Transcript of A Speech from the Vienna Let Women Speak Event

Fantastic speech by Lydia https://twitter.com/lyd20211

‘I have a message for you and it may not be a nice message, but I think it’s a message that needs to be heard. As you can see, I’m not originally from here. I’m from a place in East Africa and where I come from originally, women do not have the rights that they have over here.

When I listen to my mother, what she describes is a place where women are cut and sewn, then to be opened when they marry because virginity is extremely important. If you are not a virgin, you are a used woman.

Where I come from, if a woman is raped and she happens to be a virgin, she will be forced to marry that man. Because again, a woman is not a full human. Where I come from, women don’t have the right to sports. Women didn’t have the right to single sex spaces until Westerners came and they invested millions in my country to build toilets for girls. Why? Because it’s a human right! And because there is a direct link between having single sex toilets in schools and education of young girls.

So I have to say, now I’m 30 years old, so thanks to the work of the feminists before me, I have lived my life in complete freedom, I had complete consent and it baffles me that we have come to a point *in the West* where women are expected to take a step back on behalf of men and then have the GUTS to call it progress! I’m sure I’m not the only one here who is a bit confused by that notion.

So I’m telling you now that although it is hard to speak up and you will receive a lot of hate. Believe it or not, I’ve been called a Nazi, a fascist, I’m apparently comparable to the killers of Emmett Till - for those of you who don’t know, he was a 14 year old boy who was killed brutally, burnt and then lynched in the US about 70 years ago. Why? Because I do not believe that men belong in our spaces!

And the thing is that we don’t only have these spaces for our safety and our privacy and our participation. This is about consent! The moment governments tell us that we need to be able to just let these men come in when we are in a state of undress, when we need intimate care, when we are in a jail cell, when we have to share a shower with them, this is extreme abuse and as far as I’m concerned this is a crime against humanity!

I hope that we will have a Let Women Speak one day in the Netherlands but if not, here is my message to the international criminal court: Why are you silent when countries that are bound by you are, as we speak, letting men into women’s prisons? Right now there is a war between Ukraine and Russia. If either one of them put men in women’s prisons, we would call it a war crime! But our governments just decide this on a Tuesday afternoon in the name of inclusion!

Enough is enough! And the thing is, we need to stand up. Everybody needs to stand up because the price of not speaking up will only grow exponentially from this point. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at the UK, where just this week a woman has heard that she might be assigned an offender officer who she has to ask for permission before she posts on social media and grant access to her house.

Right now, we are talking about women’s rights because it’s women and children that are being hurt first and foremost. But make no mistake, we as a society have a problem when you cannot speak truth anymore and when a man is a woman not just in social interactions, but in law. We cannot have a democratic society where we are not allowed to speak truth and when the truth is not the single foremost important thing when we are standing in front of a judge.

So, I call upon all women of the West and I tell you - you have been the beacon of women’s rights for my entire life. So now is the time to stand up for your rights because they weren’t given to you for free and they are willing to take them away by force, as we have seen time and time again. I mean for heaven’s sake, we are in the middle of Europe talking about women’s rights and we need police protection! The fact that this is necessary is beyond my imagination. If somebody told me it 10 years ago, I would have laughed at them!

So to finish on a positive note, I’m very happy everybody is here, I’m happy to see so many different women from different countries. Kellie, you are indeed the most dangerous woman on Earth right now! Thank you so much for having me speak here.