Gay MP tells Corbyn: Sack LGBT tsar for ‘hairy lesbian’ tweet
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn was under pressure last night to sack an adviser after she branded a woman a ‘hairy barren lesbian’ and boasted that she wanted to ‘gay bash’ a TV star. Transgender model Munroe Bergdorf was appointed on Monday to her post advising Shadow Equalities Minister Dawn Butler on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transexual (LGBT) issues. But yesterday there were calls for Ms Bergdorf, 31, to be sacked or step down after it emerged that she had posted a series of offensive social media messages. In one tweet sent to a friend in 2012, she wrote: ‘Aren’t you meant to be crying over the fact your womb is broken you hairy barren lesbian.’ She wrote in another outburst that a character on the American TV show Glee was so ‘annoying’ that ‘even I’d like to gay bash him!’
Ms Bergdorf was already a controversial figure, having been dropped by cosmetics giant L’Oreal as a model last year for saying all whites were racist and labelling suffragettes as ‘white supremacists’.
Tory MP Nigel Evans, who is gay, has now demanded that Labour remove the model from her position in the light of the newly unearthed messages.
Mr Evans said: ‘I’m absolutely shocked. I don’t know which community she is representing but it is certainly not mine.’
Veteran Labour figure and feminist Linda Bellos, who has campaigned for gay and black rights, backed calls for Ms Bergdorf’s dismissal. She said: ‘These messages are just awful. If a man had said those things about women while representing a public office we would rightly be critical and wonder what he was doing in that role. So at this point the ideal thing would be for her to resign to save the Labour Party any further embarrassment.’
Ms Bergdorf released a statement on Twitter apologising to those she ‘cruelly’ spoke about in the messages and the LBGT community.
The transgender activist claimed the posts were ‘juvenile jokes’.
She wrote: ‘I am not going to try to excuse them, as there really is no excuse. Who I am now, is not who I was almost a decade ago when I wrote these tweets.
‘Again, I am sorry for these disappointing posts.’
In an interview this week with The Mail on Sunday the outspoken campaigner made the bizarre admission that she is a witch, a devotee of voodoo and engages in witchcraft ceremonies.
She said: ‘I practise witchcraft. It’s something I’ve always been attracted to and I like it because it’s female-centric. I feel most religions are driven by and tailored for men.’
She added: ‘It interests me because it’s part of my ancestry – voodoo is more entwined in black identity than Christianity.’
A spokesman for the Labour Party declined to comment on whether Ms Bergdorf would remain in her post. Ms Butler was unavailable for comment.