Oxfam inclusive language guide

[Imicola]

This thread sums it up much better than i could...

twitter.com/DrKarleenG/status/1636272910120923136?s=20

Very noble of them. I hope that Oxfam staff are practicing what they preach, e.g. that when they're busing in 'girls of the night' to entertain them in Haiti, Chad, etc, they're happy to take anyone who identifies as female.

Bonkers! That's another charity off my list to donate to. I only donate regularly to the RSPB and local food banks now.

Thank you. I am at a loss as to how to donate to people who are not misappropriation my donations to support this men's rights agenda. It's appealing to talk about inclusively and then exclude. Ost women.

Isn't this modern colonisation?

It seems to me that Oxfam must have solved all their world's problems if they have the time and money to spend on luxury crap like this. In short they don't need our money.

Exactly how I feel about all this Emperor's New Clothes line of thinking. We should only be giving any time, money and effort to such matters when all human beings are are safe, well fed, schools available, health care available etc etc. We are so far from this and yet here is a charity such as Oxfam wasting its precious funds on such drivel when so much help is needed in so many places- so cross and so sad.

I wrote a letter to their headquarters (a banned word apparently) and handed it in at my local shop. The volunteer who has done a couple of days a week for over ten years said she was leaving for good at the end of her shift today in protest.

No problem, our town has several other good charity shops which will welcome her time and experience.

It is absolutely colonisation, but because it's by The Good People it doesn't self-identify as colonisation.

The guide even has a trigger warning! Above the title of feminists principles for language use. But ironic.

I updated my will yesterday. As part of the update, I removed a donation to Oxfam ,as I no longer support them after the way they dealt with their field workers using prostitutes.
I was feeling slightly sad about it until I read about this!

There was an article on this in the Telegraph yesterday and there were many comments from readers about cancelling their existing donations. 'Go woke, go broke!' as they like to say in TelegraphLand.

Oxfam, into the bin with you and your nonsense. I’ll find another charity to give to.

Yes. There seems to be a real push under the guise of supporting lesbian and gay people in other countries to also impose gender identity ideology.

I received a postal request for donations this week from Oxfam, but only opened it yesterday. It is for a project in Indonesia, under the title of Plan She. Some extracts:

“It’s time for Plan She. Back the women fighting for a fairer, greener planet. …. It’s women who are most affected by climate change… Give today and act in solidarity with women fighting climate change around the world. “

and it goes on about women needing to feed their families and grow crops. This is an important cause, and is close to something I wrote about for my dissertation many moons ago, so I probably will donate, but will see if I can do it by phone and speak to someone, even a lowly fundraiser, because I do not want my donation going on this gender identity nonsense when they have projects for actual women desperate for cash.

I can’t get over the fact it’s 92 pages. 92! And nobody questioned whether this was a good use of time and resources.

they have become (perhaps always were?) such a dodgy organisation- first the sexual exploitation (their staff certainly knew what a woman was when they were doing that), then some utter nonsense training which said women shouldn’t report rapes (I can’t remember the detail) and now this.

I stopped donating to them after the first one.

I have a question that I suspect I know the answer would like a definitive answer. When Oxfam provided sex workers for its employees, did they provide male sex workers for female employees, too? Or was it only the male employees who benefited from this 'perk'?

I loved this book. It was such an eye opener. Not just the do-good liberal colonialism of the NGOs but also the introduction of western anorexia via social contagion into Japanese culture. It was fascinating.

Yes signalbox. It's eye opening on so many topics! So much of it as come to mind a lot in recent discussions on this board.

I just adorned the changing room in my local Oxfam with a sticker promoting the documentary Adult Human Female. It felt bloody marvellous.

Should you wish to join in these guerrilla tactics - you can get a pack of stickers for a quid. Link here: Realitymatters

Seems Oxfam has the stink of righteousness about it lately. Always suggests an organisation in trouble, to me.

I noted this section:

'we avoid

prostitute, prostitution, use of prostitutes, use of sex workers'

Do you, now? Glad to hear it.

Note they correctly sex both prostitutes and punters. But 'mothers' is beyond the pale. Funny, that.

Yes, it's colonisation. It's also even more authoritarian than that, as the language they advocate was created by an extremely tiny group in academia where queer theory rules.

The first paragraph in the guide explains to us that language can deconstruct the power structures which cause poverty.
If that were true, we would have gotten rid of poverty a long time ago.

But language can obfuscate and make discussing something much harder and more difficult, and the changes they propose do obfuscate language, even where they don't introduce impossibly contradictions etc.

As an example of some of that, the guide argues that 'poor people' is not a statement that should be used as 'poor' has all sorts of connotations. But the alternatives are longer academic sentences which would cause confusion in many and would make communication much more difficult.

Sounds like the missionaries of old.

I'm glad I stopped my donation.

I’ve not given anything to Oxfam since the scandal about their male workers abusing women in Haiti came to light.

I've said it before on threads about Oxfam, there is such a massive disconnect between head office and the stores. Store volunteers are not interested in the campaigning, political stuff. They just want to raise money to help people affected by earthquakes or famine. I haven't seen a copy of this language guide in our shop, would be interested in knowing exactly where it's been distributed to as it is probably a head office thing.