team terf?

Margaret Atwood just added her name to the list of authors with transphobic leanings

Margaret Atwood Via Flickr

Margaret Atwood has some explaining to do.

This morning, the 81-year-old Handmaid’s Tale author shared a transphobic op-ed by problematic journalist Rosie DiManno titled “Why can’t we say ‘woman’ anymore?”

In the past, DiManno has mocked a male survivor of sexual assault for coming forward with his story and used derogatory terms to describe Black and Indigenous people. Just last year, she made headlines for stupidly hitting “reply all” on a company memo then sending 60 colleagues a racist email.

Why Atwood decided to share DiManno’s latest op-ed, in which she voices sympathy for transphobic author JK Rowling and rails against “trans activism run amok”, with her 2 million Twitter followers is anyone’s guess, but people are not happy about it.

What makes the whole thing even weirder is that, just last year, Atwood spoke out against Rowling’s transphobic remarks and voiced her own support for the trans community.

“You can believe all you like that trans people aren’t people, but it happens not to be a fact,” she said in November while discussing her support for the LGBTQ community with The Times, the British daily. “It is not true that there are only two boxes.”

Here’s what they’re saying about the author’s latest tweet…

Earlier this month, author Joyce Carol Oates made a similar blunder when she launched an unprovoked assault on nonbinary people saying “they/them” pronouns are confusing and language is supposed to be about seeking clarity and blah, blah, blah. The 83-year-old later apologized.

No comment yet from Atwood, other than a few replies to angry followers telling them to “read Rosie’s piece” and insisting she’s “not a Terf” (the acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist).

For the record, we did read Rosie’s piece and she is, indeed, a TERF.

Graham Gremore is the Features Editor and a Staff Writer at Queerty. Follow him on Twitter @grahamgremore.

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