What’s Current: Oxfam retracts video vilifying ‘TERFs’ for Pride month

After sharing an animated video promoting Pride Month depicting a red-haired female character wearing a “TERF” badge, Oxfam has retracted the video and apologized. The imagery sparked complaints that the woman specifically was meant to depict author JK Rowling.

Women’s rights campaigner Maya Forstater tweeted:

“Demonizing safeguarding, demonizing older women, promoting double-mastectomies to children, bulk harassment of gender -critical staff. Oxfam’s entry to the worst take for #PrideMonth2023 is shocking” 

For UnHerd, journalist Julie Bindel reported the story of an Oxfam employee named Maria who was subjected to an internal investigation for requesting evidence of Rowling’s “transphobia.” Bindel writes:

“What Maria endured is part of a wider woke culture in the charitable sector, where female employees are silenced and treated like bigots for believing that sex-based rights matter”

 

In response to backlash online, the charity said they were trying to “make an important point about the real harm caused by transphobia.” The new video still states that “LGBTQIA+” people around the world are “preyed on by hate groups online and offline” but does not feature the “TERF” imagery.

Meghan Murphy

Founder & Editor

Meghan Murphy is a freelance writer and journalist from Vancouver, BC. She has been podcasting and writing about feminism since 2010 and has published work in numerous national and international publications, including The Spectator, UnHerd, Quillette, the CBC, New Statesman, Vice, Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, and more. Meghan completed a Masters degree in the department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University in 2012 and is now exiled in Mexico with her very photogenic dog.