Misogynist cowards

The Telegraph reports:

The Royal Academy of Arts has pulled an artist’s work from its gift shop following claims she expressed “transphobic” views.

And it has issued a crawling apology.

Jess de Wahls was found to be in “conflict” with the values of the institution over opinions expressed in a 2019 blog [post] criticising “gender identity ideology” and the LGBT charity Stonewall.

Really. So the Royal Academy of Arts requires total agreement with everything an artist is known to have said or written or embroidered before they sell that artist’s work in its gift shop? Really? It must take weeks to go through it all for just one artist, so how do they keep up?

No, of course the Royal Academy of Arts doesn’t require any such thing, or go through any such ludicrous vetting process. It’s not a normal expectation.

On Thursday, the RA issued an online statement saying that it had received complaints for selling works “by an artist expressing transphobic views”.

It added that her work “will not be stocked in future”, and thanked those who had complained about it.

Their faces should be scorching hot with shame and embarrassment.

Ms de Wahls told The Telegraph that her work had been pulled from the gift shop after a “concerted effort” from online activists over her alleged transphobia.

But when was a law passed that transphilia is required before artists can sell their work in shops? When was a law passed making it the business of brainless twerps on Twitter what artists think about men who say they are women? Why do adults in charge at major institutions jump to do the bidding of these spiteful envious ratbags? Why is it almost always women who are subject to this hole in the wall persecution?

The artist wrote a blog in 2019 which said that a woman is “an adult human female” and “not an identity or feeling”, adding: “I can not accept people’s unsubstantiated assertions that they are in fact the opposite sex to when they were born.”

Neither can I, nor can I see why we should be expected to, let alone subject to punishment if we decline.

She argued that the “ideology” of gender politics placed people into reductive boxes, enforced censorship akin to that found in her birthplace of East Germany, and had a detrimental impact on the rights of women and girls.

Yes, yes, and yes. (The punishments were harsher in East Germany, to put it mildly, but the creepy spying and ratting out are all too similar.)

Maya Forstater, who won an appeal after losing her job following tweets stating trans women were “not women”, has raised concerns over the action taken against Ms de Wahls.

She told The Telegraph: “Organisations have got used to overreacting to complaints of transphobia. They need to take a deep breath, look at the Equality Act and consider that everybody has rights.”

And stop jumping every time one of these hideous goons says “jump.”

The campaign groups Sex Matters has written to the director of the RA in a letter stating: “The Royal Academy is carrying out an egregious and blatant belief discrimination against textile artist Jess de Wahls.”

And bragging about it besides.

Ms de Wahls, originally from Germany, has established herself as a textile artist making embroidered portraits, often dealing with feminism.

Her work was sold in the RA gift shop, where prints of prominent and controversial artists have previously been made available for sale.

The Telegraph cites Gauguin and Eric Gill as examples: Gaugin had sex with underage girls and Gill sexually abused his daughters.

4 Responses to “Misogynist cowards”