Answering the Critics of Kellie-Jay Keen

A discourse in defense of the grassroots organizer

Nikki Craft, Not All Men But Definitely You, July 12, 2023

The Distance presents discussions by Nikki Craft and Donovan Cleckley on Kellie-Jay Keen and women’s rights activism. These pieces originally appeared in slightly differing forms on Facebook. The authors thank the women and men who have shared commentary.

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We thank everybody in Gender-Critical Anarchists/Feminists for helpful comments and suggestions, which have assisted us as we have written up what we call “KJK 10-Point 411.”

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“KJK 10-Point 411”

July 12, 2023

Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles confronting us.

- Emma Goldman, “The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation,” Anarchism and Other Essays

But how impossible it must have been for them not to budge either to the right or to the left. What genius, what integrity it must have required in face of all that criticism, in the midst of that purely patriarchal society, to hold fast to the thing as they saw it without shrinking. Only Jane Austen did it and Emily Brontë. It is another feather, perhaps the finest, in their caps. They wrote as women write, not as men write.

- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Women are ignored, or patronized. Liberal gestures of good will are made, when we are shrill enough or where we are fashionable enough, as long as we do not interfere with the ‘real revolution.’ Increasingly, we understand that we are the real revolution.

- Andrea Dworkin, “Marx and Gandhi Were Liberals—Feminism and the ‘Radical’ Left,” 1977

We among the Gender-Critical Anarchists/Feminists issue this statement in support of Kellie-Jay Keen. Keen’s detractors resemble those who once attacked Emma Goldman, known for her anarchism and influence on decades of women. They traffic in misrepresentation, if not fantasy, without full attention to the facts. In Goldman’s words, in 1908, press coverage for her went along these lines: “True, she does not eat little children, but she does many worse things.” So, too, has Keen been covered in the most exaggerated terms in our time. There is at least one difference from past to present: The liberal press cares less about eating little children—and may as well celebrate it by now. We need to act without pettiness and with breadth on the principles of civil disobedience, free speech, and women’s dignity, against the tyranny of the state and its religions.

The following are ten points discussing objections to Keen, with attention to a gender-critical anarchist feminist position.

1. She does not identify with feminism, which means her women’s rights activism cannot be seen as feminist.

I’m not a feminist. I am grateful to feminists of the past for the many freedoms I enjoy. But feminism has been taken over by pimps, punters, pro-men pretending to be women, pro-womb rental, anti-child morons. Stop trying to tell me that I should be a feminist.

- Kellie-Jay Keen (@ThePosieParker), Twitter, July 8, 2023

https://twitter.com/theposieparker/status/1677574265711869953

Kellie-Jay Keen is fighting for the literal dictionary definition for all women. She is risking her life to give women a place to speak out. We have been pushed back to such a place that I’m not going to get in this woman’s way, and I’m not going to spend effort to worry about what she calls herself. She is a very smart and extremely brave woman, and she is fighting for all of us. That is really unique. Any chance I get, I’ll provide interference to those attempting to stop or deter her.

- Nikki Craft, Facebook, July 8, 2023

Many of the lies shared about me were started by women who call themselves feminists.

- Kellie-Jay Keen (@StandingforXX), Twitter, May 14, 2021

https://twitter.com/standingforxx/status/1393340725014765574

In her statements, Keen has expressed that her work is “women’s rights activism,” not “feminism.” Many have taken her rejection of the label “feminist” to be “antifeminism,” which does not make sense. Whatever its form, women’s rights activism creates needed social change in favor of women and girls. Above, we see that Keen’s rationale for dissociating from feminism has to do with its co-optation post-Second Wave. She does not say that women should not have rights and, in fact, has been pro-choice—in line with her prior left-aligned politics.

Apart from women’s rights activism, Keen has utilized the term “femalism” to refer to activism by and for women. The distinction is that, to reference Goldman, this movement would foreground breadth rather than pettiness. Everyday women need to feel like they have an investment in their rights as women, connected widely in a way that encourages a mass movement. Keen is right in her criticism that what has been called “feminism” has left behind working women, especially mothers. Her ambivalence toward feminism makes sense in the wider movement’s gradual departure from grassroots activism.

Historically, other women now regarded as feminist in their work have felt ambivalent about the label of “feminist” being applied to them. Though now called a feminist pioneer, Virginia Woolf had mixed feelings about identification with feminism in her time. Arguably, Woolf had far less of a good reason to oppose identifying with feminism than Keen. Woolf’s earliest suggested title for Three Guineas was Men Are Like That, but she discarded it as “too patently feminist,” unlikely to be taken seriously. For Woolf, it had to do with the perception of her as a writer, especially within the male-dominated literary world. She was concerned with the repercussions of how she would look to others, who could simply dismiss her writing altogether. By contrast, Keen’s refusal has to do with the modern colonization of feminism by prostitution, surrogacy, and transgenderism. These circumstances were not so in Woolf’s time and remain distinct to late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century social movements. This colonization has been facilitated through the eclipse of sex by “gender identity,” the rise of pornography into a global empire, and the more totalizing commodification of the female body in an unprecedented fashion. The ongoing changes under what has been called “third-wave feminism” have reasonably alienated masses of women. Ambivalence toward mainstream feminism’s decline seems less a form of antifeminism than a longing for a truly woman-centered social movement.

2. She is a right-wing woman, à la Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant.

This lie [being funded by the Heritage Foundation], along with many others, was started by so-called ‘left-wing feminists.’ I’ve never had a penny from the Heritage Foundation or worked with them.

- Kellie-Jay Keen (@StandingforXX), August 1, 2021

https://twitter.com/standingforxx/status/1421761570779115523

She was a die-hard leftie for Labour. She is as angry as U.S. lefties (real ones, traditionally for unions and a social safety net) are at the Democrats for abandoning women. She is politically homeless, as many of us are. She is not ‘radical right-wing.’ She cares—more than almost anyone I know—about women.

- Marian Rutigliano, Facebook, July 7, 2023

The turn towards violence came in Melbourne at our largest gathering. The police had done a pretty fine job of protecting women with buffer zones between us and the rabid trans activists. But this gathering included competing groups of woman-hating losers: trans incels to the left of me and Nazis to the right, and here we were stuck in the middle and blamed by the media and politicians for the Nazi salute that occurred. I’ve been asked following that incident whether I have sympathies with the far right, but seriously, who does? It’s a vile ideology and frankly anyone convinced by it in 2023 is pathetic.

- Posie Parker, “Fear and Loathing in New Zealand,” The Spectator, April 1, 2023

Comparisons to Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant, even broad generalizations about Keen being “right-wing” and “far-right,” deliberately mischaracterize her work and her politics. For years, Keen had been quite liberal, to the left, even being a model “trans ally” in critiquing radical feminists for excluding trans-identified males in the early 2010s. If she were cut from the same cloth as either Schlafly or Bryant, among devout right-wing women, then would she have ever been a “trans ally” of any kind? Doubts begin to emerge about the notion of Keen being “right-wing” or “far-right.” Many liberals, even many on the left, share a very similar experience of converting from “gender-affirming” to gender-critical and “TERF.” Keen is no exception to many with a similar trajectory from ally to critic—and even abolitionist. Various times, she has described herself as “politically homeless,” finding neither “left-wing” nor “right-wing,” as labels, applicable.

To the claim that Keen has been “exclusionary” toward some women, particularly lesbians, we must consider that she has supported lesbian rights advocacy. Arguments presenting her as “classist,” “racist,” and “homophobic” have been more diversionary than factual. For Keen, women’s rights must be for all women regardless of their class, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, and politics. In this way, her understanding corresponds with that of Andrea Dworkin, as seen in Right-wing Women, what Dworkin terms “sex-class consciousness.” Keen’s emphasis on women’s rights activism, the name she prefers over feminism, functions in the interests of women as a sex class. Keen has appeared on right-leaning platforms to express criticism of men violating women’s boundaries. Unfortunately, platforms and presses that lean to the right have been virtually the only ones reporting critically on transgenderism and allowing her a voice to the masses.

Standing for Women, Twitter, October 28, 2021, https://twitter.com/standingforxx/status/1453698632297897985.

Posie Parker, “Lesbians Are Under Attack from Predatory Men,” The Spectator, October 29, 2021, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/lesbians-are-under-attack-from-predatory-men. 

Posie Parker, “Fear and Loathing in New Zealand,” The Spectator, April 1, 2023, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/fear-and-loathing-in-new-zealand. 

3. She used to be a “trans ally.”

Many of those now critical of transgenderism, especially from the left, used to be what one may call a “trans ally.” It is not generally acknowledged, due to the suppression of reality, but it is true. Those in support of transgenderism would rather pretend those critical of the ideology and industry are uninformed bigots rather than former allies. Learning about the social and medical transitioning of children and young people creates the critics. Men’s colonization of women, especially lesbians, creates even more critics among women. Development of any level of consciousness on this issue should be a goal, especially related to women and girls. Like many of us, Keen having a former status as a “trans ally” does not exclude her from consciousness raising.

4. She takes right-wing money.

There is much talk about Keen receiving vast amounts of right-wing money, allegedly making tons of money from activism—without evidence to substantiate the claims made. Even a plane ticket being paid for and hotel accommodations being covered would not be making a living on right-wing money. Over and over, Keen has clarified not receiving funding from the Heritage Foundation, but the claim has continued. According to her, it originated with “left-wing feminists” and has been part of the ongoing attack on Keen as “right-wing” and “far-right.” Her fundraising has not been the Heritage Foundation, but this fact has been disregarded by those asserting otherwise—again, without evidence. The continuing use of a false claim should raise questions about the general credibility of Keen’s critics. Even her clarifying that the Heritage Foundation has not funded her work has not satisfied them.

To the left, as explored by Jennifer Bilek, politically liberal entities have bankrolled transgenderism with billions of dollars. If capitalist enterprise is a problem for the critic, then Keen is not the Moloch here. A Marxist analysis would look toward the industries, namely the profitable apparatus behind “gender-affirming care,” not an individual woman’s fundraising. Talk about “right-wing money,” even alleged profiteering on activism, easily drifts into the realm of conspiracy theory. Critics on the left refuse to apply even remotely equivalent scrutiny to the enormous capital being generated in the alienation of synthetic sex identities and the commodified body.

Jennifer Bilek, “Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology?,” The Federalist, February 20, 2018, https://thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology. 

Jennifer Bilek, “Transgenderism Is Just Big Business Dressed Up In Pretend Civil Rights Clothes,” The Federalist, July 5, 2018, https://thefederalist.com/2018/07/05/transgenderism-just-big-business-dressed-pretend-civil-rights-clothes. 

Jennifer Bilek, “The Billionaires Behind the LGBT Movement,” First Things, January 1, 2020, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/01/the-billionaires-behind-the-lgbt-movement. 

Jennifer Bilek, “How LGBT Nonprofits and Their Billionaire Patrons Are Reshaping the World,” The American Conservative, July 27, 2020, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/how-lgbt-nonprofits-and-their-billionaire-patrons-are-reshaping-the-world. 

Jennifer Bilek, “The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI),” Tablet, June 14, 2022, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers. 

5. She allows herself to be interviewed on right-wing media. 

A common objection has been Keen’s willing appearance in right-wing media. Seldom does this point of view acknowledge that, if she did not appear there, then she would appear nowhere. Left-wing media platforms have not given space to critics of transgenderism.

6. She is hierarchical, profiteering, and exploitative.

Women who become leaders usually experience more criticism than men for exhibiting the basic qualities of leadership. Keen’s events platform other women than herself. She makes space for women and girls to speak and expresses gratitude for those who share. The idea that activism should never raise funds to support activists is what kills activism. Believing that activism should be the work of the impoverished and have no funding behind it has no basis in reality. Not even Marx operated without funding and support, but leftist male activists like him have not been called exploitative on this basis. The vow of poverty typically expected of modern activists destroys activism and makes social change impossible.

7. She is white, middle-class, straight, married, and has children.

There is no real feminism that does not have at its heart the tempering discipline of sex-class consciousness: knowing that women share a common condition as a class, like it or not.

- Andrea Dworkin, Right-wing Women

Emmeline Pankhurst was white, middle-class, straight, married, and had children, and her women’s rights activism—and that of her daughters—changed the world for women. Keen’s work may be compared to that of Pankhurst in consciousness raising for women. Why are we pretending that a woman cannot work for women if she is white, middle-class, straight, married, and has children? Various women have expressed that mothers can feel left behind in the modern feminist movement, and it does not seem hard to see why. Keen’s activism connects to the woman with children, “the great unpaid laborer of the world,” who has felt alienated from modern feminist activism. Mothers have an evident investment in the improvement of society not only for themselves but also for their children. Simultaneously, we have much of what labels itself “feminism” devoutly believing that heterosexual males can be lesbian feminists.

In the history of the women’s movement, mothers from the middle class have been involved. Apart from Pankhurst, one may think of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Neither was working-class, but each contributed to women’s rights in essential ways. Both women understood that women share a common condition as a sex class. Of course, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, society did not pretend that men could be women and negate women’s rights on that basis. Men possessed women in marriage, as property, not by identity, which now also makes womankind into men’s property. The battlefield is similar but stupider.

8. She is only supported by a “personality cult.”

Support for Keen has been dismissed as being entirely a “personality cult,” which can be applied to most support for any figure or ideology. Marx is an example of one whose support can be characterized as such. In a letter to W. Blos, dated November 10, 1877, Marx himself spoke against the formation of a “personality cult” around him and Engels. It did not matter that he and Engels did not care “a straw for popularity,” showing “aversion to any personality cult.” Dismissal of Keen on this basis neglects the content of her women’s rights activism and, ironically, emphasizes popularity over political substance.

Likeability being seen as negative, by default, simply does not make sense. To a great extent, the activist who seeks to make social change must appeal to people and be real, which means human, to the masses. Not being likable certainly has its limits, even in the absence of a “personality cult.” Must activists be entirely unrelatable, with no connection to the masses? A grassroots approach to women’s rights would mean being some level of likable, at least human, to the everyday woman. No woman can find a true sense of personal and political investment in what feels most alien to her. The idea that activists cannot be likable is as impractical as the vow of poverty expected of them. 

Why must likability itself be a liability? As one woman asked, “How can you not love her? She’s fabulous and hilarious.” “Personality cult” aside, it really can be hard to resist a “mouthy Gemini,” as another woman most fittingly put it.

9. She does not have a penis. 

After all, Keen is an adult human female, penis not included.

10. She is generally awful in other respects, unlikeable, apart from not having a penis. 

Women do have a hard time being likable in defending women’s dignity. Women’s rights need an unsentimental defense. Of course, if Keen is generally awful, so very unlikeable, then so much for a “personality cult.”

Signed,

Donovan Cleckley, Nikki Craft, and the Gender-Critical Anarchists/Feminists

Relevant to the discussion of Keen’s women’s rights activism, we include below the text of another piece that we wrote at the end of March. It covers similar ground to the points made above. In writing it, we used “Posie Parker,” Keen’s nom de guerre, as opposed to “Kellie-Jay Keen.” Craft and I did the piece due to left-wing feminists, including women from or affiliated with the Actual Gender-Critical Left, coming to Craft’s personal Facebook page and telling her that Keen deserves no support from women. Repeatedly, women challenged Craft’s credentials as a radical feminist simply over her expressing any support for Keen’s work. How could Nikki Craft support this “Nazi Barbie” funded and packaged by the Heritage Foundation! What “Nazi Barbie” would pair “Nazis to the right” with “trans incels to the left”—and describe both male-dominated groups as “woman-hating losers”? We worked on this piece around the time that Keen appeared in New Zealand before a mob that wanted her blood. Had the mob been able to seize her, many thrashing hands and feet would have beaten and stomped, lynched, this woman in broad daylight. Woman hating appears entirely underestimated in a time where feminism has been increasingly emptied of its political content. Both Craft and I find that, apart from the existing trans culture of violence against women, exaggerations about Keen have contributed to the violence and threats enacted against her. Women do not cause men to commit violence or lynch with their words alone; men have free will not to do violence. Yet how can one condone shouting “witch” at this woman as witch hunters search for one to burn—in this case, beat? A woman being deemed a “Nazi,” despite her objection to Nazism, functions to justify male violence against her. Women’s speech and movement need to be nonnegotiable.

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“On the Vilification Strategies Against Posie Parker”

Nikki Craft, with Donovan Cleckley

March 26, 2023

Liberals and left-wing men have recolonised women around the fear of the right. This troubles me, it makes me feel like we’re really suckers. We’ve always lived in a world that was right-wing. The world has always been right-wing to women. A lot of the reasons for the growth and the ascendancy of the right has to do with the status of women. Having some sort of bunker mentality about the right wing, as if you have to protect yourself from contamination by either this political philosophy or these terrible people, is not the right way to deal with it. The right way to deal with it is through confrontation and dialogue. I see women doing a lot of political purity trips that have no content to them. They aren’t doing anything except denouncing the right. If you ask them, what did you do for women yesterday, there isn’t anything; and what they could have done they didn’t do because they couldn’t do everything. In other words, I have to get myself one hundred percent perfect before I dare do anything in the world around me to make it different. That’s just nuts. You never will be perfect, we live with our limitations, we live with our failures and I think it’s important to do whatever it is you can do and not have all of these very exquisite metaphysical excuses for not having done anything. I’m real old-fashioned that way.

- Andrea Dworkin, “Dworkin on Dworkin,” in Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed, edited by Diane Bell and Renate Klein

Regarding the claims about Posie Parker being supported by the right wing, it matters to clarify that I have always distanced myself from the right. It has been so since the 1970s-1980s, dating back to the earliest times in my activist work. For instance, I founded Citizens for Media Responsibility Without Law (CMRL), distinguished from the Moral Majority’s pro-censorship Citizens for Decency Through Law (CDL). I take issue with the broader guilt-by-association approach generally utilized against Parker and other women. Now, as to her comments that have been regarded as “racist” and “Islamophobic,” these can be disagreed with. Male violence cuts across race and class, an essential point in the radical feminist analysis. However, I do not think guilt by association and disagreement with her past comments mean needing to cast this woman to the side. It seems perfectly reasonable to support a woman for the way she calls other women to courage. While the critiques matter, I am not interested in debating my personal support for Parker—not on my page, or anywhere else for that matter, at this time.

I don’t support her due to any popularity contest or “personality cult”; quite the contrary, I’m not like that. I support her from seeing how she has shown incredible courage against this new terrorism. Politically, the guilt-by-association approach has been detrimental to women, as seen in the astonishing lack of left-wing and liberal support for the Anti-Pornography Ordinance during the 1980s. In that case, political divisions clearly served to divide women against their own interests to the service of an industry that feeds on their bodies.

“I don’t ask women to pass a political litmus test to talk to me,” Andrea Dworkin said when interviewed in 1985. She understood these issues require attempts at deeper understanding—even, not surprisingly, cross-partisan coalitions. To those alleging her involvement with the right, Andrea replied:

I think it’s been terrifically distorted. There hasn’t been any institutional support from the right wing, no money, no political support, and no intervention in litigation. On the other hand, when Jerry Falwell starts saying there’s real harm in pornography, then that is valuable to me. When the so-called liberals who claim to care about torture in prison in right-wing countries bring themselves to understand that a woman being tortured for entertainment is also a violation of women’s rights, I’ll be very grateful.

Based on the above comment, Andrea has been interpreted to support Falwell’s politics—extending, of course, to the Moral Majority. However, she simply commented that he, though contrasting radical feminists, at least recognized a harm that the vast majority of left-wing people, including self-described “feminist” women, outright refused to see. For years, feminists critical of prostitution, pornography, surrogacy, and transgenderism have been accused of receiving a payout in right-wing money (largely without evidence—or even quantifying these allegedly huge amounts of money).

Meanwhile, liberals and the broader left have not been held accountable for bankrolling entire movements distinctively antagonistic to women’s rights. The push to commodify women in these various industries has obviously not been a grassroots effort. Yet individual women objecting to such industries have become subject to a criticism, to the point of distortion, that simply does not exist toward these industries.

Again, it seems worth considering how many of the claims against Parker have been “terrifically distorted,” as they were toward Andrea in her life—and even in her death. This comparison is the main reason I have even brought up Andrea to make clear I already know very well about the bullying (including trashing from other women), the lies, and the purity tests used against women. These vilification strategies have been aimed at suppressing women’s speech. Parker has exposed the censorship in the media, especially now in Australia, against the radical woman hating coming from the left and liberals, which is commendable work for any woman. Indeed, speech over censorship used to be a priority on the left as well, in principle—until it got into bed with the pharmaceutical industry and its cult. 

Transgenderism’s money has facilitated the capture of many groups, including former women’s rights and gay rights organizations now acting in opposition to their principles. If there is a desire for no woman to align with the right, then what are the critics doing to hold the left responsible for the widespread violation of women’s rights, the rampant child abuse becoming institutionalized, and the outrageous grooming happening in plain sight? Groups like the Actual Gender-Critical Left police women’s language, namely framing any even remotely critical discussion of grooming as “homophobic.” So-called “actual leftists” make apologies for pedophiles. They prefer attacking women for seeming “right-wing,” as opposed to confronting male violence and child sexual abuse. They have been far more focused on and effective in trashing Parker and other women than even tackling the industry. It matters to ask why. If they—and, yes, you—align with the left, then they—and, yes, you—become accountable by your own thinking and politics. 

Women and men can express ideas in opposition on my personal page, but I would prefer it be limited. I cannot see it as useful to go into long arguments, usually being unproductive, that create no resolution and drive more divisions among women. At any point, if you do not feel you are an ally to me, or that you can no longer support my work or political positions, then it is very evident that you will need to leave my page. 

My Facebook page should be a place where I do not have to deal with constant disputes that exhaust too much of my time and energy. It should be a place where I can exist and share my ideas without having my feminist credentials and thoughts constantly surveilled and policed. Additional distractions are especially unhelpful, especially now as I am working on two archival projects with my friend Donovan: the first being on Andrea, the second being my own.

Please feel free to share these thoughts in appropriate places where these discussions on Parker are taking place. Women and men alike can benefit from thinking critically about women’s speech and its suppression. It matters to consider how liberals and, unfortunately, many on the left have most radically betrayed women—and object to vilification strategies.