The Telegraph reports The Globe’s mad dash to pretend it never did call women bitches:
Shakespeare’s Globe has been criticised for sharing a “derogatory” poem challenging “transphobic Terfs”, as the theatre promoted a play about a non-binary Joan of Arc.
A play about one of history’s rare Famous Women that pretends she wasn’t a woman after all.
Verses that begin by using the word “bitch” to descibe feminists who are critical of gender ideology were shared on the Globe’s website and the venue’s Twitter feed to promote I, Joan, a play about the French heroine.
Well that’s what the good people do now – call feminists bitches and cunts. It’s The Monstrous Regiment of Women updated.
It also purged its website of a page titled “creative responses to I, Joan”, saying that promoting the piece of writing directed at “terfs” was a “misjudgment”.
No, that’s not a misjudgment, it’s a misogynistic attack on feminists and women in general. It’s not some bumbling mistake like grabbing the wrong glass in a dark kitchen. It’s one item in a deliberate calculated focused attack on feminist women and women in general. The Globe didn’t trip and accidentally promote that misogynistic “poem,” it did it the same way all the anti-feminists promote anti-feminist and misogynist tweets and posts and articles. No we don’t think The Globe just made a careless booboo.
Joan Smith, feminist writer and author of Misogynies, said: “It’s not a poem, it’s a vicious attack on women who disagree with a nasty, misogynist cult.
“Another institution captured – are there any adults at The Globe? Anyone who thinks this is reasonable behaviour has lost all sense of humanity.”
Woman’s Place UK, a gender critical campaign group, added: “Publishing such derogatory and deeply misogynistic language sends a very powerful message to women – know your place.
“We support and embrace artistic licence, but publishing offensive sexist tropes, whilst erasing a woman from her own life, only spotlights The Globe’s regressive attitudes towards women.”
A spokesman for the theatre said: “In sharing a selection of audience artistic responses to I, Joan on social media, we shared something in a moment of misjudgment. The tweet was promptly deleted, and we are sorry for any offence caused.”
Apology not accepted. That shrugging “any offence” only compounds the problem. Calling us bitches isn’t exactly subtle, so pretending they don’t even know what the “offence” might be is insult added to insult.
Comments
4 responses to “This was no misjudgment”
“Sorry for any offense caused” rather than “sorry we offended.”
The magic of the passive voice is to make appearances of taking resonsibility while actually blaming anyone offended for being offended.
“We made a misjudgment, in that we misjudged how much trouble we would get into for doing something we damn well meant 100% of.”
I was thinking about posting something snarky about Shakespeare and singular “they”, but then I came across this discussion from 2006 by the brilliant Geoff Pullum. What’s interesting here is the use of singular “they” when the sex of the referent is known.
Pullum links to a post he had written a few days earlier about Sean Lennon’s use of singular “they”, which I guess sparked some protest.
There’s a lot more that’s even more off-topic, but it’s an interesting read.
Yeah, the wrongdoing wasn’t in causing offense. The “any offence” language is obfuscatory in either passive or active voice.