Women's rights general conversations - Thread 6

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 5.

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or "Has anybody noticed this recurring theme that keeps coming up??" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions in the supermarket, grr"- that sort of thing).

Thinking around this, inspired by another thread, there's three main reasons I hate tone policing -

1. With TRA's, it wouldn't have made the slightest difference. We could have asked sweetly, nicely, if we could maybe have kept some of our rights, please? If you don't mind? and still been told to die in a grease fire. They see any form of negotiation or debate as a form of weakness to be exploited.

2. when all this shit comes to an end (and it's definitely coming), the most virulently women haters of them all will cover their backs and reserve ferret by saying 'well, maybe you had a point...but it was the way you said it!'. That's why Comerfield is still unhealthily obsessed with Magdalene Berns. How dare a woman speak like that! which leads me onto....

3. women being expected to be nice, to be kind, to compromise, to be everyone's mum. Perhaps if women had been able to be much less kind and at the very beginning of this had felt able to say 'no, that's absolute nonsense, fuck off', this whole shit show wouldn't have gone so far. But then the TRA's knew this, so any woman who did was labelled all sort of shit and absolutely silenced/smeared/cancelled.

Actually 4 reasons, the other being that because women were silenced, people (particularly men) who are now becoming aware of all this shit are saying 'why haven't women done anything?! Where are the feminists?!'

It was late. I forgot I was a sock, doh!

I too have come to hate tone-policing (and I know I’ve been guilty of it myself in the past). I’ve also realised that agreeing with one person on one thing does not mean endorsing everything they have ever said, and people don’t need to distance themselves from things and people or utter endless qualifications before they are allowed an opinion. The most effective communicators in this debate are those who speak most directly.

I use a male dominated forum. There's a daily chat thread on it. One fella posts ancient memes that are totally irrelevant to the thread.

I've started reporting the misogynistic/sexist ones as I find them offensive and the site moderator deletes them.

I've now been slagged off by the said fella and referred to as the fun police and a self appointed member of the Royal family.

Never the blokes fault is it?

Looks at bank balance... Did I forget to distribute it to the other five?

So sorry!

Goes off to polish the new Lamborghini

Speaking of strong women, how about this rather fabulous and glamorous lady?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Rhodes

It just tickles me no end that she did all her feats of strength in heels and magician's assistant type oufits.

And then there's this amazing woman:

Field Marshal Muthoni Kirima obituary

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/10e782de-57dc-11ee-aed5-2d6419a1ef3d?shareToken=ec31038b3b60baf212e72805929fcab1

Are linois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker the same person?

No, but related. Cousins, I think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pritzker_family

I sneaked a look at this in the Telegraph (archive link) about the National Trust.

https://archive.ph/Msw33

Not starting a new thread, bottled it, the last one got very shouty. Fwiw I hope Restore get a post or two. I think a diversity of view points is not a bad thing. True diversity, even people saying things you don't like.

Grr. Survey at work “what is your gender identity?” Options “Man, Woman, Other, Prefer not to say” There is no question on sex, but there are questions on race, disability, caring responsibilities, religion and sexual orientation. The demographic data requested isn’t identical to EA2010 protected characteristics. How should I respond?

Only “other” allows you to add commentary. Have drafted “Other. Woman is a sex class of human beings. I don’t identify as a woman; I am one. Why are you collecting data on gender identity and not (also) on sex?” but I worry it sounds a little petulant. How can I improve it?

I've been in correspondence with our HR department about the same issue on our staff survey. No free text box, so had to do it with a followup email. I can dig out the wording from that if you like, but I'm not sure it would help because all it got as a response was 'we asked the Pride nenetworkeho thinknit's fine, and this is more inclusive' and then a firm ignoring of further questions. I'd gone mainly for the 'but how will this give useful data?' angle, with specific reference to EA protected characteristics.

We've got another survey out this week, so I'll be picking up the question again if they've not fixed it (pretty sure they won't have done).

Other. Woman is a sex class of human beings. I don’t identify as a woman; I am one. Why are you collecting data on gender identity and not (also) on sex?” but I worry it sounds a little petulant. How can I improve it?

"I think there may be an error on the form. While it asked for how I identify my gender, there was no place where I could specify my sex".

Thanks both. I’d be interested in your wording @BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn but only if it’s easy for you to lay your hands on.

I like that approach @StephanieSuperpowers ; gets the point across without being confrontational.

Better than my usual response in the past few years, which has been to completely refuse any monitoring requests because if they can't collect proper data on something so basic and unmistakable, why would I entrust them with the rest of my personal information?

Modified slightly to remove things that identify the organisation, but this was the approximate text of my email.

"I'd like to ask about the protected characteristic questions in the staff survey. The introduction correctly stated the protectected charateristics in the Equality Act. However, the questions asked about gender identity (not in the Act) but not about sex (which is in the Act). This makes it impossible to disaggregate data by protected characteristics. Can you tell me:

• What was the reason for asking about gender identity instead of the protected characteristic of sex?
• How do you plan to monitor any signs of discrimination, or differences in survey responses, on the basis of sex if you do not collect this data?"

That looks like an extremely reasonable and well-worded email, Binturong. You'd hope it would have some impact.

Agreed, great communication as always, Bint.

Thirded!

Bintourong that's a bloody brilliant email. Factual and to the point. Hard to see how they could argue with it.

Elegantly phrased and straight to the point, bint.

odd question, but I need the hive mind...

I have a friend who needs to set up a website. She keeps trying to do it herself despite having no skills in that department whatsoever. (I can't help her as I know less about computers than she does)

Anyone know of roughly how much it would cost to pay someone to set one up? or where she might go for that sort of assistance?

or if you can recommend a company but don't want to shout about it on here you can always DM me.

she's going to waste more and more time if she keeps trying to do it herself.

and now I shall go read all the posts I just ignored.

I haven't used this company, and have no idea of their pricing or whether they are competitive, but I went to school with chap who runs it and as far as I know he's a competent human. (A minimal recommendation, I realise, but it's a starting point.) silverwebsites.co.uk/

I run a website @Boiledbeetle despite not having an IT background. I just learned what I needed with support from my brother (who has an incomprehensible IT job).

Very broadly speaking, your friend will need (1) the web pages (2) a domain name (3) a server to host it. The first item, which is what everyone thinks about because that's the surface bit you see, is not that hard to make on a variety of platforms, and can be done for free. The latter two are the actual boring background necessities and generally need to be paid for on a periodic basis.

If she has no computer knowledge at all, she's probably best trying a one-stop company like Squarespace. Their service will include loads of attractive easy-to-customise templates for making the website, and then (AFAIK) you can pay them for the hosting and domain name.

NB: I don't use Squarespace at all, so have no affiliation and can't testify to the hosting service. I just see it advertised quite a lot and have had a curious look at their page templates (these are very nice-looking).

Thanks @BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn and @Kucinghitam

She does have the bones of a website, but I think she's after starting again,. She's just going round in circles at the moment, driving herself loopy and achieving absolutely nothing, but piling stress on herself as everyone keeps telling her its really easy to do and she just cant do it.

So I think she's probably at the point where she needs to be able to sit down with someone and say I want it to do this this and this, let me know what you need from me, otherwise let me know when its ready to go.

But as I've never had to have anything to do with any of that I'm way out of my depth as to what there is out there.

I shall investigate your suggestions. They will either be what I think she needs or hopefully set me off in the right direction.