Trans campaigner Sarah McBride harassed by anti-trans feminists on video
Sarah McBride spoke of the incredible support former Delaware governor Jack Markell offered her after she came out as transgender. (Rich Fury/Getty)
Sarah McBride, the national press secretary for LGBT+ organisation Human Rights Campaign (HRC), was harassed and deliberately misgendered while at a meeting in Washington, DC by trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) UK blogger Posie Parker.
UK-based Parker interrupted a private meeting McBride was part of in the US capital on Wednesday morning (January 30), heckling the trans campaigner and telling her: “Tell the entire LGB community how much you hate lesbians, Sarah.”
PinkNews understands that the incident occurred shortly after a meeting held by HRC’s Parents for Transgender Equality Council with members of US Congress.
HRC is campaigning for the Trump administration to pass the Equality Act, which would provide better legal protections for LGBT+ people in the US.
In the nearly two-minute long video, Parker and Julia Long, a lesbian TERF, who hijacked the front of Pride in London in July last year, can be heard repeatedly misgendering McBride and describing her as a “male.”
“I want to know why this person is advocating to remove the safety for women and girls,” Parker says at one point.
HRC’s Sarah McBride is harassed by TERFs in Washington, DC
Long, meanwhile, asks the trans campaigner: “Why are you championing the rights of men to access women in women’s prisons? And rape and sexually assault them as has recently happened in the United Kingdom?”
Parker, who runs anti-trans group Standing For Women, adds: “This is Sarah McBride [she] gets paid probably quite a lot of money to lobby the government to try and make sure that women and girls have absolutely no right to have any space anymore. Shame on you.”
“Throughout the incident, I thought about the trans youth who have to experience their hostility and bullying day-in and day-out in the United Kingdom.”
—Sarah McBride
Speaking to PinkNews, McBride, who also tweeted about the incident, explained that such harassment is commonplace for trans people.
“The sad truth is that this kind of harassment is the reality for far too many transgender people, particularly trans women of colour, across the country and around the world,” she said.
“Throughout the incident, I thought about the trans youth who have to experience their hostility and bullying day-in and day-out in the United Kingdom.
“We had just concluded a really powerful meeting with parents of transgender youth and members of Congress and I won’t let this incident diminish the love, pride and solidarity that filled that room just moments before.”
Sarah McBride: “This kind of harassment is the reality for far too many transgender people”
Parker’s Standing For Women regularly posts anti-transgender content on social media and opposes the British government’s proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which is currently being consulted on.
The group has installed a number of anti-trans billboards across the UK, including in Birmingham and Liverpool.
Watch the video below:
Olivia Dalton, senior vice-president of communications and marketing at HRC, told PinkNews that the incident was “disturbing but not at all surprising.”
Dalton added: “That the targeted harassment occurred following a moving meeting between parents of trans kids and members of Congress reinforces the massive gap between our message of love and their agenda of bigotry.
“No one advocating for their basic human rights should face such hate and hostility, and shame on the Heritage Foundation for fostering this kind of atmosphere.”
In a statement to PinkNews, Parker, whose real name is Kellie-Jay Keen Minshull, said: “Sarah McBride is the national press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign, an organisation lobbying government to pass the new Equality Act legislation.
“This act will replace sex-based rights with gender identity, therefore women will no longer be protected. HRC, like many LGBT organisations, is failing lesbians. It is essential we hold such people to account.”
In a video on Monday (January 28), Parker acknowledged that she was at the Heritage Foundation, an extreme right-wing think-tank, which opposes equal marriage and abortion.
On Wednesday, the Heritage Foundation hosted a panel event, called “The Inequality of the Equality Act: Concerns from the Left,” featuring a number anti-trans feminists, including those from the Women’s Liberation Front.
Parker, however, denied any involvement with the Heritage Foundation’s event in a video on Facebook.
“It’s not my event, it’s nothing to do with me,” she said. “Although I am not remotely inclined to distance myself from this event either.”
It comes after another anti-trans group, ReSisters United, recently covered statues across the UK with T-shirts showing the definition of a woman as “adult human female.”
