Expelled from the Australian Wearable Art Festival, part 4

 I am grateful to internationally famous screenwriter Graham Linehan who has publicised my story on his Substack a few hours ago

JL on the Glinner Update

Graham Linehan is the much beloved creator of satirical sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books, The IT Crowd and much more. As a person in the arts he has also been vilified, deplatformed and regularly attacked for his defence of womens rights. Along with his Substack publication, The Glinner Update he has an irregular YouTube podcast called The Mess We’re In where he chats with with Irish feminist Helen Staniland and Canadian LGB activist Arty Morty.

If you’re wondering what the hell is going on in the world please check out and follow Grahams channels.

What has happened to me is part of a much larger story of how Australian women are being vilified and silenced when we try to talk about our concerns how the political agenda of Trans/Queer/Non Binary activists are regressing womens rights.

Below is a list of Australian women who are daily experiencing backlash from trans gender ideologues. Please google their names and follow their social media platforms to learn more and support them. These are some of the Australian women who are speaking out to stop our rights from being taken away and to uphold child safeguarding. We are not, and have never been “anti-trans”. Trans identifiers have rights, none of which they are being deprived of – it is their demand that women must give up the traditional and status quo rights and spaces that our female forbears fought for that we are questioning and resisting.

List of high profile womens rights activists in Australia

 Angie Jones, Kathryn Deves, Moira Deeming, Kirralie Smith, Stassja Frei, Sall Grover, Professor Holly Lawford Smith, Edie Wyatt, Janet Fraser, Rachel Wong, Jasmine Sussex, Anna Kerr, Jenny Kyng, Kat Karena, Nina Vallins

Womens Forum Australia   

Kirralie Smith, convener of Binary  

Sall Grover and Giggle crowdfunder

Thankyou to the people who contacted The Australian WearableArt Festival to give them feedback about my expulsion. I heard that the contact form on their website is now disabled. I think AWAF are hearing from people on their Facebook and Instagram social media but obviously negative comments are going to be moderated there too. Somebody observed that if you go to the “buy tickets” menu on their webpage there is a contact option there that still works. I am not seeking to be personally reinstated (cobblers chance) but hope you will let them know if you believe it is wrong and unfair to dump a woman artist who was selected on merit because they fear my belief that men can’t turn into women is going to cause upset to people who do believe that humans can change the sex they were born as.

It seems to me the Wearable Art Festival thought I was a lone woman with unusual and wrong opinions and that once discarded no one would notice or care. Perhaps they thought I would just go off quietly goosestepping into the sunset, feeling ashamed to be such an opinionated woman? (Vote Daniel Andrews out of govt, he who cynically slurred women speaking up for their rights as "nazis") In one of their emails to me they opined piously that I should reflect on my cancelings and deplatformings as to whether it was time to consider my opinions were wrong. Along with millions of women before me I am glad to be one those women who won't shut up, behave or stop making a fuss when there is justifiable cause. I think AWAF might be surprised to find out I am part of a vast international network of women and men who are actively resisting the incursions of Critical Social Justice Theory. Far from being alone and alienated I believe I am the mainstream.

My art has never been the least bit political. I’m not a post modernist and have never desired to plaster political slogans on my work. I am a woman textile artist working with the traditional mediums of women and interpreting textile embellishment in a contemporary paradigm. Until 6 years ago in all the decades of my art practise there was never any inclination to make public political statements. I kept personal my far left opinions and having voted Greens for 40 years as it had no relevance to my art making. It is only because I am truly alarmed that the ascendance of Critical Social Justice Theory is a massive threat to womens rights and the stable, successful flourishing of our democratic societies that I’m motivated to come forward wanting to talk with others who have the same concerns.

I am overjoyed to let readers know there are still curators and gallery owners that don’t bend over to accommodate the bullying and intimidation tactics of anti womens rights activists. My Sydney exhibition “Tangled Webs She Wove” will still be shown at Balmain Space located at 79 Beattie St, Balmain, opening on Friday July 8^th. 

I intend to complete the wearable artwork that AWAF would have shown on the runway at the Gold Coast Festival – Wedding Gown for Woman to Marry Her Garden – and the finished garment will be on display in the gallery. 

You can also book to attend a 2 hour workshop on Sunday 9^th/16^th or Saturday 22^nd July with me to learn some of my textile art technique. All welcome, including trans/queer/non binary, though I won’t use your preferred pronouns.