An anti-trans activist known as Posie Parker canceled a planned event in Wellington and left New Zealand after occasionally violent protests tried to block her appearance in Auckland before she was able to speak in public.
Parker, whose real name is Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, was labeled as a “TERF”— a pejorative term standing for “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist” and incurred the wrath of the trans lobby with her outspoken remarks against transition treatment for children and permitting biologically male trans women into women-only spaces, among other what critics call “hate speech.”
She was in New Zealand as part of her “Let Women Speak” tour, which drew a considerable number of supporters but also large numbers of combative pro-trans activists, motivated to protest her events by leftist celebrities such as Billy Bragg.
Parker was scheduled to speak in Auckland on Saturday morning. However, she faced throngs of pro-trans rights counter-protesters estimated to be in the thousands, dwarfing the speaker’s supporters. After being booed, interrupted, and doused with tomato juice, Parker ultimately abandoned the event. She added that she spent “most of my day with the protection of police who genuinely believed I was lucky to be alive,” before canceling her planned event in Wellington and flying out of the country.
“I have grave fears for this place,” Parker said as she left. In a lengthy social media post, the activist said she has been the target of a “long campaign to assassinate my character, started by a group of jealous spiteful women in the UK, that I had ambitions besides stopping the mutilation of children and the erasure of women’s rights.”
She said the “lies” about her had been “slurped up by ravenous porn sick men and their transmaidens” before eventually being “spewed by politicians in power in Australia and New Zealand [and] boosted by a corrupt media populated by vile dishonest unskilled cult members.”
“The powerful are seeking to silence us, we must continue to speak. They are afraid of us,” she insisted.
The protests and counter-protests on Saturday could be described as a violent mayhem. Green party co-leader Marama Davidson, who was backing trans rights, was hit by a motorcycle among a convoy of motorcyclists who had appeared at the protest to back Parker.
While Davidson required medical attention, she was not hospitalized. Her party confirmed that Davidson had reported an incident to police, saying: “It appears a motorcyclist failed to stop at a pedestrian crossing and Marama was knocked to the ground.”
Notably, Parker’s appearance in New Zealand had been contentious before her arrival. Her previous appearance in Australia had been attended and backed by what leftist politicians such as notorious pro-lockdown Victorian premier Daniel Andrews called white supremacist groups, who reportedly marched the streets performing the Nazi salute. Also, various LGBTQ+ activist groups had demanded that New Zealand’s immigration authorities ban Parker’s entry to the country on the pretext that she was a threat to public order.
Andrews claimed anti-transgender activists “gathered to spread hate.”
“I wish it didn’t have to be said, but clearly it does: Nazis aren’t welcome. Not on parliament’s steps. Not anywhere,” he said on Twitter. “They were there to say the trans community don’t deserve rights, safety or dignity … their evil ideology is to scapegoat minorities — and it’s got no place here.” Last year, Victoria became the first Australian jurisdiction to prohibit public displays of the Nazi swastika.
Police officers were reportedly assaulted in Melbourne on Saturday after pro-transgender and anti-transgender activists faced each other off at Victoria’s Parliament where Parker had held an event. Local media reported that at least three people were taken into custody due to attacks during the clash. When the rally approached its end, “far-left pro-#trans protesters surrounded & assaulted a middle-aged lesbian caught in the middle. She had an arm injury that required treatment. The male assailants escaped on foot,” according to reports by the Canadian conservative The Post Millennial. At the same event, protestors were seen standing around the top of the amphitheater, wielding transgender pride flags and signs that read “no terfs in T town,” “crash the cis-tem,” and “trans women are women,” among others.
Moreover, New Zealand’s immigration minister, Michael Wood, said last Thursday, “Like many New Zealanders I would prefer it if Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull never set foot in New Zealand. I find many of her views repugnant, and am concerned by the way in which she courts some of the most vile people and groups around, including white supremacists.”
However, he said that after consulting Immigration New Zealand, the “case does not meet the threshold for ministerial intervention.”
New Zealand’s high court eventually ruled that the decision to permit Parker entry into the country was lawful.
In a statement on Saturday, Let Women Speak NZ, the group linked to Parker’s events, said the planned event in Wellington had been canceled following the advice of Keen-Minshull’s security team. Local media published photos depicting Parker waiting for a flight out of the country from Auckland international airport on Saturday night.
Over 1,000 trans activists and supporters gathered at the site of Parker’s planned Wellington event on Sunday, even though she had already left the country, Radio New Zealand reported. Hundreds gathered for a similar demonstration in Christchurch.
As Keen-Minshull attempted to begin her Saturday event in Auckland, demonstrators began shouting, “no hate here,” to which attendees of the event shouted back, “let women speak.”
“The whole idea of letting women speak is to literally let women speak,” Parker said. “It’s not about letting women get attacked, it’s not about letting women be intimidated, it’s literally about creating space in which women can speak.”
Pointing to the crowd of protestors, Keen added, “now these people don’t want women to speak because they’re frightened of what we might say, and I think ultimately what frightens them is that they really do agree with us and they know we’re right.”
Speak Up For Women, which backed Parker’s attempted tour, said it “thank[ed] Mrs Keen-Minshull for having the courage to come to New Zealand and showing up in Albert Park today, despite receiving multiple death threats and threats of violence in the last week,” and announced that it would be “gathering witness statements and laying a formal complaint with the Independent Police Conduct Authority about the lack of police action to prevent violence in what was clearly an increasingly volatile situation.”
