Rose McGowan announced Friday that she won’t be making any more public appearances after a public spat Wednesday night with a transgender woman at a signing of the actress’ memoir, “Brave.”
McGowan went on to blame her publicists, managers, fans and employees at the New York City Barnes and Noble where the signing took place.
“I am canceling upcoming public appearances because I have given enough,” McGowan tweeted Friday. “I have given beauty, in return I was VERBALLY ASSAULTED for two full minutes @BNBuzz by an actor paid to verbally assault a woman who has been terrorized by your system. And no ONE in that room did anything.”
“And everyone from my publicists, t [sic] assistants, managers and every person sitting in their chairs frozen by their weakness, a weakness called COMPLICITY. The truth is you all failed me. Again. And again. And again.” She also demanded an apology from “the manager of the Union Square@BNUnionSquareNY and all security people, and the audience, who did nothing and let the paid verbal assault of an assaulted woman happen.”
https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/959504910902595585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedailybeast.com%2Ftrans-activist-who-confronted-rose-mcgowan-would-do-it-again-but-better
And everyone from my publicists, t assistants, managers and every person sitting in their chairs frozen by their weakness, a weakness called COMPLICITY. The truth is you all failed me. Again. And again. And again.
— Rose✨McGowan (@rosemcgowan) February 2, 2018
https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/959523939918770176
At the signing, McGowan was taking audience questions when Andi Dier spoke up from the back of the room, telling McGowan that she isn’t focused enough on transgender women’s rights.
“Trans women are dying and you said that we, as trans women, are not like regular women,” Dier said. “We get raped more often. We go through domestic violence more often. There was a trans woman killed here a few blocks from here. I have been followed home.”
“Hold on. So am I. We are the same,” McGowan countered. “My point was, we are the same. There’s an entire show called ID channel, a network, dedicated to women getting abused, murdered, sexualized, violated, and you’re a part of that, too, sister. It’s the same.”
“You do nothing for them,” Dier said. “Trans women are in men’s prisons. And what have you done for them?”
“What have you done for women?” McGowan said, raising her voice. After Dier left, McGowan launched into this:
“Don’t label me, sister. Don’t put your labels on me. Don’t you f–ing do that. Do not put your labels on me. I don’t come from your planet. Leave me alone. I do not subscribe to your rules. I do not subscribe to your language. You will not put labels on me or anybody. Step the f– back. What I do for the f–ing world and you should be f–ing grateful. Shut the f– up. Get off my back. What have you done? I know what I’ve done, God d—it.”
You can see more in the Instagram video post above.
Friday, The Daily Beast caught up with Dier, who said she felt sympathy for McGowan. “Her trauma was caused by men,” she said. “And I feel personally that maybe she has a traumatic response because she really does see us as men.”
“What I would have liked to have said to her, when she told me she was followed home, I would have told her that when she’s followed home, what she’s afraid of is being sexually assaulted,” Dier continued. “Well, I’m afraid of being sexually assaulted followed by being murdered.”
“I’m fully prepared for the TERFs [so-called trans-exclusionary radical feminists] to come after me like they’ve already done before,” she added.
This isn’t the first time Dier and McGowan have hit a crossroads. Diers was a prominent voice in criticism after McGowan appeared on RuPaul’s “What’s the Tee?” podcast last summer.
“They assume because they felt like a woman on the inside,” McGowan said on the podcast. “That’s not developing as a woman. That’s not growing as a woman, that’s not living in this world as a woman and a lot of the stuff I hear trans complaining about, yeah, ‘Welcome to the world.’”
McGowan has claimed that Dier was a “plant” from Harvey Weinstein, sent to harass her, which Dier denied to The Daily Beast. “No. I’m not powerful enough to know someone like Weinstein. I live in a closet in East New York,” she said.
“That’s absolutely 100% False,” a rep for Harvey Weinstein told TheWrap Friday night. “No one is monitoring her whereabouts. It’s unfortunate that she is choosing to marginalize a community that is fighting to have their voice heard by claiming that the individual was a ‘plant’ of my client. It’s simply untrue and disrespectful to the Transgender community.”