Rose McGowan cancels appearances after public spat

Actress Rose McGowan, who has been promoting her new memoir "Brave", has cancelled all her upcoming appearances after getting into a heated confrontation with a transgender during her first book signing here.

The incident happened at Barnes & Noble on Wednesday, reports pagesix.com.

On Friday, McGowan tweeted: "I am canceling upcoming public appearances because I have given enough. 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 terrorised by your system.

"And no one in that room did anything. And everyone from my publicists, 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."

According to a report in pagesix.com, the fight began when the transgender woman asked McGowan about comments she had made on RuPaul's "What's the Tee?" podcast in July.

"Trans women are dying and you said that we, as trans women, are not like regular women," the woman told her.

"We get raped more often. We go through domestic violence more often. There was a trans woman killed here a few blocks (away). I have been followed home …"

McGowan interrupted her to say, "Hold on. So am I. We are the same. My point was, we are the same. There's an entire show called ID channel, a network, dedicated to women getting abused, murdered, sexualised, violated, and you're a part of that, too, sister. It's the same."

The situation escalated when the woman asked what McGowan had done for transgender women. "Don't label me, sister," McGowan said, adding "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**k back."

The woman was escorted out by security.

On Thursday, during a panel discussion with Ronan Farrow, McGowan, who was one of the first women to accuse Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, alleged that the woman was a plant from Weinstein's camp.

A representative for Weinstein told Page Six on Friday that those claims are "absolutely, 100 percent false".

--IANS

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