Sydney Trans Community Remains Visible in Defiance of Local and US Existential Threats

Much of Sydney’s transgender community and its supporters gathered on Gadigal land in Newtown’s Pride Square last Sunday, for the Pride in Protest hosted Trans Day of Visibility rally 2025. And as speaker after speaker took the microphone, the message was clear: trans rights are under attack, so protesters were mobilising to fight back.

Far right governments coming to power over recent months have been progressing their anti-equity, antiminority and anti-climate agendas, both locally and abroad, and transgender people are on the frontline of these attacks, which are underpinned by the paranoid theory that parents are sending children to public schools where cultural Marxist staff are attempting to turn their straight kids trans.

On its first day in office, the Trump administration in the United States progressed a divisive campaign against the rights of transgender people, as the president signed an executive order to ensure that only two unchangeable sexes exist, meaning trans men and women do not exist, and this was progressed in the name of women, to combat the invasion of their “intimate single-sex spaces”.

But unbeknownst to many in this country, the Liberal National Crisafulli government, which came to power in Queensland in October, shares much of the same preoccupations as does Trump, including sticking to fossil fuels, rolling back First Nations reforms and criminalising abortion, while in January, it established a temporary ban on puberty blockers: a type of transgender healthcare.

So, with the political climate both here and overseas becoming more oppressive, Sydney’s queer community was out in force and on display in Newtown last Sunday, to show that regardless of the attempts of conservatives in power to push them into the shadows, the hard-won rights gains the transgender community has achieved over recent decades, aren’t being rolled back.

Trans rights are under attack

“We have also seen the Queensland government take unilateral action to block trans young people accessing healthcare and instead, introduced their own sham review so that they could delay the process of accepting new people into the public system for as long as possible,” Trans Justice Project director Jackie Turner told the Sunday crowd.

“We know that our struggle is not unique. We know that struggles for bodily autonomy happen for all kinds of people, whether they need access to reproductive care, whether they are a person who lives with disability, whether they are a sex worker, a person living with HIV or anything else,” she underscored.

Turner noted that following the 28 January Queensland temporary ban on puberty blockers, or hormone therapy for trans people under 18, Senator Pauline Hanson attempted to progress a federal inquiry into “experimental child gender treatments”, with a view to banning puberty blockers nationwide, and while it was voted down, it was supported by eighteen Coalition senators.

The Trans Justice Project director further asserted that regardless of which major party is in power after the May federal election, trans people must remain vigilant, because while the Liberals have “anti-trans policies and politicians”, Labor, over its time in office, “has shied away from standing up for” the LGBTIQA+ community.

“I know that right now can be a really scary time to feel like we are being public, as a trans person or a person who supports a trans person, but our opponents want us to be scared,” Turner continued.

“But the truth is that the only thing that has changed things for us in this society regarding our healthcare, and our right to life, is us.”

Visibility is key

Since coming to power in the US two months back, US president Donald Trump has signed five executive orders targeting transgender people’s identities, healthcare, education and those serving in the US military.

Indeed, 10 percent of the great number of executive orders that Trump has signed since 20 January have targeted the LGBTIQA+ community in the United States.

“We are all together here watching a fascist government in the US attempt to take away all of our rights and systematically erase us from existence, while our very own government is sitting there taking notes on how they can do the same here,” SWOP (Sex Worker Outreach Project) trans and gender diverse outreach team member Ms Andrie told the crowd in Pride Square.

“But what this tells me is that these right-wingers fear our visibility,” she made certain. “Visibility is a powerful weapon. Seeing a happy trans person makes a fascist cry. That is enough reason to be happy and defiant. So, I want to encourage everyone right now, to continue to be yourself and show them that we cannot be legislated away and that we are not going anywhere.”

Ms Andrie pointed to the passing of the Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Bill 2023 in NSW last year, which had been “gutted” by the Minns government beforehand. So, while the bill was a victory in terms of trans people being able to change the sex marker on primary identification without undergoing surgery, antidiscrimination protections for sex workers had been removed.

“Where are we now?” the SWOP member asked. “Street-based sex work is still criminalised. Sex workers still don’t have antidiscrimination protections. Right now, sex workers can still be denied basic human rights, housing, education, employment and health services.”

Stand up, fight back

The inner city suburb of Newtown, where the rally took to the streets on 30 March, has long been known as a safe space for the LGBTIQA+ community. However, this changed one night in early 2023, when it became the site of a Christian Lives Matter antiqueer demonstration that paraded through the main streets before rallying in Pride Square to spout transphobic and queerphobia rhetoric.

As Australian Greens candidate for Sydney Luc Velez took the microphone last weekend, he told the crowd that politicians weaponising the queer community for political gain is not on, and he questioned why, in a time when the constituency is suffering dual housing and cost-of-living crises, federal politicians are continuing to focus on the “policing of queer bodies”.

“We are watching queer rights go backwards in the US and the UK,” Velez explained. “One of Trump’s first acts as president when he was re-elected, was to roll back hard-fought protections for millions of queer people.”

“On this continent, the Queensland government is removing access to lifesaving affirming care for kids. So, this shit isn’t coming out of nowhere. We know that,” the Greens candidate continued. “It has been going on for a while now. Not so long ago, so-called Christian Lives Matter was rallying right here at Pride Square, spewing their bullshit and bigotry.”

Velez further outlined that the political attacks being experienced by the trans community at present are just that, political. A January released Equality Australia survey found that 75 percent of religious people in this country believe trans people deserve the same rights and protections as everyone else, while 93 percent of people who know someone who is trans answered in the affirmative.

“Labor are refusing to defend trans rights. They are refusing to mention trans people,” Velez, a long-time campaigner for Pride and Protest, said in concluding.

“On Trans Day of Visibility, the bare fucking minimum they could do is acknowledge that trans people exist on this continent,”