Katherine Deves in ‘secret location’ after receiving death threats for transgender comments
Liberal candidate Katherine Deves says she is in a “secret location” and her family has been threatened after her comments about transgender people.
Liberal candidate Katherine Deves is in “a secret location” after sending her children away from Sydney revealing she has received death threats over her transgender comments.
After refusing media requests for interviews for weeks, Ms Deves emerged on SBS television on Sunday night revealing she had been force to call in the police.
Ms Deves, who hit the headlines after saying trans teenagers were “surgically mutilated” that surrogacy was “a vanity project” and “a human rights violation” said she wanted to set the record straight insisting he wasn’t anti-trans.
“I have received death threats. I have had to have the police and the AFP involved. My safety has been threatened,’’ she said.
“My family are away out of Sydney because I don’t want them to witness what I’m going through nor do I want their safety put at risk.”
Speaking exclusively to SBS News, the mother of three girls spoke to presenter Janice Petersen “in a secret location on Sunday”.
Ms Deves said she was “chastened” by the reaction to her comments but insisted she is not transphobic.
“Going forward, I will be conducting myself in a dignified and respectful fashion. I recognise that the way I prosecuted those arguments was not conducive to proper, reasonable debate,” she said.
“What we are witnessing right now – we are in a time where it is dangerous to speak your mind.”
Ms Deves said she now recognised she should not have used some of the language that she did and would not be returning to the Twitter platform.
“I recognise that trying to prosecute arguments about complex, nuanced and difficult subjects ... sorry ... it should not take place on a platform that propagates offence and division and hurt,” she said.
“As a mother and a woman, I recognise that the way I prosecuted those arguments was not conducive to proper reasonable debate. It was not the appropriate platform to do so. I have removed myself from that platform, and I will not be going back there again.
“This is about women’s rights.
“With this issue, we have a collision of rights. And thus far the voices of women and girls have not been heard. And when we have a collision of rights in liberal democracies, we debate them in a reasonable, measured fashion.
“And that’s what should have taken place here.”
Ms Deves’ social media footprint was deleted just days before she was announced as the Liberal candidate.
But the vast majority of her commentary online and in YouTube videos is about trans people.
“I feel like this is like a fight against a hydra – we cut off one head and we end up with two. So we need to go for the immortal head and bury it forever … chop it off, and bury it under a rock,” she said.
Scott Morrison has defended Ms Deves again after insisting she’s agreed to a more “sensitive approach in the future”.
Asked in Alice Springs whether he agreed with Ms Deves that surrogacy – where a woman agrees to carry the child for another couple – was an abuse of human rights, the Prime Minister did not directly answer the question about his own views.
“Her comments were broad to that and weren’t limited to single sex relationships or anything else like that,” the Prime Minister said.
“But I’ve made a number of comments about this matter. And the issue is fundamentally about women and girls in school. Katherine Deves has made her comments about comments made in the past, and she knows that a sensitive approach is required in the future.”
Listen to news.com.au’s Political Editor Samantha Maiden discussing the latest on Katherine Deves in our daily news podcast I’ve Got News For You here, or press play below:
Ms Deves’s original comments were in reaction to a post about US politician Pete Buttigieg announcing he and his husband, Chasten, were now the parents of two children.
Subsequently, media reports suggested the children were adopted and not the product of surrogacy at all.
The Prime Minister also defended Ms Deves’ decision to ban the media from a publicly advertised politics in the pub event on Friday night.
At the press conference in Alice Springs, LNP candidate Jacinta Price, a supporter of Ms Deves, said the substantive issue she was raising was important.
“Well, let’s get this straight. I support women and girls in sport. I’ve been a captain of several AFL football teams here in Central Australia. I mean girls here put on a hard hit playing AFL but if you have to be up against a bloke that’s potentially life threatening,” she said.
“And it is up to the media to understand that being pro-women is not anti-trans as far as I’m concerned.
“Yeah, her language on standing up for women’s rights, I agree with.”
Asked about her comments regarding a link between transvestism and serial killers, Ms Price said this was a matter for the Liberal candidate to answer.
Ms Deves was on Sunday urged for a second time to take up an offer to visit Sydney’s Jewish Museum as controversy continues to rage over her references to the transgender community and Nazism.
The candidate for Warringah likened her push to stop transgender women from competing in women’s sports to standing up to the Nazis during the Holocaust in an interview in 2021, and has made reference to “the rainbow reich” in since-deleted social media posts.
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Darren Bark and Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim told news.com.au Ms Deves should reflect on her past comments.
“All of these Nazi analogies are historically inaccurate and fundamentally misconceived,” he said.
“Next week the Jewish community will commemorate Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, highlighting the contrast between the free and peaceful life we enjoy in Australia and the life of fear imposed on everybody who lived under the murderous rule of the Nazis.
“If the moral imperative of ‘never again’ is to have genuine meaning, it must begin with a deep understanding of the difference between the blessings of freedom and the horrors of tyranny.”
Originally published as Katherine Deves in ‘secret location’ after receiving death threats for transgender comments
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