Posie Parker’s Let Women Speak event in Hobart has sparked a discussion about how best to respond to her brand of anti-trans provocation and the anti-trans movement more broadly.
Should we seek to show mass support for trans people but not engage so we don’t feed into the narrative that cisgender women’s rights are under attack?
Or should we shout down provocateurs like Posie Parker so the world doesn’t hear her dangerous, harmful views?
A related question has arisen in the wake of World Pride: what role does protest still have in the LGBTIQA+ movement more broadly?
As someone who has been involved in dozens of LGBTIQA+ protests over the last three decades my response is to return to the purpose of protest. For me, that purpose is persuasion.
Protest can be immensely effective when it comes to raising an issue others are ignoring, educating the public about the need for reform, demonstrating mass public support for change, or showing why those against change are wrong.
My particular take on protest is why I have reservations about shouting down anti-trans advocates.
It’s also why I am concerned about the absence of protest at World Pride.
Making change
I eschew anger and abuse in public debate as a matter of principle. I don’t hold this view because of a desire to be polite or respectable.
I hold it because in Tasmania in the late 1980s and early 90s I saw organised, public anti-LGBTIQA+ anger, abuse and hate that was arguably worse than anything in modern Australia before or since.
Back then, as I attended pro-gay vigils outside halls in Ulverstone and Burnie and heard those within chant “kill, them, kill them”, I realised that if LGBTIQA+ people responded to anger with anger and to hate with hate it would make a dire situation even worse. The only way to end the hate was by reaching out in hope to those who feared and loathed us.
I agree with veteran bi advocate, Jen Van Achteren, that “the only result of anger is hurt, division and more anger, a never-ending cycle of opposition and hate”.
I firmly believe most people want to do the right thing despite the prejudices they may have or moral panics they may succumb to, and that society only improves when we reach around the prejudices of others to find the well-intentioned person within.
To be clear, I’m not referring to the small number of demagogues and posers who whip up hate for their own tawdry purposes.
I mean the much larger audiences who listen to them or absorb their messages. My experience has shown me they can change. I know quite a few of those anti-gay rally goers who are now our allies.
What is responsible for this change? It is almost entirely due to persuasion…by family members, by respected people, by community advocates, by public debate and sometimes by the prod of protest.
Hence my reservations about shouting people down; the louder, angrier and more abusive protests become the fewer key messages get through to the people who need to hear them.
Trans people suffer much higher levels of discrimination and stigma and suicide, they are our friends, family members and colleagues, their human rights are under concerted attack every day…these are the messages the public can’t always hear clearly when protesters are shouting and shoving.
Why these messages matter so much is that trans and gender diverse people, particularly young TGD people, are only safe and affirmed if they live in families and communities that provide safety and affirmation.
The only way to achieve that is through persuasion on a society wide level. It should be our top priority, including when we protest against anti-trans hate.
For what it’s worth, my advice as a cis-gay man to trans and gender diverse people – offered humbly and with respect to their lived experience of hate, and with full acknowledging that they must lead their own emancipation – is to look at what non-violent direct action has achieved for LGBTIQA+ Australians and adapt that to today’s needs.
In the late 80s and 90s there was an upsurge in such action across the world. In some cases, they were in response to just the kind of existential threats trans people face today.
In Britain, there were sit-ins and kiss-ins to protest clause 28. In the US, ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) had die-ins to protest the Government’s failure to stop HIV.
In Tasmania, the LGBTIQA+ movement drew on these overseas examples, plus the environmental protest movement, to develop a wide range of non-violent direct actions during the campaign to decriminalise homosexuality.
We dropped white feathers on the heads of politicians to symbolise their cowardice when they rejected gay law reform, we handed out stones to church goers and invited them to stone us if they agreed with their bishop’s homophobic views, we carpetted politician’s offices with petitions so they had to step on our rights to escape, we held sit-ins, kiss-ins and die-ins outside Parliament and in the streets, we turning ourselves into police, and much, much more.
This kind of non-violent direct action was also common in the early years of the marriage equality debate. In Hobart we saw the Queers Overboard protest against the Howard same-sex marriage ban and illegal same-sex weddings. In Sydney there was a sit-in in the offices of the Bureau of Statistics to protest the failure of the Census to recognise overseas same-sex marriages.
Such actions have continued down to the present, on issues as diverse as adoption equality and blood donation.
In March 2022 a peaceful pro-trans protest outside Hobart Town Hall ‘comically outnumbered’ attendees at an anti-trans meeting within.
Each of these actions carried such a clear message to the broader community that we didn’t need to shout, or even speak sometimes.
Because of their clear messages, these actions have played a key role in changing society for the better, especially Tasmanian society which has changed faster and more profoundly than the other Australian states.
Considering the protest tradition I have outlined, it seems one response to Posie Parker and her schtick about free speech might have been a die-in, with chalked crime-scene figures representing the number of trans people murdered by haters in Australia every year.
Trans people and their allies may still have shouted angrily at her. But at least there would have been a memorable visual representation of the impact of hate speech and a valuable message for the broader public.
At least the broader community would have a better grasp on why trans people are so angry.
I understand the depth of trans anger. I understand some speakers are so objectionable (and attractive to Nazis), that it can be hard to hold back.
I also understand the temptation, in a world of divisive social media and increased political polarization, to shout to be heard. The resurgence of prejudice against LGBTIQA+ people since marriage equality has caused me deep demoralisation and anger I am sometimes barely able to control.
But if I am to take on this resurgent prejudice I need more than just anger to keep me going, I need a positive vision for making real change through persuasion. I need to educate, not berate. In this I believe I am not alone.
World Pride
If the problem with the Posie Parker protests was no clear, cut-through message the problem with World Pride was no protest message at all.
World Pride was held two weeks before an election in a state with the nation’s worst LGBTIQA+ laws, including in the areas of discrimination and gender recognition. Neither major party had committed to the suite of reforms NSW desperately needs. In fact, their only commitment was to conversion practice legislation, and that commitment was so full of holes it was worse than useless.
The World Pride Human Rights Conference could have passed a resolution in support of wide-ranging reform and sent a delegation to state parliament to hand that resolution to the Premier and Opposition Leader. It may or may not have changed their minds, but it would have been beamed into every Australian lounge-room, given World Pride’s saturation coverage.
The problems in NSW are reflected at a federal level. Australia has fallen behind most other western nations on LGBTIQA+ reform. Faith-based schools and services are still allowed to discriminate against LGBTIQA+ people, there are no rebates on trans-affirming health care, the Census doesn’t include LGBTIQA+ people, gay men and some bisexual men and trans women are still barred from blood donation, there are no national laws to stop intersex children undergoing ‘normalising’ surgeries, and there is no national LGBTIQA+ human rights commissioner. Meanwhile, Australia’s new Labor Government is so cautious it has failed to act decisively on any of these issues.
It’s true that during World Pride, Penny Wong committed $3.5 million to overseas LGBTIQA+ advocacy, but that is seven times less than Canada commits annually, despite there being a number of countries in the Asia/Pacific that continue to criminalise homosexuality. Yes, Mark Butler announced $26 million for LGBTIQA+ health research and the development of an LGBTIQA+ health action plan, but there was nothing for over-stretched front-line services.
Apart from these unsatisfactory announcements the Federal Government announced nothing which might have upset anti-LGBTIQA religious groups.
During the Harbour Bridge Walk, a group of concerned LGBTIQA+ people could have formed a circle around Anthony Albanese thanked him for being there and then handed him the long list of reforms he is ignoring. Again, it may not have changed his mind but it would have alerted a watching nation to the problems LGBTIQA+ Australians still face.
LGBTIQA+ Australians had the biggest ever platform to protest the inequities confronting us and persuade the nation to be on our side. But we wasted it. Why?
I’ve heard it said many gay men and lesbians don’t care about reforms to come because they don’t affect us.
That’s not true. Many of us still struggle against discrimination and stand with other LGBTIQA+ people who struggle with it even more. We can see the similarities between the struggles of today and of the past. We can see our traditional opponents, especially in the United States and UK, use attacks on trans people to circle back to old battles we thought we’d won like school inclusion and marriage equality.
I’ve also heard it said the LGBTIQA+ community is beyond protest because well-placed politicians and funded LGBTIQA+ organisations are doing the job for us.
That’s also not true. Aside from the small-scale funding commitments I’ve mentioned, these well-placed and well-funded advocates were silent about most of the issues I have mentioned. It was as if their response to having such a big microphone was to make their message as quiet and comfortable as possible.
In their meek messages there were echoes of the strategy adopted during the marriage postal survey of reducing our lives and rights to a few bland phrases about “fairness”. In 2017 the greatest opportunity we ever had to promote equality for all LGBTIQA+ people was lost. In 2023 another unique opportunity to do the same was also lost.
World Pride’s corporate sponsors were no better. Companies like Coles spent millions of dollars on rainbow-branded advertising. But as far as I know they didn’t make a single donation to a front-line LGBTIQA+ service or send a single submission to the current inquiry into discrimination exemptions for faith-based schools (credit to the Body Shop for its current campaign supporting Census inclusion).
Long-time Australian/UK LGBTIQA+ activists, Peter Tatchell, was right when he said of World Pride and other big pride events that they have “strayed far from the roots of Pride, becoming depoliticised, ultra-hedonistic and too corporate and commercial. A lot of them are more a PR and branding exercise for big business than a serious challenge to the abuse of our human rights.”
Reviving a history of protest
There is so much Australians still don’t know about the daily indignities and inequities faced by their LGBTIQA+ compatriots.
There are so many reforms we must still persuade them to support.
We must never lose an opportunity to convince them to rally to our cause.
This includes never missing an opportunity to engage in peaceful non-violent direct action.
It’s time for us to revive the LGBTIQA+ community’s history of non-violent protest.
We must re-learn how to protest in a way that communicates clear messages and will cut through the noise of resurgent anti-LGBTIQA+ hate rather than adding to that noise.
We must learn to direct effective protest not only at those who oppose us, but at those who aren’t doing enough to overcome discrimination against us.
Government, the corporate sector and the Big End of the Rainbow won’t do the work for us.
It is up to grassroots LGBTIQA+ people and our allies to re-discover how protest can be used to persuade the nation it’s time to end the challenges LGBTIQA+ people still face.
Rodney Croome is a long-time LGBTIQ+ community advocate who has written this article in a personal capacity.
