Rather than accepting my order as normal, the postering company phoned to interrogate me about what sort of dangerous figure I was, why my posters had been torn and if I could explain my politics to them in light of the complaints they received alleging that I was transphobic. They told me they were nervous about taking my order and in the end, refused to handle it.
When trans activist organisations InsideOut and RainbowYouth—who also ensured that I was banned from the Wellington Zinefest in 2016—were asked for comment, they claimed that my posters communicated “a subtle transphobia.” This ‘transphobia’ was found in the slogan “The suffragists fought for the female sex.” To be absolutely clear here the words they found objectionable, and which led a company to blacklist me, were “the female sex.”
The response to my posters shows that the phrase ‘female sex’ is on its way to being classified as ‘hate speech.’
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