‘What’s the collective noun for a group of incels?’

That was what I asked my partner as we hurried away after the Let Women Speak event in Melbourne on 18 March 2023. The organisers had ended the event early. Later, they stated that police had told them the behaviour of the ‘trans rights activists’ made it too dangerous to continue.

As we walked quickly to our car, staying close to another group of women for the numbers, I was struck with déjà vu. This wasn’t the first time lesbians had walked these streets afraid for our safety, glancing around, listening for footsteps behind us, swapping jokes to keep our spirits up.

What was the collective noun for a group of incels? A wank of incels? A tantrum of incels? A crust of incels?

Those TRAs were mostly young men, masked and wearing black. They looked like they’d never had sex with anything with a pulse. Or eaten a fresh vegetable or spoken face-to-face with another human being. No wonder they were so deranged: being outdoors in sunlight must have shocked them. Imagine Gollum with a PornHub account and you’ve got these guys.

So we joked as we rushed away, but our nerves were jangling. I had never in my life seen such a spectacle of naked misogyny. Those men were howling to break through the police lines and get their hands on the wicked women who’d dared to gather in public and talk about our own rights.

During the event, the hundreds of TRAs were maybe fifty metres from us in a tightly packed crowd, pushing constantly against the police line, inching closer. They banged metal objects (which could have doubled as weapons), blew whistles, threw things, screamed dementedly, or repeated the same chants over and over for two hours. They didn’t want to prove us wrong; they wanted to shut us up. Some wore earplugs. Was it so they could tolerate their own racket, or so they wouldn’t risk hearing what the women had to say?

I cannot call the TRAs ‘protesters’. This wasn’t a protest. This was a mob.

Nothing enrages a misogynist more than women saying no. How dare we? While this rage is directed at any disobedient woman, it is especially familiar to lesbians, who have been saying no to men for years. When Kellie-Jay Keen hollered cheerfully at the mob ‘WOMEN DON’T HAVE PENISES!’ and the women around her laughed, I thought those men would spontaneously combust. Women saying no and laughing at them? The literal violence of it all!

If the event itself was oddly familiar for the lesbians present – the danger, the camaraderie, the gallows humour – what happened next was also, sadly, familiar. Within 24 hours, three major political parties and almost all the media had rewritten the whole story. It wasn’t a women’s rights event, they said; it was a ‘Nazi rally’. We women were to blame, apparently, for the horrifying appearance of more masked and black-clad men, looking just like the TRAs until they gave their abhorrent salutes, mysteriously admitted to the event by the police, who escorted them all the way across the front of Parliament in front of the cameras. We women – peaceful, politically diverse feminists with our suffragette scarves, rainbow flags and union t-shirts – must have been in cahoots with those Neanderthals, the press and politicians said.

Sure, there was zero evidence of that. Sure, the organisers condemned the Nazis unreservedly. And sure, the women present had been terrified and disgusted. But still, we must have invited them. Or welcomed them. Or not done enough to stop them. Or enticed them with our shameless woman-ing around. Never mind the facts; it must have been our fault somehow.

And while the world argued over how much blame we women should take for the behaviour of repugnant men, the TRAs – remember them? – just melted away. They went home to their filthy bedrooms with no consequences. No one debated their outrageous actions. No newspaper printed images of their attacks on police and women. The Premier, proudly declaring that Nazis had no place on our streets, didn’t seem to mind the streets being clogged with violent incels. Within days, the trans flag – the flag I’d seen waved by zealots screaming for us to be silenced – was flying at Parliament House.

Again, the déjà vu for homosexuals. A reminder of a time when people could do anything they liked to you and be praised for doing it, while you would get the blame.

Something else was familiar too: the secrecy, the silence. For days, I was too afraid to tell friends or family what I’d experienced. As for telling colleagues in my progressive workplace – forget it. My colleagues are feminine, middle class heterosexual women who talk earnestly about ‘transphobia’ and delight in stating their pronouns. So inclusive, so novel, so sparkly! When I arrived at work on Monday feeling physically sick, I couldn’t tell them what was wrong.

Smile, act normal, say nothing. What price your job, your friends, your safety? Any homosexual who has been in the closet knows that feeling. You don’t just hide your love. You hide your pain, your wounds, your humiliation, bitterness and anger. Speak honestly and you’ll be condemned – as a sicko, a sinner or, now, a ‘Nazi’. This time, the closet is wrapped in a glittery rainbow flag.

But something else felt familiar too. A rising anger, a recklessness, an urge to tell everyone where they could stick it. A realisation that silence is the devil’s bargain, and that if you want a chance at self-respect you’d better learn to speak.

In the past few days, I have written more angry emails, posted more comments online, and spoken to more people about this matter than I’d ever dared do previously. I was more scared than I’d been before but also more determined to speak anyway.

Cowardly bullies cannot understand that. They assume fear will crush and silence people, because it would certainly do that to them. But we are made of sterner stuff, and that, too, is part of our heritage as lesbians, as homosexuals.