A leading women’s rights activist who has campaigned against transgender women using female-only spaces has been doused with tomato soup again.
Kellie-Jay Keen, who is also known as Posie Parker, was leading a Let Women Speak rally in the centre of Sheffield yesterday afternoon when a 6ft-plus man approached her from behind and poured a tin of Heinz soup over her head.
The 34-year-old man then attempted to flee the scene but was chased by fellow women’s rights campaigners and police later took him away in handcuffs.
can reveal that the man who targeted Ms Keen is Ben Lindsay, a university graduate who boasts online about being Southampton Solent’s first Student Equality & Diversity associate.
South Yorkshire Police have confirmed that Lindsay, from Barnsley, has been charged with two counts of assault by beating and will appear before Sheffield Magistrates’ Court on November 25.
Ms Keen, who was also targeted with soup during her Let Women Speak tour across and New Zealand last year, told : ‘I felt quite defiant. It’s so silly because it’s just soup, but I just felt then it doesn’t really matter what they do.
‘They’ve just proven my point, and we have to get on with this and let women speak.’
Ms Keen told how she was leading a rally in Sheffield at around 1pm, but dozens of trans-activists were holding a counter-protest.
She explained: ‘In the middle of setting up the YouTube live stream, a man who was about 6ft came up behind me and poured a tin of tomato soup all over my head.
‘I didn’t really think about the quantity of soup but it was a lot of soup. It covered my arms and the front of my top and my back and my hair. Women all around came with water bottles to instantly get rid of it.
‘He then ran off, chased by a couple of women, and the police got him. He was arrested, remanded in custody. I gave a statement, as did the other lady assaulted who helped with my tech, and he’s been charged with assault by beating.’
The attack is reminiscent of when Ms Keen was mobbed by counter protesters who opposed her gender critical views. They doused her in tomato soup during a rally in New Zealand last March before she had the chance to speak.
Comparing the two incidents, she told : ‘The last time it happened to me, it provoked the mob that had already assembled to level up if you like and I genuinely thought I was going to lose my life that day, which sounds very hyperbolic but completely true. I though if I hit the floor, I’ll never get up.
‘That was the point of what he was doing with the soup [this time], it’s all tied up in intimidating women so we don’t feel like we can speak in public.’
Ms Keen said it feels ‘very strange’ when a substance is poured over you, adding: ‘It takes more than a couple seconds for your brain to process what it is.’
The campaigners continued the rally but Ms Keen hit out at the police for failing to look out for women’s safety.
She said: ‘It just feels from an operational level that our safety is not taken very seriously. The threat of the trans activists is not taken very seriously.’
Ms Keen believes the trans activism is ‘rife in the universities’, adding: ‘I think it’s very frightening how much power this cult seems to yield.’
She welcomed police quickly charging Lindsay but fears that he may be given a light sentencing – as she hit out at the heavy jail terms handed out to rioters who made despicable comments online.
Ms Keen continued: ‘I’m just very aware, over the last few months in this country people have been whipped into court, probably been given terrible legal advice and they’ve been told that if they plead guilty everything’s going to be fine and dandy, and then they’re going to prison for 15 months for a Facebook post that might be a shameful, despicable thing to say.
‘But I’m thinking… if he gets less than 15 months inside for what I consider an act of terrorism, which under the stipulation of what terrorism is, which is an act with a political aim, and the aim here is to stop women speaking, I would really hope that he gets longer inside than a pensioner saying something off colour online, or even vile, online.
A spokesman for South Yorkshire Police said: ‘A 34-year-old man has been charged with two counts of assault by beating following an incident in Sheffield city centre earlier today (21 September).
‘Ben Lindsay, of Fitzwilliam Street, Barnsley, was arrested by officers earlier this afternoon during a demonstration in Barkers Pool.
‘He has since been released on conditional bail and will appear before Sheffield Magistrates’ Court on 25 November’.