In case you’ve been fortunate enough to be living under a rock this week and missed the news – an anti-trans speaker, Posie Parker, has somehow been granted access into our country and plans on voicing her horrendous views this weekend. Thankfully there are peaceful counter protests also planned – but, really? We’re STILL having to have these conversations in 2023?! Emma Clifton has been on maternity leave for five minutes and has already returned to get angry and vocal about what is going on:
As part of my maternity leave, I have been trying to avoid the news but despite my best intentions, the Posie Parker news has crept on into my subconscious, most likely because as an elder millennial, I was horribly shocked to think that Dazed and Confused actor Parker Posey had taken a moral left-turn in recent times (she hasn’t! Parker is thriving!)
As someone who has watched many of my beloved UK writers fall down the anti-trans rabbit hole (JK Rowling remaining the one that hurts the most), my first reaction upon learning about the NZ visit of controversial figure Posie Parker was, well… ‘of course she’s British’. And then it was the even more depressing thought of ‘of course there’s a Nazi element to this’, because it’s 2023 and somewhere in the last few years, that’s just become an expected part of the discourse. And like all trends, Aotearoa is slow to get there but gets there in the end.
The moral panic of the trans debate and anti LGBT+ rhetoric has been one of the many disturbing movements picking up pace in the US and in the UK, and now we are starting to see fledging fits and starts of it here. The protest at the drag story-time reading at a library in Auckland. The destruction of LGBT+ safe spaces and rise of hate crimes. And now, the arrival of Posie Parker (the name will never NOT annoy me), a speaker who many of us had never heard of before, who has made a name for herself (or, really, mixed up another person’s name) by spouting anti-trans rhetoric masquerading as women’s rights… and flirting with far-right propaganda whilst doing so.
The debate around free speech is an important one, absolutely, and the usual suspects have jumped to the defence of Posie, as an example of someone who should be free to say whatever they want. But when free speech centres around the attitude of ‘I don’t like you, so I don’t think you should exist,’ well… a lot of really bad things have happened in history because of people who think like that. The pipeline of ‘they’re different’ to ‘they’re scary’ to ‘they’re dangerous and don’t belong here’ is an extremely troubling pipeline and it’s one that the Rainbow community has been disproportionately affected by in recent years.
The fact that women’s bathrooms remains a centre point for the anti-trans argument is, in my opinion, just one example of how insanely blown up this conversation has become; as if we haven’t all been using unisex bathrooms for decades, on planes, in parks, in cafes, without incident. The anti-trans movement is an argument built on the extremes, that negates the lived reality of the people in the middle, just trying to live a normal life where their humanity is as accepted as anyone else’s. Where their personal, often complex journey to gender identity is allowed to happen.
Writer Daniel M. Lavery writes about this brilliantly in his book of essays, Something That May Shock And Discredit You, which focuses in large part on his own transition. In Chapter 4: Reasons for Transitioning, he writes a list of (extremely tongue-in-cheek) reasons he went through gender transition, including the following:
“Want to impress good-looking ex; Want to upset good-looking ex; Bored of existing wardrobe, looking for excuse to buy all-new clothes that don’t fit in a new way; Younger siblings getting too much attention; Neoliberalism??; Want to sing both parts of a duet at karaoke; Something about upper-body strength; Excited to reinforce a different set of sexist stereotypes; Cheaper haircuts; Just love layering shirts.”
It’s a great list – and a great book – and it gets to the heart of a very important matter. The thing that has always got me about anti-trans sentiment is that so much of it is based in the belief that people are gender transitioning for, like, shits and giggles. Because they’re bored and/or evil. Because they think it’s an easier route to achieve sporting glory (just ask Laurel Hubbard how easy and controversy-free her path to the Olympics was). Because they can! Because they’re confused teenagers and it’s a phase, like dying your hair blue or briefly getting into punk.
I find this argument particularly baseless here in NZ, where doing anything REMOTELY feminine (having feelings, basic communication, wearing a colourful shirt) is still enough to get you labelled as ‘gay’ or ‘acting like a girl’, e.g. the ultimate insult to a Kiwi male. And yet, one of the persistent criticisms against the trans community is exactly that: that it’s people switching genders on a whim. Or, worse, to commit crimes.
When it comes to public figures like Posie Parker, who make their living seeding fear into the hearts of cisgender women about the dangers of trans people, it reminds me of that line from Catching Fire (yes, from The Hunger Games series; I am very literary), where someone reminds heroine Katniss ‘Remember who the real enemy is’. I think this ALL the time when cisgender women get angry or fearful towards our trans sisters, because it’s not like they’re coming over to the winning side, you know? No matter what your journey to becoming a woman is, it’s not a dream scenario once you get here. The road to womanhood is still paved with gender pay gaps (of which transgender people get an even worse deal) and physical intimidation (transgender people are four times more likely to be assaulted).
In a country with appalling domestic abuse statistics, where you’re more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than anyone else, the biggest risk to cisgender women is coming from inside the house, not from the Rainbow community. But the risk to the transgender community is growing, thanks to people like Posie Parker who make it their full-time job to stir up fear and hate. I’ll be honest, there is so much news out there that too often my attitude is ‘do I have to care about this?’ and when it comes to the trans debate – which is often heated, messy and lacks nuance – it can feel easier to just stay out of it. But when public figures like Posie are doing hate tours that self-proclaimed Nazis feel comfortable in attending, that’s when it’s important to realise how cisgender people can be helpful in making sure these hurtful messages fail to latch on. There are peaceful counter protests in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch this weekend (more info here), to show support for the Rainbow community and all who dwell within it. It’s an easy, visible and important way to show the LGBTQIA+ community that there is considerably more love for them in this country than there is fear (and that there is only one Parker Posey we recognise!)
