[CONTENT WARNING: violence, Nazis, and TERFs]
Some big-name TERFs like Helen Joyce and JK Rowling are fans of Kellie-Jay Keen, especially her latest rallies.
I figured I’d also check out Ophelia Benson’s take, since I haven’t stopped by there in ages, and discovered she too has been enthusiastically supporting Keen.
The label “anti-trans” is of course intended to make readers think she’s a big meanie to trans people. She’s not “anti-trans”; she’s opposed to the ideology that says men are women if they say they are, and she’s in favor of women’s rights. She defends women’s rights against the hostility and usurpation of trans ideology.
While I was reading, though, a guest post caught my eye.
If their views were so evil and so clearly expressed, trans activists would be able to quote them directly. They’d be retweeting videos of these genocidal statements 24/7. If they had this evidence, they wouldn’t fail to use it. But they don’t. They only have homeopathically diluted innuendo and alleged “dog whistles” , but mostly just flat-out lies. Can’t let facts get in the way of a good straw (wo)man.
I haven’t done a post on Kellie-Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker, now have I? This seems like the perfect excuse to gather together some facts about her.
I’ve had a bit of an idea about what you can do, and for once, men, I’m talking to you. I’m talking about you dads, who maybe carry – I think that’s what you say? I’m so down with the American lingo – Maybe you carry, maybe you don’t. Maybe you consider yourself a protector of women, maybe you’re that sort of man. Maybe you have a daughter or a mother, or a wife, maybe you have a sister. Maybe you have friends, maybe you just think women are human and you don’t need any absolute connection with them to feel compelled to protect us.
I think you should start using women’s toilets, men.
You would think the gender critical movement would be strongly opposed to men invading women’s spaces, and thus be quick to denounce Keen for advocating exactly that. Yet in reality they seem perfectly fine with threatening violence against women so long as some of those women are transgender. I didn’t have to dig very far to find this one, either; so many people were outraged by it that Keen wound up deleting the original video. Even her fellow TERFs and transphobes have denounced her… sorta.
Posie should consult with a PR/media professional. She’s getting too big to make these mistakes. A simple run through of what her initial ideas are would have shot down the gun thing and would have alerted her to the in-depth facts of the Capital attack. This can be done immediately by any professional worth her salt.
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We don’t think that KJK is a “bad” person, or that women who choose to follow her are “bad”. It is not a question of morality (or jealousy, or trashing), but a question of political strategy: what strategy should we choose, according to our political understanding of oppression and power, and the political outcomes we hope to achieve?
Oh, they have no problems with men invading women’s spaces, the [real] problem is [that] Keen made them look like hypocritical extremists. Admittedly, that was a few years ago. It’s not like she’s still advocating violence against women todaaaaayyyy…
[11:18] Men don’t have to march upon our necks, they don’t have to put their hands around our throats, they get women to do it! And if women aren’t doing it directly [puts hands around her own throat], if they’re not doing it directly, they’re strangling us in other ways. They’re trying to silence us for not quite [delivering] the right message, not working with the right people, not talking to the right people. Each and every one of you women who stand in my way, each and every one of you – let me just tell you – you will be annihilated. Because I genuinely don’t lose. So if you want to stand in my way, you better be ready, ready, ready for watching the back of my arse as I walk away from you – as I walk ahead of you – as you are eclipsed. Every single last one of you!
This isn’t just hypothetical violence, either. Keen’s current tour is called “Let Women Speak,” and features a parade of pre-selected women coming up to talk about the evils of transgender people. Presumably, any woman who wanted to speak would be permitted some time at the mic, correct? Well, no; one woman who rushed the mic was choked out by the two male bodyguards Keen had hired. You’d think that would cause some cognitive dissonance, but no, Keen had the perfect excuse: that’s no woman!
And yet, immediately after her goons attacked, Keen was caught on tape referring to this woman as a woman. So how did Keen change her mind? Did her hired muscle perform a genital check off-camera? Or is this a lie spun out by Keen to justify violence against women? To be fair, by Keen’s own admission she’s also fine with violence against men, so it seems more accurate to declare her love of violence to be equal opportunity.
Speaking of, Keen loves hanging out with white supremacists and bigots. As some of the above gender critical “feminists” have noted,
4. October 2019, Posie is interviewed by Jean Francois Gariepy (removed by YouTube), a Canadian, far-right white nationalist & now banned YouTuber. He has called for a “white ethnostate” & previously hosted Nazis Richard Spencer, David Duke & Mark Collett.
5. January 2020/May 2021, Posie Parker is interviewed by Carl Benjamin (aka Sargon of Akkad) – British YouTuber & former unsuccessful UKIP candidate in the 2019 European Parl. election. Helped launch far-right org Hearts of Oak along with Tommy Robinson.
8. March 2022, Posie Parker appears on The Tucker Carlson Show. Carlson is an American TV host, conservative political commentator & author who has hosted his nightly political talk show on Fox News since 2016. Afterwards, PP called him ‘a lovely man.’
10. 26th March 2022, Posie Parker is interviewed by Jon Root for Turning Point USA, a US conservative organisation founded in 2012 by evangelical Christian, Conservative activist, Trump supporter & conspiracist, Charlie Kirk (along with Bill Montgomery).
As the numbers imply, there are more receipts in the original thread, plus this thread where you can spot a selfie she took with a Holocaust denier. Oh yes, and Keen was interviewed by Soldier of Christ Online (motto: “Proclaiming the Light of Christ Online”). From the opposite side, Nazis are comfortable with Keen and will gladly rally to help her cause. That isn’t a one-off, Keen’s also had holocaust deniers and anti-abortion advocates attend other rallies. There’s a lot of mutual support, with some of Keen’s supporters even posing for photos with the Nazis.
Alas, I don’t think I gathered up enough evidence to satisfy Benson’s guest poster, but in the process I’ve dredged up a question: why on Earth are Benson and other TERFs such big fans of Keen? This post’s title comes from a confrontation between Keen and off-screen protesters.
PROTESTOR: Why do you stand with Nazis, though?
KEEN: Why don’t you go away?
PROTESTOR: Why do you stand with Nazis?
KEEN: Who did?! Who did?!
PROTESTOR: You did! I know anti-feminists that are more feminist than you!
KEEN (trying to shout over protestor): No! No! No! I’M NOT A FEMINIST!!
You’d think people who consider themselves feminists would think twice before boosting someone who explicitly says they do not defend women’s rights. Ask me to name two things Benson is famous for, excluding transphobia, and I’d come up with opposition to Trump and his enablers, as well as a critique of religion. Yet Keen has called Trump “my man” and been interviewed by Tucker Carlson and Seb Gorka, on top of the aforementioned fundamentalist Christians, so what gives? It can’t be as simple as “because Keen’s a TERF,” since I’ve already quoted other TERFs who share the same views but don’t carry the same extremist baggage.
Here’s my theory: hating people is hard. If you spend some time around transgender people, listening to what they say, you’ll realize they’re just people. Some are jerks, some are cool, but all of them want nothing more than a happy, healthy life. It’s a lot easier to turn a person into a devil if you see them shouting and acting angry. This also gives us a emotional kick, as well, like how roller-coasters and scary movies can bring us pleasure.
So what if you went around trolling the public, saying bigoted bullshit and trying to gin up as much controversy as possible as you go. Either nobody will show up to protest you, which gives you an unopposed stage to spread hate, or a protest happens and you get your wish. The target of the shouting gets to feel like a martyr, and with a little selective editing you’re left with endless reams of footage of angry, shouting people. The perfect porn to fuel your hatred. Browse Butterflies and Wheels, and you’ll find plenty of reports of angry people shouting devoid of much context over what they’re shouting about. As for the Nazis, their presence is treated as a mystery, something we can easily wheel the goalposts away from.
QUOTE: Opposition leader John Pesutto said he met Ms Deeming on Sunday afternoon and discussed her involvement in organising, promoting and participating in a rally that had speakers and others publicly linked with far right-wing extremist groups, including neo-Nazi activists.
BENSON: What does “publicly linked with” mean? Anything more than “trans activists say they’re all neo-Nazis!!”? KJK’s rallies are open to everyone, but they’re not neo-Nazi rallies. […] The neo-Nazis didn’t so much “join” as “invade.” There’s a photo of one cop high-fiving one of the neo-Nazis. There’s no such photo of a gender-critical woman high-fiving a neo-Nazi.
Benson somehow never mentions that Keen’s recent tour was sponsored by CPAC, which has been publicly linked with Donald Trump. Keen and CPAC are a perfect fit, as she’s following the same playbook as Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and other right-wing grifters, right down to releasing new merchandise to capitalize on controversy. The only difference is that Keen’s hate porn is a better fit for Benson’s tastes, and thus inconvenient facts are conveniently left out of the narrative.
Keen is providing a valuable service to TERFs and transphobes, Benson included, hence why she is so celebrated by them. Her product more than makes up for any bitter after-taste that hypocrisy leaves behind.
[HJH 2023-03-29]: Ouch, I hit “publish” at the wrong time. My favourite Twitter mirror went down, and the Wayback Machine is overloaded so I can’t back up its Twitter threads; Twitter themselves seem to have issues with the Machine, which is only adding salt. I’ll gradually be replacing the Twitter links with archived captures over the next few days, so don’t be surprised if some of the links change. Any significant textual changes will be archived on the Wayback Machine, as usual.
[HJH 2023-03-30]: The Wayback Machine is still down, so I’ve used archive.today instead. Looks like I accidentally removed this post from my blog roll, as well. It should be back now.