The Guardian job cuts

[MummBraTheEverLeaking]

twitter.com/ben_bt/status/1283351434717782016?s=19

A lot comments standing up for women. What was that phrase again, go woke.....?

@RoyalCorgi

TeiTetua The first of those links you give - the article by Gaby Hinsliffe - is the one that people are unhappy with.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

People felt that Hinsliff was trying to minimise the seriousness of the attacks. This paragraph in particular upset some people:

"Liberals shouldn’t be afraid to ask hard questions. Young German women thankfully enjoy historically unprecedented economic and sexual freedom, with their expensive smartphones and their right to celebrate New Year’s Eve however they want. The same isn’t always true of young male migrants exchanging life under repressive regimes, where they may at least have enjoyed superiority over women, for scraping by at the bottom of Europe’s social and economic food chain. It is not madness to ask if this has anything to do with attacks that render confident, seemingly lucky young women humiliated and powerless."

The other issue that annoyed a lot of people was that the Guardian barely reported the story initially. Afterwards, the coverage mostly consisted of these three handwriting comment pieces. (The last one you link to was by Deborah Orr, who subsequently lost her column at the Guardian, and then died a year or so later.)

Reading that quote, I'm angry all over again. She gets halfway there - yes, men can be resentful of successful women. And we have a name for that, don't we, Gaby? It's called misogyny. If misogyny is prompting men to conspire to rape German women en masse, why isn't the Guardian up in arms?

It's also racist. To imply that immigrant men somehow wouldn't know it's wrong to rape shows a complete ignorance of Middle Eastern culture.

It's also racist. To imply that immigrant men somehow wouldn't know it's wrong to rape shows a complete ignorance of Middle Eastern culture.

Yes, and it's also racist to suggest that men from MENA countries can't be expected to find ways to express resentment over economic or social disenfranchisment that don't involve sexual assault. It's the soft bigotry of low expectations combined with the same poisonous idea that some women are so privileged that they're fair game that you also see in some discourse about trans issues. The idea that women should stay out of the public sphere if we'd like not to be sexually assaulted is misogyny of a very old school kind, and many women were shocked to see it expressed so openly in The Guardian.

I’d imagine newspaper readership has dropped an awful lot over the last decade. If the Guardian can’t get enough people to buy their paper then that’s their problem.
They are a business like every other business.

Interesting sidenote. If true, the Guardian may well deserve its fate. To throw women under the bus is bad enough, but to do so for money is even worse.

I really feel it's time to stop using the term trans woman. Complying with it has, predictably enough, led to "trans women are women! Trans is the adjective and woman is the noun!"

I stopped using it a year ago and now use only males who identify as trans, females who identify as trans and people who identify as trans. Further qualified as necessary (like: males who identify as trans and who may have medically transitioned, or females who identified as trans and who have detransitioned etc).

Yes, it's not as convenient as TW and TM, but it completely avoids confusion over who you are talking about. Especially since precise and logical language construction means that a trans woman is a female who identifies as trans, whereas a transwoman is a male who identifies as trans.

In written discourse some people may notice the space in the former, but in oral communication it's inaudible. So no one knows how you are using these words.

Male and female, if necessary first qualified by their definition, are so much easier for me now.

And it does make a lot of statements much more striking. The two instances of women in TWAW are can be confusing, but replace TWAW with males who identify as trans are female and the absurdity becomes clear.

(Not to some people, I know, but the radical TRAs pushing the notion that males are female are still fringe enough that you'll frequently find the ordinary TRAs denying that extreme stance even exists.)

The idea that women should stay out of the public sphere if we'd like not to be sexually assaulted is misogyny of a very old school kind, and many women were shocked to see it expressed so openly in The Guardian

I don't think Hinsliff was advocating that view, but she was both attributing it to refugee men and - worse - implying that it was understandable, even excusable. And there was no call to arms to protect women's rights. So the article says, "Refugee men think it's OK to rape successful women, and who can blame them?"

@CharlieParley

Interesting sidenote. If true, the Guardian may well deserve its fate. To throw women under the bus is bad enough, but to do so for money is even worse.

That would be interesting, given that in their appeals for reader contributions The Guardian describe themselves thusly:

"The Guardian’s independence means we interrogate the actions of those in power without fear. With no shareholders or billionaire owner, our journalism is free from political and commercial bias – this makes us different. We can give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and stand in solidarity with those who are calling for a fairer future."

Free from political and commercial bias, eh?

Free from political and commercial bias, eh?

An amusing thing to say when one's bias can be seen from outer space.

Interesting sidenote. If true, the Guardian may well deserve its fate. To throw women under the bus is bad enough, but to do so for money is even worse.

No, it's not true. In that particular case, Open Society Foundations funded reporting on gender equality. The Guardian chose to spend the money on its favourite topic, gender identity.
OSF has funded various other journalism projects the G has been involved in, like the Panama Papers investigation. It doesn't dictate the content.

No, it's not true. In that particular case, Open Society Foundations funded reporting on gender equality. The Guardian chose to spend the money on its favourite topic, gender identity.

I don't know about you, but that makes it even worse for me.

Thanks for the info though.

Supposedly posted by a writer for the guardian... it would explain a lot.

Yes I agree, it's worse. In a way it would comforting to think that the Guardian is just vulnerable to outside influence because it's running out of cash, but that would be letting it off the hook.

It’s really eye opening to see how many ppl pleading for ppl to support the guardian are getting multiple replies along the lines of “we would but they don’t support women so no”. There is a particular joy in seeing the number of ppl reminding them that 300 guardian employees signed a letter to cancel another employee because they didn’t like her views

I would hope that some serious meetings are happening at The guardian atm

All they have to do is say - ‘we need a proper discussion/exploration of the issues being raised by women and we will do that’, it’s not that hard

All they have to do is say - ‘we need a proper discussion/exploration of the issues being raised by women and we will do that’, it’s not that hard

You wouldn’t think so, would you? But they seem incapable of getting their heads round the idea.

I don’t think I’d trust them anyway, even if they said that. I’d want to see real action & change, not just words.

I was on Marina Hyde’s twitter feed and I noticed something. In the replies to this tweet:

mobile.twitter.com/MarinaHyde/status/1283444181420171265

Marina is going all out to thank everyone who had said they’re subscribing or donating. Then there’s this tweet:

mobile.twitter.com/Marks_Jon/status/1283477243918987264

Some random guy tweets about his favourite writers and they all chip in and reply with thanks. I wonder if they’re under instruction to make an effort to show good will to anyone they can?

And why is it that they’ll thank people for subscribing because of how good the reporting on Spurs football is, but they won’t acknowledge those who won’t subscribe because of their reporting on women’s rights?

I think Marina Hyde is brilliant. It's reasonable that she wants to keep her job, and nice that she's thanking people.

I disagree with the Graun, clearly, and am horrified by where they've headed on women. But that doesn't make every journo who writes for them responsible. There are some really good people writing there, who will go down with them. It's one of the reasons I really hope they can find a way to turn this around, and allow women a voice on gender and sex.

I know many appear to take the public temperature in Twitter but I hope some at the Guardian are also reading this too!

Increasingly I am convinced the tide will properly turn when companies and organisations start losing money and donations in a big way. Statistically speaking there simply can't be that many queer or trans 'folk' to support business on their own, if say, they lose a significant part of their female audience or customer base.

All the buyer and reviewers of knickers on M&S can't make up for the loss in sales from all the women who shop there and in food section and in the home section etc.

I'm also looking at you BBC and Centre Parcs - not necessarily TopShop etc.

The Pink Pound was once the customer base every high street retailer wanted to capture, maybe the 'Karen Crona' will be next? (sorry I'll try to come up with a better name than that!)

*krona

The problem for me is that, even if they were to walk back on this, they have still demonstrated to me on too many occasions that reporting the news accurately is not their priority. Which means I no longer trust them on anything.

Karen Kartell but nowt wrong with krona and very apt

I like the idea of the "Karen Krona"

I expect for the wokey- cokey brigade I'm a Karen and I've got plenty of krona.

I'm very low on Karen Krona because I keep needing to donate it to crowdfunders, but if I didn't need to do that, I might have spare cash for the Guardian, but seeing as I'm all out of sympathy as well (and that void has been replaced by sheer fury) I'll spend every last penny helping women before I feel anything for the press that betrayed us.

They can swing for it.

@ThePurported

Interesting sidenote. If true, the Guardian may well deserve its fate. To throw women under the bus is bad enough, but to do so for money is even worse.

No, it's not true. In that particular case, Open Society Foundations funded reporting on gender equality. The Guardian chose to spend the money on its favourite topic, gender identity.
OSF has funded various other journalism projects the G has been involved in, like the Panama Papers investigation. It doesn't dictate the content.

Even after everything I've seen and read, I hadn't picked up on the sidestep. Fucksake, Guardian.

I am sure Marina does appreciate the support. She seems quite friendly with Suzanne so I doubt she signed the letter. A lot of the journalists who are tweeting have nice responses saying you are the reason I subscribe.
Ben BT didn’t get any responses saying they liked his column just a lot of angry women. His response was really cloth eared when so many of his colleagues are going to lose their jobs.

@Floisme

The problem for me is that, even if they were to walk back on this, they have still demonstrated to me on too many occasions that reporting the news accurately is not their priority. Which means I no longer trust them on anything.

Sadly, I agree.

I'd missed how appalling the Cologne reporting was. It's the child grooming gangs mentality all over again, isn't it? Women and girls don't matter, if there's a risk that racists are emboldened.

Race matters. So does sex. If you're willing to throw women under the bus to protect another marginalised group, you're a misogynist. I note that there's never any reluctance to call women out on racism, which is as it should be. What isn't is the refusal to call out abuse towards women, if there's ever any conflict with other political priorities. And we see that again and again and again.

The rape situation should be a huge campaigning drive by the Guardian, if they were really bothered by misogyny. So should sexual assaults in psychiatric hospital wards, which have been mixed sex for decades, and the consequences for women well understood - but they couldn't care less. Instead, they dedicate endless pages to navel-gazing on which gender identity boxes people prefer.

We need a new left leaning paper. One that actually recognises that women are human. Meanwhile, women are voting with their feet, which is shitty for the good journos, but what else can we do?