A transgender Berkeley English professor who once backed the burning of books was suspended from Twitter after tweeting to the UK government that she hoped the Queen of England would die of COVID.
Prof. Grace Lavery, a prominent trans activist, was in a Twitter spat on Sunday with an anti-trans advocate when the person accused Lavery of wanting to incite public disorder with her tour around the UK promoting her memoir.
During the back-and-forth, Lavery snapped that: ‘I hope the queen dies’ in a tweet that also tagged the UK government.
The post came as Queen Elizabeth, 95, tested positive for COVID-19.
Twitter quickly suspended her account in response.
She told DailyMail.com that she supported people being canceled on social media -but apparently that does not apply to her.
Lavery said: ‘I wholly support social media platforms taking action against harassment.
‘I do not think they should ban people for hoping that public figures die, whether the person in question is Elizabeth Windsor, Donald Trump, or Jeremy Corbyn,’ Lavery said, the latter referring to a member of the UK’s Labour Party that was suspended from the party in 2020 over anti-Semitic comments.
Prof. Grace Lavery, of the University of Berkley, had tweeted, ‘oh I hope the queen dies also,’ before she was suspended on Twitter. She said she stands by her statement
Lavery had been in a Twitter spat when someone tagged the UK government and accused her of intending to incite public disorder in the middle of UK tour promoting her memoir
Lavery’s Twitter account was suspended following her post tagging the UK government
She also complained that her Twitter ban was suppressing her freedom of speech.
‘Bans on discussing the Queen’s death additionally have the (presumably unintended) effect of suppressing speech about the line of succession,’ she said.
‘I’m not expecting any of the free speech activists to get incensed about this, of course, but their hypocrisy is nonetheless pungent.’
UC Berkeley did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
After being suspended from the platform and garnering backlash for her statement, Lavery went on to Instagram to further insult the queen in a sarcastic post paired up with the Sex Pistol’s ‘God Save the Queen.’
‘I certainly do *not* wish for the reintroduction of the guillotine, nor the public seizure of all lands and entitlements reserved by the Windsors, nor do I crave to appear on the front of the Daily Mail dressed in my (unmarried) mother’s bridal veil’ she wrote.
‘Under no circumstances would I describe the Windsors as cruel, bloodsucking molesters and sponges, each of significantly below average intelligence even for the degenerate British ruling class; and at no price could anyone compel me to declare Elizabeth Regina an impassive, thoughtless windbag, as incapable of saying anything more thoughtful than a Tory’s guff, as she is undeserving of even a legacy place in a second-rate provincial grammar school.
‘We love our queen. God saves. Shine on, ma’am! (rhymes with SCAM).’
The post was preceded by Lavery echoing the words of others who stood by the queen and her decades on the throne.
Lavery went on to further insult the queen and the royal family on Instagram
Lavery previously earned backlash on social media when she advocated for the burning of author Abigail Shrier’s anti-trans book, ‘Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.’
In a post last November, which was taken down along with the rest of Lavery’s posts due to the Twitter suspension, she encouraged her followers to steal Shrier’s book and ‘burn it on a pyre.’
She also told her supporters to rip out the book’s pages and replace them with pro-trans rights literature.
The newest controversy comes in the middle of the California professor’s tour around the UK, where she was set to promote her new memoir, ‘Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis’ and debate anti-trans right advocates.
Lavery was set to debate Irish journalist Helen Joyce, who has written critically of the trans right movement, on the far-right site UnHeard, but has since backed out after she said her mother was being harassed online.
Lavery claimed her mother had received photos of Lavery and her partner having sex on Twitter, which she said was stolen from a private Instagram account years ago.
‘The hatred, misogyny, and rage that were being directed at my mother were simply too much to bear. I could not, and can not, ask her to bear the vicious attacks that I have become used to,’ Lavery wrote in a statement.
‘I realized that my UK tour would likely become a focal point for the same kind of people who would send my mother pictures of me and Danny having sex. I am scared of those people, and I am not prepared—in a literal sense, I am not prepared, cannot afford the preparations that would be necessary—to feel physically safe at a debate.’
Lavery said in a statement that she was no longer taking part in a much anticipated debate after she claimed her mother was harassed online
‘She added that she would no longer be doing future debates and giving up her role as a ‘public intellectual’
The lesson for me is clear. For the last few years, I’ve tried to be a scholar, a public intellectual, and an author of creative prose. One of those has had to go, and it’s the second one.
‘If I were willing to claim I’d been “canceled,” maybe I could salvage my reputation among the chattering classes, but I don’t want to do that, because it isn’t true. So again, I’m not going to be doing any more political engagements other than those to which I’ve already agreed. . For others, I’m not so sure.’
