Fuck Oxfam

Slighlty off topic, but as this thread has shown getting publicity for these attack on women into the MSM has meant relying on right wing papers. (Although am surpised to see the Guardian even recognising it.)

It was announced yesterday that the Telegraph, daily and sunday, are to be sold off.

Not because they aren't sustainable, but because they are they are the best options for the owners to raise money to pay off other debts.

If it gets taken over by a financial company as a good money maker, more than likely the editorial stance will be influenced by corporate policies. Which as we know have been captured.

Fuck Oxfam indeed. Rotten to the core. I want to go and change the writing on the front of their shops. It currently says

Grows vegetables
Fills classrooms
Drills wells
Empowers women
Fights poverty

Hmm, maybe
Rapes women
Slurs JKR
Etc

There's always the Moomin Shop website and stores. I get dragged into the Covent Garden one every time we're in a nearby pub the vicinity.

They do have a nice line in Moomin merch which I shall be sad to swerve going forward, but I’ll live

I notice that our local Oxfam shop is advertising for volunteers. I'm very tempted to pick up an application form and make it clear that I am GC just to see the response.

No time to actually volunteer, and if I had it would be elsewhere.

I refuse to buy or donate at the shops but called in yesterday to assess what was going on. Plenty of alphabet nonsense posters etc, but apart from the cards for eg giving a goat, nothing that I could see about what used to be their core aims.

Treaclemine · Today 16:59
I caught up on reading New Scientist this morning, from the end of November. The cover story was about the family (yup) of Indo-European languages, and the search for the origin, or mother tongue (yes). And no matter how far back they go to primitive forms, which word do the linguists choose to illustrate their findings? Mother, mere, moeder, mater, ma, and I can't remember the rest, but easily identifiable even in Sanskrit.
And this bunch of lunatics want to eradicate something held at the core of language so that you reach the 21st century and it disappears. What will future linguists make of it

I so agree there is a bunch of lunatics holding sway. It is beyond belief that the word is being attacked and weakened while people stand by and feel virtuous. Thank goodness for the House of Lords doing what they did.

Or this one? https://selfhelpafrica.org/

More geographically limited, but even better in terms of the proportion of donations actually getting to the people on the ground. And they seem pro-women: the first item on their page is marking IWD, quite a few posts about women farmers and the specific difficulties they face, and this https://selfhelpafrica.org/uk/gender-comic-book-helps-unite-families/ - makes a nice change to read something titled 'Gender comic book' and come away thinking "What a good idea!" Instead of "WTF?!"

Oxfam alternatives: https://www.concern.org.uk/ looks promising. Similar focus to Oxfam, nicely transparent about what percentage of donations goes on what, and although this page https://www.concern.org.uk/what-we-do/gender-equality is labelled gender equality it seems to actually be very sensible measures to improve sex equality.

Anyone know more about them?

I caught up on reading New Scientist this morning, from the end of November. The cover story was about the family (yup) of Indo-European languages, and the search for the origin, or mother tongue (yes). And no matter how far back they go to primitive forms, which word do the linguists choose to illustrate their findings? Mother, mere, moeder, mater, ma, and I can't remember the rest, but easily identifiable even in Sanskrit.
And this bunch of lunatics want to eradicate something held at the core of language so that you reach the 21st century and it disappears. What will future linguists make of it?

My Jaw dropped on that one. Just wow.

The mail aren't letting up on this their latest piece
'This is Oxfam's Ratner moment': Charity accused of 'turning on women' https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12173267/This-Oxfams-Ratner-moment-fire-charity-accused-turning-womens-rights.html?ito=native_share_article-nativemenubutton

Even if in-house lawyers etc saw it in advance, I suspect they would have been cowed into not saying anything. Although they could have said something about the racist overtones, even if they were nervous of saying something about the TERF aspects. This is what happens when you have groupthink and no diversity. Having DE&I policies is no good if they only work in favour of one group.

And yes, will people please stop volunteering in the shops. Just walk out. If you have relatives and friends who volunteer in the shops, please ask them to walk out and volunteer in a different shop. There are so many charity shops and most need help, it won't be difficult to find another one in most cases. It's going to be rare that the Oxfam shop is the only one someone can get to (in which case I say wellbeing comes before politics but those instances will be rare).

WHY ARE YOU STILL VOLUNTEERING THERE!?

There are plenty of other places.

Drop them in it, walk out and find somewhere else more worthwhile.

I'm sorry but I think in the context of this petty acts like this really are just ridiculous and virtue signally into the void.

ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING MEANINGFUL INSTEAD.

Like quit.

I think if you are an Ally, this really is your "are we the baddies?" moment for the images that are very clearly sexist, agist and racist.

Its very overt propaganda which takes its reference point from not too nice propaganda from yesteryear.

Its fascinating to see, and even more fascinating to see people who try and defend it (especially after Oxfam realised themselves how offensive and probably liabilious it is).

They probably mean EMPOWERS WOMEN WITH COCKS TO TAKE OVER EVERYTHING, but ran out of space...

Sadly I think you're right. They are no longer an organisation to relieve famine, with some organisational misogyny. They are now an organisation of which one of the primary goals is the suppression of women. It's a feature, not a bug.

That might sound like hyperbole, but consider their record. They ignored for years, and then covered up, widespread sexual abuse of children by their male staff, yet they train staff to denigrate and silence women who complain about rape. Those two flaws are not coincidental.

It's Pournelles' iron law of bureaucracy and Michels' iron law of oligarchy in action. The ideology driving Oxfam is no longer famine relief, but identarian politics, especially misogyny.

They actually have the words EMPOWERS WOMEN on their shop front! I stood and looked at it and spluttered today. Where do you start?!?

Appreciate I've crashed into a lovely reasonable discussion with a random outburst but I'm just so angry.

Fuck Oxfam.

You’re probably right about Oxfam. I just love the idea of naughty women carrying out acts of sabotage in their shops 😍

I agree with this in general but I think Oxfam is too rotten at the core. My opinion of course. Maybe all the volunteers can start a claim for discrimination, get the current lot out and take over and go back to doing what they're supposed to be doing.

@GulesMeansRed Fabulous! And give your colleague a sugar cube on me 😁

Well done. I think this is really important. For organisations to become captured it relies on people stepping away. Although I also understand why people do so because it’s stressful especially if you are the only person taking a stand.

@Signalbox , that's my reason for hanging on in Unison. I'm branch women's officer, so am well placed to ask awkward questions about both union and company policy docs.

Nice work, @GulesMeansRed and colleagues.

I'm off for a nose at the charity shop windows in the High Street to see if any contain coded messages.

Fantastic but please, please give serious consideration to taking your lovely selves, and horseselves of course, and volunteering elsewhere

I dunno, if people feel brave enough to stay and fight and sabotage and ask awkward questions I actually think it’s helpful to have TERFs in all these organisations. It’s the only way they will be held to account. One by one they’ll be sued for harassment or discrimination and sooner or later the word will get out that you can’t bully and harass women because they believe men aren’t women. Perhaps the EDI companies will eventually have to start including a section in their training on belief discrimination (related to GC).

Wonderful!

As an aside, I have just Terfed in our local charity shop. They have a rainbow clothing display in the window, so I snuck in some balls of wool in green, white and purple 💜