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.

I caught up on reading New Scientist this morning, from the end of November. The cover story was about the family (yup) of Indo-European languages, and the search for the origin, or mother tongue (yes). And no matter how far back they go to primitive forms, which word do the linguists choose to illustrate their findings? Mother, mere, moeder, mater, ma, and I can't remember the rest, but easily identifiable even in Sanskrit.
And this bunch of lunatics want to eradicate something held at the core of language so that you reach the 21st century and it disappears. What will future linguists make of it?

Oxfam alternatives: https://www.concern.org.uk/ looks promising. Similar focus to Oxfam, nicely transparent about what percentage of donations goes on what, and although this page https://www.concern.org.uk/what-we-do/gender-equality is labelled gender equality it seems to actually be very sensible measures to improve sex equality.

Anyone know more about them?

Or this one? https://selfhelpafrica.org/

More geographically limited, but even better in terms of the proportion of donations actually getting to the people on the ground. And they seem pro-women: the first item on their page is marking IWD, quite a few posts about women farmers and the specific difficulties they face, and this https://selfhelpafrica.org/uk/gender-comic-book-helps-unite-families/ - makes a nice change to read something titled 'Gender comic book' and come away thinking "What a good idea!" Instead of "WTF?!"

Treaclemine · Today 16:59
I caught up on reading New Scientist this morning, from the end of November. The cover story was about the family (yup) of Indo-European languages, and the search for the origin, or mother tongue (yes). And no matter how far back they go to primitive forms, which word do the linguists choose to illustrate their findings? Mother, mere, moeder, mater, ma, and I can't remember the rest, but easily identifiable even in Sanskrit.
And this bunch of lunatics want to eradicate something held at the core of language so that you reach the 21st century and it disappears. What will future linguists make of it

I so agree there is a bunch of lunatics holding sway. It is beyond belief that the word is being attacked and weakened while people stand by and feel virtuous. Thank goodness for the House of Lords doing what they did.

I notice that our local Oxfam shop is advertising for volunteers. I'm very tempted to pick up an application form and make it clear that I am GC just to see the response.

No time to actually volunteer, and if I had it would be elsewhere.

I refuse to buy or donate at the shops but called in yesterday to assess what was going on. Plenty of alphabet nonsense posters etc, but apart from the cards for eg giving a goat, nothing that I could see about what used to be their core aims.

They do have a nice line in Moomin merch which I shall be sad to swerve going forward, but I’ll live

There's always the Moomin Shop website and stores. I get dragged into the Covent Garden one every time we're in a nearby pub the vicinity.

Fuck Oxfam indeed. Rotten to the core. I want to go and change the writing on the front of their shops. It currently says

Grows vegetables
Fills classrooms
Drills wells
Empowers women
Fights poverty

Hmm, maybe
Rapes women
Slurs JKR
Etc

Slighlty off topic, but as this thread has shown getting publicity for these attack on women into the MSM has meant relying on right wing papers. (Although am surpised to see the Guardian even recognising it.)

It was announced yesterday that the Telegraph, daily and sunday, are to be sold off.

Not because they aren't sustainable, but because they are they are the best options for the owners to raise money to pay off other debts.

If it gets taken over by a financial company as a good money maker, more than likely the editorial stance will be influenced by corporate policies. Which as we know have been captured.

Many a Big Charity seems to be led by people who think they're too big to fail. That the government would always step in and save them. No one is too big to fail (Lehman wasn't) and no charity should be prevented from going to the wall "just because".

I'm not sure they will be ended by this but there are a lot of them who seem to delight in taking a lot of government money - our money - and then being unaccountable and uninterested in being accountable. That has to stop.

Empowers women

Need to add on the end there to be raped and put into prostitution by our workers

Did they empower the women and girls so heinously abused by their workers to achieve justice? Did they hell as like, because that would have meant men being held to account for their crimes and that, as Oxfam tell us, would never do.

Fuck Oxfam indeed and not before time.

I'm not sure they will be ended by this but there are a lot of them who seem to delight in taking a lot of government money - our money - and then being unaccountable and uninterested in being accountable. That has to stop.

Oxfam were stopped from receiving tax payer funded grants after the Charity Commission investigation in 2019 but were allowed to apply again in 2021.

No, they shouldn't be in receipt of tax payer funds, in fact a number of Charities should not. You would have thought lessons would have been learnt after the Kidscape debacle but as usual they were not. I also find it a very questionable use of tax payer money, do the tax payers want or agree to fund some of these charities, are they ever asked?

Good post. Maybe they wanted imagery that suggested terfs are a bit nazi, but lacked the intelligence to check the origins and context of the images they found.

I can't believe what I'm reading! And what about actual women, does their opinion on influential women count for nowt.. They are never ever getting a penny from me again. Is their any petition or anything about Oxfam? That tweet is shocking & chilling in equal measures.

Late to the party here, but @mommyisbest , your post was so powerful and thought-provoking. I wish it could be read more widely.

Yes, the huge irony is that whilst they are posturing about being 'inclusive' all the evidence points to Oxfam employees being the least diverse, most cliquey, rigidly group-thinking people you could possibly encounter.

If they'd actually had any diversity in their paid staff, a few older employees not steeped in queer theory for example, some working class people, some people with a passing knowledge of history and past Nazi propaganda, people who were in any way willing to question or think of the wider context, there is no way this would have gone out without someone saying 'hang on a minute....'.

The very fact this was signed off shows how lacking in diversity of thought their core employees are. And ultimately, even if the multiple rape allegations and misogyny didn't exist, if your employees are completely incapable of even predicting the backlash to something like this, I don't think they're going to be especially effective in provided the aid needed to people in other countries who are suffering and whose lived experience is even further removed from theirs than UK feminists.

Saw this in reply to a tweet about Childline, seems relevant here, especially this, which was news to me:

"What well-intentioned government officials may think of as common sense — that charity should be an independent, apolitical process focused primarily on supplementing the state — is not what the law mandates. As with so much bad legislative reforms, New Labour were the forerunners. In 2006, after years of secondary legislation, Tony Blair’s government redefined “charitable purposes” in the Charities Act to include the advancement of human rights, conflict resolution and reconciliation and the promotion of religious or racial harmony or equality and diversity.

David Cameron’s administration reaffirmed the reforms in 2011. Prior to these changes, a charity that sought to promote inclusivity would have to provide evidence that their activities promoted religion or education or gave some tangible benefit to the community. Essentially, the Conservative Party granted express permission for controversial organisations to benefit from charitable status: left-wing political goals suddenly became defined as non-political in the eye of the law.
This, combined with the financial independence granted by the support from wealthy trusts, has allowed the charitable sector to become increasingly divorced from public opinion."
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2023/radical-chic-charities/

(The tweet it was posted under: https://twitter.com/safeschoolsuk/status/1666895411708059651?s=46&t=WHoOZZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ)

That's very interesting @ResisterRex

dimorphism Very many years ago I worked at Oxfam HQ in a role which was concerned with publicity and fundraising. There was a huge range of staff there, from all backgrounds and beliefs. There was a collective feeling of doing our very best to alleviate poverty and suffering, while trying to spend donor's money as wisely as possible.

Whenever materials were being prepared, for adverts, mailshots, posters and the like, the artwork and text was discussed in depth. Did it give a positive image of the people we were trying to help? Did it represent people fairly? Did it reflect Oxfam's core values? We "lived with" artwork for a few days until everyone was happy that it was acceptable. Only then did production go ahead.

Something has gone badly wrong in the intervening decades. I feel so sad as well as angry.

FourChimneys It must be very disorienting seeing your former workplace become almost unrecognisable. What do you put the shift in workplace culture and practice down to at Oxfam?
Obviously it’s not a change that is unique to Oxfam, sadly. A lot of private businesses and companies, public sector bodies, government departments, charities and others that have done a good job (and often with the input of very dedicated women!) and who could still do work that is much needed, instead now these days have taken this sexist dogma to heart and corporately now go out of their way to chuck women under the bus to validate a few men’s feelings.

Ex Stonewall chappy there now , isn’t he?

https://twitter.com/bindelj/status/1666909875224412160?t=ToGHEE8WMxTJe_Imo0BjCQ&s=19

This absolutely dosgusted me. 'Whorephobic'! I doubt impoverished women outside the western world think sex work is empowering and call themselves 'whores'.

Anne Widdecombe:

""But over a long period of time... first of all it went left and very noticeably so, and now it appears to be actively campaigning over political issues and the charity commission does not allow charities to do that."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/style/ann-widdecombe-slams-oxfam-for-targeting-jk-rowling-in-pro-trans-cartoon/ar-AA1cjjRU?li=AAnZ9Ug

Jesus

nice to see the Telegraph putting the boot in

i think the current management are fucked

good

Something has gone badly wrong for Oxfam to change so much.

How on earth the trans women must have access to everything and if women speak up with concerns means they are bigots or Terfs etc for an organisation that uses so many mainly women volunteers to staff it's shops, women donate, fundraise etc. Someone at the top hates women. I wonder who that might be?