UN Women’s choice of U.K. representative was poor but fitting.
UN Women’s choice of U.K. representative was poor but fitting.
A s a child, Ian Bergdorf was not like the other boys, but rather, he recalls, “effeminate.” At age 15, he came out as gay. Later, after experimenting with cross-dressing and drag, Ian found another explanation for his preference for girly things — he was really a woman. Ian changed his name to Munroe, embraced kitschy stereotypes of female sexuality with the help of makeup, drugs, and surgeries, and is now one of the most obnoxious transgender activists in the U.K.
Bergdorf’s career highlights include an honorary doctorate from the University of Brighton, an award of “Changemaker of the Year 2018” from Cosmopolitan magazine, a contributing editorship at British Vogue, an appearance posing for Playboy, as well as the time he declared all white people to be irredeemably racist and a series of prestigious appointments which were walked back after backlash.
Most recently, out of the millions of eligible females in the United Kingdom, UN Women — the United Nations’ organization supposedly dedicated to the rights of women and girls — chose Bergdorf as its U.K. representative.
Some British women’s-rights activists, who take a no-nonsense approach to transgender ideology, wrote to the organization to express their discontent. The letter, signed by 17 groups including Fair Play for Women, Sex Matters, For Women Scotland, and Transgender Trend, gave two main reasons why Bergdorf was a poor choice.
First, they said, Bergdorf does not appear to understand what a woman is. A woman is an adult human female, whereas Bergdorf’s view of womanhood, as manifest in his “gender presentation,” consists of “a particularly demeaning example of offensive gender stereotypes.”
Moreover, the letter complains that Bergdorf has “objected to women making references to our female bodies.” Since Bergdorf won’t acknowledge the female body and sex differences, how he is going to tackle the global issues women and girls face, such as “FGM [female genital mutilation], child marriage and forced marriage, reproductive rights, male violence against women and girls, rape as a war crime, pregnancy and maternity healthcare”?
I’d go even further. Not only is Munroe Bergdorf going to be unhelpful in advancing these causes, but he actively undermines them. Indeed, he is a champion of one of the greatest affronts to women’s rights in the Western world: the denial of sex-based rights and protections. Bergdorf has promoted the practice of gender-affirmation for minors, which, as I’ve argued previously, closely resembles (and is arguably worse than) female genital mutilation.
The U.K. women’s-rights groups argue that Bergdorf’s “past behavior” also makes him “entirely unsuitable” for the position. In 2018, he resigned as an adviser on LGBT+ issues to the U.K. Labour Party “after previous homophobic and racist posts on social media were revealed,” for which he later apologized. Bergdorf was “dropped as a Childline ambassador because of inappropriate messages which were counter to safeguarding norms,” after he invited gender-confused minors to message him directly on social media.
In 2017, Bergdorf was dropped from L’Oréal after addressing “all white people,” saying “your entire existence is drenched in racism.” The brand explained that his views were “at odds” with its values of “diversity and tolerance towards all people irrespective of their race, background, gender and religion.”
The typical things employers consider when hiring are competency, suitability, and character. But when identity trumps these, new hires and affiliates can become liabilities, and current hires can expect to get away with violating even basic integrity. Like the congressional staffer fired for having gay sex in a Senate hearing room who complained to “have been attacked for who I love.” Or consider the way Claudine Gay, Harvard’s outgoing president, has tried to use her racial identity as a cover for credible allegations of plagiarism.
Even L’Oréal, in 2020, seemed not to learn its lesson. After the company posted in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, Bergdorf, who is mixed-race, tweeted “F*** YOU @lorealparis. . . [you] threw me to the wolves for speaking out about racism and white supremacy.” Astonishingly, this prompted the company’s new president, Delphine Viguier-Hovasse, to express “regret” over L’Oréal’s distancing from Bergdorf, make large donations to radical transgender groups, and invite Bergdorf to join their newly formed “UK diversity and inclusion board.”
It’s not often you can say “f*** you” to a former employer and be invited back.
But back to UN Women. The organization is one among many that excels at luxury feminism. A feminism more interested in bowing to the latest ideological fads than tackling real problems. We saw this in UN Women’s mealy mouthed response to the October 7 attack, in which they took months to condemn Hamas’s use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Perhaps, then, Bergdorf does reflect the values and priorities of UN Women. If the organization is not really committed to women’s interests, then it makes sense to have a representative that isn’t either.