Fuck Oxfam

[DismantledKing]

Anyone seen the tweet by Maya tonight about this little animation by Oxfam? Here’s the link:

https://twitter.com/mforstater/status/1665817901327085568?s=46&t=U7-xooKExwmFQ8mivn72lw

as I said, fuck Oxfam.

You beat me to it!

An excellent post, thank you.

I agree about where does the money come from. I think that is something worth uncovering if anyone can do it.

I have no idea if jkr is going to sue, it doesn't strike me as a thing she would do lightly.

You obviously don't know law.
Newspapers satirising celebs and MPs is vastly different to charities using your satirised image to get donations. and look woke

Probably you need to read up on different laws before spouting rubbish

Miranda Yardley shared an internal email that had been sent to Oxfam staff that very much shows that any apology is not very sincere. They apologise to distressed trans staff but not to GC staff and/or women.

This. Oxfam is a great case study of an organization that has institutionalized misogyny.

@Theeyeballsinthesky God absolutely. It's just staggering. I guess the board who appointed him were in full "are we woke enough??" cringe mode. Or perhaps they were already on board with the whole "nasty complaining Karens vs the truly oppressed" agenda.

Today I bought the Times and the Mail to see what was in the print editions. As I have already said, I think many of Oxfam's volunteers read physical papers so I was interested in what was in them as well as on the websites.

The Mail had a double page spread, pp 10 and 11, headlined "Fury over Oxfam slur on Rowling" including Julie Bindel's Commentary piece and an inset on previous Oxfam scandals.

The Times has two thirds of a page, p 11, headlined "Oxfam 'depicts JK Rowling as hate figure' in LGBT cartoon".

TrainedByCats · Today 09:17
Brilliantly put Shazia more eloquently than I could

What @mommyisbest said was so brilliantly put that it would be good if some politicians could see it. They might finally understand.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. It's my sincere belief that the women on FWR have been one of the cornerstones of the pushback against this ideology.

Several books have arisen from FWR. Many campaigns.

Mumsnet is the biggest gathering of women in history. Journalists would be mad to ignore them. (Likewise MPs).

I'm a regular contributor and am always very happy to see the concepts written about here being picked up by mainstream media and put into newspapers.

I couldn't understand why they weren't doing it, for years.

Anything that gets these messages out there can only be a good thing.

Philip Larkin used to sign off his phone calls to Kingsley Amis with the words 'Fuck Oxfam!' This is usually taken as an indication of his being a reactionary miserable old git, but perhaps he was just rather prescient.

Larkin is about ripe for cancellation (incoming any time now, I imagine) because despite, as far as we know, not doing anything too terrible in life, he was a reactionary miserable old git with some pretty awful opinions. Oxfam, on the other hand, professes all the right opinions so it can get away with sexually abusing the very people it is meant to be helping, sexually harassing and abusing vulnerable young volunteers in its shops, illegally denying the freedom of expression of its staff and telling them that the worst thing about rape is it gets men locked up. Join the sacred caste and you can do what you like.

@mommyisbest that is SUCH a good post and covered aspects of this mad shitshow that I hadn’t even thought of.

Thank you.

I've just read my way through this thread after realising that in the UK we have allowed an ideology to trump biology, fact and everyone else. They have gone so far that they feel that they can say and do anything now.

Oxfam you are so wrong. The self entitlement of a very few individuals has gone too far now. Push back.

This post is excellent
"mommyisbest · Yesterday 23:31

I’m a British Pakistani Muslim woman. I give to Oxfam and endeavour to make donations to Oxfam as well as shop at my local store in preference to other charity shops. I have a strong affinity to Oxfam because of its history of identifying need and tackling it.

I will no longer be supporting you. You have allowed your charitable purpose to be hijacked. What kept me loyal to Oxfam despite recent difficulties is that it is a charity that finds what needs to be done and seeks solutions without fear or favour. There is no scope for ideology in this. Everyone who is needy benefits. No questions are asked about people’s religious or political affiliation.

As a minority- ethnically and religiously- I depend on pluralism in order to express my culture and my religious beliefs. I don’t require anyone to validate my beliefs. I just need society to accept that I have my own beliefs. I don’t need anyone to say Salaam to me or call me sister and I don’t impose this on anyone. By the same token I don’t want to be forced to validate other people by modifying language to include concepts I don’t accept ie describing myself as cis or finding which pronoun suits me based on my sexuality or masculine/feminine leanings.

In discouraging the use of words such as male or female, modifying expressions that reference human biology, replacing one word for another such as prostitution for sex worker, you have pursued an ideological agenda which has nothing to do with your purpose or aims.

You have decided to champion that ideology in favour of other ideologies. When challenged on your dogmatic stance you have taken an unpluralist view by stating that it is the best ideology as it is, in your view, the most inclusive.

In saying this you disregard most people in the world who come from collectivist cultures where identity stems from family and community and not from Western notions of individualism where identify stems from pronouns or sexual orientation or gender identity.

That is not to say that collectivist cultures do not have active and vibrant LGBT people. But they are not asserting this in the same way and never have. To see all these LGBT people in such a monolithic way is to reduce and simplify even those people you think you are including. This is a form of cultural imperialism. Other countries have strong LGBT heritage and it’s not the same as yours.

Your latest attempt at evangelising, has led you to depict those of a different ideology (who believe biology is more important than socially constructed gender) as ugly, older women termed TERFS. Where will you go next? Will you depict Muslims similarly after all the Quran does not mention gender identity once? If you are to be consistent I don’t see that you have any choice.

For all these reasons I won’t have anything more to do with you.
Shazia"

Yup, yup, yep.

And like most charities in the UK, we will see how they get on once women, particularly women over say about 30, decide they are being fucked over, notice that the pattern of deriding, abusing, maligning and smearing of women is being repeated so frequently it can no longer be attributed to accident, or a few bad apples.

The whole barrel is rotten, Oxfam. Male supremacists have taken over your charity and are actively working to harm women and girls.

We are the ones who volunteer for you, Oxfam, who donate to your shops, who buy from your shops, who fundraise for you.

See how long you last with your anti-women bullshit.

BaronMunchausen · Today 09:42
And how much of the developing world has adopted the western practice of making gender ideology compliance a condition for funding (particularly for women-centred activity)? Cultural imperialism in the frame again. Commissioning an Indian company seems to be Oxfam’s lip-service to internationalism - the film however is concerned for the western twitter TRA rather than Hijra.

India may well be the next target for infiltration with western style transgender ideology to take over and supplant Hijra. There was that Starbucks advert featuring an Indian family with a son who was a transwoman all meeting in a Starbucks cafe where at last his dad showed he accepted that his son was now his daughter.

It's an irony that while feeling distressed, unsafe etc can be part of male performative femininity, actual women don't push their personal distress.

Probably because it won't be taken seriously.

Maya was great on Times Radio.
Full interview with Maya here.
https://twitter.com/TimesRadio/status/1666381979170873345

And Hadley Freeman ranting about it too. Good day on Times Radio.
https://twitter.com/HadleyFreeman/status/1666405135122087936

This is such a brilliant post - important points and so well articulated, I wish this could be read more widely. Will you be sending something along these lines to Oxfam @mommyisbest? (For all the good it will do, but I really think they should hear viewpoints like this and consider what their version of "inclusivity" actually means for other groups of people)

Apologies, I don't have time to read the whole thread today.

Oxfam, if you are reading this, please be aware that I am instructing my bank to cancel my regular donation. I am also instructing my solicitor to alter my will. You will no longer receive the rather large (5 figure) sum I had asked to be left to you.

Several decades I worked for you, you were a good organisation, focused on the actual needs of people. You have lost your way, it is very disappointing.

@NeverTrustAPoliceman would you be willing to send your very clear message directly to Oxfam?

You can email feedback@oxfam,org,uk or post a letter to Supporter Relations Dept., Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2JY

Hi @notsinging I have emailed them on their customer relations email and also their policy and practice email for all the good it will do (as you rightly say). And thank you for liking it.

The pluralist angle is important to me for all the reasons given but I think it has not been explored. This is partly because the right has been very effective at saying we have been too sensitive and too kind in the face of intolerant views/beliefs. The left has too easily ceded this. In fact a disciplined and assiduous pluralism is the only way to get out of this. Our beliefs are our beliefs. That is all. We do not have to prove tolerance and acceptance to one another. We have to behave tolerantly and decently.

So a good example of the fault line which can lead us to overcompensate is when parents protest at school gates about LGBT content. As a pluralist society we should draw lines between education which states the facts of LGBT communities and describes them and education that actively invites children to think about their own LGBT identity. 'Some people believe they are trans' is different to 'people are trans- are you'?

As a sister in (Abrahamic) faith, I applaud you.

Brava!

@mommyisbest That is an excellent letter, thank you for sharing it.

I'm now thoroughly ashamed of myself for having stuck with Oxfam following the scandals of staff behaviour in Haiti and DRC. I feel stupid and naive for not ditching them then. DD has now been cancelled.

I wrote to them on a previous occasion, asking, among other things, whether they collect data and organise programmes according to sex or gender identity. This was the reply.

> On the whole, our global data is based on sex. This is partly because the ability of people to be open about their gender identity varies greatly between each context we work in. There are some places around the world where not only a person’s ability to express gender identity is suppressed, but even the person asking a question about it can be at risk of harm. Therefore, while we would like to record information about gender identity, it’s left up to the discretion of the team member who’s collecting that data.

ie We'd really like to be organising our lifesaving work around the completely subjective category of gender identity, but unfortunately people in many countries where we work aren't on board with it, so we're stuck with having to oppress people by using fact-based categories.

On the whole, our global data is based on sex. This is partly because the ability of people to be open about their gender identity varies greatly between each context we work in. There are some places around the world where not only a person’s ability to express gender identity is suppressed, but even the person asking a question about it can be at risk of harm. Therefore, while we would like to record information about gender identity, it’s left up to the discretion of the team member who’s collecting that data.

And this shows exactly the issue, oppression is generally sex based, needs in disaster areas are often sex based, but instead they wang on about gender identity and how that is suppressed. GI does not get a girl out of a menstruation hut. Absolute dumpties.