I’m sure you would all have seen the news about neo-Nazis at a demonstration in Melbourne. I’m not going to touch on all of the ways that neo-Nazis are awful and how the far right have infiltrated mainstream media and politics. What I am going to say is that I cannot stand how the far right is using the language of rights to mask hate speech and hate actions. “Let women speak” is a terrible play on human rights campaigns like the Let her speak campaign led by Australian of the year Grace Tame and journalist Nina Funnell. Let her speak was about legally letting Grace Tame speak about her experiences of child sexual abuse that was not available under Tasmanian law which protected her abuser’s right to privacy. I will confess that I haven’t bothered to look at the what Let women speak is about apart from the news reporting that it is anti-transgender.
Women’s rights are about our right to physical safety, our right to sovereignty over our bodies, our right to safe health care, abortion, our right to be free from violence, our right to equal pay, our right to housing. Women’s rights are not about the right to hate. It makes me so angry that the term women’s rights is being used to perpetrate hatred and violence when women’s rights were from the beginning about fighting against hatred and violence.
One Red Step stands for the rights of transgender people to LIVE, live free from violence and hatred and discrimination.