This article was originally published by Lucy from Naarm. You can find the original article here.
Thanks to the incredible campaigning of the Trans Justice Project and others, made possible by my investigation into CPAC Australia, which revealed that Kellie-Jay Keen was attempting to enter the country unnoticed, anti-trans bigot Kellie-Jay Keen Minshull will not be entering Australia this weekend.
“So I won’t be going to Australia, courtesy of CPAC, I’m not going to lie I was very much looking forward to upsetting all the right people with my trip.”, Keen cried on her livestream earlier today.
Kellie, known for her anti-transgender campaigning, lamented her visa never was approved, saying, “They haven’t got the gumption to cancel me. So instead what they are doing is they are just pretending that they haven’t processed it even though they’re sort of days overdue.”
“How annoying is that?” she asked her audience.
Initially, there was an attempt to keep it under wraps, with vague promotional material quietly issued to those on the CPAC mailing lists which sparked my initial attention.
I made enquiries and had it on good authority that it was in fact Keen who was being referred to in the promotional material, even though “What is a woman?” is not Keen’s catchphrase but one of Matt Walsh. I began sounding the alarm quietly within the queer community but was not seeing anyone willing to take up the mantle to start a campaign to prevent her visa.
This was understandable, and since this was my first big story, I especially did not want to get it wrong and stress out the already stressed transgender community. However, a source inside CPAC revealed to me later that week that Keen was, in fact, the mystery guest. By then, I had come to the conclusion that the chance of me getting this wrong was almost nill. Keen was going to be attempting to enter the country to embark on another hate tour, so I ultimately chose to publish the article to sound the alarm more loudly.
That led to reports in friendly outlets such as QNews, OutInPerth and others about Kellie’s trip to Australia. This forced Kellie-Jay Keen to announce her appearance at CPAC Australia two days after our report went live.
“I’ll be making my way to Australia in a couple of weeks.” she gloated to her YouTube audience.
Ultimately, it wasn’t to be. A petition by the Trans Justice Project was started to prevent the granting of a visa to the notorious anti-trans hate preacher. The Australian community got behind it, with the petition gathering over 5,500 signatures in a week.
“Because of your actions Kellie-Jay Keen will not be getting a second opportunity to spread her hateful rhetoric in Australia.” the Trans Justice Project said on Facebook.
”Trans people deserve to thrive. We deserve to feel safe in our communities, to have the freedom to be ourselves, and to be able to live free from discrimination and hate.”
I think people don’t realise that Keen was not just planning on CPAC, but was planning to relive her despised 2023 Let Women Speak tour across the country. There simply is no way that Keen would go to the effort of flying for a 48-hour round trip to simply speak for an hour at a private conference.
By coming together to oppose the visa, we’ve avoided a repeat of the scenes we saw in 2023.
