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Rose George | |
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Born | 1969 England |
Occupation | Author & public speaker |
Education | Somerville College, Oxford (BA), University of Pennsylvania (MA) |
Notable works | Life Removed (2004), The Big Necessity (2008), Deep Sea & Foreign Going/Ninety Percent of Everything (2013), Nine Pints (2018) |
Website | |
www |
Rosemary George is a British journalist and author. She has explored topics such as refugees, sanitation and human waste, and human blood in her books. [1]
In 1992, George earned a First-Class Honours BA in Modern Languages from Somerville College, Oxford, followed by an MA in international politics in 1994 at the University of Pennsylvania, as a Thouron Scholar and Fulbright Fellow. [2]
In 1994, she embarked on her writing career as an intern at The Nation magazine in New York City. Subsequently, she assumed the roles of senior editor and writer at COLORS magazine, a bilingual publication published by the Benetton clothing company. It focused on "local cultures with global reach," which was distributed in eighty countries. The magazine was initially based in Rome, later relocating to Paris and then Venice. [3]
In 1999, she moved to London to freelance. She has contributed her writing to publications including the Independent on Sunday , Arena , Financial Times , Daily Telegraph , Details , Bad Idea , [4] and UnHerd. [5] She also served as a war correspondent in Kosovo for Condé Nast Traveler magazine and notably attended Saddam Hussein's birthday party [3] on two occasions. George wore a burqa, which she called a "hideous concept", provided by her translator. [6]
Until 2010, she held the position of senior editor at large for Tank, a London-based quarterly magazine covering fashion, art, reportage, and culture.
She has written four non-fiction books:
George has been vocally critical of the transgender community. In September 2023, she signed an open letter from the organization Sex Matters urging UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to "lead the fightback" against what the organization characterized as attacks on gender critical individuals. [10]
George ended a Substack post criticizing UK politicians Matt Hancock and Suella Braverman by writing:
And I wonder whether the current gender fluid trans nonsense and its accompanying violence and lack of debate is because being trans is something to cling to, and when you hold tight to something, you get violent in its defence. I’m not talking here about the men who have co-opted trans rights into the women-silencing misogyny that has captured so many institutions. They will get their reckoning, one day. I mean instead the young girls and young women, mostly, who cling to the new cult because it is accessible and makes a certain sense, and they are led willingly by adults who should know better into surgery and hormones that can wreck lives. [11]
George has characterized transgender women's access to public bathrooms as "letting intact men into women’s toilets", adding, "Yes, not all men. But yes, some men. Those some men who will take any chink in security to exploit it, to be a predator. George is against unisex public toilets. [12] She said of transgender women as potential threats,
- Not all trans people are predators.
- Hardly any trans people are predators.
- But a predator can get a long way with his predation by pretending to be a trans woman. No better place to commit a crime than at sea; no better way to abuse women and girls probably with impunity than to be a man who notices how useful it is to pretend to be a woman. See, prisoners, often in for sexual assault, suddenly finding that they are women after all and being put in women’s prisons. Men in women’s refuges. Don’t get me started on men in women’s sports. [13]
George has referred to transwomen athletes as "mediocre men who pretend to be women" [14] and has called their achievements "female records held by men". [15] She has said only cisgender women should have access to hormone therapy, writing:
I wish that men who decide they’d like to pretend to be women did not need to use our precious HRT supplies to do that. I was told recently that HRT is being exchanged on a kind of black market by men experimenting with taking hormones. Experimenting? When these drugs are in some cases actually life-saving for menopausal women? How dare you. [16]
George criticized The Guardian for allowing a trans woman to take part in a blind date as part of a series without disclosing to her date that she was transgender. [17] She has characterized the accusation of transphobia as one that's "constantly lobbed at anyone who thinks biology is binary or that women and girls are entitled to single sex changing rooms/sports categories/prisons/refuges etc. It's nothing to do with trans folk, but just the delightful new woman-silencing misogyny". [18] George wrote that her 10-year-old niece reported she had classmates identifying as cats, adding, "She’s a level-headed youngster. So, not nonsense". [19] George has attributed transgenderism among children to "social contagion". [20]
In 2018, Twitter required George to remove posts deadnaming transgender woman Jessica Yaniv. George posted screenshots of these posts after removing them; Twitter has required her to remove those as well. In 2022, she signed a letter to the Society of Authors calling for the removal of its Board of Management Chair over a perceived "sideswipe at JK Rowling". [21]
In December 2023, George retweeted a BBC post featuring trans Green Party candidate Melissa Poulton with the comment, "This is a man being a man in a mannish way". [22]
George supports Graham Linehan's stances on transgender issues, telling one critic, "If you think Graham an 'utter shitebag' then you will have to call me the same, as I agree with him and think his exposure of woman-silencing bullies is careful and reasonable. Unlike the people who hide behind so-called trans activism to bully & erase & abuse women". [23]
George's father, a vicar, died when she was 5 years old. George wrote of her father:
I have a box of his sermons that I keep meaning to read, and I’ve been thinking about him this week not just because of the anniversary of his death, or the fact that he so objected to the Americanization of Mothering Sunday into Mother’s Day that he wrote a sermon about it, but because I have been thinking about codes, and morality, and having an anchor in your life. I don’t believe in God, but I can see that God is a heck of an anchor. [24]
The Church of England paid for George to attend boarding school as a child. George has characterized the other education options available to her as "awful". [25] She has rejected the assertion that her attendance at boarding school and later at Oxford are examples of societal privilege. [26] [27] George has called the concept of cultural appropriation "pish and tosh". [28]
George has lived in Leeds since 2011. [30] She is a fell runner [31] and has written about suffering from severe endometriosis in a review of a book about a different topic. [32]
On May 1, 2022, the Guardian published an article by George about experiencing long COVID-19. [33] Some online readers took issue with the line, "My long Covid is suspected by my GP, since I never actually tested positive ..." George defended herself on Twitter by engaging with critics directly. [34] [35] [36] [37] On November 8, 2023, George posted another account of her experience with COVID. She wrote that she believes she had COVID-19 despite having taken a test that produced a negative result. [38]
George rents out a French house that was once a Vichy cafe and Gestapo spy station [39] on AirBnB. [40] In April 2023, after a renter secured a refund because the home lacked electricity, George detailed the incident publicly, referring to the renter as "a liar who had no evidence" and claiming "Air BNB does not protect hosts who behave in good faith." [41] [42] [43]
Graham George Linehan is an Irish comedy writer and anti-transgender activist. He created or co-created the sitcoms Father Ted (1995–1998), Black Books (2000–2004), and The IT Crowd (2006–2013), and he has written for shows including Count Arthur Strong, Brass Eye and The Fast Show. Early in his career, he partnered with the writer Arthur Mathews. Linehan has won five BAFTA awards, including Best Writer, Comedy, for The IT Crowd in 2014.
Matt Walsh is an American right-wing political activist, author, podcaster, and columnist. He is the host of The Matt Walsh Show podcast and is a columnist for the American conservative website The Daily Wire. He has authored four books and starred in The Daily Wire online documentary film What Is a Woman?.
Transmisogyny, otherwise known as trans-misogyny and transphobic misogyny, is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny as experienced by trans women and transfeminine people. The term was coined by Julia Serano in her 2007 book Whipping Girl to describe a particular form of oppression experienced by trans women. In an interview with The New York Times, Serano explores the roots of transmisogyny as a critique of feminine gender expressions which are "ridiculed in comparison to masculine interests and gender expression."
Helen Alexandra Lewis is a British journalist and a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is a former deputy editor of the New Statesman, and has also written for The Guardian and The Sunday Times.
TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. First recorded in 2008, the term TERF was originally used to distinguish transgender-inclusive feminists from a group of radical feminists and social conservatives who reject the position that trans women are women, including trans women in women's spaces, and transgender rights legislation. Trans-inclusive feminists assert that these ideas and positions are transphobic and discriminatory towards transgender people. The use of the term TERF has since broadened to include reference to people with trans-exclusionary views who are not necessarily involved with radical feminism.
British author J. K. Rowling, writer of Harry Potter and other Wizarding World works, has garnered attention for her support of the Labour Party under Gordon Brown and her criticism of the party under Jeremy Corbyn, as well as her opposition to the Republican Party under Donald Trump. She opposed Scottish independence in a 2014 referendum and Brexit during the 2016 referendum to leave the European Union.
Casey Plett is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish, her Lambda Literary Award winning short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection, A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing.
Nevada: A Novel is the debut novel from author Imogen Binnie, released by Topside Press in 2013. Nevada follows the story of Brooklyn trans woman Maria Griffiths, who embarks on a road trip headed towards the west coast. In the years following its release, it has been credited as having starting a new transgender literary movement and inspiring authors such as Torrey Peters and Casey Plett.
Munroe Bergdorf is an English model and activist. She has walked several catwalks for brands including Gypsy Sport at both London and NYC Fashion Weeks. Bergdorf was the first transgender model in the UK for L'Oréal, but was dropped within weeks after a racial row. In February 2018, she was appointed as an LGBT adviser to the Labour Party, but resigned the following month. Bergdorf appeared in the Channel 4 documentary What Makes a Woman, which aired in May 2018.
Candace Amber Owens Farmer is an American conservative political commentator, author, activist, and television presenter.
Blaire White is an American YouTuber and political commentator. Describing her politics as center-right, many of White's videos have been centered around social issues such as transgender people, feminism, and Black Lives Matter.
Ashlee Marie Preston is an American media personality, journalist, activist, the first trans woman to become editor-in-chief of a national publication, Wear Your Voice Magazine, and the first openly trans person to run for state office in California. Originally from Kentucky, she moved to Los Angeles and began transitioning at age 19. She first rose to public attention after publicly confronting Caitlyn Jenner over her support for the Trump administration. She contributed her writing to a number of publications, and has been recognized for her activism by various media organizations and companies.
Abigail Thorn is an English YouTuber, actress, and playwright, best known for producing the YouTube channel Philosophy Tube.
India Scarlett Willoughby is an English newsreader, broadcaster, journalist and reality television personality. She is Britain's first transgender national television newsreader and the first transgender co-host of an all-women talk show, Loose Women on ITV. She is a previous nominee for a British LGBT Award (2017) and winner of the Diversity in Media Award (2017) for Media Moment of the Year.
Magdalen Berns was a British YouTuber, boxer, and software developer. Berns, a lesbian radical feminist, produced a series of YouTube vlogs in the late 2010s focusing on topics such as women's rights and gender identity. Berns's vlogs attracted attention from transgender rights activists, some of whom characterized her as being transphobic and a TERF. Berns co-founded the non-profit organisation For Women Scotland, which campaigns against possible changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004, among other things.
Maya Forstater is a British business studies and international development researcher who was the claimant in Forstater v Centre for Global Development Europe. The case established that gender critical views are protected as a belief under the Equality Act 2010, while stating that the judgment does not permit misgendering transgender people with impunity. At a subsequent full merits hearing, the Employment Tribunal upheld Forstater's case, concluding that she had suffered direct discrimination on the basis of her gender critical beliefs. The judgement for remedies was handed down in June 2023, with Forstater awarded compensation of £91,500 for loss of earnings, injury to feelings and aggravated damages, with an additional £14,900 added as interest.
Lia Catherine Thomas is an American swimmer. She is the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship, having won the women's 500-yard freestyle event in 2022. During her swimming career, Thomas has been part of the public debate about transgender women in women's sports.
Libs of TikTok is a handle for various far-right and anti-LGBT social-media accounts operated by Chaya Raichik, a former real estate agent. Raichik uses the accounts to repost content created by left-wing and LGBT people on TikTok, and on other social-media platforms, often with hostile, mocking, or derogatory commentary. The accounts promote hate speech and transphobia, and spread false claims, especially relating to medical care of transgender children. The Twitter account, also known by the handle @LibsofTikTok, has nearly 3 million followers as of February 2024 and has become influential among American conservatives and the political right. Libs of TikTok's social-media accounts have received several temporary suspensions and a permanent suspension from TikTok.
Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, formerly Sarah Cirillo and Sarah Ashton, is an American former journalist who has worked as a spokesperson for Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, in which she is a junior sergeant. A self-described "recovering political operative" from Las Vegas, Nevada, she was active in Nevada politics from 2020 to 2021, including an abortive run for Las Vegas City Council. She arrived in Ukraine in March 2022, shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion, and has variously served as a war correspondent, a representative in aid negotiations, a civilian analyst with the Ministry of Defense, and a combat medic.
Rosalynne Montoya, known professionally as Rose Montoya, is an American transgender rights activist, model, and social media content creator. She began modeling in 2018, and has since modeled for Fenty Beauty, Savage X Fenty, Fluide, Yandy.com, Adore Me, and TOMS Shoes. Montoya, who is a non-binary transgender woman, was featured in 18 LGBTQ+ Policy Makers and Advocates Changing the World by Out Magazine in 2021. In 2022, she was nominated for Favorite TikToker at the 10th annual Queerty Awards.
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