JOINT STATEMENT FROM
TRANS PRIDE AUSTRALIA
AND
LGBTI RIGHTS AUSTRALIA:
SAY ‘NO’ TO TRANSPHOBIC FASCISTS
Trans Pride Australia and LGBTI Rights Australia condemn the speaking tour of UK anti-trans fascist import Kellie-Jay Keen (also known as KJK and ‘Posie Parker’).
Keen has an established record of promoting or excusing hate and violence towards trans and other marginalised communities, which can easily be seen on her Twitter feed here. The people who have spoken at her past events in the U.K. can be found here and include well-known neo-Nazi and anti-abortionist groups.
Keen’s tour, strategically positioned to undo the work done by World Pride, titled “Let Women Speak” where she invites other women to openly discuss why they feel it wrong to consider trans women to be “real” women. Keen has scheduled talks in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart, Canberra, and Perth over the next few weeks. Many grassroots organisations have been working hard organising counter rallies to drown out this transphobic fascist rhetoric. Today in Victoria Park, Sydney at the first rally we saw over policing with the riot squad, mounted police and approximately 60 police officers surrounding the grassroots anti-fascist protesters. When requested, police did nothing to control the continuous antagonistic presence of several fascists who moved towards the counterprotest repeatedly over photographing people in clear attempts to intimidate.
Keen was recently singled out in HOPE not Hate’s “State of Hate 2023 Report”. HOPE not Hate noted that a gender-critical speaker at a January rally organised by Parker “referenced Adolf Hitler’s term ‘the big lie’ and drew a parallel to those supporting trans rights today”. The advocacy group warned that Parker’s influence is likely to grow as the “theme” of trans rights continues to be a “salient topic in the mainstream media as well as among the far right”. Keen’s ongoing ties with white supremacist groups, racist & anti-Islamic groups are documented here.
Her tour of Australia will likewise incite action by Proud Boys, neo-Nazis & ‘Christian Lives Matter’ who are already targeting LGBTQ+ and drag events in Australia. The Daily Telegraph has already reported on the Sydney rally at Victoria Park, Camperdown where “Public order riot squad teams and mounted horse police are expected to be deployed”. This speaking tour has long-reaching implications for those people we care about.
Keen has already done extensive interviews on 2GB and on Sky New Australia promoting her tour with Katherine Deves (the failed Liberal candidate for Warringah in the last Federal election). Deves was both relentless and vicious in her attack on the transgender community during the lead-up to the election and beyond. The harm that is caused by such hateful conversations in both society and in the media is very clear. During the 2022 election campaign when Katherine Deves was at the height of her attacks on the transgender community, ACON experienced a 5-fold increase in people seeking mental health care, despite Deves not winning her seat.
Join us in saying a resounding ‘No’ to transphobia, racism, and imported far-right agendas.