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.

Janice Turner in the Times:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8cf8c722-055f-11ee-9bf2-8ca4db35d928?shareToken=d56301bbc7994a40c4070be60c2f4437

The BBC article posted earlier (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65831823) had this line: "Rowling has spoken against allowing trans people access to single-sex spaces." I emailed to point out this was incorrect and I see it's been changed to "Rowling has spoken against allowing trans women access to women-only spaces."

Considering the topic of the article, it's a bit sneaky to correct it without acknowledging the edit anywhere.

I should imagine the hordes of fuming people cancelling their direct debits and even legacies in their wills, absolutely suggest that the public have lost confidence in the charity.

The sector in general. With people assuming that the top brass in these charities are just milking them.

Well done on challenging that @sseXX .

I should imagine the hordes of fuming people cancelling their direct debits and even legacies in their wills, absolutely suggest that the public have lost confidence in the charity.

And while this won't be visible, there'll be plenty of us who have nothing to cancel because we withdrew support due to Oxfams previous conduct, but who've still clocked the misogyny and antisemitism inherent here.

Times leading article is about Oxfam today:

I wonder who it was who suggested using JKR as the model for this image - was it the agency or someone who was briefing them? Who did the artwork - did they realise who it was or did they think they could ‘get away’ with it and it would be their ‘in joke’? Is this agency really ‘woman led’? Or are they going to blame over zealous interns?

The upshot is - someone wrote the brief and had numerous meetings with the agency at each stage. They approved the visuals, the theme, the storyboard, the content, the final cut.

People in Oxfam will have seen the artwork in progress and probably many versions of the film as it was being produced. It would have then been presented in its final form for approval. Chances are it will have been circulated internally before it was launched.

Yes I’ve worked client side, and know that there are many opportunities to catch ‘problematic’ content - so can only assume those at Oxfam who were responsible for commissioning this and approved it were absolutely pushing and agenda.

So many opportunities for someone with half a brain to say ‘so much over the top melodrama, so much hatred and insults…’

From the mail
Oxfam could face Charity Commission probe after JK Rowling cartoon https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12171955/Oxfam-face-Charity-Commission-probe-cartoon-depicting-JK-Rowling-anti-trans-demon.html?ito=native_share_article-nativemenubutton

Additionally, it should really be someone's job at some point in the process to check whether something looks a bit Nazi.

I think it's to do with the demographic profile of all those involved in decision making.

Young, not widely read, swallowing fashionable opinions without research or critical thinking.

They don't know about Nazi anti-semitic propaganda - despite supposedly being anti-fascist, they know nothing about actual fascists. And their entire social and professional bubble repeats the "JKR is a transphobe" blether, again without knowledge or thinking.

The Charities Commission are getting busy. Mermaids, the LGBA court case, and now this.

I wonder whether at some point they will discover that there is something adrift with the sector as a whole. A small number of people, who seem to move from job to job, being paid very high salaries, living in a PC bubble and a low proportion of income being spent on actually delivering services.

My epiphany came when moving my mother with dementia into sheltered housing and cleared a skip load of charity begging letters, though the chuggers who operated where I used to work did not inspire confidence. I don't disbelieve Daily Mail rants about the National Trust and the RNLI, indeed have heard first hand how the former treated employees in Cornwall. AgeUK were completely unhelpful and seemed only interested in getting my contact details, as for the NSPCC, Red Nose Day, etc. Too often charities seem to have decided that their focus should be lobbying rather than service delivery. You need the latter to inform the former, and anyway I want to donate to charities who keep administration costs to a minimum and who deliver to those who need help.

I now avoid big charities preferring to give regular donations to a local swimming for the disabled charity. DD volunteered for them when she was at school, so I know they are good people and the money goes directly to activities their clients enjoy. Far better than contributing to Oxfam's advertising budget. Perhaps there ought to be some sort of quality standard for charities. A proper ratio being spent on service delivery, rather than administration fundraising or lobbying, proportionate salaries for senior people - and a fair wage for the more junior. Proper adherence to the equalities act including recognition that some vulnerable groups need single sex spaces.

Excellent article in the Telegraph pointing out my earlier argument - what on earth are Oxfam doing campaigning against transphobia when they are meant to be relieving poverty?
www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/06/07/oxfam-jk-rowling-terf-cartoon/

I completely agree. Many of the large charities have seemingly lost sight of their essential mission. Amnesty being another example. They are essentially just large corporations. Smaller, local charities are much more focused on delivering to meet an identified need.

Small local charities can't deal with distant earthquakes and floods though. When I wanted to give to a Pakistan disaster the usual suspects were very slow off the mark but I looked around and found a Muslim chaarity that seemed trustworthy, so did it through them.

(I should stress that the guide wasn’t just about gender. It also decreed that, when expressing support for others, staff should not say they “stand with” them, because this could “alienate people who are unable to stand”. I forget what the staff are meant to say instead. “Sit with”? But that could alienate people with haemorrhoids. It really is a minefield. Although I shouldn’t say that either, because it could alienate people who have had all their limbs blown off, and therefore struggle to do anything.)

I want to marry him.

Yes, as plenty of us who have worked in the charity sector know very well, small local charities can be an absolute shitshow. Oxfam are clearly awful, as are Amnesty, but that's not a good reason to assume the smaller charities are automatically a better bet.

Additionally, lobbying is an important part of what charities do and they're often the ones with the expertise to do it. Many problems need addressing at source as much as they need the symptoms treating. The problem isn't with lobbying itself, it's with the things being lobbied about.

Please note that this article didn't bother to include the image in question.

Typical bloody Graun.

Oxfam can call the video a mistake all it wants, we all know that's far from the truth.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned much is that (last time I checked) the video still started with the promotion of bilateral mastectomies for girls. Charities would be censured for the promotion of self harm or anorexia, why is this OK?

Apologies if this is a repeat.

I expect that someone on the board of directors for Oxfam Canada may also have been ‘advising’ on LGBT comms policy.

https://www.oxfam.ca/who-we-are/our-people/our-team/

F Johnson…. What a surprise!

There’s a lefty woke bro in charge of Oxfam, they are the worst kind of women haters in my opinion.

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

100% agree with you MommyisBest As a society that’s exactly what we need to focus on.

And thanks to everyone who has written to Oxfam and copied in their MPs and the Advertising Standards Authority, all this helps to raise the level of thinking about how charity advocacy should be regulated.

As private donors and taxpayers funding government grants to charities we should all be concerned about regulation in the charity sector (though it’s good that PPs are rightly noting that all charities are not the same!)

I haven’t thought about this issue that much before so this is just quick Google research, but it looks like political/government attention on charities seems to have been diluted a lot lately at the highest levels of this Conservative government.

Any apparent loss of focus does not seem good at a time when the work of charities is needed more than ever due to war, international crises, the global Covid pandemic, massive economic disparities and the cost of living and climate crises, and the resources of governments are stretched more than ever.

The Conservatives have not used the specific ministerial brief in government with responsibility for charities since 2022, the job of ‘Minister for Civil Society’, which had been set up by Blair and continued by successive governments. From what I can see, civil society has now been rolled in with loads of other responsibilities at Ministerial level, which can only make the focus and accountability of government much less visible on the charity sector.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_for_Civil_Society

The Minister for Civil Society (now vacant) was a position within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the Government of the United Kingdom. It concerned and directly supported charities, volunteering and social enterprise.

Your post @mommyisbest made me think about the distinction between deserving and undeserving poor in receiving charity support, though now instead of the “feckless” todays undeserving poor are those who won’t buy into gender identity or critical race theory. I wouldn’t be keen to approach any of them for help.

@PotteringPondering excellent, very well written! And you are right, TERF is a very offensive slur & I think more action needs to be taken. Bigot is another label commonly thrown around. I'll link an article from Pink News which referred to "bigots" savaging Innocent smoothies Mermaid charity tweet.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/05/31/innocent-drinks-mermaids-tweet-deleted

"Innocent Drinks savaged by bigots"..

Crikey. They're laying it on a bit thick, surely? I read that as 'savaged by beasts' at first.