Community rallies to support Island woman bashed for her views on gender and parents' rights
Local man on trial for assault March 4 and 5
For immediate release. Contact info@radfems.ca.
Nanaimo,
February 24 – A man who allegedly bashed a Vancouver Island mother in
front of Nanaimo City Hall has entered a plea of "not guilty" to an assault that
left a 53-year-old woman with a broken nose and a head injury.
Nicholas
Matear, who was carrying a rainbow-coloured sign reading
"No Place For Hate," was charged with assault by RCMP in early 2024. His
trial is set for March 4 and 5, 2025, at the Nanaimo courthouse.
Supporters are coming from across Vancouver Island in support of Tatiana Makovkin, a mother of two. They come from all political backgrounds, and their message is about stopping violence against women. Their signs read: “No More Violence,” “Women Will Speak,” “Stop Bashing Women,” and “Mother is Female.”
The assault took place in October 2023 in front of dozens of onlookers at a parents' rights rally. Witnesses say Nicholas James Matear, a 33-year-old Vancouver Island man, had joined the counterprotest on the opposite side of the street before he allegedly crossed the street and punched Tatiana in the face, knocking her down on the curb. Nanaimo RCMP detained him at the scene and later charged him with assault.
The attack
Tatiana describes the attack as lasting “half a second” and said a large man dressed in black seemed to be stalking her earlier. She says she was holding a sign with the words “Get the Cult Out of Schools” when the man crossed the street towards her. The man pushed a “No Place for Hate” sign in her face, but Tatiana retreated into the crowd along the sidewalk, "feeling distressed and looking for safety," she says.
Finding a quiet spot at the edge of the crowd, Tatiana stepped out into the street and raised her sign again. That's when the man reappeared, she reports.
“He walks right up to me and
puts his sign back in my face. The sign is about a foot away from my
face,” she said.
“I lift my hand and grab his sign, then pull it down. In one motion, as I pull the sign away from my face, his fist comes pummelling in,” she recalls. “His punch sent me all the way to the curb. I flew more than the width of a car and landed partly on the sidewalk.”
“My body twists and flies backward and I land face-down, half in the gutter with my head and arms on the sidewalk.”
Supporters speak out
“We’re here to support this brave woman standing up for her beliefs,” said supporter Tara Prema. “We want her to feel safe and surrounded by strong sisters. We believe in freedom of speech and freedom of belief for women. There is no excuse for abuse.”
“I’m horrified that this woman suffered a beating because a man disagreed with her politics, and that it happened in broad daylight in front of City Hall and dozens of witnesses,” Prema said. “This is political violence – trying to force women to submit to controversial gender policies that affect parents and children, and especially women and girls. People see what’s happening: bullies using force to stop women speaking out.”
Jacqueline Gullion of the Vancouver Lesbian Collective was following the parents' rights movement and the “No Place for Hate” counter-protests across Canada in 2023. Gullion says, “The attack in Nanaimo was clearly woman-hating male violence. She was physically assaulted by a man trying to shut her up and intimidate others into shutting up about the threats of gender ideology to women, children, and of course lesbians. The lesbians in our province-wide network will continue to assert that women have the right to critique gender ideology.”
Public opinion and the law
Opinion surveys show the
majority of adults in Canada are "not comfortable" with schools that
don't notify parents when their children adopt a new name or pronouns. More than half say they do not support giving cross-sex hormones and
puberty blockers to children who are under the age of consent.
A recent ruling in Supreme Court of Ontario clarifies that human rights laws do not prevent anyone from speaking out in opposition to schools exposing young children to explicit materials about gender and sex.
“What happened here should not happen in a democratic society,” Ontario Superior Court Justice James Ramsay said about the case of Carolyn Burjoski, a whistle-blowing teacher who is now retired.
“The Human Rights Code does not prohibit public discussion of issues related to transgenderism or minors and transgenderism. It does not prohibit public discussion of anything,” Justice Ramsay stated. (Source: National Post.)
In 2022, Janayh Wright, a Nanaimo mother, organized two protests after she caught a convicted pedophile peering into a stall where her young daughter was undressing in the women's change room at the Nanaimo Aquatic Centre. The centre's staff dismissed Wright’s complaint at the time, saying the voyeur identified as female. Wright says that the worker threatened to call the police on her for “misgendering” the intruder, who was later found to be an ex-convict who had sexually assaulted a young child in Kelowna.
Political violence against women
A number of other women have been assaulted in public for sharing their views about gender. An angry mob attacked a National Women's Convention hosted by Women's Declaration International in September 2023 and reportedly injured several people. (Source: Daily Mail.)
In March 2023, Women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen’s “Let Women Speak” tour in New Zealand was disrupted by protesters throwing soup and projectiles at participants. She escaped without serious injury. (Source: Daily Mail.)
In
October 2023, vandals spray-painted anti-feminist threats and pro-trans graffiti
across the front and sides of a Saltair community hall that hosted a
presentation with Meghan Murphy of Feminist Current. (Source: Youtube video description.)
To speak with Tatiana, contact Radfems of Canada.
Tatiana’s first-person account
Sisters! We are looking for women to join this radical feminist community. For so many reasons:
- Retreats, festivals, and celebrations
- Workshops, seminars, and mentoring girls and women
- Contributing to worldwide radical feminist consciousness
- Creating women's land and women's co-housing communities
- To protect, restore, and rewild the land.
This is our statement of principles.
- Women born female who survived girlhood.
- Women of all races and ages, lesbian, straight, bi, celibate, married, single.
- Coming together for mutual aid and support.
- United in our radfem principles and consciousness.
- Holding women's space for healing, mutual aid, leadership, and organizing to fight male domination.
- Pushing back against discrimination based on race, faith, ethnicity and belief.
- Opposed to the culture of male violence against women, including pornography and prostitution.
- We are here for solidarity, peer support, and collective action for women and against male violence.
- We strive to eliminate male domination, racism, classism, bullying, and other forms of exploitation from our communities and our personal relationships.
- We pledge to listen more than we talk, treat each other with respect, set aside our differences, and seek areas of consensus rather than conflict.
- This is a private group based on mutual trust: we will not “out” each other or disclose personal/political details outside of this group.
- Class analysis for the liberation of women. We seek to undermine and overthrow this culture that designates females as the sex class, exploits us because of our biology, and grooms us to be breeders, rape victims, prostitutes, and sex objects.
- Solidarity with women worldwide oppressed by race and class.
- Collective action against patriarchy.
- We directly confront the crisis of male violence against women. We name the problem and the perpetrators.
- We have the right to our own spaces separate from men: those who were born male and benefit from patriarchy.
- We have the right to our own spaces separate from men who say they identify as women.
- We recognize that gender is a set of sex stereotypes designed to subjugate women's bodies and minds.
- We are taking back our space, our voice, and our strength as women.
- Our end goal is a society free from gender stereotypes, pornography, and prostitution.
- It's not about equality. We want to free women from a violent and coercive system, not join with those who oppress us.
- It's about radical feminists, not about those who hate us and challenge our right to organize on our own terms.
- Individualism, identity politics, “fun feminism,” and consumerism do not improve the material conditions of women worldwide.
- It is not possible to change one's sex. Switching genders or inventing new ones does not improve the material conditions of women worldwide.
- Men, those who were born male, are not entitled to colonize our spaces, even if they identify as women.
The Constitution and the Human Rights Act uphold women's inherent right to create and define spaces apart from men. They also uphold our rights to freedom of belief, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. See Section 41 of the BC Human Rights Act.
