A UN charity’s appointment of a transgender model who called brave suffragettes ‘white supremacists’ has been branded ‘ridiculous and offensive’ by stunned women’s rights campaigners.
Controversial Munroe Bergdorf, 36, has been picked as the first ‘UK champion’ for UN Women UK – in a move that has sparked fury from 17 campaign groups who said she was ‘unsuitable in every regard’ for the role.
In one vitriolic tweet from 2018, the former Labour Party LGBT+ advisor even declared: ‘The Suffragettes were white supremacists who were fighting for WHITE women’s rights – they specifically left black women out of the movement.’
Women’s rights activists have been outraged at Ms Bergdorf’s new role, with Maya Forstater, co-founder of Sex Matters, saying UN Women UK had made the ‘wrong call’ in appointing the divisive figure to become an ambassador for British women.
She told MailOnline: ‘It’s insulting to women to have UN Women say of the 33 million women in the UK none of them are fit to do this job.
Ms Bergdorf (sic), who was born a boy called Ian, and worked as a DJ, is trans activist and model.
She(sic) began living as a woman at the age of 18 but was prescribed hormones by a doctor in 2014.
Ms Bergdorf was appointed as UN Women UK Champion in November. The role aims to support the work to improve the lives of women and girls, in November.
However, following her appointment 17 campaign groups – including Fair Play for Women, Sex Matters, Transgender Trend and the Women’s Rights Network – signed a joint letter expressing of their ‘dismay and disappointment’ at the decision.
They said she was ‘unsuitable in every regard’ and pointed to her previous alleged ‘homophobic and racist posts on social media’.
Either this individual has no knowledge of history or deliberately misrepresents it. The contention that the Suffragette movement or Suffragettes were ‘white supremacists’ would be actionable as defamatory if these women were still alive. Women of all class/status and race/ethnicity backgrounds were members of this movement. Women from India, for example, marched in the major 1911 march in London (and that is just one example). When Emily Wilding Davison’s funeral took place in London the streets were filled with women (and men) of all backgrounds – many members of the trade union movement: the funeral crowd was larger than that lining the streets for that of Edward VII. These are simply a few – very few – of the examples that might be given. Indeed, googling (an easy way to research through to essential resources) would readily serve up many more resources that immediately put paid to such a proposition. What a pity that individuals do this – that is, fail to acknowledge the women of the working class centrally involved in the struggle for the vote, and fail to acknowledge women from minority ethnic/race background similarly dedicated. Indeed, expressing such a view could, one might surmise, be evidence of a bias in itself. (And what a pity that at ‘UN charity’ should be so ignorant itself.)