicated. We are all conflicted moral beings, capable of both insight and harm. Learning from someone who has said or done wrong is possible, but it is neither automatic nor uncritical. And that learning must be shaped and qualified by the understandings gained from those we’ve prioritized.

Now, moving toward an answer: whether to go or not is less a moral verdict than an ethical stance. If you choose to attend, do so with awareness, questions and readiness to support those harmed. If you abstain, it may be a refusal to amplify a problematic voice, but that does not mean turning away from the realities of marginalized people. Either way, protest remains a possibility. Sitting in the audience does not eliminate your responsibility to speak out or engage critically, and staying away shouldn’t close off opportunities for action or thoughtful reflection.

More on Broadview:

Your dilemma is complicated by uncertainty. An accusation is not the same as guilt, and we rarely know the full story from the spectacle of online media. A rush to judgment risks overshadowing nuance. But uncertainty must not paralyze moral attention nor numb concern for those demeaned.

Remember that moral attention can be practised without endorsement; critique without erasure; admonition without suppression. Where possible, and through what we learn from listening to the oppressed and vulnerable, we can (un)learn from flawed figures.

So my answer is this: whether you go or don’t go, orient your attention first and foremost to those under threat. Learn from them. Then, with that understanding, listen again — discerningly — to the pioneer and her viewpoints.

***

Ashley Moyse is a Canadian ethicist, theologian and associate professor of bioethics at Baylor University in Texas.

This article first appeared in Broadview’s March/April 2026 issue with the title “Can We Learn from Flawed Figures?”