Let Women Speak rally drowned out by trans activists before police intervention; 1 arrested
WASHINGTON — At least one trans activist was arrested Monday for disrupting a rally featuring a British women's rights campaigner speaking out against what she believes is the erasure of women's rights and the danger of experimental gender medicalization in children.
Assembled with fellow demonstrators on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Monday afternoon, a rally featuring activist and mom of four Kellie-Jay Keen was drowned out by approximately 15 trans rights activists with sirens and bullhorns.
About halfway through Keen's Let Women Speak event, the U.S. Park Police separated the protesters from the group, one of which was arrested.
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Keen, who is the founder of Standing for Women and has been putting on free speech events called "Speakers Corner" addressing the perils of gender ideology across the United Kingdom for years, told The Christian Post in an interview that the selection of the historic monument was intentional given its symbolic importance for freedom.
"This is about letting women speak, not necessarily about large crowds. It's not necessarily about the opposition we face, but those are always the stories to tell. It really is about creating a space in which women can speak so that they can talk about the things happening to them."
The event comes on the heels of several stops around the United States that Keen has made as part of a nationwide speaking tour. She is also filming a documentary about her advocacy and how women from all walks of life are speaking up against what they say is the incursion of gender ideology, the harms of hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries on gender-confused minors.
The police in other cities have not removed the protesters, according to Keen, and she believes that the right to free speech outlined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is not much good if such speech cannot be heard, something that she believes the authorities in D.C. recognized and enforced.
Soon after Monday's event began, a group of trans rights activists, waving pink and blue flags and chanting trans rights slogans, disrupted the event.
One person held a siren next to the speakers' ears until ordered to cease or be arrested by the U.S. Parks Police.
Having failed to secure a permit to protest, the person and their fellow demonstrators were ordered to another area of the memorial grounds.
Video footage captured by documentarian Ford Fischer shows that shortly after the police moved the protesters with sirens, the individual was fleeing on foot and chased by police and SWAT.
In a statement to The Daily Signal, Park Police confirmed the arrest of one adult at about 2:15 p.m. in the area o the Lincoln Memorial. The individual was charged with disorderly conduct-disrupting a public gathering, resisting arrest, violating demonstration regulations, interfering with agency function and violating of closure of the public use limit.
An African American woman who went by the pseudonym LadyStudio told CP in an interview that she was inspired to speak at the Lincoln Memorial by a policy at her local gym in Virginia. She recalled a time when a man in the locker room saw her in a state of undress.
In part because of Keen's advocacy, LadyStudio learned how this gender ideology has spread through every area of culture and how female objections were being censored when it comes to things like biologically male rapists being transferred into women's prisons and biological men being housed in women's hospital wards.
"I keep thinking that there is a bottom to this," she said disgustedly, "but it's a bottomless pit and it's always something else."
Kara Dansky, the author of The Abolition of Sex: How the 'Transgender' Agenda Harms Women and Girls and president of the U.S. chapter of Women's Declaration International, secured the permit for the #LetWomenSpeak event.
She believes that the silencing tactics of trans activists and the legacy media are part and parcel of the larger strategy to squelch and ignore their voices.
"These people really want to shut women up. There's a reason for that. They know that if the general public can hear what we have to say, they will lose," Dansky wrote in her Substack Tuesday.
Amid the blaring sirens from the trans activists, she called the park police, who sent two officers. Dansky showed them the permit and was told they were within their rights. But the park police did not take action until conditions grew rowdier, she said.
"Once they saw the real threats that we were facing, they told me that they were calling for additional officers, and they did. More officers appeared, including one officer identified as 'SWAT,'" she said.
"Countless hundreds of tourists saw what happened. They saw a group of women trying to speak and being silenced by misogynists."
Keen arrived in the U.S. in the middle of October and will be making appearances for similar events in Philadelphia and New York before returning home to the U.K later this month.
As many pollsters are predicting Republicans to pick up gains in the midterm elections on Tuesday, Keen says she is excited about the prospects.
"But if you're a Democrat and there is a red wave and you know about this issue, I think you'll also be elated because maybe the Democrats will take a punishment and correct their course," Keen believes.
"But at the moment, neither party is in too much glory when it comes to this issue. Trump was in power for four years and did pretty much nothing about the butchering of kids. But out of the very few speaking up, it does seem to be Republicans."
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