The Daily Telegraph - Features
‘Trans activists’ give protesters a bad name
What did you do at the weekend? “Oh, I got myself a balaclava, dressed in black, put a noose with trans colours on it around the neck of a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst and posed for a picture with it.”
I don’t know the names of the people in the photos that emerged from Manchester city centre this weekend. I don’t know if they think they have done trans people an enormous favour with this cosplay of being members of some kind of militant force. “Black Pampers” as one wit described them on Twitter.
I do know that intimidating women is not a good look. And that it is more than a pose.
There is also a video circulating from the same day. A woman calmly holds up a suffragette flag in front of the statue. It appears she is being physically threatened by these morons. A policeman stands around, not doing much. These images are properly shocking whatever your particular beliefs about women’s rights.
This was a stand- off between two groups: Standing for Women, who had planned to hold a protest by the statue of Pankhurst, versus the anonymous “ninjas” who turned up to the counter-protest organised by Manchester Trans Rise Up (the group has said that the “ninjas” were not affiliated with it).
Standing for Women is mostly supported by gender-critical feminists who refuse the cult of trans ideology that threatens women’s spaces, language and rights. Increasingly, women feel unconsulted and trampled over, as every institution buys wholesale the nonsensical arguments that sex is “assigned” at birth and that gender is just an internal and inexplicable feeling.
I may agree with the founder of Standing for Women, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (usually known as Posie Parker), on these particular issues, but she is also a provocator, a controversial figure and someone I don’t support.
Unlike her, I wouldn’t share a platform with far-right figures such as Jean-Francois Gariépy, a YouTuber who wants a “white ethno-state” or neo-nazi Richard Spencer, even in the name of getting the word out about women’s rights. That said, there is no way the behaviour of the trans activists of the counter-protest showed anything but contempt for women. The hard-man poses – perhaps some of these people were not men (I don’t actually don’t care how they identify) – is particularly jarring up against the statue of Pankhurst who indeed believed in “deeds not words” and who paid the price in the name of women’s suffrage. Pankhurst is a symbol of how hard women have fought to secure their basic rights but also a complex figure to many modern feminists due to her support of the Conservative Party and the Empire. If only revolutionaries were simple souls and history was not multifaceted, life would be easier. And so would protest.
In another town another man was also posing. Jeremy Webster, the deputy director of an arts centre, managed to get himself pictured throwing an egg at the new statue of Margaret Thatcher. This, he said, was a “call to arms”.
It all seems rather silly but at least he didn’t bother with some knock-off SAS outfit. I am no fan of Thatcher and feel sorry for anyone who has to look at this monstrosity of a statue. Loved by some, she remains a divisive figure; so much so, that the statue had already been rejected by Westminster council in 2018 on the basis it would attract vandalism.
I would argue that you don’t need a statue to see the legacy of
Thatcher. You can see it in the destruction of social housing, in the tatters of privatised industries, in the self-serving nature of the current government.
In this age of social media and symbolic protests, statues have become literal touchstones for dissent. But while hating a statue or egging it is one thing, watching hooded men in masks put a noose around the Pankhurst statue in front of women protestors should make us all shudder.
Having walked through the “demonstrations” of so-called trans activists on the way to meetings, I’ve seen that there are a lot of mixed-up people who believe themselves to be radical and are perfectly prepared to terrorise women in the process. Setting off flares on campus, surrounding women speakers, shouting in their faces, death threats. Good old-fashioned male aggression designed to silence women. Kid yourself this is for trans rights or that both sides are equal as much as you like but these images speak for themselves. Those fighting for women’s rights are fighting to keep what we already have.
One side is waving suffrage flags and singing, the other side is in balaclavas and using nooses. The horrible truth is that the gimps in masks believe themselves to be “progressive” rather than cowardly anonymous misogynists. Hide your faces as much as you like. We see you.
The horrible truth is that the gimps in masks believe they are ‘progressive’