Trans liberalism and nonviolence: reportback from protect trans kids rally in so-called “adelaide”
i. regardless of whether the gate is held open or closed,
a gatekeeper is a gatekeeper
A series of rallies was called in late January 2025 by an organisation called Trans Justice Project, in response to new legislation in so-called ‘queensland,’ pausing the distribution of hormones and puberty blockers to new public patients under the age of eighteen. Trans Justice Project has ‘branches’ across multiple states on this continent and calls itself the ‘first trans-led national campaigning organisation,’ a pretty rich claim. I know, through my connections in Naarm, that the ‘Protect Trans Kids’ rallies provided an opportunity for more radical voices and actionists to connect and try to make something happen. In spite of the TJP organisers planning a non-marching rally in Naarm, people in the crowd felt compelled to march and defied the organisers’ instructions in order to do so, marching from State Libary Victoria to Flinders Street Station and annoying traffic and police.
But the ‘official,’ mainstream element of the ‘Protect Trans Kids’ rallies, and TJP’s rationale, have been designed to block radical actions that might actually help trans kids survive in this fascistic colony or even arm them with the knowledge and tools to destroy the systems that oppress them. I wasn’t at the Naarm rally, I was at the rally on unceded Kaurna land (also known as so-called ‘adelaide’) organised by the Trans Justice Adelaide branch on Sunday, 9th Feb 2025. In this piece of writing, I’m going to trace out the atmosphere and events of the rally I attended in ‘adelaide,’ to provide the more radical among us with insight into what we are up against when it comes to fighting both the state, and liberal co-option of trans healthcare activism. I’m then going to look at some of the politics and opinions that the director of TJP, Jackie Mae Turner, has professed online, and discuss her tactics and strategies alongside a brief analysis of the successes, failures and broader understanding of movements held by leftist activists in major cities on this continent. I will then attempt to tie this to the context of trans fights for liberation, and give a prediction of what I think we could achieve if we relinquish our reliance on nonviolence, doctors and the state.
When I arrived outside ‘south australian’ Parliament on the Sunday morning, the atmosphere of the rally was subdued, with an air almost of obligation. I wondered if this was what those corporate international women’s day morning teas are like (I’ve never been to one). There were a few of anarchist-looking trans people giving out zines for free about DIY hormones and how to participate in clandestine night-time actions1, to a mixed response of eagerness and reticence. As I watched the zine distributors, I wondered if the crowd’s reticence came from suspicion that the zines had not been officially sanctioned by the rally organisers. There was a clear divide between punters on the footpath and rally ‘organisers’ on parliament steps, passing instructions on to the marshals, with an overwhelming energy of tight control, alongside passiveness from the crowd. As in other states, Trans Justice Adelaide deliberately chose not to follow the speeches with a march – lest the crowd become too excited by protesting their lack of rights and something meaningful actually happen that could cause ‘risk’ to participants, which Trans Justice did not want to take responsibility for. Instead, there was to be a picnic in Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden. The rally MC, directing the crowd on how to get to the garden, literally gave instructions to ‘walk – using the footpath’ and then ‘cross the road – using the lights,’ with a patronising energy that laughed in the face of any willingness for disruption that may have been brewing. Even the SAPol members deployed to police the rally were lethargic and disengaged, comfortable in the knowledge that the marshals were there to do the cops’ job for them. As the crowd swelled, the MC actually stopped the speeches to corral the watching rally-goers off the road and back onto the footpath, lest any traffic be inadvertently blocked and draw too much attention to trans people ‘demonstrating’ for their rights.
I was not especially inspired by the speakers. One of the them, early on – I think it was a cis mother of a trans child – claimed that ‘trans healthcare must be in the hands of doctors, not politicians!’ I was dumbfounded when this statement was met with cheers and applause (and some jeering by me and my pals). Since when was it controversial to say that trans healthcare should not be in the hands of doctors or politicians, but of trans people themselves? For as long as we have agitated for more access to transition medicine, there has been an acknowledgment that doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and surgeons are gatekeepers and not our allies. Of course, some trans people have always been devoted to their doctors and surgeons, and since the push for healthcare providers to be educated about trans issues, it does feel like a lot of the people around me have backtracked into the opinion that healthcare providers have been our allies. After all, aren’t they the ones that hand us the scripts for our T or E, our referrals to surgeons, our letters of approval? But regardless of whether the gate is being held open or closed, a gatekeeper is a gatekeeper. Has our understanding of that completely dissolved?
Around this point in the rally, a friend of mine became inspired to address the crowd so she quickly arranged a short section of a manifesto about trans health to read out and she approached the MC to be added to the speaker list.
The MC told her it wasn’t possible for her to speak for the following reasons (in this order):
1. The rally was designed to be short, to cater to the needs of ‘restless children;’
2. The person we were speaking with (the MC) didn’t have ‘authority’ to decide to allow my friend to speak;
3. No one had proofread my friend’s speech, so the ‘organisers’ couldn’t take a risk of letting her speak because they didn’t know what she was planning to say;
4. A curated lineup of speakers had already been selected that ‘represented the community.’
This response may not be surprising to many of us, who have, for years, been stymied and frustrated by the roadblocks presented by not-for-profit groups claiming to work toward the liberation of queer and trans people. But this denial of agency is still worth drawing attention to. Why was it a risk to them if my friend spontaneously addressed the crowd? What were the organisers afraid of? Since when did a trans woman need someone else’s authorisation to address a crowd of trans troublemakers?
Furthermore, why was a cursory acknowledgment given to brotherboys and sistergirls at the start of the event, but no space was given to the specific issues that trans Aboriginal people face? Why is spontaneity so quickly quelled? Why do our ‘movements’ need bodyguards to keep the protesters and demonstrators in line?
The ‘community’ apparently represented by these speakers, none of whom were under the age of eighteen, some of whom weren’t even trans themselves, is a largely white, middle-class, highly educated community – the most privileged and least at risk of becoming victim to transphobic changes in policy. Naturally my friend was dissatisfied with the outcome of her chat with the MC. At the conclusion of the official speakers, she read her speech at the top of her voice, to what was, at that point, a dispersing and indifferent crowd.
ii. liberalised trans activism holds the gate open for fascism
I think through years of political activity largely based in reactivity – responding to potential threats from government and fascist groups but failing to agitate for radical improvement to trans healthcare – we are backed into a corner, trying to protect an already broken and inadequate system of hormone distribution. Many speakers and community leaders are insisting that this inadequate system is perfect and in need of no improvement in the face of it being ripped away. In the face transition care becoming worse, we are begging for the system to stay the same, rather than replace it with something better. I’m no longer interested in attempting to ‘hold the state accountable’ to treat me well as a transgender person with complex needs relating to hormones and healthcare. I have come to understand that, even if the state treats me, personally, well, and meets my healthcare needs, this is at the expense of others, both here and in other countries, who are sacrificed so that I can live comfortably as a trans person in the global north.
I haven’t always, but I now understand that fascism is not external to my life in ‘australia,’ held back only by some impenetrable fortress of ‘democracy’ protecting me and my community. As others have put it, ‘fascism is not external but central to western “civilisation”’ (from ‘On “Australian” fascism’). Fascism is already here. Fascism is core to this colony, and my life is coloured by the genocidal violence that is enacted against those the state wants to eradicate. Many settler trans people in major cities on this continent, myself included, are able to experience gender transition without losing the position as a privileged and entitled benefactor of the colony. Whether or not the state wants to eradicate me, specifically, is a choice I make every day. Within the healthcare and bureaucratic systems of ‘australia,’ I am only granted my gender of choice by the state when there is something in it for the state – ie, when I assimilate my trans identity into that of a good white citizen. The relationship between me, my healthcare provider, and the pharmaceuticals I buy from the chemist is an inherently fascistic and extractive one. The ‘freedom’ to live as my preferred gender can be ripped away at any moment, especially if I step out of line by criticising the colony or pushing back against fascism. Even then, retaliation from the state on settler trans people will never be comparable to that experienced by brotherboys, sistergirls, First Nations trans people who have dedicated their lives to resistance.
Below: TJP director Jackie Mae Turner’s instagram story from March 2025
On instagram the director of Trans Justice Project, Jackie Mae Turner, has established her commitment to ‘strategic nonviolence’ in ‘our’ fight for trans rights. She has hailed the pro-Palestine movement, land rights movement, and freedom movements in Serbia and the Phillipines as examples of successful ‘mass civil resistance’ (ie nonviolent ‘resistence’). Because of her position as a self-acclaimed2 ‘leader’ of trans ‘liberation’ on this continent, her pushing of these ideas is pretty unfortunate, not to mention a huge red flag. Turner’s claims from the instagram story are hard to address because they are hardly ‘claims’ (name-dropping locations of struggle around the world alongside liberal dogwhistle phrases without substance to back up what you’re saying does not really count as a political position). Is she suggesting that conditions here are analogous to the end of the Marcos government in the Philippines, which occurred in the context of economic collapse triggered in part by the Iranian revolution and subsequent global oil crisis? The ongoing Maoist/Communist insurgency in the Philippines, mutiny of the military, and armed guerrillas assassinating cops and government officials? Or was she referring to the Serbian student-led blockades in response to government corruption in the face of the collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad? Active protests that took place across 400 Serbian cities and towns since November 2024? In which activists daily blockade roads, and are known to have splashed red paint on city hall and made attempts to besiege the building? (a bit of an escalation from a picnic and static rally that doesn’t even march around the block)
A lot of writing about the uselessness of mass rallies has emerged in the last 18 months, so I will draw the reader’s attention to a recent zine from this continent called ‘Bring the War Home: Recovering Anti-Imperialism’ and the anonymous author’s reflections on mass rallies during the period of the Iraq war:
‘The mass rallies against the Iraq war, some of the largest in world history, were a complete failure; Iraq was invaded, over a million people were murdered, tortured, disappeared or died as a result, and the country’s political and economic system was restructured to suit the needs of Western corporations and US Imperial designs. Why doing exactly the same thing twenty years later, in the face of burgeoning fascist/Neoliberal police states with far harsher protest laws, more advanced systems of surveillance and pig brutality, would work now is anyone’s guess.’
It is the definition of a liberal fantasy to say that liberation in Palestine or land back movements on this continent will be facilitated by ‘nonviolent’ ‘civil’ resistance through passive mass rallies shuffling up and down city streets, escorted by police and marshals. The characterization of Palestinian or Aboriginal resistance as civilly diplomatic and nonviolent is a liberal obfuscation of the truth, a counterinsurgent move, designed to pacify and isolate those who may otherwise be inspired to participate in action that has a material effect on empire. This framing of ‘strategic nonviolence’ as the most successful tool against the violence of the state disempowers the ideology and historic process of actual liberation and in fact holds the door open for fascism to march in with very littlemeaningfulresistance from the masses. In the case of trans liberation on this continent, veneration of mass nonviolent resistance over actual, meaningful disruption and dismantlement of transphobic (and colonial) healthcare and political systems, plays right into the hands of the state and their monopoly on violence. State actors know they can deploy the cops and the courts to use violence on you and expect no retaliation. They know you have been indoctrinated by both the state and by your comrades to believe that using violence, or even just breaking the law, ‘makes you just as bad as them.’ They know, because they have taught you, that the only way to resist righteously is to lie down and die.
But protest ‘leaders’ like Jackie Mae Turner, who have full investment in the NGO industrial complex rely on our learned helplessness – the conviction that the state will do everything for you. Turner and those like her need to believe that mass rallies, and nonviolent ‘resistance’ more generally, are the solution. Turner won’t acknowledge that petitions, opaque ‘fundraising,’ mass rallies with digestible speeches (that don’t block roads), and partnerships with wannabe ministers from racist and transphobic political parties won’t achieve trans liberation, because her investment in these ideas mean that resistance doesn’t require anyone to actually break the ‘law’ of this colony, and risk their social and class position. Any risk to either a middle-class settler or a settler organisation (funded through state grants and schemes) is seen as unacceptable. This is key, because NFPs and NGOs are funded through the state and therefore basically are the state. Any perceived threat the government means risks to funding. While nonviolent civil disobedience ‘activism’ like lobbying the government or liaising, advising and educating can win some concessions (which are then projected as a huge win for the community), ‘wins’ of that kind are rooted not in liberation but in assimilation into the colonial project. This is how we’ve wound up with the broken, dissatisfactory and traumatising medicalised system of hormone distribution that we currently rely on in this ‘country’ – through minor concessions, damaging compromises, and loopholes disguised as wins. It’s not through the innate goodness of the ‘asutralian’ government that trans people get hormones on the PBS (for example) – our access to these medicines remains reliant on our willingness to lie to doctors to get what we want, and then disappear into society as ‘good’ (usually white) citizens (which is why hormones are controlled through doctors even with the informed consent model). Nonviolent (ie nondisruptive) activism will at best win assimilation, but never liberation, because fascist states and colonies will never give anything up unless we make them – especially not the ability to control those of us it would be convenient to eradicate.
We have no people power if the people will not challenge power. Not-for-profits and non-government-organisations use control to prevent organic organising and uprising, because they rely on the ‘masses’ remaining compliant, passive, and always looking to the official ‘organisation’ for instructions about what to do. If grassroots groups and random community members start taking action successfully, the NFPs and NGOs will literally no longer have a job; their funding model relies on us remaining compliant and not actually challenging power. This was why the crowd, in ‘adelaide’ at least, needed to be kept docile and compliant; why a spontaneous, unauthorised speaker could not be tolerated; and why any road-blocking (even accidental) would not be allowed.
The reality is that a fight for true trans liberation will likely mean material sacrifices for a lot of us trans people who benefit from living in a privileged position in a settler imperial core. It might mean your supply of hormones dries up while we figure out how to get them without relying on deeply evil and exploitative pharmaceutical companies or prescriptions from doctors who could get you in deep shit by reporting you to the government. It might mean that you can’t get cheap surgery in Thailand because the medical system there has pivoted to prioritise Thai patients. It might see you having less income from your arts practice because you refuse to work for colonial, Zionist ‘pride’ companies like Midsumma. It might see you stealing from a pharmacy, burning a white supremacist’s car, smashing the windows of a a transphobe’s office, or punching a cop in the face. It might mean undertaking a direct action with a material impact that supports poor trans kids, that then lands you in a prison that misgenders you and holds you in solitary confinement for the ‘safety’ of the broader prison community.
A fight for true trans liberation will not see you standing around outside an empty state parliament building on a Sunday morning, politely listening to liberal mothers of trans children demanding that trans healthcare remain in the hands of doctors.
iii. so what do we do?
In my view, the best material impact we can have on trans kids and adults who need hormones and cannot get them is to find ways to supply them to each other. In the short term, I still see a place for legal/conventional routes of accessing trans medicine, while that route is still available. If transition medicine starts to be removed from the PBS or becomes even more difficult to access ‘legally’ in the landslide of fascist policies that are staring us in the face, I predict that we will likely see many trans people accessing hormones through a combination of legal and underground means. Some of us will continue to be able to get hormones from the doctor, and, hopefully, we will have a strong enough commitment to each other and to mutual aid principles to share these around with people who can’t access hormones ‘legally.’ Those of us who have income and are comparatively free from state surveillance could buy hormones online and distribute them to those who cannot access them through a doctor. It sounds ludicrous to some people, but in the long term, looking at how we can access and distribute different sorts of healthcare, hormones, blood tests, sexual health tests, and medicine, and knowing how to administer them without reliance on a doctor, will be integral. This will include breaking the law, taking these things through force, and even using violence against those that get in our way. What many of the more radical trans people are really calling for, as we anticipate the potential rolling back of trans ‘rights’ on this continent, is to learn how to take care of ourselves and each other, to access things through unconventional means, and to learn to monitor our health ourselves, to know how much is enough or too much, to keep ourselves healthy, because the state simply cannot be trusted to do this for us.
Trans people who benefit from living in an imperial core are so tied to this idea that the government will always look after us – that the government cares about us – that it has become literally laughable to many inner-city transsexuals that people would source transition medicine without the help of doctors. But transsexuals do it all the time, and have done it for decades. I’m not saying the government should not supply adequate healthcare. I’m not telling you to stop taking your hormones until they can be ethically sourced, or that you don’t deserve to have affordable surgery or an income from your arts practice… I am telling you that you should not be okay with doing these things when it requires you to sacrifice millions of other people who cannot do them. I’m asking, why should we rally in the most ignorable way possible and ‘demand’ that the government hand something to us? Why shouldn’t we use our collective power to simply take or make what we want? Why call for the maintenance of a system that already sacrifices those on the periphery? Why not throw the whole thing away and start again?
-anonymous, march 2025, written on unceded land
References
Bring the War Home: Recovering Anti-Imperialism (paper copy can’t find online sorry)
On “Australian” Fascism – on Backlash Blogs
A Recipe For Nocturnal Direct Actions
DIY HRT History and Practice (can’t find online, here’s this instead): thelinknewspaper.ca/article/diy-hormones-arent-dangerous-the-dismissal-of-trans-knowledge-is)
Limited suggestions for further reading
Arm protect Trans Kids – on Backlash Blogs
Dangerous Spaces – on Anarchist Library
Gay Shame Opposes Marriage in Any Form – on Trans Reads
How Nonviolence Protects the State – on Anarchist Library
I Don’t Bash Back I Shoot First – on Anarchist Library
Smash the Non-Profit Indigenous Complex: An Indigenous Anti-Capitalist Zine – on Indigenous Action
The Boat That Wasn’t Blocked – on Backlash Blogs
Trans Health Manifesto – on Tumblr
Voting is Not Harm Reduction – on Indigenous Action
1See reference list for links 😉
2Jackie Mae Turner seems to be the singular authority of the Trans Justice Project. There used to be a board, as recently as 2024 (also filled with pro-cop Zionist labour shills such as Joe Ball). I have not been able to find anything published by TJP that isn’t by Turner herself. Nearly a hundred thousand dollars have been fundraised ‘for the project’ with no transparency about how this money was spent.
References
Bring the War Home: Recovering Anti-Imperialism (paper copy can’t find online sorry)
On “Australian” Fascism – on Backlash Blogs
A Recipe For Nocturnal Direct Actions
DIY HRT History and Practice (can’t find online, here’s this instead): thelinknewspaper.ca/article/diy-hormones-arent-dangerous-the-dismissal-of-trans-knowledge-is)
Limited suggestions for further reading
Arm protect Trans Kids – on Backlash Blogs
Dangerous Spaces – on Anarchist Library
Gay Shame Opposes Marriage in Any Form – on Trans Reads
How Nonviolence Protects the State – on Anarchist Library
I Don’t Bash Back I Shoot First – on Anarchist Library
Smash the Non-Profit Indigenous Complex: An Indigenous Anti-Capitalist Zine – on Indigenous Action
The Boat That Wasn’t Blocked – on Backlash Blogs
Trans Health Manifesto – on Tumblr
Voting is Not Harm Reduction – on Indigenous Action
1See reference list for links 😉
2Jackie Mae Turner seems to be the singular authority of the Trans Justice Project. There used to be a board, as recently as 2024 (also filled with pro-cop Zionist labour shills such as Joe Ball). I have not been able to find anything published by TJP that isn’t by Turner herself. Nearly a hundred thousand dollars have been fundraised ‘for the project’ with no transparency about how this money was spent.
