Expelled from the Australian Wearable Art Festival, part 3

 TERF WARS - the Women the Left Fear the Most DOCUMENTARY

I doubt there is any possibility I could be reinstated as a finalist in the Australian Wearable Art Festival 2023. Selected on merit then dumped for having a “hot potato” belief. I get the impression the organisers hope their problem is contained in just me personally and now that I am expelled everything will be just hunky dory and dinky di. 

Problem solved – now that the woman with the reprehensible beliefs has been thrown overboard they can get on with navigating the passenger ship through the ice field.

generated this in AI

I think the "she's right now, mate" hope will likely end up as wishful thinking. In workplaces, organisations and communities around Australia people are being confronted and polarised by what trans gender ideology is demanding we believe. Its their way or the highway. It was conceded in emails that my views made them fearful of disruption from LGBTQUIA+ and dumping me was a way of trying to protect the Wearable Art Festival from public controversy.

It anguishes me that the organisers and myself find ourselves in this situation where they believe there is the possibility of an existential threat to their business that I might be the cause of it.

In future, textile artists applying to enter AWAF will need to understand that believing men can’t turn into women makes it possible their application may get rejected because that belief is too “hot potato”. Perhaps it will become necessary to trawl through each applicant’s social media postings in case they have ever said anything vaguely critical of Trans/Queer/Non Binary identifiers? By expelling me AWAF have demonstrated that a finalist who supports Gender Critical Feminism is likely going to be unacceptable and they fear being associated with them. In this way, they are propagating to others the same fears they have already taken on.

Its surreal that Wendy and Helen view me as a potentially disruptive problem for the Australian Wearable Art Festival. The three of us share a passion for textile art. I started making art to wear clothes around 1983 and work full time as a textile artist. Wendy and Helen are significantly invested in a business that promotes art to wear. Wendy told me she is an admirer of my art and has followed my blog for some time. Sadly, along with 945 others she can no longer follow my account on Instagram after it was hacked and shut down in April by a mens rights activist going by the moniker “Dr Panti Bliss Cabrera”.

During our phone chat I discovered Wendy had been in the audience at the old “Benson and Hedges Fashion Awards” back in New Zealand in 1986. The B&H was an early forerunner of the now world famous ‘World of Wearable Art” still held in New Zealand (I am a NZer by birth). I was in the audience too as one of my garments had been selected and got modelled on stage. I called it “The Aviator” and the ensemble had a close fitting fabric helmet that is the same pattern I used for the headdress made for my AWAF entry. Regrettably I’ve lost all the pictures I had from that time and can’t show my original Aviator to readers. 

Heres some pics of the headdress for “Wedding Dress for Woman Marrying Her Garden”. The tall sides are supported by being stitched to the close fitting cloth helmet.

Diving deep into my closets yesterday I pulled out this cape that I wore on the night of the 1986 B&H fashion parade. I handpainted it on silk chiffon, the square in the centre is where it is put over the head. I wore it over a straight white sheath dress that was sashed at the hip, catching down the front and back hems of the cape, with a wide band tied in a bow (in the picture below, its photographed sideways, pegged to my clothesline with a blue sheet behind it)

Many people admired my ensemble and I wonder if Wendy noticed it too. How uncanny that now she probably feels only antagonism toward a woman artist she admired up until recently.

I have another exhibition of wearable art due to open in an inner city Sydney gallery on 8^th July – “Tangled Webs She Wove” – now only a month away. I’ve been literally too afraid to announce or talk about it due to fearing anti womens rights activists will target myself, the curator or the owner of the gallery with their outrage that I get public recognition for my art.

Trans Gender Ideology is not only polarising society between the believers and the questioners, it actively demonises anyone who resists their beliefs by slurring us as people who intend oppress and harm LGBTQUIA+. The ideology press gangs individuals, workplaces and organisations into furthering its dogmatic beliefs by cloaking itself as a “social justice” movement.

I feel like I'm the one who has been harmed, not them.