The refugee and trans activist who threw tomato juice on Posie Parker

Having dumped a litre of tomato juice on a woman who would deny her gender recognition, Eli Rubashkyn is unremorseful.

On Saturday, she walked into the rotunda at Albert Park in central Auckland, waited for anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull and emptied a bottle of tomato juice on her head.

In the hours since, she has become an internet sensation and the juice is a new symbol for trans rights.

On her own livestream of the event, Keen-Minshull, aka Posie Parker, tells police that she has “food” on her, is not injured and doesn’t need an ambulance. Meanwhile, her supporters have characterised the incident as an assault.

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The juice thrower has received at least 10 death threats.

But who is Eli Rubashkyn?

“Politically, I am a woman with trans experience, an intersex body, a non-binary gender identity. I identify myself as post-gender.

“I am many things in one person. I am Jewish. I am from Colombia, a refugee, Ukrainian. My intersectionality makes my point of view different to others’.”

She’s also a qualified pharmacist and researcher, and advocate for intersex and gender issues at the United Nations – most recently at the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

She has been in New Zealand since 2014, having been accepted as a refugee – a generation after her Ukrainian mother fled anti-semitism in the former Soviet Union.

In November, Rubashkyn had gender-affirming surgery and has finally fallen in love with herself.

“Being able to decide over my body, and have access to it – it makes me full of joy, and makes me so complete. I am the happiest person on planet Earth.

“It’s happiness that comes from actually being in love with my self… I was miserable two years ago. I feel I was born in 2023.”

Rubashkyn, 35, originally from Bogotá, Colombia, entered the world intersex, which was poorly understood at that time.

Raised a boy, she knew her gender identity didn’t match. Her medical history shows that as an 8-year-old she had a testicle removed, and until she was 12 she was put on hormone treatment.

“All without my consent, and all to force me to be a man. Which actually backfired. The more testosterone they gave me, my body turned it into oestrogen,” she said.

Due to what would later be diagnosed as oestrogen hypersensitivity, the treatment gave her full breasts, which led to bullying and discrimination at school.

“To have women’s breasts, when you’re supposed to be a boy, and you can’t even have the voice of a boy? The anatomy you learn at school doesn’t show how your body looks.

“You feel like an alien, like this planet is absolutely not for you. I remember hiding all the time, constantly. I felt ashamed of my body for so long.”

As a young person, Rubashkyn tried to go out dressed the way she felt inside, but on an early outing she was violently attacked in the street.

“It’s that violence that made me give up my mum, who is everything I have.”

She wouldn’t see her mother again for 12 years.

Rubashkyn earned a scholarship to study public health, patient safety, infectious diseases in Taiwan.

In a new country, she had the fresh start she needed.

There she learned about the condition she was born with and finally knew its name: androgen insensitivity syndrome, an extremely rare inherited condition.

She began taking oestrogen, which due to her hypersensitivity worked extremely quickly – so much so the Taiwanese government required she update her passport to match the feminising changes she’d undergone.

Taiwan and Colombia didn’t have diplomatic relations, so Rubashkyn went to Hong Kong – the nearest Colombian embassy – to get the paperwork sorted, only to be detained on arrival due to her ID discrepancies.

In detention, she remembers being stripped naked and laughed at by guards, assaulted and refused basic needs.

“They said I was a freak, a deformity, a monster.”

But there was no easy route out of Hong Kong.

Unable to return to Taiwan, she was faced with a deportation order to return to Colombia, where she was convinced she’d be killed.

In desperation, she contacted rainbow supporters in Hong Kong, and together they approached the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Having heard Rubashkyn’s case, the UNHCR permitted her gender identification marker to be recorded as female and gave her refugee status.

“That allowed me to have access to health services I needed because of my intersex condition. It allowed me to have a dignified life.”

Her story made international news, even in New Zealand. Local activists made her case to the government, which invited her here as a refugee.

“New Zealand actually chose me… When I came here, my real life began.”

Now, she’s hoping she’s launched a tomato revolution for trans rights, she said.

“People say, when you say trans genocide, when you compare it to the Holocaust, you’re making it too big.

“I say, trans people were killed in the Holocaust. The books the Nazi’s burned were books from the Institute of Sexology in Berlin. So yes, I do smell genocide because I know how genocide smells.”

And though hate is a powerful force, love is more so, Rubashkyn said.

“That’s what we trans people want to feel: that we are loved, that we are cared for, and that those that care for us are willing to stand against those who are promoting hate and violence.”