Turn Up for Women Event - Parliament May 3rd 2023
Speak Up for Women (SUFW), in conjunction with Women Act Up are hosting an event on Parliament Grounds this coming Wednesday May 3rd at 12:30pm.
The message of this event (as made clear in the image) is that while we can’t always speak up and we can’t always act up, we can always turn up.
Since the events of March 25th at Albert Park, where women and their supporters were denied the right to freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly, our groups have been contacted by hundreds of men and women wishing to express support for our movement and the concept that Sex Matters. They were disturbed by the level of violence that was used to silence women and they were appalled at the way the Labour government,
Green MPs and the media seemed to combine to whip the opponents of the event into a frenzy where they truly believed they could do whatever it took to remove Kellie-Jay Keen from the venue and cancel the Let Women Speak events. The police did not protect the women who attended this event from violence and intimidation.
We are meeting on Wednesday to show that we will not be silenced, we will not be removed and we will not be denied our human rights.
There are important conversations that need to be had and they needed to happen yesterday.
There are conflicts between the sex-based rights of women and the rights demanded by some transgender people and activists. We believe that everyone should be able to live their lives with dignity, free from harassment; and every consenting adult should be able to love whoever will have them. However we don’t believe that having access to services and spaces that are designated for the opposite sex is a human right and we will fight to maintain the protection of women-only spaces.
The group Pōneke Anti-Fascist Action are organising a protest about our event, calling us an “extremist group” and referring to our event as an “anti-trans hate event”. Neither of these things are correct. We are concerned that they are stirring up their supporters to oppose and disrupt our event.
We call on the Labour government to support our right to freedom of expression, to assemble peacefully; and for the police and parliamentary security to do their job and protect us from counter protesters if necessary.
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