Who is Posie Parker, the anti-trans activist whose protests have attracted Neo-Nazi extremists?
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, also known as Posie Parker, is a British anti-transgender rights activist. (Getty)
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, better known by her pseudonym Posie Parker, has fast become one of Britain’s most notorious anti-trans campaigners – and her current tour of New Zealand and Australia is already generating plenty more controversy.
An anti-trans event organised as part of Parker’s ‘Let Women Speak’ tour in Melbourne, Victoria on Saturday (18 March) was attended by around 400 demonstrators and around 30 Neo-Nazis – who Parker has denied were there for her rally.
The Australian state of Victoria responded by raising a trans Pride flag outside government offices in support of the community, with the state’s premier Dan Andrews, declaring: ”I wish it didn’t have to be said, but it clearly does: Nazis aren’t welcome. Not on Parliament’s steps. Not anywhere.”
Following reports that New Zealand was reviewing whether it would permit Parker entry following the incident, it was confirmed on Wednesday (22 March) that she will be allowed to enter the country.
She is due to visit Auckland on 25 March and then Wellington, the capital, the following day, as part of her ‘Let Women Speak’ tour.
Who is Posie Parker?
Posie Parker is a British anti-trans rights activist who rose to infamy in 2018 when she was questioned by police over tweets she’d posted about about Susie Green, CEO of trans charity Mermaids, and her trans daughter.
In the tweets, Parker misgendered Green’s daughter and made reference to “castration”.
Parker, who has built her following around saying “a woman is an adult human female”, has more than 48,000 followers on Twitter.
In recent years, Parker has generated headlines after organising anti-trans protests and events in the UK, Australia and the US. She also founded the group Standing for Women – an anti-trans campaigning group which she uses as a vehicle to vocalise her gender critical views. In fact, the group’s website states: “2023 is the year of the TERF”.
The initialism TERF stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” and refers to people who describe themselves as feminists but who exclude transgender people, particularly trans women, from their women’s rights advocacy.
Standing for Women’s website adds that women’s rights were “never created for our ‘gender’ but our sex”.
In 2018, Parker and supporters of Standing for Women paid for a billboard to be displayed in Liverpool. The sign was later removed following a complaint to the advertising company that installed it.
In February 2022, the printing company responsible for Parker’s anti-trans “adult human female merchandise” has said it would have never worked with her if they knew the full extent of her work.
Posie Parker’s language and links to the far-right have caused concern
In 2018, Parker made comments in since-deleted tweets about Muslim communities, causing Woman’s Place UK – a group opposed to gender-self identification for trans people – to publicly cut ties with her.
“We reject any generalisations or misrepresentations of Muslims and other faith groups and we think this contributes to the alienation of these communities from the public discourse,” the group said at the time.
In 2019, the then US national press secretary for LGBT+ organisation Human Rights Campaign, Sarah McBride, was harassed during a trans rights meeting in Washington DC, by Parker.
Parker has also previously been criticised for praising far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson in a Feminist Current podcast.
Parker has previously been interviewed by far-right network Soldiers of Christ Online, and appeared in a video with Jean-François Gariépy – a prominent far-right YouTuber who calls for a “white ethno-state”.
Parker later defended her appearance, claiming she didn’t know the people in question were far-right.
Parker was also accused of using a Barbie doll wearing a Nazi uniform as her profile picture on the social media site Spinster.
HOPE not hate’s State of Hate 2023 report singled out Posie Parker as a “leading voice in the anti-trans movement”.
“She has increasingly found support from, and an overlap in, views with the far right, which has also increasingly focused on trans people,” the report read.
The advocacy group warned that Parker’s influence is likely to grow as the “theme” of trans rights continues to be a “salient topic in the mainstream media as well as among the far right”.
On 5 February 2023, Posie Parker bought her ‘Let Women Speak’ tour to Glasgow’s George Square, where it was met with a counterprotest organised by Scotland-based protest collective Cabaret Against The Hate Speech.
In a video broadcast on Twitter that same month, Parker threatened women who oppose her, stating that those “who stand in my way… will be annihilated.”
In the same rant, she compared trans women to sexual predators and serial killers.
A month earlier, a so-called gender critical activist was recorded quoting Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf in a speech against trans rights at a Posie Parker event in Newcastle.
Posie Parker intends to go into politics
Standing For Women’s website claims that the group intends to create a political party, stating: “We will be launching a new political party: The Other Party.”
It adds: “Kelly-Jay will also be running against Keir Starmer.”
According to The Other Party’s website the groups aims to be launched by spring or summer 2023.
In September 2022, Parker said she intended to run against Suzy Eddie Izzard as an MP for Sheffield at the next general election.
She explained that while she doesn’t believe Standing for Women will “flood the House of Commons with loads of MPs”, she expects “to dominate conversation”.
Parker added: “We need to be the ones to run against the likes of Eddie Izzard, or even Keir Starmer, I’ll take him on any day of the week.”
