Oxfam's analysis of its 'inclusive language crises'

Thanks@CharityShopChic , that was an insightful post.

I did get my xmas cards from Oxfam last year, having swerved away from Amnesty and this year am supporting a local animal charity.
No longer needed clothes, books and bric a brac have for quite a while gone to my closest charity shop.
I really hope someone from their head office reads this thread.

I might have missed this in the analysis - is Oxfam feeling the pinch re lower donations of cash and stuff/lower sales or footfall/fewer people prepared to volunteer? After all, that’s the way the charity is actually funded, so it might matter a bit?

Oxfam is now a nasty organisation. I have not given them money or goods since the revelations about their aid workers in Haiti and other places trading food aid for sex with women and children.

i am sure you all will have seen their TERF cartoon featuring a nasty characterisation of our wonderful JKR shown here months ago.

They should be investigated and closed down. Fortunately we have an Air Ambulance clothing bin near us now so we can boycott the Oxfam one

I work in the charity sector and have heard plenty of conversations about not actually wanting 'that kind of supporters'.

Twenty years ago it was generally a way of resigning yourself to losing some people over a particular stance you feel you need to take on the core issue that you work on. Now it's about 'If people don't agree with our impassioned stance on gender/Palestine/BLM [picklist of issues totally unrelated to the charity's cause] then we don't want their money anyway'.

After a whole working life in the sector, I now don't feel able to donate to anyone much, as I just don't trust modern charities not to spend my donation on something else altogether. I was an Oxfam donor for nearly 30 years. No more.

I'd imagine people identifying themselves with pronouns would be supportive of Oxfam's erasure of sexed language.

And many of those putting 'she/her' aren't.

So 'inclusive' is 'exclusionary to all groups except less than 1% of the population' and anyone saying 'er these people matter too and should not be excluded to suit only this tiny group' are 'conservative'.

Batshit.

I didn't volunteer there for as long or as recently as you, but my recollections echo yours. There is such a contrast between who head office seem to think their volunteers are, and who their volunteers actually are.

It made me laugh to see the trans activists on twitter say Oxfam didn't need 'terfs'. In my experience, it's not the pronoun contingent getting up in the morning to staff their local shop, all for the low low price of free.

Oxfam could have saved a load of money on this review. I’d have done it for free. It would take no time at all to say this:

Oxfam, you are alienating your donors with your ridiculous erasure of women and mothers. Your commitment to “inclusion” just means more exclusion. You are completely out of touch with the disadvantaged people you’re trying to help, who don’t have the luxury to ponder over preferred pronouns as they have far more pressing matters to deal with. Like survival, for example. Get a grip, grow up, stop wasting money and start showing some respect to the people who want to help you do good in the world.

Exactly what I thought?! Mind you, we're usually called fascist nazi's so it's a step up..

Ooooh - someone invited the EDI Vampire in at Oxfam, eh?

Not only did they use twitter but they segregated their results by whether someone had she/her or he/him in their handle 🤣
Anyone wondering why so many she/hers were pro eradication of mother and father in the guide.

I also liked how they tried to gloss over the women's day tweet and failed to connect it with the style guide or understand that many of us see it as them doubling down on the women's day tweet

So, Oxfam discovers that people don’t like them spending money on policing people’s speech (and attitudes) so they pay for a review of how that worked out for them? Well that makes sense 🙄

I also struggled with the idea that they needed to split people into ‘cis men’ and everybody else women - uh?

I’m not on Twix so my views don’t count, but I am one of those no longer donating to Oxfam or buying stuff in their shops…..

I used to get so much from, and give so much to Oxfam, and they spent the money on hiring rapists.

So they can fuck off.

Oxfam were "conservative" when their workers raped women and children in Haiti in return for giving aid. After all prostitution is the oldest profession.

I thought encouraging ‘sex work’ was seen as very progressive….

At the women’s conference at UCL last year, after the screening of Adult Human Female, a woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo gave an impassioned speech from the audience about how western donor orgs demanded fulfilling of their diversity objectives when she was purely concerned with dealing with women raped in the never-ending civil war where ‘gender identity’ was an evident luxury belief.

The "existing structures" favour males. Everywhere, for all time.

Single sex spaces are a relative blip in human history. And they don't fully compensate for the structural disadvantages of being female.

Oxfam were "conservative" when their workers raped women and children in Haiti in return for giving aid. After all prostitution is the oldest profession. (That's why I stopped my monthly direct debit, incase you're reading, Oxfam).

@FatherJackHackettsUnderpantsHamper
Whenever people express unhappiness with how much the top people at huge charities are paid, we're always told it's because they need brilliant, intelligent, highly-skilled elite people who are up to the task.

This is something that often puzzles me, as in where is the tipping point between the above at the top and the "grunts" paid peanuts at the bottom (I include myself in the latter)?

I suppose it's a gradual scale but I'd rather the person looking after my elderly relative in a care home or making my kid's school dinners was excellent at their job too. Why is it important at one end of the scale but not the other? As a Union rep I know once said "It shouldn't matter if you push a pen or a broom, everyone deserves respect for the work they do".

I know I'm being disingenuous, we all know why. I just don't think the "We need to pay megabucks to get the best" stands up to scrutiny.

If you think feminism is about "maintaining the social structures around gender that we have now", you've completely misunderstood what feminism is.

I also believe in gravity, so am presumably ultra-conservative.

I would not say Im conservative at all on the gender topic. I'm after equality and no more gendered expectations on the different sexes. I want a very different reality to what I see for the women around me in my life.

I don't think understanding a scientific biology fact that there are male and female sex class in mammals is conservative. You can't change that so there is nothing to conserve.

I now, never ever, under any circumstances, donate anything to Oxfam or indeed any large charities at all. The only charities I support are local to me.

Not unlike the RSPCA, which is now far more interested in politicising and right-on causes, but too 'busy' and not bothered at all to help when people alert them of animals in distress.

Look at how the SSPCA recently came on the scene right at the end, to get their name in the paper and make out that they'd provided essential assistance, when some blokes who actually cared about action had already got together and done all the hard work of rescuing Fiona the lonely stranded sheep.