Expelled from the Australian Wearable Art Festival, part 2

Apologies to the Upper Hunter Valley Shire Council and those who attended the Sustainability and Upcycling talks at Murrurundi Library yesterday. I pulled out due to the mental health crisis instigated by the cruel and unfair treatment of the Australian Wearable Art Festival. I felt too shattered to stand up in public to give my presentation. I should be OK for the events tomorrow and later this month. They will be held at the public libraries in these towns.

Wednesday 7 June:      Scone 10am and Aberdeen 2pm

Wednesday 21 June:   Merriwa 10am and Cassilis 2pm

The picture below is a jacket I made from upcycled denim and cotton plaid fabrics in 2020. The pattern is my PDF sewing pattern "Zambeesi Jacket".

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I’ve written this blog since 2008 – 15 years – and it may possibly just disappear into the ether without explanation, in a similar way to how I’ve been silenced, excluded, banned and blocked from other social media platforms. Here’s a link to YouTube channel Womens Declaration International, to a video where I discuss in detail my cancelation from social media.

Pearl Red Moon statement on Womens Declaration International

If the blog gets nuked and you’re curious to know what happens to me, here is a link to the Substack I publish. Substack is currently a platform that seems impervious to shutting down counter cultural views - so far….

Cosmic Pearl

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Please watch this to get a sense of the enormity of how women are being silenced in Australia when we want to speak about our issues. It was published only a few hours ago....prepare to be horrified.

Court of the EDI Jester

Incidentally, I left a public comment about that video and it has already been removed.

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For anybody who might wonder if I am just a nutty old crone, vegetating in a basement and hating on trannsexuals...here is a link to John Anderson, ex Australian politician who was shadow Deputy Prime Minister in the Liberal government. Anderson has 337,000 followers to his YouTube channel and shares the view that humans cannot change sex and that Queer Theory is a threat to womens rights and the stability of our society.

This is a clip, but the whole video is worth watching.

The truth is transphobic

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Now to continue explaining my expulsion from the Australian Wearable Art Festival...

In February 2023 I applied to the Australian Wearable Art Festival to have my work showcased at their event. I was ecstatic to be advised on February 26^th, 2023 that the concept I’d submitted was successful in getting selected. In good faith I proceeded to start working on my garment. Over the next few months AWAF and I exchanged routine emails about our mutual preparations.

On May 23^rd I got an email indicating they had concerns that a thing I believe might be a “hot potato”. Obviously this made me very anxious and I sent 5 emails over the next 9 days seeking to clarify my status. None of those emails was acknowledged or addressed so on May 31^th I rang Wendy and asked to talk. In the phone conversation Wendy told how she had heard about Kellie-Jay Keen (or Posie Parker, she referred to her as) for the first time at the end of March this year in relation to the Let Women Speak rallies in Auckland, New Zealand when Kellie-Jay was mobbed and driven out of the public park where she had a permit to have a rally. Wendy referred to Kellie-Jay as “anti trans” and in other comments she made I felt it was implied Keen was an awful woman who got what she deserved when she was attacked. This left me aghast as I understood that awfulness was probably getting transferred to me. Eventually we arranged that Wendy, Helen, my husband (who I often need as an advocate and support person because I’m autistic) and I would get together for another phone discussion sometime over the weekend.

Dress made from fabrics recycled from a collection of stripey teeshirts

At 3.36 pm on Sunday, June 4^th I received an email from them stating I was expelled as a finalist in the Australian Wearable Art Festival. I presume this is due to having a “stance” that other participants in the event might disagree with.

As a finalist in AWAF I was one of 40 entrants who were selected on the merit of their artistic concept. 

I wonder how the other 39 feel about my dumping? I wasn’t invited to join the private WhatsApp and Facebook groups that the other finalists were given access to. I asked to be joined but it wasn’t acknowledged. I find it hard to believe that every single one of my fellow 39 finalists might disagree or find offensive my view that men cannot turn into women. In truth, I think more than a few of them might be in strident agreement. However, now that they see what the consequences are if they don’t keep quiet it means having to stifle saying anything or get dumped too. Even if they think my view is wrong they might have wanted to just publicly support that I’m allowed to state my beliefs in a democratic country without getting ejected. If any finalists share my view I wonder how they feel being in a position where they are required to tacitly endorse Queer Theory?

Having experienced the bullying and silencing tactics of anti-womens rights activists I understand why probably none of them are going to publicly support me. I wouldn't be surprised if they are already hearing from AWAF specifying what they are allowed and not allowed to say publicly.

I went to two Let Women Speak rallies in Australia, Sydney and Canberra. I spoke at the Sydney rally addressing my concerns at how trans ideology is regressing womens rights. 

In the rally address I spoke a lot about Critical Social Justice Ideology (CSJ) and how its adherents take on the mission to “queer” everything in society they disdain as normative, and especially despised is anything “heteronormative”. The roots of this transgressive ideology go right back to the mid 20Cth and started out as something fairly anodyne called “post-modernism”. I was an enthusiastic young acolyte of it myself until the late 1980s. Then four years of living in the notorious cult “Centrepoint Community” gave me the lived experience of what happens when heteronormative gets queered. Essentially women and children got sexually exploited by men who insisted normative boundaries are limiting Kumbaya being realised. Love is love! 

I learned boundaries are good and necessary to protect women and children. I am fighting for them.

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If you feel I have been unfairly treated by AWAF and want to let them know you disagree with my expulsion, here is a link to their contact form.

AWAF contact

Also, you might like to take a look at the Australian Wearable Art Festival Facebook page. 

AWAF Facebook

If you attend the event I hope you'll enjoy it and probably best not to wear your teeshirt that says "Adult Human Female". Those words are now considered transphobic and women have lost their jobs for wearing them in public.

I'll have more to say tomorrow.