I thought, perhaps naively, that trans people having the right to exist and the right to protest was something we could all agree on, writes Madeleine Chapman.

When a wasp makes its way into my home, I gently shoo it out, sometimes with great effort. I don’t like wasps and I really don’t want to be stung by one, but I have no interest in harming them. I’ve been taught this from a young age, nudging wētā out of wet logs and sweeping weevils from the entryway. 

Years ago, when I was a student and rode a motorbike, a wasp flew into my jacket while I was on the motorway and stung me on the collarbone. I flinched and swerved a little in my lane, but had nowhere to pull over. A moment later, it stung me again on my chest. Then again. Trying not to veer into the cars on either side of me and still going 100km/h, I took one hand off the handlebars and pounded my chest until I felt the wasp crunch against my sternum. 

When I finally managed to safely pull over and open my jacket, the wasp fell out and, incredibly, flew away. I stood there with a swollen and bruised chest and shuddered at what would have happened if it had kept stinging me.

Seeing the number of people who are this week suggesting that trans people and their allies should have simply ignored Posie Parker when she was in New Zealand makes me think of that wasp.

“They played right into her hands,” said Heather du-Plessis Allan in the Herald. Tracy Watkins wrote in the Sunday Star Times of the “pro-trans lobby” in a piece headlined “Outrage was the winner in ‘Posie Parker’ chaos”. The CEO of Diversity Works, the national body for workplace diversity, equity and inclusion, Maretha Smit, wrote despairingly on LinkedIn that “we have not managed to engage the hearts and minds of those who are still figuring out where they stand on these issues”. There were many calls for empathy and understanding in the face of disagreement.

They’re all correct in that there was tension at the protest and there were brief moments when things got physical from both sides, which I don’t endorse. I myself received a good shove from behind from Parker’s security as they cleared a path to the rotunda, and my naive first thought was that someone must have tripped and fallen into me. The jostling was unsurprising because, after all, it was a protest. Protests have very, very rarely been without conflict. People were protesting for their right to live without the spread of hate-filled rhetoric in their backyard so, as you’d expect, their emotions ran high. And as far as protests go, it ultimately was uneventful. Right now in France, streets are quite literally on fire at the prospect of the retirement age being raised from 62 to 64.

The overriding argument of the aforementioned three (and many others) is that the way to engage with those who don’t share your views is through civil discussion, not “outrage” or “cancel culture”. And I agree, when we are talking to our relatives, neighbours, colleagues, friends and random internet strangers who are equally willing to engage in constructive dialogue. But what these calls for empathy and kindness have done is conflate Posie Parker, who even other “gender critical” activists have distanced themselves from because of her extreme views, with your high school friend who watched one too many Youtube videos about Hillary Clinton in 2016.

It is disappointing for me to see how many of my media colleagues have approached this whole saga as an even debate where one side overpowered another, rather than a community’s fight to be seen as valid members of society. People can have their own conflicting thoughts on, say, where transgender athletes might fit into the current Olympics framework. But I thought, perhaps naively again, that trans people having the right to exist and the right to protest was something we could all agree on. A collective show of empathy, you could say. 

The purpose of Saturday’s protest was to be peaceful and legal but also extremely loud. That was the whole point, clearly written on the tin, because some of the things Parker says (namely: denying the existence of trans women by insisting that they are men) are harmful. This was not a protest of people disagreeing with what Parker said or not liking what Parker said. These were people who felt their lives and the lives of their loved ones would be made demonstrably worse if they didn’t do something.

So they yelled. Louder than Parker could speak. And she left. It’s an effective protest tactic, but it doesn’t mean that the same approach would be taken with every person who asks a genuine question to their neighbour about how some areas of society might function differently when everyone is living as their true selves. 

I can confidently say that every single person present at the various support rallies over the weekend has had at least one awkward conversation with someone they know about trans (or queer, or any ethnic minority) rights. Those conversations are ongoing and require a lot more empathy and patience than most people realise. The Springbok Tour protests of ‘81 weren’t the beginning and end of Apartheid discussions in New Zealand. They were protests with a specific aim (to stop an event), just like this one. And just like this one, they made a lot of people angry who now hold different views after being made to talk about the lived reality of others at home/work/school.

Posie Parker is not someone who wants to have those sorts of conversations. When someone’s stance includes conspiracy theories that billionaires are funding a pro-trans movement (as said on RNZ last week), they’re not wanting a civil discussion. Parker is not providing a helpful foundation from which to have these talks as a country either. She wanted to come in, sting and leave. And thousands set out to lessen that sting, even if it meant hurting themselves (by now having to read handfuls of cisgendered people, whose lives are not impacted by the ideas Parker spreads, determining on national platforms that actually it was all a bit much).

I still shoo away wasps and other creatures when they come inside the house. Sometimes I’m lazy and ask my partner to put them out in the garden where they’ll be happier. Most of the time they’re just an annoying buzz that can and should be ignored. Trans people are already at greater risk of being victims of violence and are, in general, at the sticky end of most wellbeing statistics. They are eternally riding bikes on the motorway, where an annoying buzz can quickly turn deadly, while the rest of us watch from a safe distance, asking for more empathy.