Oxfam faces boycott calls over a Pride month cartoon which saw it accused of basing an anti-trans ‘villain’ on J.K. Rowling. The Mail has more.
The video, which was shared online with charity’s millions of supporters, featured three figures, two men and a woman, with evil-looking eyes.
But the woman appeared to look like the Harry Potter author.
Ms. Rowling is understood to have seen the cartoon and liked a tweet criticising the depiction of the cartoon character. She declined to comment when approached by MailOnline.
Oxfam insisted this afternoon it was not supposed to be based on anyone and said it would re-release a cut version of the cartoon. The version it later published had completely removed the scene.
The cartoon character in the original appeared to resemble Ms. Rowling’s usual haircut and style, as well as a green dress she has been pictured wearing. A memorial poppy she wore in the real image – taken at a 2018 film premiere – is replaced with a badge, bearing the word “Terf”. The acronym stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, a view the author has denied having.
It came on the same day the charity was accused of hounding out a volunteer for defending the writer. A former worker – calling herself Maria – said she was accused of transphobia before settling with the charity, which apologised for its handling of the process.
Philosopher Kathleen Stock criticised the advert on Twitter today, saying: “This has shocked me – a still from an Oxfam video, made in support of Pride month.”
Maya Forstater, a business studies and international development researcher, accused the charity of “demonising safeguarding, demonising older women, promoting double-mastectomies to children, bulk harassment of gender -critical staff”.
She said the video was “shocking” and was appalled that “no on in the chain of command” had “internally raised concerns” about the video.
Other Twitter users called for a boycott of Oxfam, alleging they would no longer be making donations to the establishment. Many also urged others to make formal complaints against the firm.
Today supporters of Ms. Rowling said she should consider legal action against the charity over the video.
An hour after being [contacted] by MailOnline about the similarities between the cartoon and the writer, Oxfam took the video down.
It then said: “Oxfam believes that all people should be able to make decisions which affect their lives, enjoy their rights and live a life free of discrimination and violence, including people from LGBTQIA+ communities.
“In efforts to make an important point about the real harm caused by transphobia, we made a mistake. We have therefore edited the video to remove the term TERF and we are sorry for the offence it caused. There was no intention by Oxfam or the film-makers for this slide to have portrayed any particular person or people.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Julie Bindel writes in the Mail that “Oxfam is a toxic charity that has shifted so far from its original aims as to be almost unrecognisable. Its new video is a vile, misogynistic attack against J.K. Rowling”.
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I only support local charities nowadays. I know the Government hand over my tax to these groups as well but I have no control over that.
Same here. For many years I have refused to donate to ANY of the big charities. Local charities get our cast offs but that’s it – no cash.
Donating to major “charities” – yeah right – is secondary taxation for the gullible.
I think it’s often better to help people directly if you can, with money or gifts and/or time or whatever help you can give. Cut out the middle man who takes a percentage of every pound you give, maybe a very large percentage. Though organised charities can do things an individual can’t, but not all charities are the same, some are better than others, and I’m sure there are many better than Oxfam.
Agree entirely.
Good! I’m glad we agree about something!
We agree about many things, but not that one thing. Like Toby and James Delingpole!
It then said: “Oxfam believes that all people should be able to make decisions which affect their lives, enjoy their rights and live a life free of discrimination and violence, including people from LGBTQIA+ communities.
I’m looking forward to their campaign against the WHO / EU vaccine passports.
Excellent point.
“Oxfam believes that all people should be able to make decisions which affect their lives, enjoy their rights and live a life free of discrimination and violence, including people from LGBTQIA+ communities.”
But not JK Rowling, who has to be destroyed! They’re such hypocrites!
Good point !
I have many years’ accumulation of books which I’ll need to thin out in order to move house soon-ish. From earlier reports of woke infiltration I had already decided that Oxfam was not going to get them. Looks like I’ll have to travel further than the local
towncharity shop centre to donate them.Oxfam are actually resorting to the same propaganda techniques as the Nazis did. And I know referring to the Nazis is a cliché, but this sort of art is exactly the sort of thing they did to turn Jewish people into cartoon parodies in order to make people hate them. The LGBTQIA+ antiracists of Oxfam are the biggest bigots of the lot.
I only support local charities, chucking them unwanted old clothes and books: big charities are corporations and arms of the state using charitable status as a massive tax dodge while they pay their bosses massive fees and their shop staff nothing.
I discovered my elderly parents had been suckered into the monthly direct debits with big charities. They were paying over £500 a year! Between that and getting a water meter, I saved them £1,500 a year in one evening. I cancelled the direct debits and the charities started making phonecalls within 12 hours. I blocked their numbers. We still get the odd begging letter!
I’m not aware of any UK charity that did anything but enthusiastically support Covid mania so I’m already boycotting them
The BHF are firmly behind the official story line even to the point of supporting masks for people who suffer with heart disease.
I had hoped the National Autistic Society would speak up as autists will have been especially badly affected by the lockdowns and the nonsensical rule changes
Nothing
Their boards have likely been colonised by the Borg, like all the others.
Charities that depend on donations from the general public are unlikely to come out against the COVID mania, given that so many of their donors were persuaded by it, but there are plenty of smaller development charities with proper in-country decision making that knew full well that the last thing that low-income countries needed was lockdowns or COVID “vaccine equity”.
Most large charities are political slush funds and should be avoided.
Well I think you are being charitable. I doubt in most cases that the decision was arrived at along the pragmatic lines you suggest.
Also surely there comes a point where you draw the line and have to say so if you think something is egregiously wrong.
It’s a judgement call. If you’re a small international development charity saving lives at a few hundred pounds each (they exist) do you a) turn into an anti-lockdown campaign group, a likely futile gesture that will get you shut down in the country where you’re working and lose a lot of donors or b) highlight the soaring infant mortality and the catastrophic effects on the healthcare system due to COVID lockdowns (not “due to COVID”) and leave it at that? Part of the issue was that there wasn’t an obvious wall of money for decent charities, most of the commentary on sites like this were to the effect that all charities were scams. If people want good charities then they need to do the research to find them, and then fund them.
Yes I would agree with reference to the kind of charities to which you refer. I don’t know if any, but then as you say I’ve not done the research.
LOL! Is it just me or have they made them all have slitty eyes, as a poke at the Chinese as well? I’m amazed they haven’t put a Russian flag in there somewhere, then they could have demonised just about everybody…..
Nazi Germany was a prequel to todays situation ! Same mind game methods to start with then book burning , Brownshirts were then unleashed ,then death & destruction, Why can’t we just live ffs !!
Can anybody tell me what all those letters stand for? They lost me at LGBT. And a + sign to indicate letters ad infinitum presumably.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trangender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual plus any other random shit humanities departments in universities can make up!
So asexual is now a group too, give me strength, you’d think they’d be glad to be out of it.
Here’s a message, guys: You’re losing. The harder you try to ram the notion that there’s no human accomplishment more worthy of being celebrated than fucking something, provided something is not a member of the opposite sex, down everybody’s throat, the more you expose yourself as what you are. At the moment, what you are still seems tolerable but barely so. Keep on pushing and sooner or later, you will have convinced everyone that it’s actually intolerable.
Andrew Bridgen said yesterday that the country with the most resistance to the alphabet agenda propaganda is the UK, hence why it is rammed down our throats ad nauseum.
Oh that’s good to know.
It’s heartening that the UK public are pushing back on something.
Oxfam should get back to their normal job of sexually exploiting desperate refugees.