Sorry Buddy, Your Wife is Uninvited
Hand embroidery and gold-work
50 x 70cm
Coming out as a TERF publicly, that is, publishing my essay ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow, Something Went Terribly Wrong’, I knew to a certain extent that there would be a backlash.
I spoke up precisely because I couldn’t quite believe how seemingly decent people would suddenly turn on and treat (mostly) women horrifically who simply asked legitimate questions about child transitioning and the impact on women’s rights and dignities. I could not in good conscience stay silent, sharing those same concerns, while those who did speak up received obscene treatment.
My experiences that followed were very unpleasant, and though I was, to a certain extent, mentally ‘prepared’, it is in reality something that no sane person can really be prepared for.
People turning on you so viciously is something that has to be experienced to be fully understood. It elicits a kind of primal response in you that I can’t quite compare to anything I have ever experienced before or after. I consider myself pretty thick-skinned and yet found myself walking around numb, with heightened social anxiety - something I had never experienced before - for weeks.
This is not to mention the silent social ostracism, never explicitly acknowledged but recognised through hushed whispers and a rapidly emptying social calendar.
There were of course supporting voices and emails in between all the constant pile-ons I experienced, but they were almost drowned out by what can only be described as a frenzied mob who wanted me, for all intents and purposes, to literally disappear.
Apparently, I’m informed, I had caused a “transphobic rupture” in the embroidery community. Many “loving and compassionate” people just had to stop by to either tell me what a piece of shit I was or to give me some long self-righteous, emotionally draining lecture on why I got it all wrong and that men in women’s dresses are indeed the most oppressed minority the world has ever seen. That they show the exact same pattern of male entitlement when dressed in their ‘womanface’ is probably just a coincidence.
It was shocking to see how readily I got thrown overboard because, apparently, the poor darlings would not feel safe around an uppity woman like me, who wasn’t prepare to lie to spare their feelings.
A great many things happened publicly and privately. Opportunities cancelled and lost. Reputational damage. A burgeoning kind of anti-fan club, who monitored my every step online making sure to inform any potential collaborator or client of just how horrible I was and that they must not associate with me. And, of course, the loss of my hairdressing salon I had for 8 years in the cabaret dressing room of Soho Theatre after “activists” kept piling on, demanding that I left. I left.
All that was a lot to come to terms with but the time I really felt like my face was branded was when it affected my personal life. It’s quite the gut-punch to be un-invited by friends only for my husband to still be welcome. Again, something I don’t wish on anybody, but I do wish to convey just what a deeply disturbing and upsetting impression that left on me.
I got over it, as my small personal circle and the wider TERven (the TERF coven) support propped me up and helped me through the worst of it.
It was always going to become a portrait though.
£7,000
£5,600
Exhibition pre-sale price
Interest-free payment plan available
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