Review of Kellie-Jay in the USA
“If we can uplift the work of other women, we can win.” --- Kellie-Jay Keen
Last week, Kellie-Jay Keen, UK founder of Standing for Women, released her documentary Kellie-Jay in the USA. The film chronicles her 2022 Let Women Speak tour, during which she visited major cities across the US, staging events similar to those she hosts in the UK. Members of the public (women first!) are invited to take the mic and hold forth on their experiences and criticisms of gender identity policy and law.
The format offers women a chance to voice concerns, without fear of being labeled “transphobic,” about the consequences for women’s rights and privacy of allowing trans-identified males to compete in women’s sport, to utilize women’s restrooms and locker rooms, to be housed in women’s prisons, and of allowing trans-identified minors to consent to experimental medical treatments. The opportunity to speak publicly about these issues, after having been stifled for so long, proves empowering and inspiring for many women.
Onlookers less familiar with the issues, however, are unlikely to come away better informed, as they might have with leafleting and conversation. The combination of personal testimony with hard data can create a powerful narrative that will move and inform. How many trans-identified males have been moved into women’s prisons? Where is this happening? What are the facts about male vs female biology relevant to sport? Documentary film is the perfect vehicle for such education and persuasion, but the filmmakers, (whoever they are), chose not to take this route.
The opener features Kellie-Jay at the NCAA Women’s National Swimming Championships in Atlanta last March, where trans-identified male Lia Thomas competed in the women’s division. In response to being asked by a trans rights advocate whether she was a biologist, Kellie-Jay famously snapped, “I’m not a vet, but I know what a dog is!” - thereby snagging herself a spot on Tucker Carlson, who was wildly amused. In voice-over, Kellie-Jay says, “When we did that, it ignited women in the States.”
But who is “we”? Also at the Championships, but never mentioned, or shown on screen, were Beth Stelzer, founder of Save Women’s Sports, who organized a protest outside the venue, women’s sport advocate Linda Blade, and veteran organizer Amy Sousa (aka Known Heretic) who livestreamed the event. Key US activists credit Stelzer with “igniting American women.”
The work of US activists is made invisible throughout the film. When Kellie-Jay makes the decision to cancel the Portland and Seattle events for safety reasons, Jeanna Hoch and local activists, faced with disappointed women who had flown out for the event, organize an alternate event at a different Portland location, with Sousa and Yang livestreaming. No mention of the alternate event is made in the film. Instead, we see Kellie-Jay in a Portland suburb, hobnobbing with Republican anti-abortion, pro-gun gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan and other right wing operatives. Off-screen, Hoch, Sousa, Yang, and their sister activists dodge pies and verbal abuse flung by trans activists.
Key moments that dramatically illustrate the violence with which the women are threatened - and their bravery in standing their ground - are left out of the story when Kellie-Jay, for whatever reason, is not present. The most dangerous event of the tour occurred in New York city, where a mob of trans activists lifted barricades and nearly shoved back police in order to get at the women. K Yang describes the situation:
I don't think the barricades had been erected for even five minutes, yet they were already trying to push the boundaries of the barricade and there were not a lot of police… Amanda Stulman, the US director of Keep Prisons Single Sex… had negotiated for there to be a large police presence… When we actually showed up, they were not there in the numbers that we had been told.
Luckily, Yang had the foresight to hire six security guards - for which she fronted the money - else the women would surely have been seriously harmed before police reinforcements arrived. The video is truly terrifying, but none of it made it into Kellie-Jay’s film, presumably because she sat out the event, pouting in a Starbucks. “Women are speaking, yeah, great,” she said. “My event’s going on without me.” Kellie-Jay says she arrived late, (as she did for a number of events, including Philadelphia and Los Angeles), after a dangerous situation had already developed, and police would not let her in.
Kellie-Jay tells her listeners, in a podcast videoed for the film: “If we can uplift the work of other women, we can win.” However, there is scant “uplifting” of other women in her documentary. Even the time given over to women speaking at various events is limited. Of the 108 minute run time, approximately 30 minutes is devoted to women other than Kellie-Jay speaking - and this includes women speaking at various parties and other functions she attends. There are no lower-thirds with names of women interviewed on camera and, bizarrely, no credit roll! Perhaps that is why Amy Sousa created a twitter thread to acknowledge and thank all the women and organizations that made the tour possible.
A film financed in large part by women’s donations, with travel funded by their purchases of Kellie-Jay’s line of merch, could have platformed and uplifted various groups and women who have been toiling away on these issues for years. She could have showcased, for example, the work of Amy Sousa, who is a seasoned organizer, and most recently championed a woman in her hometown who was banned from a YMCA for reporting a (trans-identified) male in the women’s locker room “helping” little girls to undress.
She could have highlighted the work of April Morrow, founder of Sovereign Women Speak, whose hand was broken and her phone destroyed, when a trans activist assaulted her at Kellie-Jay’s event in Tacoma. Sovereign Women Speak, among other projects, tracks trans-identified males in women’s prisons in Washington state. (This is the only event reported in the film at which Kellie-Jay was not present; she had already exited the scene when aggressive trans activists chased the women to their cars.)
But the film is titled Kellie-Jay in the USA, not Fighting Gender Identity Policy in the USA. So we instead are treated to scenes of Kellie-Jay touring the Pacific coast in a 30 foot motorhome with slides, doing her podcasts and exploring ancient coastal redwoods; Kellie-Jay attending a posh cocktail party in Virginia, feted by Christian Post journalist Brandon Showalter; Kellie-Jay chauffeured in a Hummer to an alternate venue in Miami as the other women activists walk.
Ultimately, the film is primarily a vanity project for Kellie-Jay, financed on the dime of women whose work is not celebrated or uplifted in a substantive or meaningful way. It’s a film that chronicles celebrity activist tourism, glorifying the “star,” and leaving nameless the many hard-working grassroots activists doing the day-to-day work that results in meaningful social change.
Updated March 5th, 2023 to further credit Beth Stelzer’s work, clarify the organization of the alternate Portland event, and correct the number of security guards hired by K Yang for the New York city event.
Thank you for writing this honest review of the film! Every major US Women's organization was involved in this tour, and every major US activist showed up. You are exactly right, that is the reason that I made my thread so that our hard work would be recognized.
I still appreciate what KJK does but this needed to be said. There's much more footage out there and I hope someone can compile it and create a more centered view on what the American women have gone through and what future plans are in the works. Thank you.