Goulburn Valley Pride president Deb Chumbley described the event as an anti-trans activist speaking tour, supported by neo-Nazis.
“It was just very sad,” she said.
“It’s a message to all minorities, shows how dangerous the extreme right-wing community can be, something disguised as a women’s rights rally ends up being hate speech.
“We can’t expect trans people to do the heavy lifting; silence is deafening, even as non-trans people we need to stand up and not tolerate this. It’s a human rights issue not just a trans issue.”
Transgender woman and Greater Shepparton resident Emma Tang said the rally was hateful and harmful to trans people even before neo-Nazis got involved.
“Even just the name ‘Let Women Speak’ is hateful, it’s trying to say we’re not real women, it’s putting that sentence in every household, and is just another way of trying to erase us as transgender people,” she said.
“There’s young people in our local community who are working through this, figuring out their identities and being supported by their families, and probably aren’t in the best head space, and this kind of thing is so terrifying and harmful to them, it’s dangerous.”
Ms Tang said she had met so many wonderful and supportive people in all sectors of the community and that the Greater Shepparton community at large was very accepting, and that the rally was representative of a loud minority.
“This is just the 0.001 per cent, and unfortunately those are the people with a news camera in their face, which gives them power,” Ms Tang said.
“There are transgender people everywhere, it’s important when things like this happen we have these conversations and ask if they are actually okay.
“You say let women speak; well, I’m a woman, and I’m speaking.
“We are women, we come in all types of shapes, sizes and races, but are all just as real as each other and we do have a voice.”
The neo-Nazi group gathered at the Let Women Speak event held by British activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, and performed what has been described as multiple acts of the Nazi salute.
Binary Australia said the Let Women Speak events were held to “protect and promote biological reality” and unite “adult human females — not a costume, not a feeling or a drug to be dependent on”.
Liberal MP Moira Deeming spoke at the rally, and Opposition leader John Pesutto said he would move a motion to expel Ms Deeming as a Liberal Party member.
Ms Deeming used her inaugural speech last month to call for an inquiry into transition practices and was critical of calls to include trans women in female sports.
She said on Twitter following the announcement that she was disappointed in Victoria Police’s inability to protect “terrified women who were just trying to speak their rights” and condemned the “horrible” use of the Nazi salute.
