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.

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.

Expelled from the Australian Wearable Art Festival, part 1

 

Yesterday, about 15 minutes after publishing my Going Nowhere blog post, I received an email confirming I am expelled as a finalist in the Australian Wearable Art Festival.

My expulsion is due to my public stance defending womens rights. The organisers of the festival, Wendy and Helen feared there would be backlash from the Trans/Queer/Non binary (TQ) people involved in the event if I was present. A particular focus of their concern was ensuring the backstage area should be a “safe space for everyone”. The backstage is of course where the models change into the garments that are going out onto the runway and get their makeup done.

Initially Helen, Wendy and I were going to have a phone conversation on Sunday but I got the email cancelling me instead so there wasn’t a chance to have a discussion about what happens backstage. If it had happened I did plan to ask what were the privacy arrangements for women who are getting dressed and undressed. It seems likely that backstage there may be men who say they are women, identifying as trans women and non binary. I am pretty sure the toilet facilities will be unisex and that correct pronouns may be enforced. And if any or all of that is true, it would have made me uncomfortable.

The foremost thing that makes me uncomfortable is that there is no consultation with how women feel being put in that possible situation. While some might have no misgivings at all, others may feel differently. A conservative Muslim woman would most definitely not allow herself to be in that position. Therefore a conservative Muslim woman would either not apply to enter the Wearable Art Festival, or have to make other arrangements backstage for her dignity, privacy and religious obligations. What happened to the much vaunted TQ assertions that they uphold “diversity and inclusiveness”?

This scenario neatly encapsulates many of the problems I have with the imposition of TQ ideology. Women are put in circumstances where we are directly impacted and not consulted about how we feel about our right to privacy and dignity. If we express discomfort or concerns we are scorned as bigots and transphobes. If we express them too publicly, you can lose your job or be cancelled off social media. Or get expelled from the Australian Wearable Art Festival. That we have a right to speak and not be shamed or coerced into going along with things we disagree with is not given any respect. It seems that the right of men to claim rainbow identities will always override the concerns of women and give them a free pass into spaces that have been segregated exclusively for women until recently.

I’ll continue this blog post tomorrow as I'm still in a state of extreme distress and upset. 

I’m incredibly grateful to the people both online and in my local community today who are rallying around to support me.

Below is a link to the contact form of the Australian Wearable Art Festival. If you think I have been unfairly discriminated against please send the organisers an email to let them know you think they made a wrong decision.

Contact AWAF

Going nowhere

Various forces are working very successfully toward completely obliterating my presence on social media and anywhere else in public.

It is with sorrow that I doubt my artwork "Wedding Gown for a Woman Marrying her Garden" will ever get modelled in public.

This picture of my workspace shows how hard I work to make sense out of chaos.

But sometmes the forces of chaos cannot be constrained and when powerfully driven by male-volent forces little things are always going to get overwhelmed.