Fury over Oxfam slur on Rowling
Charity is forced to apologise for LGBT cartoon ‘depicting Potter novelist as a transphobic demon’
OXFAM was forced to apologise yesterday for an LGBT video that appeared to demonise JK Rowling as an anti-trans villain.
The charity admitted it ‘made a mistake’ by using the image of a woman labelled with the derogatory term ‘TERF’ to illustrate transphobic hate groups.
In a PR humiliation, it was forced to delete the animation that had been posted in support of LGBT rights worldwide.
But Oxfam insisted it had not meant to caricature the Harry Potter author and women’s rights campaigner, who has long been a target of trans activists. ‘Terf’ is a term used by the activists to refer to ‘trans exclusionary radical feminists’ who oppose gender ideology.
An Oxfam International spokesman told the Mail: ‘In efforts to make an important point about the real harm caused by transphobia, we made a mistake. We have therefore edited the video to remove the term Terf and we are sorry for the offence it caused.
‘There was no intention by Oxfam or the filmmakers for this slide to have portrayed any particular person or people.’
The spokesman added: ‘ We fully support both an individual’s rights to hold their philosophical beliefs and a person’s right to have their identity respected.’
Oxfam posted the short animation on its social media channels at the start of Pride month last Thursday. A voiceover warned of the plight of ‘LGBTQIA+ people around the world’, who are ‘ deprived of basic safety, not protected by laws, preyed
‘Reputation in the shredder’
on by hate groups online and offline, discriminated against at work, deprived of opportunities and pushed to the margins’.
Then women’s rights campaigners spotted that the cartoon used to illustrate the claim about ‘hate groups’ showed a figure with a resemblance to JK Rowling. The character was depicted in a V-neck dress like that worn by Ms Rowling to a film premiere and had a similar hairstyle.
Instead of wearing a poppy on her dress, she had an orange badge labelled ‘TERF’.
The cartoon villain had red ‘demon eyes’ and was shown pointing accusingly at smaller rainbow- coloured figures. Last night Oxfam uploaded the video again with the offending section replaced by an illustration of angry comments online.
Maya Forstater, who won a landmark employment tribunal that guaranteed the right to express gender-critical views, led the criticism on Twitter.
She accused Oxfam of ‘demonising safeguarding, demonising older women, promoting double-mastec
tomies to children, bulk harassment of gender-critical staff’.
Professor Kathleen stock, whose speech at the oxford union last week sparked protests by trans activists, said: ‘this has shocked me.’ and ian acheson, former chief operating officer of the equality and Human Rights Commission watchdog, said: ‘What a decline for a once mighty charity. either you didn’t know, didn’t care or were too terrified to stop the youngsters putting what’s left of your reputation in the shredder for virtue points.’
Ms Rowling did not directly comment but ‘liked’ a series of critical tweets about it, including one that told oxfam ‘you can’t bully us into silence with cartoons’. oxfam deleted the offending video at 10am yesterday ‘ because of concerns raised with us’. its apology came in a statement to the Mail at 2pm.
Downing street described oxfam’s apology as ‘ the right approach’. But Ms Forstater said: ‘this is barely an apology. simply erasing the word and re-releasing the insulting video is a slap in the face to any one working at oxfam who shares “gender critical” views with JK Rowling.’
the cartoon was made by Falana Films, based in Bangalore, india. it did not respond to questions.
separately, oxfam has been accused of hounding out a volunteer over her support for JK Rowling.
the former worker told news and opinion website unherd she had been found guilty of misconduct for asking on a company intranet forum why the writer was being accused of transphobia.
an employment tribunal case was settled out of court last year with oxfam apologising.