Don’t go thinking Canada is perfect.

The Federal Standing Committee on Finance heard from a variety of speakers about economic disparities, including gender inequality, Tuesday in Charlottetown.

The only problem? The committee didn’t have any female members present.

Because women are such a tiny minority that such a committee can’t possibly be expected to represent them?

Jenny Wright, executive director of the St. John’s Status of Women Council, posted a tweet Tuesday highlighting the irony of the fact that she was about to speak in front of an all-male government panel about income inequality for women.

https://twitter.com/JenEWright/status/788364286854729732

Nine members; nine men. Marvelous, isn’t it?

“Any standing committee like this needs to go for gender parity,” Wright told Yahoo Canada News after the presentation, adding the diversity of presentations called for a diversity of panelists. 

Other speakers included representatives for not just groups like hers but also small businesses and provincial governments, she said.

She addressed the committee members about the importance of using gender analysis tools when creating budgets, she said, and the need to include measures like national childcare programs and a national minimum wage in order to reduce gender wage disparity.

“I was urging them to listen to the World Health Organization and other organizations who have been calling on all governments to use gender assessment tools when they’re putting together budgets,” Wright said. She was disappointed that none of the panel members had any follow-up questions or comments on the matter when given the chance to respond.

That’s ok. They can speak for women.

The committee met on Persons Day, which celebrates the 1929 court decision that legally defined women as persons under law. It’s also one day after an Oxfam report highlighted the income inequality women still experience in Canada and around the world.

It’s astonishing, isn’t it? Less than a century ago, women were not persons under law. Women were like dogs and cats, pots and pans, goods and chattels. Stuff that men owned.

Other organizations and governments have provided frameworks that can be used by our government to implement budgetary measures that can help reduce these disparities, Wright said.

“The policies have to ensure that women are less reliant on services and contributing more to the economy,” she said. 

“What I got from that committee was absolute crickets. It was really frustrating to see that they couldn’t find a question for how economic policy relates to half the population.”

Half, yes, but the half that doesn’t count.

Meghan Murphy says why she will no longer write for Rabble.ca.

This has been a long time coming for a number of reasons, but I chose to stay on in the past because I knew that if I left, never again would we see an abolitionist or radical feminist voice or analysis there, and I felt it important to ensure a feminist analysis existed in a space that claims to be a progressive and leftist one.

Recently, I felt I had no choice but to draw a line due to a decision made by a number of editors to publish, then remove (about seven hours after publication), a piece I wrote that was critical of the dehumanizing language Planned Parenthood has adopted to discuss women, reproductive rights, and women’s reproductive capacities.

Women’s rights exist because women are discriminated [against] on the basis of sex — because they are the only people on the planet who can get pregnant. Erasing that reality poses a serious risk to hard-fought-for protections women have and to our ability to claim discrimination on a legal basis.

After my piece was removed from the site, I waited for an editor to contact me to explain, 1) That this had happened, and 2) Why this had happened. No one contacted me, so I emailed the then-news editor (who had removed the piece) and the blogs editor, asking what was going on. The editor who removed the piece never responded to my query or accounted for her decision/actions, instead, the male blogs editor responded to me saying only, “Your article was removed because it contained transphobic language and violated our journalistic policy.” I responded, asking what specific “transphobic language” was contained in the article. I looked over the journalistic policy numerous times (and was, of course, already familiar with it) to see if something had changed within it, but could not find anything that defined any of the the language used in my article as “transphobic.” My follow up question was ignored by both the news editor and the blogs editor. To date, I have not heard from a single editor at rabble about this issue or my question.

I find that horrifying, but unpleasantly familiar.

This is censorship. As far as journalistic ethics go, editors should not remove already published pieces unless there is a libel or legal issue. Beyond that, many feminists and many progressives find various aspects of the current/popular discourse around “gender identity” troubling for numerous reasons. These debates should be heard, not silenced.

Historical revisionism and baseless accusations of “phobia” (which, in the current context of this debate, is a term equated with some form of “bigotry”) have no place on the left or in our so-called progressive, self-proclaimed “feminist” publications. Women are allowed to speak about their own realities and oppression. It is not our job to accommodate men in our movement, nor is it our job to validate the chosen “identities” of a few individuals.

It’s especially not  our job to validate the chosen “identities” of a few individuals at a time when the meaning of the word is so unsettled and contested and just plain incoherent. People like to say “anyone can identify however they choose” but that’s not actually true, unless by “identify” we mean just “think of inside one’s own head.” Sure, internally, we can all “identify” i.e. fantasize any way we like. Inside our heads we can be Elizabeth Tudor one minute and a fighter pilot the next. But can we “identify” any old way we like in the external world? No. Crossing borders we can’t do that, showing photo ID in various situations we can’t do that, on the job we can’t do that – and so on. I can identify as French inside my head if I like, but if I try it outside my head my French will be way too halting and clumsy to fool anyone. Donald Trump can identify as presidential, and many people will validate his identity, but more people won’t. External identity is social, and it just is not true that we all have to validate any and every identity other people might choose. It’s not even close to true.

I hope my decision to push back and to speak out publicly about this will lead rabble and other progressives/progressive organizations/media outlets to consider what they want political debate to look like. Perhaps nothing will change. Either way, I consider this response to and treatment of my work to be unacceptable and unethical and I will not stand idly by while women are erased, while feminist activism and theory is silenced and marginalized, and while history is rewritten in order to avoid offending a small minority of people and to avoid controversy.

The so-called left is failing badly when it comes to critical thought and analysis, but also when it comes to upholding principles and ethics that are imperative to ensuring political discourse is rigorous, honest, and rooted in a genuine desire to create a better, more equitable society, free from violence and oppression. I will not stand by and watch censorship and silencing replace critical thought and while women — the group of people who remain at the bottom of the social hierarchy, raped and beaten and murdered daily by men — are made to shut up about their own oppression and the source of that oppression.

My politics and work have never been determined by what makes others feel comfortable. Liars and cowards are aplenty. And if that’s who the left wants speaking for them, we are destined for failure.

The feminist movement has never shied away from speaking the truth, and we are not about to start now.

It’s so interesting, in a sickening way, that women are the one subordinated group that the left is willing to throw under the bus.

Another Savita Halappanavar, this time in Italy.

Italian prosecutors have begun an inquiry into the death after a miscarriage of a woman of 32 who was pregnant with twins.

The family of Valentina Milluzzo said the doctor treating her refused to abort the foetuses because he was a “conscientious objector” to abortion.

The hospital involved has categorically rejected the family’s claims.

…

Milluzzo was admitted to Cannizzaro hospital in the Sicilian city of Catania on 29 September after suffering complications and going into premature labour in her 19th week of pregnancy. She had had fertility treatment at another health centre.

She was in a stable condition in hospital for more than a fortnight but on 15 October her blood pressure and temperature dropped and her condition worsened.

According to the family’s lawyer, one of the foetuses was suffering breathing problems. The lawyer alleges that the gynaecologist refused to abort the foetuses in order to save the mother and said: “As long as it’s alive, I will not intervene.”

No action was taken while the troubled foetus was still alive and hours later both had died, the lawyer said.

Overnight, the mother’s condition deteriorated and she contracted an infection. On 16 October she was transferred to intensive care, where she died.

Apparently all the doctors in that hospital refuse to perform abortions.

A senior doctor at the hospital, Paolo Scollo, told the Corriere website that all the doctors in his department were “objectors”, and external doctors were called in when necessary. “However, in this case we’re talking about a spontaneous miscarriage, no external help was needed. So we do not think the doctor was negligent,” he said.

But sometimes a miscarriage does need external help – as in the case of Savita Halappanavar, for instance.

70% of doctors in Italy refuse to perform abortions.

Yesterday’s treat, by way of surreal punctuation to the three nausea-inducing debates, was a “traditional” event that “traditionally” features lashings of “good-natured” jokes between rival presidential candidates. Groan. Must we? Must we have things like the White House reporters’ dinner and the Al Smith dinner and “roasts”? The whole thing is excruciating. Last night’s was of course especially excruciating. (I’ve never seen an Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner before, and I’m glad I haven’t. Not the least of the horrors of this one was the prominence of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the guy who complained about the New York Times’s reporting on the Catholic church’s enabling of child-raping priests. Dolan protected the child-raping priests for decades.)

It was tense even before they started. Reporters tweeted that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump entered the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner from separate sides of the room, and didn’t even shake hands (which at this point really isn’t a surprise).

But there was hope that Thursday night’s event could serve as a comedic salve for the nation following three decidedly nasty presidential debates. The fundraising event for Catholic charities — now in its 71st year — traditionally is a time for the candidates to offer jokes about themselves and their opponent.

Oh don’t be so silly. Why do they have to go through some absurd joke-swapping ceremony? This isn’t a damn game show.

The Times seems to find it uncomfortable too:

By the end, facing cascading and uncomfortable jeers from a crowd full of white ties and gowns, he had called Hillary Clinton Catholic-hating, “so corrupt” and potentially jail-bound in a prospective Trump administration.

“I don’t know who they’re angry at, Hillary, you or I,” Mr. Trump said sheepishly from the dais, turning to his opponent amid the heckling.

It seemed clear to everyone else. Mr. Trump was being booed at a charity dinner.

So it went at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in Manhattan, a presidential campaign ritual of levity and feigned warmth — upended, like so much else in this election season, by the gale-force bid of Mr. Trump.

Breaking with decades of tradition at the gathering once he took the microphone, Mr. Trump set off on a blistering, grievance-filled performance that translated poorly to the staid setting, stunning many of the well-heeled guests who had filed into the Waldorf Astoria hotel for an uncommon spectacle: an attempted détente in a campaign so caustic that the candidates, less than 24 hours earlier, declined to shake hands on a debate stage.

It’s a gruesome idea, isn’t it. It looks like telling the electorate, sitting out there in OrdinaryPeopleLand, that the whole thing is a fake set up by the rich people attending the dinner.

Trump produced some “jokes” at first, but then – entirely predictably – recycled his familiar bullshit.

Mr. Trump said Mrs. Clinton was merely “pretending not to hate Catholics,” an allusion to hacked correspondences from Clinton aides that appeared to include messages criticizing Roman Catholic conservatism.

He wondered aloud how someone like Mrs. Clinton — “so corrupt,” he said — could sell herself to the American people. “What’s her pitch?” he asked. “The economy is busted, the government’s corrupt, Washington is failing. Vote for me.”

He fake-griped that “all the jokes were given to her in advance.”

By then, he had decisively lost the room. Those on the dais with him seemed to almost visibly writhe away from him at points — brows furrowing, smiles turning to grimaces. One man beside Mr. Trump became a viral sensation on social media, his face frozen and eye bulged by a quip gone awry.

There was at least one joke that got nothing but loud boos.

Traditions are weird.

An item by Jhenah Telyndru:

Here’s a little thing I made; feel free to pass it on!#votenasty #nastywoman

Pestilence, war, famine, and…pronouns.

The University of Toronto has slapped down a professor who openly criticized the use of gender-neutral pronouns and political correctness at the post-secondary institution.

Jordan Peterson, a psychology prof, was sent a letter Tuesday that told him that he must refer to students by whatever pronoun they wish — not just ‘he’ or ‘she’ — and that he must also refrain from making public statements on the topic.

Whatever pronoun they wish? What if every student comes up with a different “pronoun”; how is Peterson supposed to refer to them [or whatever “pronoun” “they” are using instead of “them”…] in that case? Is he expected to memorize every single new pronoun? Will he be punished if he forgets one, or accidentally switches them?

Also…what the hell has happened to the left that pronouns have become the hill it wants to die on? It’s so ludicrous. How often do teachers “refer to” students anyway? Mostly they talk to students, and “you” isn’t gendered; is the occasional use of “her” or “him” really such a throbbingly urgent matter?

Well, in my view, no, it’s not, and the enraged obsession with it looks decidedly infantile, or perhaps just narcissistic. I get that people want to be “validated” but I think that’s mostly just too much to expect of other people in general. We can’t expect other people in general to give enough of a shit about us to “validate” us – they have other things to do. We all have other things to do. It’s not our job to “validate” people. Treat them decently, yes, refrain from harassing or bullying them, yes, but validate them, no. And I think it’s ludicrous that a university is telling a professor what third person pronouns he can use.

The professor published two YouTube videos on the topic of political correctness in response to the university’s plan to conduct anti-racism and anti-bias programs.

His comments sparked tense rallies both for and against his position, which argued against gender-neutral pronouns and in favour of free speech.

The university said the refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns when asked would be discrimination.

Universities should not be telling professors what words they have to say. That’s for the professors to decide. They can tell them some words not to say; nobody wants professors calling students names, and especially not politically fraught names – cunt, nigger, faggot, kike; you know the ones. But what words to say? What pronouns to say? No.

The U of T letter, signed jointly by arts and science dean David Cameron and faculty and academic life vice-provost Sioban Nelson, said the university is committed to free speech but that right has limits.

“Your statements that you will refuse to refer to transgendered persons using gender neutral pronouns if they ask you to do so are contrary to the rights of those persons to equal treatment without discrimination based on their ‘gender identity’ and gender expression,’” the letter says.

Notice the scare quotes on “gender identity.” They’re not sure gender identity is a real thing, but they’re bullying Peterson over it anyway.

I look forward to the time when we’ve moved beyond The Great Pronoun Wars.

The Daily Mail shares a group of upsetting photos of a woman being beaten with a stick in Aceh, Indonesia, for “standing too close to her boyfriend.”

Heart-wrenching images show a screaming young woman flogged in front of a jeering crowd for breaking Islamic laws as floggings reportedly spike in Indonesian province.

An unidentified woman screamed out in pain as she was caned 23 times in Indonesia’s Aceh for breaking the province’s strict Islamic law forbidding intimacy between unmarried couples.

Aceh is the only province in Indonesia that enforces sharia law and people face floggings for a range of offences, including gambling, drinking alcohol and gay sex.

The evil god strikes again – inspiring fanatics to hit people with sticks for being affectionate with lovers. The evil god approves of hitting people with sticks and hates affection between people. What a horrendous god it is.

She was one of 13 people – aged between 21-30 – to be flogged on Monday at a mosque.

The woman was allegedly caught standing too close to her boyfriend.

The six couples were found guilty of breaking Islamic law that bans intimacy – no touching, hugging and kissing – between unmarried people.

Intimacy is a good thing, when it’s mutually wanted. Hitting people with sticks is a bad thing. The laws in Aceh are fucked up.

With a reported increase in floggings of women, Daily Mail reported Nur Elita was marched to the yard of Baiturrahumim Mosque in Banda Aceh at the end of last year and received five lashes.

Ms Elita keeled over in pain at the end of her lashings as she had to be carried off stage and taken to hospital.

She received her harsh floggings for getting to close to a fellow university student – who was also whipped.

A scene out of a nightmare.

Zineb El Rhazoui is still speaking out.

Zineb El Rhazoui was 1,500 miles away, on vacation in Morocco, when gunmen forced their way into the Paris offices of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015, fatally shooting nine people. As the publication’s religion writer, she would ordinarily have also been present at the editorial meeting which was targeted by terrorists Saïd and Chérif Kouachi — motivated, it is thought, by the magazine’s controversial depictions of Muhammad and various Muslim clerics.

For the 20 months since the massacre of her colleagues, El Rhazoui has remained steadfast in her critiques of extremist Islamism, including publishing two books — even in the face of death threats.

She has a baby now…but she still doesn’t see backing down as an option.

“After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, when I started to be targeted by all of those fatwas, a lot of people told me, ‘Why don’t you go somewhere in the world, change your name, and live happily with your family?’ and I thought about it. But I felt that if I go somewhere, if I stop being the person I am, if I change my name and hide my identity, it’s exactly like I was killed also on the 7th of January.”

Hundreds of thousands of people are waging the same battle against oppression that she is, she reasons, and without protections — just as journalists around the world are remaining courageous in the face of threats to their lives.

“I don’t have the right to shut my mouth,” she said.

“I don’t have the right to be silent.”

All this terrorizing for the sake of an imagined jealous god.

Clown car.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined a teleconference last night hosted by the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) to discuss the presidential election, warning the group that if Hillary Clinton is allowed to nominate Supreme Court justices, she could pick “fanatics who want to impose a secular America on the rest of us” and who might even go so far as to require churches to remove the words “our Father” from the Lord’s Prayer.

Mature citizens? Meaning old, or meaning grown-up as opposed to like-Trump?

Anyway – no, she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, and isn’t going to. Sit down and stop being so ludicrous, Newt. Be a Mature American Citizen.

Claiming that recent WikiLeaks emails show that Clinton’s aides are “radically anti-religious” and “radically anti-Christian,” Gingrich said that this means that Clinton’s court picks would be “people who do not believe in the right of religious liberty, people who believe that the government should define what you’re allowed to say, even in church.”

“And, by the way,” he continued, “there’s an organization in Massachusetts now, a government commission on transgender rights, that’s looking at potentially defining for churches what kinds of pronouns they could use, raising the specter, for example, of eliminating ‘our Father’ from the Lord’s Prayer, because, after all, that’s a particular pronoun.”

Wut?

The pronoun there is “our,” which, like “my” and “your” and “their,” is not gendered.

But more substantively, of course they’re not going to do that or anything like it. Messing with churches and other religious clubhouses is something US politicians are terrified of doing, even when they need to, such as when priests are raping children with impunity, or when Catholic hospitals are refusing to perform abortions even when a pregnancy is about to kill the woman hosting it.

They’ll say anything.

Asra Nomani and Masih Alinejad (of My Stealthy Freedom) on Nazi Paikidze-Barnes’s boycott of the Women’s World Chess Championship:

To us, Paikidze should not have to boycott the tournament, which an Iranian Woman Grandmaster said would hurt the progress of women’s chess in the country. Instead, Iran should respect her choice, make the headscarf optional and lift its ban on women who choose not to cover their hair.

The 22-year-old U.S. chess champion’s sincere protest is a remarkable checkmate to the government of Iran and other fundamentalist elements in our Muslim societies, who peddle “hijab” as a virtual sixth pillar of Islam for women.

If Allah is so desperate for women to wear hijab, why didn’t he (yes he) just make them with hijab pre-installed?

In a countermove, Susan Polgar, the Hungarian-born American chair of FIDE’s Commission for Women’s Chess, said she has “respect” for “cultural differences,” even noting the “beautiful choices” of scarves Iranian organizers provided women in the past.

You might as well rhapsodize about the view from Raif Badawi’s prison cell.

While American liberals call out the “slut shaming” of beauty queen Alicia Machado, they too often sacrifice their values and stay silent on the idea of the hijab. Paikidze’s protest is a welcome departure from politicians, journalists, nonprofit leaders and fashion designers who express, for lack of a better word, a hijab fetish, which romanticizes and normalizes the hijab. Indeed, hijab fetishists are like pawns for the clerics, blinded to the fact that the hijab is a symbol of sexism, misogyny and purity culture.

And is itself a very intrusive form of slut shaming, one that treats all girls and women as sluts in need of shaming.

Compulsory hijab is not part of our culture. Yet women are criminals in Iran if they remove their headscarves to feel the wind in their hair. Forcing women to cover their hair imposes a false identity on us. For years, a battery of Iranian clerics had the advantage of the bully pulpit, boasting that women embraced the hijab, but, since the launch of the #MyStealthyFreedom campaign, thousands of women have posted selfies without headscarves, showing the emptiness of the mullahs’ claim.

As many liberals and Muslims shiver at the idea of a ban on Muslims entering the United States, Iran is banning women such as Paikidze who don’t believe in covering their hair. She won the right to compete in a world championship that Iran won the right to host. In the spirit of a history that welcomed seafarers, spice traders, merchants and orphans through the span of the Persian Empire, Iran has a choice on its next move: continue its ban or host a world championship that accepts a young chess champion from America, as she is, brilliant, dynamic, collegial — and scarf-less.

My Stealthy Freedom posted this a couple of days ago:

First time in Iran, none Iranian athletes without compulsory hijab

تیم فوتسال زنان روسی را در داخل ایران به زور با حجاب نکردند، چرا زنان شطرنج باز نباید اعتراض کنند تا حجاب برای آنها هم زوری نباشد؟
Russian women play futbal without hijab in Iran after pressure from Russian federation.
These days, Fide, the chess federation, has given in to Islamic Republic’s demand that chess players competing in Tehran’s Women Chess championship must wear compulsory hijab. As everyone can see, Iranian government can be flexible if you protest instead of obeying a discriminatory law. Isn’t it time for Fide to stand up for women chess players?
جلوی ورود خبرنگاران ایرانی به این بازی گرفته شد ولی این عکس ها را رسانه های روسی منتشر کردند. این یعنی می شود قهرمانان شطرنج را هم در خاک ایران پذیرفت بدون آنکه حجاب زوری را به آنها تحمیل کرد اگر به جای تسلیم شدن در برابر حجاب اجباری اعتراض صورت بگیرد.

#MyStealthyFreedom