Some 50 police officers have been called in to separate two crowds of protesters at a Kellie-Jay Keen rally in Belfast today – just weeks after the controversial activist was evicted from New Zealand.
Hundreds of people gathered in the Donegall Quay area of the city center on Sunday afternoon to hear Keen, also known as Posie Parker, calling counter-demonstrators ‘f***ing deranged’.
Parker, who has repeatedly said she is “not a feminist,” addressed the “Let Women Speak” demonstration next to the city’s “Big Fish” landmark.
It comes after Keen fled New Zealand last month after being pelted with eggs and doused in tomato sauce in the middle of a speech.
Keen was forced to cut short her ‘Let Women Speak’ tour after the Albert Park incident, in Auckland’s CBD.
Posie Parker (pictured) has been repeatedly criticized for her homophobic and transphobic views
Father Ted creator Graham Linehan, who was banned from Twitter for the second time today, also attended the Belfast rally
A man dances alongside police officers at the pro-LGBT+ rally in Belfast
She was due to give a speech when she was harassed by counter-protesters and thrown under tomato soup before being taken away under police protection.
Father Ted creator Graham Linehan, also an outspoken critic of the trans rights movement, was among those attending the event today.
Linehan was banned from Twitter for a second time today, having been reinstated by Elon Musk following his takeover of the company.
The writer had already received warnings from the site for his views on trans rights, but was removed after “joking” that he would kill LGBT+ activists at today’s rally.
Linehan wrote, “Durr imm gonna kill em,” in response to a pro-trans tweet on the platform.
In the vicinity of Parker’s rally, several LGBT+ groups gathered for a counter-gathering.
More than 50 policemen formed a line between the demonstrations, as loud music played and participants on both sides chanted and waved flags and signs – but the demonstrations remained peaceful.
Supporters of the LGBT+ community also showed solidarity with the transgender community
The counter-demonstrators carried pride flags and slogans in support of transgender people
Parker, 48, – who is endorsed by JK Rowling – has been described by her supporters as a ‘women’s rights activist’, but her recent rally in Melbourne was attended by Nazis (pictured at the rally)
Parker has been interviewed by police for several suspected offenses regarding their views on the LGBT+ community.
In 2018, she was interviewed by Wiltshire and West Yorkshire Police over comments she made about transgender teenagers, but no charges were brought.
In May of the same year, she was removed as a speaker for Woman’s Place UK, a women’s rights organisation, due to now-deleted tweets saying that the city of Bradford in England was a ‘terrible place for women’ due to its high population density. of ‘Pakistani Muslims’.
She added that it was “disgusting” for young children to “wear hijabs” and said Islamophobia “b******” was invented to “silence critics of Islam.”
In 2021, she wrote a blog for British political magazine The Spectator, where she criticized an advertisement for British department store John Lewis for allowing a boy to dress up and play with what she sees as “girl toys.”
And at a Parker meeting in Newcastle earlier this year, a speaker read an excerpt from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The woman referred to the Nazi ideology of “the big lie” and said accepting transgender people was equivalent to the “big lie.”
Parker told the audience at the Let Women Speak event today, “I know a lot of you have taken a lot out of your big girl pants to come out here because it’s really genuinely intimidating.”
Despite Parker’s insistence that children shouldn’t question their gender, her calls for children as young as 11 to speak out against anti-trans activists, with their comments widely shared on social media.
Even fellow ‘gender-critical feminist groups’ are cutting ties with the mother of four, with a prominent British group saying the presence of neo-Nazis at the Melbourne event should be a ‘wake-up call’.
John O’Doherty, executive director of LGBT+ support group Rainbow Project, took part in the trans rights demonstration.
“We are here today to make sure every trans and non-binary person in Northern Ireland knows they are welcome and there is a community waiting here to embrace them and the hatred shared by the other today, is not a reflection of the people of Northern Ireland,’ he said.
