The Violence in Auckland Last Week Was Appalling - & Entirely Predictable
Societal tolerance of trans activist aggression & reckless behavior by a leader combine to create a predictably volatile situation.
The clash between trans activists and women campaigning to claw back rights to sex-segregated prisons, shelters, sports, restrooms and change rooms, infringed by gender identity policy and law, turned violent last week in Auckland. UK campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen’s Let Women Speak tour, which features an open mic for women to discuss their objections to gender identity policy, drew increasingly larger counter-protests as it progressed through Australia, finally drawing about 2000, compared with an estimated 250 LWS supporters, in Auckland, NZ.
Immediately upon arriving to the rotunda stage in Albert Park, Kellie-Jay was doused with tomato juice by a trans activist who later said, “I want her to be full of blood… because she is advocating for our genocide.” Amid police failure to separate the opposing camps, and trans activists aggressively closing in on the rotunda stage, Kellie-Jay’s security team decided to escort her out and cancel the event before she even had a chance to speak. Alarming video shows an angry mob pushing against Kellie-Jay’s security team, which encircled and tightly gripped her as they struggled to move her out of the venue. Kellie-Jay later said, “I thought I was going to be crushed to death.”
Thankfully, she was delivered into a police vehicle relatively unscathed. Her supporters, however, were not so lucky. Without private security, and police standing down, the mob attacked with impunity. Women reported being kicked, grabbed, thrown to the ground, and having projectiles thrown at them. One woman’s foot was broken; another, a 70 year old, was punched repeatedly in the face by a young male trans activist.
The violence was shocking, but predictable for many reasons, primarily because aggressive de-platforming and violent threats from trans activists have been allowed to continue unchecked in many countries for years and years. Violent imagery on social media has been prolific and prompted creation of the website “Terf Is A Slur” to document the threats. So normalized is the threat of violence, that in 2018 San Francisco Public Library thought it worthwhile to put on an exhibit celebrating symbols of violence against so-called “terfs,” a slur meant to indicate “trans exclusionary radical feminists,” that included baseball bats, axes, and a tee shirt splattered with red paint to indicate blood.
When the UK government in 2017 announced plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act to allow self-ID, rather than requiring a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, in order to change legal gender, women began organizing to meet and discuss the impact on their rights - while trans activists mobilized to de-platform them. After one early meeting was de-platformed from its original venue by trans activists, organizers asked women to meet at Speakers Corner in Hyde park, where they would be informed of the alternative venue. Trans activists discovered the plan, turned up at Speakers Corner in order to follow the women, and violently attacked a woman who was videoing the crowd.
Since then, meetings by various women’s organizations to discuss their rights have been routinely subject to attempted, or actual, de-platforming, counter protest, and silencing tactics. In 2018, at a meeting at the Jam Jar in Bristol, trans activists attempted to block women entering the venue, forcing them to push past protesters on their way up the stairs. At a meeting in Brighton in 2019, trans activists pounded on the windows of the venue throughout the meeting. In Manchester in 2022, trans activists attempted to block both entrance and exit to the venue, shouting threats and abuse, to the extent that venue management asked the women to cancel their meeting. The women carried on, but police, concerned for their safety, did not allow them to leave until the trans activists dispersed.
Often in the UK and the US, trans activists wear black masks, hiding their faces, while videoing faces of women attending the events. US organizer Amy Sousa reports that at many events, trans activists are outfitted with communications gear to enable strategic placement and actions of their people:
Many of them are wearing earpieces… fortified gear… gloves with knuckles on them. They have walkie-talkie and communication devices. They are strategically placed, some on the outside, and they are directing others on the inside to take certain actions at one point, so that focus goes over here, and another action can be drawn on this side.
In the UK, US, and now Australia and New Zealand, police routinely fail to show up in sufficient numbers, or to act to prevent violence when they are present. For example, at the Manchester event described above:
[Police] made no attempt to disperse a crowd which they judged to be threatening us. They didn’t attempt to contain them, or facilitate their right to protest at a less threatening distance, as is usual at demonstrations outside buildings and corporate events…
The police kept us inside to prevent a breach of the peace and waited for the hostile protest to disperse of its own accord.
During Kellie-Jay’s US Let Women Speak tour last autumn, women threatened by aggressive trans activists in Tacoma made 23 calls to police to no avail. Ultimately, the women were spat at, had water bottles thrown at them, were chased to their cars, and one woman's hand was broken by a trans activist. In New York City, police failed to turn up in numbers negotiated for by one of the local organizers. Luckily, K Yang, another local organizer, 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.
No analysis of factors contributing to women’s vulnerability to aggression and violence by trans activists at LWS events would be complete without consideration of Kellie-Jay’s own actions. Too often she appears to be unwilling to heed the advice of local activists when planning her events. In New York City she rejected plans suggested by locals for a safer venue than the one she preferred; then failed to turn up on time for the event, leaving her supporters to face down trans activists in the more dangerous location on their own. She was reportedly warned that police would only observe, not act, in Auckland, but declined to cancel the event in advance. If chat logs of her UK assistants, leaked on twitter, (now deleted), are to be believed, she doesn’t always take security seriously. “When she’s here,” one wrote, “we force them on her.”
Moreover, she has a propensity to taunt counter-protesters in ways that are personal - and counterproductive. In Hobart, she accused a Green party politician of being a “groomer” who transed her child in order to get a seat in government. The step-father of the child, Senator Nick McKim, also a Green party politician, angrily denounced Kellie-Jay in parliament. Noting that she claims not to be a feminist, and agreeing with her, he said:
Keen “and her ilk” should be known as “trans-exclusionary rightwing dropkicks. T-E-R-D-S. They're not TERFS; they are TERDS.”
While some regarded his remarks as inflammatory and disproportionate, one can only imagine how angry Kellie-Jay herself would have been had someone similarly insulted her child and spouse.
In Adelaide, Kellie-Jay harshly criticized trans-identified females who become mothers as self-hating child abusers whom she finds “disgusting.” In Philadelphia, when a teen called out, “Terfs go home!” in support of his trans-identifying father, she yelled, “Your dad’s a pervert!”
Taunts and jeers are part of street protest, but personal attacks such as these reinforce the stereotype of gender identity critics as “transphobes” and “haters.” They are insensitive to the pressures parents face from school officials and health professionals to accommodate children’s wishes, and to the trauma and sexual abuse many women who choose to transition have experienced. Calling such women “disgusting” and “self-hating” makes it harder for them to find a way back if they realize transition has not solved their problems.
Kellie-Jay’s dubious connections, and the dangerous right wing characters drawn into her orbit, also increase the risk of violence at her events. She has long been a fixture on UK and US right wing podcasts, including multiple interviews with both Carl Benjamin (aka “Sargon of Akkad”), former member of the nationalist UK Independent party (UKIP), and co-founder of Hearts of Oak; and Sebastian Gorka, UK-born American citizen of Hungarian descent, former adviser to Viktor Orbán, and Trump administration official accused of having links to far-right groups in Europe.
In September 2022, Hearts of Oak advertised their intent to livestream Kellie-Jay’s Let Women Speak event in Brighton, using images that made it appear as if they were partnering with her. Also spotted at the event were far right provocateur Michael Chaves and right-wing commentator Sophie Corcoran. Feminists alarmed that such connections would damage the movement, and about the intentions of far right actors, asked Kellie-Jay to distance herself from them. She refused, arguing that her events platform free speech and anyone may attend.
During Kellie-Jay’s 2022 US Let Women Speak tour, far right men turned up at a number of events. In Chicago, Jan 6th rioter and Proud Boy Edgar Delatorre showed up to “help” with security and got a selfie with Kellie-Jay. Proud Boy Chris Barcenas, also spotted at the Jan 6th insurrection, and other Proud Boys, turned up to her Miami event, with Barcenas mic'd to speak by Kellie-Jay herself. In Austin, a 3 Percenter badge was spotted on at least one security guard.
Often these individuals were recruited by local activists, so Kellie-Jay may not have known who they were, though a reliable source told me that she was informed of the background of the security men in Austin. Whether or not she knew who they were, when made aware, she refused to distance herself. Moreover, they know who she is - an avowed Trump supporter and Jan 6th apologist.
The problem of far right actors getting involved became so obvious that even her long-time friend and colleague Kara Dansky, current president of Women’s Declaration International USA, made a point of distancing herself from the far right at Kellie-Jay’s Washington DC event. Dansky and Kellie-Jay are linked through their work with Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), where Dansky served on the board and Kellie-Jay still serves on the advisory council. At the 2022 Let Women Speak DC event, Dansky noted that while she had worked with conservative groups in the past, and made no apologies for it, she did not want the far right in the movement. She said:
[T]here are certain elements of society with whom I want nothing to do at all. If anyone here is a Nazi, I do not want them in this fight. If anyone here is a member of the Proud Boys, I do not want them in this fight… I know that Kellie-Jay does not wish to impose any conditions on the women or men who attend her events and that is totally her right to do.
Given this background, it should surprise no one that eventually a group of neo-Nazis would turn up at one of Kellie-Jay’s events. In Melbourne, a group of about 30 men marched in, gave a Nazi salute, and positioned themselves on the stairs at Parliament house, some distance from Kellie-Jay. While there is no evidence she has any connection to them, it is reasonable for them to assume that their presence would not raise objections - at least not from Kellie-Jay. Indeed, Kellie-Jay resisted calls to distance herself from them until just before NZ authorities made the decision whether or not to allow her entry to the country. In an interview for the New Zealand Herald, she said:
They’re absolutely not associated with me whatsoever. I absolutely abhor anything to do with Nazis. It’s preposterous they even exist in 2023.
It is clear that there is a long and established pattern of threats of violence from trans activists whenever women attempt to organize resistance to gender identity policy. Liberal media exacerbate the problem with biased language and reporting; for example, referring to women’s rights activists concerned about gender identity policy as “anti-trans activists;” as do progressive politicians hoping to score points in the culture war around this issue.
Most feminist activists carefully plan their events to minimize the risk of harm to their participants. Kellie-Jay’s inflammatory rhetoric escalates tension; her tolerance of the far right encourages their presence, and, in turn, inflates opposition to her events. In Melbourne she faced an estimated 600-800 counter protesters. Once news of neo-Nazi presence got out, trans activists, a constituency that overlaps with self-avowed antifa types, mobilized to turn out more than double that number, an estimated 2000 counter protesters in Auckland.
It is unlikely that Kellie-Jay will moderate her rhetoric or her stance on far right actors. But one hopes, with planned tours in Canada, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, she will at least heed the advice of local activists and more carefully plan her events to minimize the risk of violence to her supporters.
This is such an important perspective. It is interesting that, as bad as things are in rhe UK (where the women’s rights events are not “hers”) the pushback is not as insane as in the US and down under. I watched every one of her US events online (and they were hers. Not the local activists) with increasing horror as they became more and more dangerous and unhinged (with the notable exception of DC where cops are 1st amendment pros). I’ve participated over my life in countless street demonstrations and marches, and know that to be safe and effective, many months of careful planning is necessary.
The fact that this continues to happen makes me feel like these tours are more about the Posie Parker brand than women’s rights. No such thing as bad publicity.
I actually don’t believe she is a fascist or a Nazi. But she doesn’t mind people who are.
Kara Dansky is a deep disappointment. She does understand the political landscape in the US , and should understand single issue voting is deeply irresponsible given the make up of the Supreme Court, the catastrophe of guns and violence (which disproportionately impacts women and children) reproductive rights, and the safe guarding of democracy. With that backdrop, appearing on Tucker Carlson so frequently shows an inability to understand that democratic women are just not going to make common cause with the likes of Matt Walsh and other regressive men. They just won’t. Until perhaps a girl in their family gets swept up in this insanity, when it is largely too late, because by then, speaking is incredibly dangerous.
Thank you. Great overview, helpful information, and well-written. Great job.