Munroe Bergdorf opens up about practicing voodoo and witchcraft amid ‘gay bashing’ tweet controversy
As she faces calls to step down from the Labour Party LGBT+ advisory board, activist and model Munroe Bergdorf has opened up about practicing witchcraft and voodoo.
The newly appointed advisor to the Labour LGBT+ advisory board apologised yesterday for a string of tweets sent over several years around 2010, in which she joked she would have “gay bashed” the character Kurt from Glee.
In other tweets she used the words “poof” and “dyke” and made fun of a “hairy lesbian” friend’s “barren womb”.
Tory MPs yesterday called for her to step down or be sacked from the position, which was announced last week.
And in a newly-published interview with the Mail on Sunday, Bergdorf opens up about the fact that she practices witchcraft and voodoo, partly because it is “part of [her] ancestry”.
She tells the paper: “I practice witchcraft. It’s something I’ve always been attracted to and I like it because it’s female-centric. I feel most religions are driven by and tailored for men.
“It interests me because it’s part of my ancestry – voodoo is more entwined in black identity than Christianity.”
She also shared with the paper that she enjoyds full moon rituals, and uses healing crystals.
The Labour Party has not returned a request for comment from PinkNews about whether Bergdorf will remain on the LGBT+ board.
Bergdorf has since issued an apology on Twitter, in a tweet which reads: “Who I was at 23 years old, is not who I am at 31.”
“Regarding any offensive tweets that I’ve posted in the past; namely those tweets shared playfully between close friends, I want to begin this letter by apologising. I am sincerely and wholly sorry – both to those who I cruelly speak about in those tweets, but also sorry to the entire LGBT+ community and anyone who has supported me over the past year.
“In 2010 I hadn’t yet transitioned and was outwardly presenting and identifying as an effeminate gay male. Tweets were juvenile jokes made with friends who also identify as LGBT+ regarding a website called ‘Lesbians who look like Justin Bieber’, however they were in bad taste and certainly not reflective of who I am today at 31 years old. I’m not going to try and excuse them, as there really is no excuse. Who I am no, is not who I was almost a decade ago when I wrote those tweets.
“Again, I am sorry for these disappointing posts. I feel as let down as you, but this is certainly not what I think of others or how I treat others. I’ve learned first hand that unless you learn to love yourself, you have no hope of loving others.”
(instagram/munroebergdorf)
Out gay Tory MP Nigel Evans has called for Bergdorf to resign from the Labour LGBT+ board.
He said: “I’m absolutely shocked. I don’t know which community she’s representing but it is certainly not mine.”
LBC presenter Maajid Nawaz, who has been a strong supporter of LGBT+ rights, said that there would be outrage if Bergdorf was an advisor to the Conservative Party on LGBT+ rights.
He said: “If a Tory dissed feminist campaigners in this way, you would be outraged.
“But what, a black, transgender model can get away with it because they’re in Labour?”
Bergdorf has repeatedly sparked controversy with her critiques of race, not least when she was fired by L’Oréal for saying that all white people were racist.
On Facebook after the Charlottesville white supremacist march in August, she wrote: “Your entire existence is drenched in racism.
“From micro-aggressions to terrorism, you guys built the blueprint for this s***.”
Bergdorf added: “Once white people begin to admit that their race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth…then we can talk.”
