Pride is a Protest: Why police need to pull out of Midsumma
The police don't protect us, and we need to stop pretending they do.
This is a guest contribution from Natalie Feliks, a transgender woman writer and activist living in Naarm, who has been paid for her contribution.
A week ago, transgender advocacy body Transgender Victoria announced they would withdraw from the annual Midsumma Pride March. In a statement, the organisation claimed that the decision was made due to “a deep and pervasive discontent among TGD people regarding their interactions with and treatment by Victoria Police”.
To understand the significance of this, Midsumma is the foremost queer festival in Melbourne, often directly compared to Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. It’s a big gay party, but as with the Mardi Gras, raises eyebrows for who it chooses to invite. Taking a look at the website, you can see rainbow-coloured logos of the likes of AGL, NAB, Seek and the City of Melbourne itself. Taking a look at the list of stalls at the carnival, you can see Amazon, Crown Resorts and, of course, Crime Stoppers Victoria… whose headquarters is in the Victoria Police Centre.
If you aren’t aware of the term “pinkwashing”, it’s when less-than-ethical entities cover up their less-than-ethical practices by bringing some glitter to pride and offering out free hugs for a day. Sure, AGL might be one of the worst climate polluters in Australia, but at least they use their megaprofits to sponsor a big gay festival! Sure, Victoria Police might have a history of raiding queer bars and violently arresting gay people, but at least they’ve apologised now and want to party with us! That’s all cool and progressive, right? We should forgive them and move on, right?
Many members of the queer community celebrate the visible presence of queer people within the police force as proof positive of how normalised queerness has become in everyday society. Independent NSW state MP Alex Greenwich, co-chair of Australian Marriage Equality, supports police members to participate in pride, citing the need for “inclusiveness”, cooperation between police and the queer community, and opportunities for the police to protect queer people in the future. If state-sanctioned police violence is a thing of the past, then it means queer people can count on cops to protect us from harassment, Terfs, Nazi attacks… right?
Well, as Transgender Victoria seems to have noticed, it doesn’t cut that way. State-sanctioned violence against queer people still exists. The most notorious example of this was, of course, in March 2023, when police protected an anti-trans rally which saw the attendance of members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network. Despite the extremist anti-trans rhetoric espoused by the neo-Nazis and other attendees, police mobilised heavily against the pro-trans protesters, using horses and pepper spray in what the Melbourne Activist Legal Service described as “excessive” and “discriminatory” levels of force. Three trans rights activists are suing Victoria Police as a result.
There are countless other incidents of anti-queer behaviour from Victoria Police, from a refusal to assist in the search of trans woman Bridget Flack, which saw a rare admission of failure from Victoria Police, to complaints of an internal anti-queer culture from members within the force itself. In 2019, a report by the Victorian Human Rights Commission found extraordinary levels of hatred against queer people within the force, with attitudes such as “they [gays] should be taken out the back of the station and shot in the head” and “all gays should be gassed in the chamber like the Nazis”. It’s hard to be surprised that the cops protected the neo-Nazis now, hey.
It’s true that queerness is more normalised in everyday society, and there are definitely more queer people on our TV screens, radios, and in parliament than in decades past, which is all thanks to the tireless effort of the queer rights movement. However, while this has translated to more acceptance of queer rights in the general public, it seeming hasn’t translated to more acceptance within institutions such as Victoria Police. If attending our parties and marches was the key to making the cops our friends, you’d think it would’ve happened by now, and the cops would know that protecting a sign calling us “paedo freaks” and threatening to “destroy” us isn’t cool.
So why have years of “inclusion” and “cooperation” between police and the queer community seemingly led nowhere, and relationships have broken down so badly that even Transgender Victoria has had enough? Well, the problem lies in the concept of policing itself. Whilst ostensibly existing to help us through hate crimes, domestic abuse, sexual assault, and to help us find justice, they have failed in these obligations. A UK survey found that 73% of rape survivors said that police treatment worsened their mental health, and hundreds of Victoria Police members themselves are being investigated for domestic violence and sex crimes.
Policing is a component of the state, and thus, their primary objective is to protect not the interests of a marginalised community, but the interests of the state. Despite repeated claims of crimes all supposedly being handled equally, it’s impossible to ignore the disparity in police response depending on who is the victim of each crime. Last year, the Commonwealth Bank was fined $10.3m for underpaying over 7,400 workers a total of $16m. National Australia Bank, the proud sponsor of Midsumma, has also been found to have stolen from their own workers in the past. And yet, media and police attention is far more focused on youth crime, which the police admit to be linked to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, and unironically caused by, amongst other things, stagnant wage growth. It’s hard to be sympathetic to the coverage on the rise of theft of “meat and fresh produce” from retail stores, when last year Woolworths was found to have stolen $1.2m from their workers, including $12,000 from one worker specifically.
Even worse than that, is when police respond to situations where no crime even exists at all. It makes more sense that police would attack pro-trans protesters at the March 2023 anti-trans rally, when you realise that one of the organisers of the anti-trans rally was a member of Victorian Parliament. This isn’t the only time Victoria Police have attacked members of the public simply for protesting. In September last year, Victoria Police came under immense scrutiny for using the likes of flash bangs and rubber bullets against protesters of the International Land Defence Exposition. Alex Zucco, a photojournalist covering the event for her agency, was attacked by police during the protest, despite her clearly displayed “PRESS” insignia, and described it “one of the most disturbing days of my life”.
The International Land Defence Exposition hosted Israeli weapons companies in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war. Two months later, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. At the time, the death toll in Gaza was estimated at over 41,000, with Israel accused of using starvation as a weapon of war and genocide in Gaza. The fact that war crimes on an international scale attract protection from police, but being a journalist at a protest attracts police violence, is a perfect demonstration of the police’s role in Victorian society.
A major queer NGO such as Transgender Victoria withdrawing from the event in protest of police attendance was seen almost unanimously as a win for the anti-police queer rights movement. The statement even made waves interstate, with grassroots collective Pride in Protest declaring it as vindication of their campaign to kick NSW Police from Mardi Gras. The argument goes that if events such as Mardi Gras and Midsumma truly exist for the benefit of the queer community, then every organisation in attendance should have the future of our community firmly at heart. If not, then it’s just an opportunity for the wealthy and powerful to cover up their unethical activities – a big corporate corrupt pinkwashing party – covered in glitter, and we can’t abide by that.
This isn’t touching on the constant controversy surrounding Indigenous deaths in police custody and the police’s never-ending refusal for oversight. Countless attempts at consultation and police reform have been made, even by Transgender Victoria themselves. They originally committed to appearing at a forum at the Victoria Pride Centre aimed at boosting conversations between Victoria Police and the transgender community. However, after a severe backlash on social media by community members, the event was cancelled.
The CEO of Transgender Victoria, Son Vivienne, has stated that he is committed to reforming Victoria Police into an institution that works for the safety of the transgender community, citing cultural sensitivity education and “gender-affirming data collection” as future goals. While these might be good-faith goals, reforming the police into an institution that protects the community will require a massive cultural change in not just the force, but society as a whole, to the point where it would be entirely unrecognisable. This is happening at a time when the Victorian Liberal Party supported an inquiry into gender-affirming care, and the criminalisation of trans people is occurring in the United Kingdom and United States. If criminalisation of our existence takes place in Australia, as some members of Parliament are advocating, then this will be enforced by… the police. Not exactly a great atmosphere for cultural sensitivity education, unless your priority is the cops using your current pronouns while they arrest you for possession of puberty blockers.
It’s also deeply ironic, but not surprising, that the Victorian Liberal Party is also joining Midsumma, given their renewed support for anti-trans campaigner Moira Deeming only last month. Joining Midsumma these days is like being gaslit by a sea of rainbow flags, pronoun badges, and glitter, washing away all your memories of the massive attacks on our community by the same organisations. Rainbow Labor, which blocked marriage equality; Salvation Army, which campaigned against Safe Schools; Woolworths, which banned its staff from wearing pride stickers. This is the tip of the iceberg. It’s disturbing, upsetting and insulting.
One of the things that upsets me the most about the presence of the police at pride isn’t just the false assertion that police are invested in our protection, but the historical revisionism of how deeply our community has defended itself. Mutual aid has shaped the community since the start of the queer rights movement, and it continues today. We’re living in a cost-of-living crisis, which disproportionately affects queer people. When members of our community can’t afford food, housing or hormones due to the actions of Labor or Woolworths, we don’t turn to Victoria Police or Transgender Victoria for help. We turn to each other. The community supports us, these organisations don’t, and Midsumma certainly doesn’t.
Pride is a protest, and the protest is directed at the fact that our existence is still determined by a cisgender patriarchal state that hoards wealth and resources from us. We can’t pretend that the same people who control this state, and participate in this hoarding, are invested in our safety. Our existence and our resources should be ours to control. We should have the right to our own healthcare, education, and safe places to live and prosper as a community. We shouldn’t beg for these things, and they shouldn’t be distributed at the behest of a state that doesn’t represent us, secured by wealthy elites and an abusive police force.
If we want pride to be a revolt, which we should, then we need to make it one. We’ve depended on no one but ourselves when we’re at our most vulnerable. We shouldn’t depend on others to determine our protest or demands. Let’s stop ceding to the gaslighting of Midsumma, and make it clear that we expect more than just a rainbow logo. Our future isn’t theirs to determine, it’s ours. Let’s make our future the best it can possibly be.
This is a guest contribution from Natalie Feliks, a transgender woman writer and activist living in Naarm, who has been paid for her contribution. Help me continue to pay other Australian trans writers by pledging a future subscription to LucyFromNaarm.com.
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Good article again by Natalie.