A poetry event is under fire for featuring a male poet who identifies as a woman for a women’s history month event.
On March 11, Poet in the City, a London-based poetry and arts organization that has been running since 1998, announced a woman-centric event during women’s history month. The event, titled WHAT A WOMAN, was advertised on Twitter with the intended purpose of “[celebrating] the women in our lives, from artists to friends, family and more.”
The free-to-attend event, which will be held on March 23 in Newcastle and March 30 in Exeter, will feature “an evening of poetry, storytelling, and music celebrating the unique experiences of womanhood.”
But it is the program for the March 23 event being held at the Newcastle Public Library that is currently raising eyebrows, with one prominently advertised feature apparently being a male who identifies as a woman.
According to Poet in the City’s Twitter, Alexis Beaufoy-Salguero’s “original composition will top and tail the event, drawing on her own response to who inspires her and her experience of womanhood.”
His contribution to the event comes during a block titled Poets Corner, which says it “invites everyone to come celebrate everything and anything that contributes to what it means to be a woman. From Mary Prince to Marsha P Johnson, Anne Frank to Amanda Gorman, these people highlight the diversity of femininity and feminine expression.”
Beaufoy-Salguero is a Spanish-British composer with a limited track record of note. According to the Guilford School of Acting at the University of Surrey, Beaufoy-Salguero was a cast member for a play held in 2021 titled Danced to Pieces, which was held by final year students and raised funds for the Young Woman’s Trust. He also recently composed music for a short YouTube film titled The Terrarium.
Beaufoy-Salguero’s inclusion at the women’s history month event has prompted backlash from feminists on Twitter, who took particular offense to his description of experiencing womanhood.
Other users were even more direct, with one writing “MAN” a few dozen times in her tweet, and another putting it in a bold text graphic.
This isn’t the first time a male identifying as a woman has taken center stage at what is intended to be a women-centric event.
Earlier this month, the Wicklow Libraries in Ireland hosted a Women’s History Month speaking event, and Sara Phillips, a biological man who identifies as a woman, was the main speaker. According to the Facebook advertisement, Phillips discussed a “variety of topics, in particular those that affect transgender women in terms of inclusion.”
Similarly, at the University of Cork’s Lesbian Lives Conference 2022, which wrapped up its Women’s History Month-based seminars last week, a biological male was invited to give a keynote speech on lesbianism.
In December of 2021, a trans-identified male was invited to give a keynote address on the anniversary of the Ćcole Polytechnique Massacre — a mass shooting that took place in Montreal, Canada during which an “anti-feminist” male gunman murdered 14 female engineering students.
UPDATE 3/16/22: While Alexis Beaufoy-Salguero has locked his Twitter to the public in light of the backlash, users who took screenshots from his account prior to him doing so have uncovered a number of disturbing and misogynistic comments from him.
One user has posted a thread containing screenshots in which Beaufoy-Salgeuro promises to “break the face” of anyone who says he “looks a man,” the accompanying picture showing him standing partially nude in front of a mirror.
In another, he calls “cis” women “fish,” a derogatory term referring to ‘unclean’ female genitalia originating in drag queen subculture.
In another tweet of Beaufoy-Salgeuro’s posted by the user, he writes “If [Sex Reassignment Surgery] is such a f*cking privilege stop degrading our bodies on the basis of transmisogyny. Acknowledge me as a woman- Me & My Beard, My Dick, and All My Testosterone. Then we won’t have a problem.”
Reduxx has reached out to Poets in the City for comment on whether Beaufoy-Salgeuro’s appearance at the Herstory festival will be reconsidered in light of this new information.
Reduxx is a newly-launched, independent source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re able to continue our work exposing predators and reporting the truth thanks to the generous support of our readers.
