Anti-trans groups clash with LGBTQ campaigners in Sydney

Anti-trans rights groups clashed with LGBTQ+ activists as hundreds of protestors descended on Sydney’s Victoria Park on Saturday.

UK-based activist Kellie-Jay Keen, who also goes by the name Posie Parker online, has travelled to Australia for a series of anti-trans rallies.

Her presence in Sydney is being protested by trans advocacy groups with loud chants of: ‘Posie Parker you cant hide, you’ve got Nazis on your side’ and ‘TERFS go home’ as she took the stage.

Ms Keen, a self-described transphobe, believes it’s impossible to change gender and campaigns to exclude trans women from female-only spaces.

She also argues that trans people should be dead named and not have the right to chose their own pronouns.

Tensions threatened to boil over towards the end of rally but a strong police presence including mounted cops stopped it. 

Chants of ‘bigots gone and anti-queer TERFS are not welcome here’  were shouted by LGBTQ+ groups while Ms Keen spoke to crowds. 

TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist and describes those whose views on gender identity are hostile to transgender people and who oppose social and political policies designed to be inclusive of transgender people.

Speaking at the rally, Ms Keen, dressed in a white jumpsuit with ‘WOMAN’ emblazoned across it,  described trans women as ‘men’ and said they are ‘upset they can’t wear dresses because they’ve never been told no before’.

She added that when people say they ‘believe in trans rights’ what they are actually saying is ‘men should be in girls spaces and play girls sports’. 

Anti-trans rights groups clashed with LGBTQ+ activists (pictured) as hundreds of protestors descended on Sydney’s Victoria Park on Saturday

Australian TERF groups were there in support of Ms Keen, including divisive Liberal candidate Katherine Deves (pictured) who told crowds: ‘We will not be silenced. We will stand our ground. I am still fighting the fight

The campaigner added that trans people are trying to take ‘every tiny little bit of the world that women have carved for ourselves’ and described trans men as ‘human shields for the fetishisers’.

She also sang to crowds, saying it was a ‘wonderful day to be a TERF’ and said that the LGBTQ+ groups made ‘even menopausal women look sane’.

The right-wing speaker added the ‘pornifcation of society’ is making ‘AGP people breed like rabbits’.

AGP is a term used by anti-trans groups referring to autogynephilia, a pseudoscientific concept describing a man’s propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female.

After her speech, Ms Keen gave the microphone to other protesters, with one claiming her teenage granddaughter ‘is depressed’ because her ‘teachers are trying to convince her she is a trans man’.

Ms Keen, a self-described transphobe, believes it’s impossible to change gender and campaigns to exclude trans women from female-only spaces

Speaking at the rally, Ms Keen, dressed in a white dress with ‘WOMAN’ emblazoned across it, described trans women as ‘men’ and said they are ‘upset they can’t wear dresses because they’ve never been told no before’

Australian TERF groups were there in support of Ms Keen, including divisive Liberal candidate Katherine Deves who told crowds: ‘We will not be silenced. We will stand our ground. I am still fighting the fight.

She added that trans groups ‘deny women and girls the right to language’ and ‘male free spaces’.

‘We see them coming for the children. We see them coming for families. We now have state intrusion into our home and our families. 

‘And parents have been told they will be criminalised if I try to defend their children.

‘Race in our education system that is trying to indoctrinate our children into this way of thinking.’

There is no evidence of these claims. 

There was a strong police presence dividing the two opposing groups, including a line of mounted cops – with chants of ‘bigots gone and anti-queer TERFS are not welcome here’ from LGBTQ+ groups while Ms Keen spoke to crowds

Protesters – one wrapped in the LGBTQ+ Progress flag – hug one another 

Ms Keen has come under fierce criticism from many groups in the past, including for allegedly  posing with a campaigner who celebrated Winnie Mandela’s death and called the anti-apartheid fighter ‘a whore’ and ‘white farmer murdering c***’.

She has also been slammed by a British MP for saying access to abortion and contraceptives need to be rolled back for children and teenagers. 

Ms Keen raised eyebrows recently after she criticised British MP Jess Phillips for reading out the name of a teenage trans murder victim Brianna Ghey in the House of Commons during an International Women’s Day speech. 

She has also spoken alongside a number of figures in far-right groups, including Christopher Barcenas, a member of the Proud Boys,  who was deposed by the US government due to his presence at the January 6 Capitol riots.

Pride in Protest activists as well as National Union of Students were among the counter protesters in the inner Sydney park (pictured) 

Groups held up signs saying ‘trans rights are human rights’ and chanted against Ms Keen

 Protesters signs read ‘no TERFS on our TERF’

Pride in Protest activists as well as National Union of Students were among the counter protesters in the inner Sydney park.

‘TERFs/SWERFs in an anti-queer culture war. This far right politics needs to be stopped,’ Pride in Protest said in a Facebook post ahead of the event, referring to acronyms for ‘feminists’ that exclude trans women and sex workers from their activism. 

The National Union of Students has also called for a series of counter-protests against Ms Keen.

‘We are protesting Keen’s speaking events for two reasons – firstly, because these events are demanding the removal of trans rights, and we strongly support transgender people,’ a spokesperson said.

‘Secondly because these events are supported and attended by the political right. 

There was a strong police presence at the protest

‘Allowing the right to network and grow under the pretence of supporting women, poses a threat to every progressive cause and everything unions stand for.’

Ahead of her travel to Australia, Stephen Bates, the Greens spokesperson for LGBTIQA+ issues, wrote Immigration Minister Andrew Giles asking him to revoke her visa.

Mr Bates argued that Ms Keen had a long history of ‘promoting or excusing hate and violence towards trans and other marginalised communities’.

 Speaking on 2GB with breakfast host Ben Fordham on Friday , Ms Keen described herself as a ‘transphobe’ but argued that she’s ‘not scary’ because she’s ‘really small’.

She argued people had ‘attempted to cancel her’ and that she ‘does nothing to invite controversy’ but she’s ‘so influential, trouble follows her’.

‘I’m not scary. I’m really small as well,’ the British commentator told Fordham.

Groups chanted that Ms Keen ‘had the support of Nazis’

Police blocked the counter-protest group from getting close to Ms Keen’s rally

When asked by Fordham why people were scared of her, Ms Keen said: ‘It’s my ability to speak directly and speak the truth. 

‘I think that’s quite frightening for some people. We’ve lost the ability both in the UK and Australia and elsewhere, to just speak plainly, just just to speak the truth.’

‘In today’s money, because being transphobic means that you say “a woman doesn’t have a penis”, and probably I am a transphobic.’

When asked if she’s an anti-trans activist, she replied: ‘I am a woman’s right activist’ and that she defines a woman as an ‘adult human female’.

‘Because so many people are complete cowards, social media has been able to manifest into a mass silencing tool,’ Ms Keen added.

‘There’s a weird social currency of acceptance. And I think underpinning that is really not caring at all about women.’

One protester holds up a sign reading ‘No one is transing your kids’

LGBTQ+ protesters were out in force against the anti-trans group

When asked what she would say to people who who were assigned male at birth, but feel like they’re trapped in the wrong body and they want to be a female, Ms Keen said: ‘There’s plenty of people that feel things that aren’t true. We don’t then say that they’re a different category of person. 

She said that she has ‘no objection’ to people ‘doing what they want in lives’ but that this shouldn’t ‘impinge on her’. 

She added that she also has a problem with calling trans people by names and pronouns that don’t align with ones they were born with, because it ‘opens the door’ for more trans rights.

LGBTQ+ rights campaigners were out in force against the TERFS

When questioned by Fordham why she then goes by the name ‘Posie’ instead of her birth name ‘Kelly’, she added: ‘If I wanted to be called John, it would be difficult.’  

‘I’m so influential. Trouble just comes along. I do nothing, I really do nothing to invite it,’ she added.

‘What’s happening in a country like this, the state is gaslighting women into pretending they cannot see the truth in front of their eyes and they can’t name it.’

NSW Police warned ahead of the protests must be done lawfully.

‘The NSW Police respects the right of individuals and groups to protest; however, those involved must do so peacefully and in compliance with the law,’ a spokesman said.