Bette Midler defended herself against backlash online on Tuesday after a tweet posted over the weekend sparked criticism on social media, with thousands of users calling her comments anti-transgender and exclusionary.
Midler, who has given her voice to LGBTQ+ activism in the past and has been described as an ally of the community, met with disappointment from fans and advocacy groups when she seemed reluctant to call for the use of gender-inclusive terms in discussions involving abortion access.
“Women of the world! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives, and even our names!” the artist chirp Sunday. “They no longer call us ‘women’; they call us ‘birth people’ or ‘menstruating women’, and even ‘people who have vaginas’! Don’t let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!”
The letter came less than two weeks after the Supreme Court ruling The heart of the Roe v. Wade case — Her landmark 1973 case establishing the constitutional right to choose abortion — which gave state governments the ability to regulate access to abortion within their jurisdictions and triggered a number of bans almost immediately. Alabama lawmakers have already used the court’s decision to defend those individual states You should be able to ban Gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender youth.
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Twitter users flooded Midler’s post with comments that noted how he uses phrases like “people who need abortions” or “people who can get pregnant” when talking about abortion, rather than just saying “women,” many transgender people admit or non-transgender. Couples need access to those healthcare services, too. Some users have called Midler “TERF” or trans-eliminator retro feminism, and have suggested a boycott of her upcoming movie.
Midler took up the criticism on Tuesday, writing in another tweet She did not mean to say “anything exclusionary or phobic towards transgender people”.
“People in the world! My tweet about women was in response to this great and well-written New York Times article on July 3,” she said, linking it to an article that disagrees with gender-inclusive language regarding abortion rights. “There was no intent of anything exclusionary or transphobic in what I said; it wasn’t about that.”
“I have fought for marginalized people for as long as possible,” Midler continued. “However, if you want to turn down 60 Years of Sure Love and worry about a tweet that mistakenly angered the people you’ve always supported and loved, so be it.”
New York times opinion articlewritten by author Pamela Ball, notes that the after-effects of last month’s decision revealed common ground between people on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
“Because the far right and the far left have found the only thing they can agree on: women don’t count,” she wrote. Paul claimed that abortion rights advocates who use inclusive language when talking about the issue fall into the latter category, and said their efforts to remove gender jargon from conversations about reproductive health care perpetuate an “anti-women’s agenda.”
Musician and actor Missy Gray also came under fire this week for sharing anti-transgender sentiments during their time. appearance In a Fox Nation talk series “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” she challenged the legality of gender confirmation surgery and said she believed transgender women should not be allowed to participate in sports. Her comments echoed those Leaders use it Across the United States as I did and still Policy implementation that prevents transgender children from joining sports teams and receptions Some forms of medical care.
Gray later said her remarks were “blatantly misunderstood,” adding in a tweet that “there is no greater fan of the LGBT community” than she was before she finally repeated Morgan’s previous comments about transgender people.
J.K. Rowling – who wrote the “Harry Potter” franchise and has been rated as the next “TERF” Transphobic accusations – supported grey and Midler on Twitter after they both faced similar accusations.
