Between accusations she used her late Harry Potter colleague, Alan Rickman to advance her own feminist agenda and soliciting the internet for possible names for her feminist book club, Emma Watson hasn’t had a stellar January thus far. The outspoken gender-equality advocate has been catching a lot of flack for her beliefs lately, and thanks to a popular Change.org petition, more trollery is about to slide into the 25-year-old actress’s DMs.
According to The Independent, Oscar Izard of Melbourne, Australia, thinks Watson should put her own words into action to prove that the North African and Middle Eastern refugees currently spilling over into Europe are safe. How? By spending a week with them in Calais, where many of the refugees attempt to enter Europe through France. Per Izard’s Change.org petition:
In order to show how safe current migration is to Europe, particularly regarding the cause of feminism (I reject wholeheartedly the notion that North African and Middle Eastern migrants are unsafe, and rapists), Emma Watson should spend a week’s holiday in a Calais migrant camp, without guards of course, to show how safe, and how pro feminism these migrants are.
As of this writing, the petition has garnered more than 14,700 signatures toward the current goal of 15,000 in its first week. However, readers shouldn’t assume that Izard and the petition signers are actually supportive of either Watson’s feminism or her pro-refugee stance.
As The Independent points out, around 1,000 men assaulted countless women on New Year’s Eve in and around the German city of Cologne — prompting the city’s mayor to suggest a “code of conduct” for women. The mass assault also increased anti-refugee rhetoric throughout the country, which remains one of the most refugee-friendly European nations.
Watson has yet to respond to the petition, either to the press or on social media.
(Via The Independent)