The goodies v the baddies

Very fair and impartial reporting from the Guardian:

The independent senator Lidia Thorpe was pulled to the ground after attempting to storm the stage at a rally in Canberra held by anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen, who also goes by the name of Posie Parker.

Draped in an Aboriginal flag, Thorpe struggled with police before she was stopped by them; she returned to the pro-trans rights rally to cheers.

Except that “anti-trans” isn’t the right label. The issue is the way trans ideology is shredding women’s rights. That’s too long for a label, but “anti-trans” is too inaccurate and prejudicial for a label.

Thorpe, who recently staged a protest attempting to block the Sydney Mardi Gras parade to protest Indigenous deaths in custody, said she had moved on Keen to protest homophobia and transphobia.

What homophobia? It’s not homophobic to try to defend women’s rights.

Thorpe also complained about her treatment by Australian federal police, alleging that it constituted assault. A spokesperson for Thorpe later clarified that the incident involved private security officers as well as AFP officers. The matter is being investigated by the AFP.

But she charged at KJK from behind. Should the federal police and security officers simply have let her keep going?

Outside Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday, the trans rights protesters referred to the Melbourne rally with a chant of “Posie Parker, you can’t hide, you’ve got Nazis on your side”.

In a tightly cropped video streaming on social media, Parker claimed this was an attempt to “silence” her and that she had been “aggressed upon”, as the pro-trans rally maintained a distance of 50 metres.

Except for Thorpe, who came charging up at her from behind. It looked pretty aggressive to me.

Earlier, the Liberal MP Bridget Archer told ABC Radio that organisers had “almost stopped pretending that it’s about women’s rights and they are openly saying that it is an anti-transgender protest”.

“If they want to talk about women’s safety, I don’t think that the issue of … same-sex bathrooms is where the issue of women’s safety is at,” she said. “The most unsafe place for women to be is in their own homes.

“In terms of safety, the transgender community have much higher rates of violence perpetrated against them than even women do, so I think it’s just nonsense.”

No they don’t. It’s not even close.

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