Melbourne, in Australia's southeastern state of Victoria, marked the halfway point of Posie Parker's Standing for Women tour down under. It was set to be held on the Parliament House steps on 18th March 2023, at 12pm local time (1am UTC).
Before
Kellie-Jay Keen had much success with the Australian Let Women Speak events prior to the one held in Melbourne. The usual transactivist noise was present; however, there were little to no interruptions at these events, and it has been said that Keen coming to Australia had successfully shifted the conversation about gender within the country.
Calls to protest the Melbourne leg of Let Women Speak came from a number of groups, including the National Union of Students and Pride in Protest, and were amplified by figures such as Tom Tanuki, an activist with a Twitter following of nearly 15,000. An Antifa group identifying themselves as 161 Naarm Crew even referred to women who would be attending as "cooked cunts" and "soggy cookies" who would supposedly preach "anti-Semitic conspiracies".
The Let Women Speak event was advertised with physical posters in Melbourne as well as online, but they were quickly torn down.
During
Protestors began showing up about an hour before the Let Women Speak event was due to begin, and were originally taking up the Parliament steps where the women would later be gathering. They were already banging on pans and drums and sounding fake sirens, and it was said that a protestor was arrested for spraying feces.
The protestors were ushered onto the other side of Spring Street not long after, where they would remain through the duration of the event. Around this time, the Let Women Speak group was beginning to set up.
Let Women Speak quickly amassed a large crowd, which spilled out onto Spring St. Katherine Deves, a woman who was in attendance, shared a video of the police neatly organized in lines, with five mounted police clearly visible. "We’ve been advised some of the men actually allegedly want to assault us," she wrote in her tweet, "we’ve been advised to run if they break ranks through police cordon".
At just after 12pm, a group of about twenty neo-Nazis was recorded on Spring St. north of the Parliament House, carrying two Australian flags and a large banner reading "DESTROY PAEDO FREAKS". Led by Thomas Sewell, they would repeatedly salute in the direction of a throng of transactivists with red flags approaching from the north. Mounted police would intervene and form a barrier between the two groups.
A few transactivists infiltrated the Let Women Speak crowd to cause trouble. At around 12:25pm, Kellie-Jay's speech was interrupted by a woman screaming and making a big show of pretending to give birth to her nonbinary-identifying friend. They were immediately thrown out of the group and escorted to the protestors on the other side of Spring St., where they were greeted with applause. The woman in the dress could be seen on the livestream not even ten minutes earlier.
The speeches commenced, though the first woman to speak appeared to be interrupted by shouting. Right after this, Kellie-Jay pans the camera around to show the Let Women Speak crowd and counterprotestors, and the neo-Nazis are also visible in the background - though with their backs to the women, their saluting is hidden.
After a brief interruption from Kellie-Jay, the next speaker stepped up to talk about womens' suffrage, single-sex spaces, and the effects of puberty blockers and sex reassignment surgery. However, she was only a minute into her speech when someone ran up and grabbed the microphone away from her to shout "TRANS RIGHTS MATTER". He was quickly pulled away by security, and a struggle on the ground ensued, in which a woman was knocked to the ground and rendered unconscious
An alternate angle of the transactivist rushing up to grab the microphone revealed that he had two buddies with him, one of them a man with short blond hair and the other a man in a baseball cap. The man who rushed the speaker was wearing a wig, which came off in the tussle. Interestingly, he too was within the Let Women Speak crowd before his attack, and could be seen on the livestream similarly to the two women from earlier on.
After he was kicked out of the Let Women Speak group, it was revealed that he had broken the microphone, and Moira Deeming also mentioned that she was kicked in the shins repeatedly. The stewards were asked to form a ring around the speaker to prevent future rushes.
During this time, the neo-Nazis were still facing off against protestors; however, they would be allowed to continue further down Spring St. and onto the Parliament House steps, though at a slight distance from the Let Women Speak event. Here, they would hold up their banner and continuously salute, still in the direction of the transactivist protestors. Kellie-Jay would pan her camera around once more while they were on the steps, but they did not salute during this time.
Not long after, the police would escort the neo-Nazis further down Spring St., between Let Women Speak and the protestors. All the while, they were still saluting in the direction of the transactivists, who in turn were being held back by the police. The next time Kellie-Jay panned her camera around, they were gone, having been spotted south of the Parliament House earlier on.
The rest of the speeches would go by without issue, aside from a loud whirring which momentarily interrupted one woman. One speaker talked about manipulation, while an autistic woman spoke of the effects of transgenderism on the autistic community. A Greens member had a word to say about being investigated by the party for misconduct, and a particularly rousing speech was delivered by a woman who had become disillusioned with the political left. One notable speaker was Moira Deeming, a recently elected member of Victorian parliament, who spoke on behalf of a Muslim friend unable to attend. In total, seventeen women spoke that day, including the aforementioned five.
Later on, the mounted police would come back between Let Women Speak and the transactivists, to help hold the line as the protestors spread out over the intersection. Kellie-Jay would mention in a post-event chat that they had been advised by police to wrap up early due to protestors assaulting the horses.
After
Unsurprisingly, accusations of the neo-Nazis being supporters of Let Women Speak flew once transactivists got wind of their presence. In response, many of those who attended the Let Women Speak event mentioned that the neo-Nazis had not been invited, with Kellie-Jay herself announcing that she believed them to be Antifa at first. Once she saw them saluting, she chose not to derail her own event by calling them out.
Condemnation came fast from Let Women Speak attendees, as well as radical feminists and gender criticals who hadn't been there. One notable condemnation came from the Australian Jewish Association, who maintained that Let Women Speak had nothing to do with the neo-Nazis.
There was much speculation on the neo-Nazis' true motives for showing up, from shit-stirring to psyops to a transactivist ploy. Others were outraged at how the police had led them directly between the two groups, with some sharing a picture of a neo-Nazi shaking hands with a police officer on the House steps. However, this picture can be traced back to a separate incident from 2015.
Some more credible theories regarding this strange police decision were made. One woman mentioned that the police escort was likely due to protestors further up Spring St., while another person pointed out that one of the neo-Nazis was Nathan Bull, son of a Victorian police officer, implying that they were let through because of his connections.
Questions regarding the neo-Nazis' presence that day were answered by a post to XYZ, a far-right blog site. The author, David Hiscox, would refer to Let Women Speak as a "normie protest", and described Kellie-Jay Keen as an "atheist radical feminist", likely because she called herself as atheist on her livestream. Hiscox would use this same description later on in the post, clearly mentioning Kellie-Jay by her hyphenated surname (Keen-Minshull). As if this paragraph wasn't enough, Hiscox makes it clear at the end of the post that his beliefs are in direct conflict with those of Kellie-Jay Keen and the rest of the women at Let Women Speak.
To solidify this evidence, a video of a man questioning a neo-Nazi on their appearance surfaced a couple of days after the event. The neo-Nazi refers to the transactivists further up Spring St. as "pedophiles", or at the least, "pedophile protectors" and "pedophile advocates". When asked what he thought of the Let Women Speak group, he answered that he was "all for womens' rights" before adding on "what rights don't women have these days?", seemingly contradicting himself. He stated that he and the other neo-Nazis were the most worried for little boys, stating that "they're made to stand up and apologize for rape". Evidently, if the neo-Nazis had come to support Kellie-Jay Keen, they had not done their homework on what Let Women Speak was about.
But the damage was done, with influential figures such as activist Billy Bragg and Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt alleging that the neo-Nazis had shown up in support of Let Women Speak. Trans-identified man Katie Montgomerie got his two cents in, while Victorian premier Daniel Andrews tried his hand at forced teaming, and Federal Labor Member Josh Burns spoke of an "ugly allience between anti-trans bullies and neo-Nazis".
Some attendees of the Let Women Speak event had their livelihoods targeted in the following weeks, including a couple forced out of a Greyhound rescue which they founded. One of the more high profile women targeted was Moira Deeming, who had spoken on behalf of her friend at Let Women Speak. John Pesutto, leader of Victoria's Liberal Party, issued a statement in which he expressed intent to expel Deeming from the party. This move was immediately condemned by, among other groups, Womens Forum Australia, with their CEO calling for Pesutto to step down as leader. Deeming would issue a two-part press release the next day, in which she defended herself and other Let Women Speak organizers while condeming the neo-Nazis.
Moira Deeming would avoid expulsion, instead being suspended from the Liberal Party for nine months. Her statement on this can be found here.
Odds and ends
Odds and ends are interesting morsels of information which reside here due to me being unable to fit them into the story.
Two people appear to have been arrested, and a man was either talked to or arrested for revving the engine of his motorcycle to drown out speakers. It is possible that they may be mentioned in this article.
Remember how Adam Bandt was so quick to smear Let Women Speak as a Nazi rally? Well, now's a good time to mention that the Greens reprimanded, but failed to suspend, a trans-identified man who, among other things, was a Nazi sympathizer. (There has also been a much more official-looking screenshot of a document floating around, but if it's a public PDF, I have been unable to find it.)
There were reportedly anti-vaxxers present near the Parliament House during the events of 18th March, but as far as I'm concerned, they don't really fit into the tale of Let Women Speak Melbourne. Rukshan Fernando notes that they were a separate group at around 53:12.
In addition, someone, likely a transactivist protestor, threw a glass bottle at the neo-Nazis while they were departing further down Spring St. Zoom in on the bottom left video to see it better.
In the wake of the neo-Nazi gatecrashing, Victoria would move to ban the Nazi salute, with other states following suit.
Links and References
STONE THE CRONE on YouTube filmed several videos detailing the transactivist protestors before the Let Women Speak event began. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Real Rukshan's livestream
Randell Ceetwo's livestream
Platform Melbourne's livestream
Timestamps to the Let Women Speak speeches:
Public health worker, steward, Katherine Deves, green dress 1, Michelle Uriarau, manipulation speaker, black hat, Nina Vallins, white shirt, "Barbary", Moira Deeming, stripey dress, Stassja, light gray shirt, Jennifer, green dress 2, black shirt.
Someone edits the speeches into a video with Rukshan's livestream, and a couple of others, with a plethora of times in the description.
Rebel News interviews Kellie-Jay Keen
SkyNews coverage
Real Rukshan's after-event video
Daniel Andrews' thoughts on Let Women Speak on air
A really good write-up. I was here and have scoured the web for others' impressions. One minor quibble - that infiltrator who snatched the mic was actually clearly female. She was carried right past me and deposited on the footpath - where she gathered to pack her "disguise" wig. I just found it hilarious that someone would think they need a disguise to pretend she is GC... The ex-leftist you mention delivered a fantastic speech and I highly recommend everyone to watch - its avail on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIsAqEFu-io
This is an excellent piece documenting the events. The truth matters.