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.

All good points. I think that this exposes a weakness of relying on a regulatory environment (see also healthcare, schools and many others). It is impossible to create a regulatory framework for a diverse environment that doesn’t also create perverse incentives and undesirable outcomes.

Regulation should be a safety net, to protect against serious wrongdoing, but we increasingly rely on it to set sector goals and outcomes, and that is distorting service delivery and creating a management structure that is about servicing the regulator, not achieving the organisation’s core goals.

Oh absolutely. Achieving aim 1 could well lead to followup aim 2. As, indeed, it did for Stonewall - first with the general equality (2010 EA = achieved), moving on to marriage equality (2015 achieved) , and as you say that could have been followed by a legitimate aim to uphold those laws.

But that shift of aim perhaps needs more official scrutiny for a charity to retain status. Otherwise you end up with aim 3 being 'keep the charity paying my salary'.

The 31 million comes from the Government Foreign Aid Budget of the UK. Gifted by us tax payers of course.
Nothing to do with Gift Aid - Oxfam has a number of income streams.

They got funding from the DfID (or whatever it's called now). Not sure what the current state of play is.
https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/oxfam-gb-banned-bidding-aid-funding-less-month-reinstated/management/article/1712076

The main costs of many / most charities is salaries, even where services are delivered by volunteers someone needs to support them. Lots of charities try to minimise support staff because of how it looks, but then you have people doing their own admin even at CEO level, which isn’t value for money or efficient. So much of what the sector does is relationship-based. You can involve volunteers to some degree, but there are many functions you need to know someone with the right skills is going to be there at specific times and with enough responsibility and authority to make decisions, and that they are going to be there consistently rather than people accessing services being bounced from one person to another.

The Express are reporting that Oxfams CEO is standing down because of this

"Oxfam chief Danny Sriskandarajah is quitting"
www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1781576/oxfam-jk-rowling-pride-anti-trans-cartoon

He obviously applied for the job before the cartoon came out, but did he know it was in the making? I don’t know what connection there is between Oxfam GB and Oxfam International. He presumably presided over the language guide though. I really hope NEF doesn’t go woke, they’ve done some good work.

It's not a battle for women only. Many, many men agree with pushing back against the trans cult. I had a few things to pick up today and am heading to B&Q instead because of this. It's about £30's worth, but still...

I've just seen what's happened with Wickes. I just do not understand senior people running businesses saying to a tranche of potential customers, we don't like you, sod off.

I think some of them imagine they're going to win over new customers because of it. Not immediately obvious how the COO of Wickes came to that conclusion, mind.

I thought he’d been on gardening leave for a while. And had not been active in the post when this video was released. I thought I had read this somewhere.

I still have access to the Oxfam internal system for volunteers, the "Pride Guide" was sent out at the end of May to encourage stores to plan/display the Pride merch and maximise sales.

Some highlights:

• asking volunteers to download and use pronoun badges.
• Links to 8 other campaigning organisations including Stonewall, Mermaids, Peter Tatchell FOundation.
• encouragement to order different Pride flags and claim the money back through shop expenses

They are "trying" to address the main volunteer in their FAQ but I really don't think the answer is any good:

Q: What does Pride Month have to do with tackling poverty?

A: Around the world, LGBTQIA+
people are more likely that non-
LGBTQIA+ people to live in poverty
and to experience homelessness.
Tackling poverty means
supporting everyone affected,
especially those most
marginalised by societies. You can
read more about our
intersectional approach to the
work we do here:

The Express article doesn't suggest to me that he's resigning because of this. He's got another job lined up that he'd have applied for some weeks ago. I don't think he'd likely have known about the cartoon, and if he had and was bothered enough by it to consider resigning he'd have put a stop to it instead wouldn't he? Possible that he's fed up more generally with the intolerance within Oxfam but he's not said so.

And no, the Chief Exec has not resigned over this, he's been in position 5 or 6 years and is moving on. Pre-planned.

I had read he had been not active in the role for a while and had stated at the time he was off until the end of the year. It sounded more like he went on ‘sabbatical’ and found another job in the meantime.

I'm sceptical of this claim that LGBT+ people are more likely to be in poverty. The only data I've ever seen on it was for the UK and showed higher salaries overall. It was dubbed the "gay pound" in the press. Likely explanations being that they're much more likely to be university educated, to live in London and less likely to have children to support. I've also heard theories that gay men in particular are less type cast in terms of jobs open to them so are freer to choose traditionally male or female jobs.

I guess Oxfam would argue that it's not so rosy worldwide where there's more discrimination. But I can't imagine how countries that persecute homosexually could possibly have any reliable data on poverty rates. We do know that children cause poverty though - there's really clear evidence for that worldwide and very obvious reasons why it's hard to support children if you're poor. And LGBT+ people are very much less likely to be parents. So it seems quite unlikely.

I'd be more comfortable with Amnesty supporting LGBT+ groups as they undoubtedly face discrimination, but would really like to see Oxfam challenged over this claim about the link with poverty.

Such an interesting point.

I'd also be fascinated to know if Oxfam have hard evidence for this, or if it's just generalisations that suit a particular narrative and feel plausible to activists.

Seen at an oxfam near me

I find it so affirming when I see stickerperson has been out and about.

Have now had a bit of a Google and there does seem to be some US data (and some other UK studies too) that suggest gay people are more likely to be in poverty. They're not good though as they're not adjusting for family size and composition. This is something that everyone researching poverty knows should always be done - there's an agreed method for doing it whereby a baby counts for about half a person, an older child for 0.7, etc. Not doing it for a group who are obviously less likely to have children than the one you're comparing them to ("cis gender heterosexuals") is dubious. The studies seem to have found some evidence of lesbians earning less than straight women, which could suggest some workplace discrimination, but gay men earning more. Much less data on trans earnings.

But is Oxfam really concerned about Americans earning slightly less than average Americans rather than people in desperate poverty in other countries?

This article about a woman working as a doctor in a remote and desperately poor population is very good, and moving and shows how very badly the work that Oxfam do do/should be doing is needed in the world.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-64948453
Such a contrast to producing leaflets full of hatred with rainbow flags on them and talk about chosen families and breast removal. The little boy featured here who risks death because his family can't afford to travel for treatment should be where they focus they're efforts. I'm really angry at Oxfam over this leaflet because people are (understandable) questioning what they're doing and may tar all charities with the same brush, when their work is so badly needed in the world.

But is Oxfam really concerned about Americans earning slightly less than average Americans rather than people in desperate poverty in other countries?

No they aren't. If you look at their "finances and accountability" pages, you can see where they are spending their money. https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-we-do/about/our-finances-and-accountability The "Pride Guide" which had the FAQs is unreferenced.

Top 5 countries where money is spent are: South Sudan, Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Syria. Now I'm sure that being a lesbian woman in Yemen or a gay man in Syria is not a bundle of laughs. And yes, gay, lesbian and transgender people are discriminated against in Syria/Yemen/Iraq and that is wrong, but as well as being discriminated against they are starving to death and have no clean water.

Pride month is a very developed world sort of thing. Europe, North America, Australia, Brazil. Quite how an Oxfam in Chipping Norton displaying a pride flag is making any difference to a gay/trans person in Iraq beats me.

The problem is that most volunteers and members of the public perceive Oxfam as a disaster relief charity, which raises money to improve the lives of people living in abject poverty in places like Syria. To be there when there's a natural disaster to provide clean water and food. Oxfam Head Office want to be a political campaigning organisation.

I genuinely believe that the Western pride movement is actively harming gay and lesbian people abroad by this point. If it had stopped at LGB, or rather if other groups hadn't jumped on board and re-purposed it, then it would have helped its counterparts in other countries. I mean, it has helped but it's now been thrown into reverse. The reason is very simple. LGB rights used to have the messaging that "we're not different, we just want to love our partner and have a normal life". Well that's where gay and lesbian people still are in most of the world - trying to get people to just let them live a normal life. But every time they say this the rest of their country is seeing parades in the West filled with men in dog masks and leather thongs, children sitting in a circle around a man in drag or 12 year old on stage having dollars stuffed in a skirt he is wearing as he dances for a crowd of adults... and they say "Yeah, pull the other one, off the rooftop with you."

The Western pride movement is one of the most self-absorbed movements in the west. It's like some garishly coloured versions of the Pharisees in the bible giving money to the poor. 'Look at me, I'm kind and compassionate'. But then go to something like Pride in Bristol and you'll find more queer people than lesbian or gay. And by queer I mean Straight with a "bi cut".

I genuinely believe that the Western pride movement is actively harming gay and lesbian people abroad by this point. If it had stopped at LGB, or rather if other groups hadn't jumped on board and re-purposed it, then it would have helped its counterparts in other countries.

This is my concern only I’d expand that to say that Western Pride, hijacked by the TQ+, is now actively harming the LGB in western countries as well as other countries. You see this in the US so clearly. The ‘no LGB without the T’ teaming has resulted in an immense backlash of frightening homophobia and restrictive laws that include LGB people eg Florida. If only there had been a more measured and thoughtful recognition that LGB is all about one’s sex and sexual orientation, and not about gender, in the first place.