Actor Bette Midler on Tuesday defended her recent comments concerning women’s rights that many LGBTQ activists have slammed as transphobic.
On Monday, Midler tweeted: “WOMEN OF THE WORLD! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name!”
“They don’t call us ‘women’ anymore; they call us ‘birthing people’ or ‘menstruators’, and even ‘people with vaginas’!” she continued. “Don’t let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!”
Midler’s tweet accrued over 100,000 likes. Simultaneously, the online backlash was swift and pointed.
“What is it about ‘womanhood’ that TERFs like macy gray and bette midler are so desperate to cling to?” writer Arielle Tschinkel tweeted Monday, using an acronym for transgender-exclusionary radical feminist. “trans women existing doesn’t make me any less of a woman, no matter how different our experiences may be. it’s just ridiculous at its core honestly.”
“Bette Midler being a TERF despite getting her start playing at gay bathhouses is a reminder that being progressive is like doing the dishes,” queer artist Ro Salarian tweeted Tuesday. “You’re never really *done* with it. There’s gonna be new dishes to do tomorrow and you have to keep doing them every day.”
Actor Lynda Carter, who is best known for her role as the star of the 1975 television series “Wonder Woman,” also appeared to criticize Midler’s remarks, without naming names.
“I cannot think of anything that helps women’s rights less than pinning the blame on trans women,” Carter tweeted Tuesday.
“They face so much violence and scrutiny as is. Leave them alone and focus on the real war on women. It’s happening in the courts and legislatures around this country.”
Midler defended her remarks Tuesday, adding that they were in response to a “fascinating and well written” op-ed published Sunday in The New York Times.
The piece Midler referred to — which was written by opinion columnist Pamela Paul and titled “The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count” — said the “fringe left” is erasing cisgender women by, among other things, using gender-neutral language when defending abortion rights.
Activism over abortions has been amplified in recent weeks following the Supreme Court’s decision last month to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark court ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion.
“There was no intention of anything exclusionary or transphobic in what I said; it wasn’t about that,” Midler tweeted.
