Deemed

The Guardian poisons the well in the usual way.

An artist whose work will no longer be available in the Royal Academy’s gift shop after views she expressed in a blogpost were deemed transphobic has said she is considering legal action against the institution.

It’s a bad sentence to begin with: too many separate bits of information with no punctuation between them. But setting that aside, note the “were deemed transphobic” – by whom, you damn fool? God? The entire world? Knowledgeable people? Or eight sniveling censors who don’t give a shit about art but just like silencing women?

It was the latter, of course, so what the hell is the Guardian doing insinuating that it’s some kind of authoritative “deeming” as opposed to a spiteful campaign against feminists and feminism? It is not good journalism to treat 8 nasty gossips as some kind of official body.

The RA confirmed Jess de Wahls’ embroidery work would no longer be stocked after a 2019 post – in which she outlined her views on gender identity politics – was determined to be transphobic by the RA.

That’s not what happened. The 8 censors whined to the RA and the RA panicked. They didn’t pause to “determine” anything, they just jumped when the censors said jump.

De Wahls told the Guardian that she is considering legal action. “I don’t know yet, but something’s going to give. They’re gonna have to say something at some point. If they hope that this is just going to go away, it’s not going to go away,” she said.

That “gonna” is a sneer, too.

The artist also refused to accept that denying trans women are women was transphobic, saying: “There has to be place for people to disagree respectfully and not validating someone’s felt identity, to me, I’m sorry, that’s not a hate crime.”

There also has to be a place for people to tell the truth. Trans women are men by definition.

Veteran LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said: “Trans women are different from other women, but being a different kind of woman is perfectly valid and no justification for the denial of their identity.

“If an artist denied Jewish, black or gay people’s identity, most people would say that the Royal Academy would be right to remove their works from the gift shop. But when Jess denies trans people’s identity, she and other trans critics say that it’s her right to free speech and she should not be penalised. This smacks of double standards.”

What’s it got to do with Peter Tatchell? Why ask him? Why not ask, for instance, a woman? Why ask a man with a long record of bullying women on this subject?

Because they’re in the tank, I suppose.

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