A social justice movement like any other.
https://twitter.com/blablafishcakes/status/1408791892700151819… Read the restAll entries by this author
Reinventing the theorywheel
Jun 25th, 2021 4:38 pm | By Ophelia BensonGender theory is a powerful tool to address the oppression of female & non-normative gender identities – and to transform systems of power hierarchies.
Today, I presented the findings of my report on Gender Theory to the Human Rights Council.
Read more: https://t.co/pwhgSsUFGC pic.twitter.com/VZ1Rl9Vg6j— Victor Madrigal-Borloz (@victor_madrigal) June 25, 2021
No, it really isn’t. We already have a powerful tool to address the oppression of women: feminism. We don’t need a hipster bro to come along and tell us how awesome gender theory is. If he wants to help he could just tell his fellow hipster bros to shut up and let feminists talk.… Read the rest
Brutally
Jun 25th, 2021 3:45 pm | By Ophelia BensonMSF mourns three colleagues brutally murdered in Ethiopia
… Read the restStaff at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) are today in mourning after receiving confirmation of the death of three of our colleagues who were working in Tigray region, Ethiopia.
Maria Hernandez, our emergency coordinator; Yohannes Halefom Reda, our assistant coordinator; and Tedros Gebremariam Gebremichael, our driver, were travelling yesterday afternoon when we lost contact with them. This morning, their vehicle was found empty and a few metres away, their lifeless bodies.
No words can truly convey all our sadness, shock and outrage against this horrific attack. Nor can words soothe the loss and suffering of their families and loved ones, to whom we relay our deepest sympathy and condolences.
We condemn
A process of dehumanisation
Jun 25th, 2021 3:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonGlinner points out that the “heehee look at us threatening violence” cover of Trans Studies Quarterly – this one –
The cover of an “academic” journal. I kid you not. Someone probably thought this was “edgy”. It’s not edgy, but it is revealing. This is what #nodebate looks like. pic.twitter.com/R4qku3mgef
— Colin Wight (@colwight) June 25, 2021
– is just the latest in a long series. He includes 4 that we’ve all seen many times. There are many many more. Remember these at the San Francisco public library?
Hur hur. Isn’t it interesting that they do this and we don’t yet we’re constantly accused of violence and oppression?… Read the rest
Tripartite
Jun 25th, 2021 11:32 am | By Ophelia BensonOne mitigation. It still stinks but at least Manumua isn’t missing her chance.
BREAKING NEWS : IWF has selected TNG Nini #Manumua with a Tripartite invitation!! Nini is going, guys!!! pic.twitter.com/S9vUzj7wXl
— Mar Vickers #32742 (@mar_vickers) June 25, 2021
What’s a tripartite invitation?
A Tripartite invitation is basically the IOC, IWF and the Host Org committee getting together and picking athletes from under represented countries to invite (hence Invitation) to ensure fairer representation.
I would suggest Nini's choice was no coincidence. The outcry helped.
— Mar Vickers #32742 (@mar_vickers) June 25, 2021
I’m relieved. The maddening unfairness of it was haunting me.… Read the rest
Check the books, Andrew
Jun 25th, 2021 10:56 am | By Ophelia BensonAndrew Sullivan is crowing.
Amazing that active race discrimination by the federal government is found unconstitutional. Call it “equity” if you want. It’s still racist. https://t.co/D1dWRcRoop
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) June 25, 2021
So if an army of accountants added up all the numbers and could tell us exactly how many billions of dollars were withheld from former slaves and their descendants by a century of deeply racist laws that for instance made it illegal for those descendants to refuse a job, no matter how shit the pay and dangerous the conditions – would Sullivan still call it “racist” to try to pay back some little fraction of that massive sum?
Not to mention all the wages not paid for … Read the rest
Please abandon the plan
Jun 25th, 2021 10:22 am | By Ophelia Benson… Read the restThe Manhattan district attorney’s office has informed Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that it is considering criminal charges against his family business, the Trump Organization, in connection with fringe benefits the company awarded a top executive, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
If the case moves ahead, the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., could announce charges against the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, as soon as next week, the people said.
An indictment of the Trump Organization could mark the first criminal charges to emerge from Mr. Vance’s long-running investigation into Mr. Trump and his business dealings, and raises the startling prospect of a former
Wanting to understand white rage
Jun 25th, 2021 9:48 am | By Ophelia BensonRight-wingers don’t like it when left-wingers are critical of the military.
When it’s Fox News on the other hand…
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has attacked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, calling him “a pig” and “stupid” for defending teaching cadets and service personnel differing viewpoints, including aspects of critical race theory.
Huh. Imagine if some mouthy feminist had said that.
… Read the restThe theory—which “maps the nature and workings of ‘institutional racism,'” according to Kendall Thomas, a law professor at Columbia University—was little known outside academic circles a few years ago, but is now at the centre of a culture war. Republicans in more than 20 states have proposed or passed legislation to
Election “Integrity”
Jun 25th, 2021 8:46 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Justice Department is suing Georgia.
The Justice Department will file a federal lawsuit Friday against the state of Georgia for its efforts to enact new voting restrictions that federal authorities allege discriminate against Black Americans, according to people familiar with the matter.
Which would have been illegal under the 1964 Voting Rights Act, had it not been for the disastrous Supreme Court ruling in Holder v Shelby that killed the preclearance part of the Act. They said oh that’s all over now, and RBG said it will come right back if you take the protections away, and guess what that’s exactly what happened.
… Read the restThe legal challenge takes aim at Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, which was passed in March
Self-identifying
Jun 25th, 2021 7:23 am | By Ophelia BensonHayley Krischer at Salon December 2014:
So who is Charles Clymer? Clymer, who self-identifies as a Feminist Leader, has a Women for Equality Facebook page (which now seems mostly defunct) where he’s been alleged to verbally attack women as well as accused of deleting women’s comments who disagree with him. In an article for the Huffington Post last year, Darlena Cunha reported that a former moderator of his page, Zoe Katherine, disagreed with him and then was threatened with being kicked out of the group. “If we did it privately we were guilt-tripped, or simply ignored,” Katherine explained.
Who needs male “feminist leaders” anyway? Who asked him? Imagine Andrew Sullivan self-identifying as a Black Power leader; it would make … Read the rest
From what to what?
Jun 25th, 2021 7:07 am | By Ophelia BensonI bet the footnotes are a hoot.
The cover of an “academic” journal. I kid you not. Someone probably thought this was “edgy”. It’s not edgy, but it is revealing. This is what #nodebate looks like. pic.twitter.com/R4qku3mgef
— Colin Wight (@colwight) June 25, 2021
More victims
Jun 24th, 2021 4:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnother residential school, another unmarked mass grave cemetery.
… Read the restLeaders of Indigenous groups in Canada said Thursday investigators have found more than 600 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school for Indigenous children — a discovery that follows last month’s report of 215 bodies found at another school.
The bodies were discovered at the Marieval Indian Residential School, which operated from 1899 to 1997 where the Cowessess First Nation is now located, about 85 miles (135 kilometers) east of Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.
A search with ground-penetrating radar resulted in 751 ’’hits,″ indicating that at least 600 bodies were buried in the area, said Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess. The radar operators have said their
See also: the Illuminati
Jun 24th, 2021 1:19 pm | By Ophelia BensonAh yes the old “crypto” ploy. They’re hiding so we can’t detect them but we know they’re there! We totally know. We know for certain. Even though they’re hiding.
Confronted with the evidence that CRT is not being taught in schools, Sullivan pivots to crypto-CRT: That CRT is secretly influencing our educators. Which is totally non-falsifiable and allows him to label anything he doesn't like as CRT. pic.twitter.com/bkV3EGL7AZ
— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) June 23, 2021
Bioessentialist conceptions of gender
Jun 24th, 2021 11:38 am | By Ophelia BensonOoohhh deeeep.
Gendering animals serves to normalise bioessentialist conceptions of gender. When we gender animals, we forget that sex is assigned. We begin to believe that sex is literally ~in~ the body.
— Florence Ashley (@ButNotTheCity) June 24, 2021
Yeah don’t gender animals. That would be very wrong. … Read the rest
Dear colleagues
Jun 24th, 2021 11:23 am | By Ophelia BensonAnyone would think there were tumbrils rolling down the streets, or gulags swallowing the condemned.
https://twitter.com/BodmassX/status/1408110852352450567Not only would one think of tumbrils and gulags, one would also think that the people filling them were feminist women. Forget Robespierre, forget Stalin, forget Hitler, the really dangerous people are feminist women who persist in thinking that only women are women and that thus men are not women.
Why does the wellbeing of women not “greatly concern” the vice-chancellor of the Open University? Why does women’s “feeling of being abandoned” not matter?
Rhetorical question. We know why. Women don’t matter.… Read the rest
Typical of the culture wars
Jun 24th, 2021 11:02 am | By Ophelia Benson“Folks, we’re in a cultural warfare today,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said at a news conference alongside six other members of the all-Republican House Freedom Caucus. “Critical race theory asserts that people with white skin are inherently racist, not because of their actions, words or what they actually believe in their heart — but by virtue of the color of their skin.”
No, it doesn’t. That’s not what it is. That’s not what it is. I’m not saying there’s no one who thinks that or says that, I’m saying it’s not what Critical Race Theory is.
… Read the restAndrew Hartman, a history professor at Illinois State University, described the battle over critical race theory as
It has become a culture war issue
Jun 24th, 2021 10:40 am | By Ophelia BensonMatt Gaetz wants us to think the US military is too woke.
… Read the restThe chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, responded sharply to questions from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., on Wednesday about the examination of critical race theory in the U.S. military.
“I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding — having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?” Milley said.
He continued brusquely: “And I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned, noncommissioned officers of being, quote, ‘woke’ or something else, because we’re studying
Guest post: Spongy definitions
Jun 24th, 2021 9:30 am | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by Freemage on On thin ice.
To an extent, the whole Trans Debate has come down to which set of adjectives the nouns “man” and “woman” should be tied to–GCFs hold that those terms apply to “Male” and “Female”, while TRAs insist that they apply to “Masculine” and “Feminine”.
The TRA position falls apart once you give it a hard look under this light, because it’s trivially easy to point out that the latter adjectives have spongy, shifting definitions, and as categories have often had traits that swapped from one side to the other. Computer programming used to be a feminine occupation, for instance, because it was unglamorous and relatively low-paid. Once it became more rewarding, … Read the rest
The resistance grows
Jun 24th, 2021 9:15 am | By Ophelia Benson… Read the restMs Cherry, who will return to Arnot Manderson Advocates, said that as she no longer had front bench duties for the SNP in Westminster, she would take on “human rights and public law cases from time to time as my duties as a constituency MP allow”.
…
“I am grateful to the dean of Faculty for granting me a dean’s dispensation to reflect the fact that my availability to be instructed will necessarily be limited by the requirement to be at Westminster regularly and to fulfil my duties to my constituents,” she said.
…
Ms Cherry added: “I remain very committed to the law as an important instrument for upholding human rights and preventing discrimination and
