Spurned artist in transgender row with Royal Academy considers legal action

Jun 21, 2021 by

by Cormac Connelly-Smith, Mail Plus:

 

A feminist artist whose work was withdrawn from the Royal Academy of Arts gift shop has said she wants an apology and may pursue legal action.

The RA said it would not stock art by Jess de Wahls after it received complaints – stating that her allegedly transphobic views conflicted with its values.

The complaints related to comments she made in a 2019 blog, where she said gender identity ideology ‘collided’ with her ‘understanding of feminism’.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I have the feeling that there is a hope within that institution, which is mind-boggling to me, that this just will go away… my inbox and the feedback I’ve been getting from the general public is quite the opposite.

‘This isn’t going away. This is a conversation that needs to happen, it needs to happen in public. They will have to talk eventually.’

The artist said she noticed ‘a mob’ being ‘mounted’ against her on social media referring to the 2019 essay in which she said that she had no issue with people expressing themselves as the opposite sex but could not accept ‘unsubstantiated assertions that they are in fact the opposite sex to which they were born and deserve to be extended the same rights’.

She said she was contacted by officials from the RA who told her they were investigating.

But De Wahls said she found out her work was being withdrawn the following day, when friends sent her screenshots of the academy’s Instagram account, where the decision was announced.

Read here

Read also:  Feminist artist Jess de Wahls on being dropped by the Royal Academy over her trans-sceptical views from spiked

Please right-click links to open in a new window.

Related Posts

Tags

Share This