Following the February 2020 The Australian interview and Triple M Hobart, Katie Warren continued to face targeted harassment on Facebook. Screenshots from the time show individuals from Hobart’s transgender community responding to her safeguarding concerns with direct threats, including a comment stating:
“Honestly, sounds like we should be giving CPS a call about you. I shudder to think about what you’re exposing your child to.”
On 27 June 2020, while hosting karaoke at the Brisbane Hotel’s 13th birthday event, Warren confronted the individual who had made this CPS threat. What began as a one-on-one request for explanation escalated when others joined in with verbal abuse, physical intimidation (grabbing her arm), and disruption of the event — including a “TRANS LIVES MATTER” speech from the karaoke stage.
Warren was fired by the pub owner at the end of the night. In her public letter of 17 July 2020, she detailed providing the venue with evidence of the prior threats and her version of events, but received no substantive response or reinstatement.
Katie Warren’s Open Letter (17 July 2020):
My name is Katie and Hobart has been my home for the last 12 years. For 7 or so of those years I have been running the karaoke night at The Brisbane Hotel together with one of my very good friends. These karaoke nights can range from hectic madness to absolutely dead, but I love karaoke (something born from spending 20 years in Asia) and I was, for the most part, a great host — keeping the performances moving along as well as filling in dead air with my own performances, and the occasional unpleasantness with punters a little bit too drunk, but nothing I could never handle. The karaoke team operated on the basis of free beers for our work and this was enough for us even as some shifts saw us working up to 5 hours or more.
A few weeks ago (June 27) I was fired from my gig as a result of a punter’s complaints to the pub management in response to my efforts to seek an explanation from this individual regarding an ominous threat they had directed at me as a result of my interview with The Australian some months ago.
Prior to the release of my interview with The Australian, I had had minimal interaction with this individual, including one situation that I had called them out for slandering the owner of a small business on a public post. This person (who I shall refer to as Person X from here on out) communicated with me in such a manner that indicated they thought I was “lovely”, and had even conceded with me that I had made some fair points in a minor disagreement regarding one of their Facebook posts. All of this changed once my interview was released, and it was rather shocking to see Person X become one of the most outspoken and nasty critics of me and my position of zero tolerance regarding the involvement of children in questionable LGBTQ+ activities. It did not matter to this person that my posts regarding this matter had support from other transwomen in the community, nor did it matter that up until that point I had never given them any cause for concern regarding their own personal safety. It did not matter to this person that my statements were only ever against the exploitation or possible grooming of children — it did not matter that I myself am a mother to a little boy, who has a right to express alarm and concern over some situations regarding “drag/trans kids”. Person X seemed only too eager to do a complete 180 in their interactions with me based on the perceived mob opinion of who I apparently must be, and proceeded to threaten me, alongside other insults, with Child Protective Services.
This now brings us to the events of June 27, the night of the Brisbane Hotel’s 13th birthday celebration, and karaoke was in full swing. Running such an event in a small town meant that I was calling Person X up on stage, and knowing that this individual had expressed that I, a mother, should lose my child based on Facebook posts, made me feel so incredibly uncomfortable that I felt I had to say something to this individual, which I did. I approached them and said “Do you remember that time you said this — can you explain WHY you feel I should lose my child.” I challenged this individual to explain — precisely — what sins I had committed as a mother that were so grave in their eyes that my child should be traumatised by undergoing a visit from CPS. This person immediately became loud and aggressive, and began ranting about Facebook posts and transphobia, while I simply repeated my question — “WHY DO YOU THINK I SHOULD LOSE CUSTODY OF MY LITTLE BOY THOUGH.” I found it rather remarkable that in between their rants and chants (yes, they started chanting at me at one point) they could never actually pinpoint anything I have said that is so obviously hateful and wrong and that all they could do was jab their finger at me and call me names, and then try to find out where I was from. As to why my race or place of birth was of any importance to my question, I can only guess. It soon became clear I wasn’t going to get a clear answer nor an apology (in fact this person said “What makes you think I haven’t called them already”) and so I went back to the karaoke area, and Person X went into the other part of the bar.
In my opinion that was the end of the conversation, but I found that I began to get harassed and abused by other members of the transgender community. I was told by complete and utter strangers to “fuck off you aren’t welcome here”, and when I realised they were looking for a fight and I turned my back on them, they moved closer and even physically grabbed my arm in order to facilitate an interaction with me that I had no desire to engage in. My issue was a personal issue with Person X alone, and I had no further interest in any more drama, much less from people I had never met in my life. They were unrelenting in their pursuit of some kind of argument that eventually a bouncer intervened and they were asked to leave the karaoke area as even when I once again tried to ignore them and enjoy conversation with my friends, they remained beside us attempting to stir shit up. At one point in the evening as I was back on stage sitting at the karaoke desk, one of these individuals got up and took the microphone from a woman of colour in order to give a speech that began with “TRANS LIVES MATTER” — an irony that was not lost on me — and proceeded to rant in this fashion, ending with “Anyone who doesn’t agree with this needs to get the fuck off the stage”. As I was attempting to actually run a karaoke night, the people with no intention of performing a song were actually those who should not be on the stage, and I kept a smile on my face and attempted to keep the event running smoothly without giving in to my inner impulse to respond to them in kind from the stage.
As their targeted verbal abuse and attempt to publicly humiliate me from my own stage seemed to fail in their desired outcome — to see me banished — this is where I simply assume what might have happened, as I remained in the karaoke area and it wasn’t until the end of the event that the pub owner came on stage, accused me of causing him “so much shit” and said I was fired from karaoke and to “get the fuck out of” his pub. I can only assume that those in the trans community that were there created so much drama about what was simply meant to be a one on one interaction between me and somebody who had threatened my family, that I was consequently fired. I have reached out multiple times to the pub and the owner, giving my version of events (which they were not interested in on the night) — I supplied evidence of Person X’s history of interaction with me along with proof of their threats. I provided proof of Person X’s Facebook post defaming a small business owner and my own communication with that business owner whose version of events contradicted Person X’s version, in order to prove that this person is someone with a precedent of manipulating and twisting events to appear a victim. I pointed out that I laid no hands on anybody, but that they did me, that I did not chase any further drama with them — they did me — I pointed out that the pub’s cameras would even prove this. I provided all of this, and more, in order to seek a specific reason from them about my termination, to no avail. I have received no response, I have received no reason for my firing beyond Person X’s version of events and whatever else they may have intimated to the pub’s owner. I was accused of “causing shit” when the reality is I confronted Person X one on one to seek an explanation or apology regarding a threat that made me feel incredibly unsafe around them.
There is a portion of the LGBTQ community that is clearly unable to have a discussion about safeguarding, or even be held accountable for the things they say online when they slander business owners or threaten mothers, and it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that those who cry about being “oppressed” are the same people who will gang up on one single woman, a mother, and work together to get her fired from something she loves and has done for several years, simply because one of their own was asked to be held responsible for threatening a family on the basis that they did not like my Facebook posts. Is this community indeed so perfect that they must never be held accountable for things they might say and do? Is any individual so perfect that when faced with someone they have threatened they can rally their cronies to action in order to intimidate and bully a person while she is attempting to work? There is a serious lack of accountability that should be concerning to any casual observer, especially when this community has the ability to destroy one’s livelihood and reputation, and far more concerning has been their complete erasure of the whole reason I became a target to them in the first place — simply because I stated, multiple times on Facebook, that child grooming/exploitation/sexualisation is never okay and sometimes it is disguised under the rainbow flag of empowerment. I have been accused of “using” such instances I consider child abuse as a pretext to “attack the community” — and this gaslighting simply avoids actually addressing the issue that there should NEVER BE ANY instances of child sexualisation or exploitation within the community to “use” in the first place! I have a history of posting against child exploitation in VARIOUS communities and platforms, not just the LGBTQ examples, but I’ve found that anytime I have spoken against the grooming, exploitation and recruitment of children in that specific “community”, they refuse to publicly say “This is wrong/I am against this” and even go so far as to attack me for speaking up at all! I have been left dismayed by a clear unwillingness to disown or distance the community from the instances I provided examples of with my posts, and I am left with some very disturbing questions as to why this is the case. They have never, ever engaged in any healthy and constructive dialogue in order to address these worries that I, and others, have expressed — indeed many of their own “allies” have said to me in private that they completely support me speaking up — and this is gravely concerning. It would indicate that they are not so particularly interested in people actually supporting every single thing that might happen in the community, but that they only desire people keep their mouths shut about their true thoughts should there be any disagreements.
I often hear it said that “silence makes one complicit” and in this case…the silence has been deafening.