Rita Panahi: The trans activist movement in Australia holds disproportionate power

The “sisterhood” has been split in two, with many siding with radical trans activists while others fight to protect women’s-only spaces from biological males who identify as women.

We are living in bizarre times. On the one hand we have endless messaging around the rights of women and female empowerment and yet women in Melbourne will need police protection when they gather this Saturday for a “Let Women Speak” event in the CBD.

We hear plenty about respecting women’s boundaries but we have people in positions of power, including health chief Dr Brendan Murphy, who cannot readily define what a woman is.

And, we have a trans activist movement in this country that holds disproportionate power and wields it regularly.

A protest in support of transgender women in Sydney. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

It should shame the state government that right now a sexual predator, guilty of multiple rapes, is housed in Victoria’s largest female prison despite the objections of many of the terrified inmates whose pleas have been ignored by authorities.

And sadly their cries for help have also been ignored by the loudest feminists in the country.

The modern feminist movement is at a crossroads and has split in two with the bulk of “the sisterhood” siding with radical trans activists, while the remainder fight to protect women’s only spaces such as locker rooms, shelters and prisons and women’s sport from biological males who identify as women.

The modern feminist movement is at a crossroads. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

This Saturday that clash will be evident on the steps of parliament as women gathering to talk about their rights being infringed upon are expected to be met with hundreds of trans activists, including many identifying as feminists, determined to intimidate the women into silence.

No doubt they will be successful in scaring many women away.

I attended the Sydney event, headlined by Kellie-Jay Keen, on the weekend for Sky News and heard women of all ages and backgrounds telling their stories.

They needed protection from lines of police including the mounted branch.

Throughout the rally hundreds of trans activists seeking to disrupt the women screamed into megaphones, chanted about Nazis and generally carried on like a pack of enraged clowns.

It’s frankly incredible and more than a little depressing that in 2023 women in Australia who hold very much mainstream views about gender cannot meet in a public place in broad daylight without police protection.

It’s time Australian women woke up to what is happening to their rights in the name of diversity and inclusion.