Author: FLC Admin

Society Prefers Dead Women to Women Who Fight Back – Donna Johnson

Femicide is a feature, not a bug, of patriarchy.

In the early years of my work, when women would ask me, “How is this happening when we are the victims of unremitting cruelty? How is it that our abusers are running the show?”, I’d say, “I’m sorry. We’re working on it. It’s a matter of educating police, judges and CAS.”

Back then, I believed my own words. I saw myself as part of a broken system.

I no longer see the system as broken, but working exactly as intended, to maintain control of women.

The truth is, women face massive resistance to leaving abusive men. They are opposed at every turn by the justice system itself, routinely patronized, belittled, accused of overreacting and “having an agenda”. They endure massive character assassination and are routinely abandoned to situations of grave peril. They are prohibited from taking their children—and themselves—to a life of peace and security. Father’s rights supersede even the rights of the women they batter. Ironically, it is often the men who receive society’s sympathy. Even when men kill women, their violence is explained away by stress or mental illness.

We hamstring women, trapping them between a rock and a hard place. Stay and be mistreated, and possibly killed, or leave and live in fear, and possibly be killed. Oh, and by the way, your children may be killed. We hope not, but we can’t be sure. You might want to teach them a code word, or maybe give them a safety plan so they know to run into the bush if the perpetrator shows up. Nathalie Warmerdan’s son Adrian, 15, was in the house when his mother’s killer showed up. He ran into the bush as she had instructed him to do.

Oh, and remember, you may not pick up a weapon to defend yourself.

We prefer dead women to women who fight back.

So we block all the exits. And then when the next women is murdered, we say, “Oh, how terrible! Women, you need to open up about abuse! You need to break the silence!”

It’s not that we do nothing for women. We’re prepared to help them cope, adapt, hide, and so on. We support women in living with male violence. We’re just not prepared to free them from it.

Source: Society Prefers Dead Women to Women Who Fight Back

Australian trans golfer gets death threats after tournament win | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

An transgender Aussie golfer has copped a barrage of abuse and death threats after winning a major women’s tournament this weekend.

Professional golfer Breanna Gill won the Australian Women’s Classic trophy at NSW’s Bonville course on Sunday after a thrilling playoff, but her moment of celebration was tarnished by internet trolls.

Last month, World Athletics barred all transgender athletes from competing in women’s track and field events regardless of their testosterone levels. In December, the International Olympic Committee tightened its policy on trans athletes to preserve “fairness”, allowing sporting bodies to determine the eligibility criteria for their individual sports.

The WPGA has welcomed transgender players since 2004, a policy adopted by all seven of the major international women’s golf tours.

The comp requires trans athletes to have undergone gender reassignment surgery, undertaken hormonal therapy for at least a year and provided legal documents recognising their new gender. The WPGA confirmed Gill had met all of those requirements.

Source: Australian trans golfer gets death threats after tournament win | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

Artificial Wombs Will Change Abortion Rights Forever | WIRED

Ectogenesis—gestation using an artificial womb—is fast approaching reality. Yet without legislation, this innovation also has the potential to cause harm.

Current philosophical literature and legislation on abortion revolve around three debates: the moral status of the fetus, women’s bodily autonomy, and the fetus’s viability. Ectogenesis means that fetuses at all stages will be viable, so the technology’s development will impact all three of these debates.

Under law in many places where abortion is permitted, the fetus’s right to life transcends a woman’s bodily autonomy at the point when the fetus becomes viable.

Successful ectogenesis would render the fetus viable at a very early stage, possibly even from conception. If ectogenesis—even partial ectogenesis—becomes available, it would then be possible for an unwanted fetus to be transferred into an artificial womb to continue developing without harming a woman’s bodily autonomy, depending on how the fetus is removed. In this way, women would be able to end their pregnancy without resorting to traditional abortion. Given this option, if a woman chooses traditional abortion regardless, the abortion will appear more like an intentional killing.

Women should have the right to reject ectogenetic surgery on the grounds of bodily autonomy; otherwise, as Canadian philosopher Christine Overall has pointed out, a forced transfer procedure would be akin to deliberately stealing human organs, which is deeply unethical.

Future legislation will need to guarantee that ectogenesis is a choice rather than a new form of coercion. The right to abortion will need to be recentered in law around the value of reproductive autonomy and the right not to become a biological parent against one’s will, as opposed to fetus viability. As this legal debate gains the attention of politicians, legislators, community leaders, and the wider public, how much people and societies respect women’s right to choose will become more apparent than ever.

Source: Artificial Wombs Will Change Abortion Rights Forever | WIRED

Josephine Cochrane – Wikipedia

Stamps of Romania, 2013-34.jpg

Josephine Garis Cochran (later Cochrane; March 8, 1839 – August 3, 1913) was an American inventor[1] who invented the first successful hand-powered dishwasher, which she designed and then constructed with the assistance of mechanic George Butters, who became one of her first employees.

Source: Josephine Cochrane – Wikipedia

Calls to ban transgender women from playing soccer in female only teams | Daily Mail Online

Angry parents fed-up with a trans woman‘s domination of a female soccer league are campaigning for the competition to ban transgender women from female soccer teams.

The trans woman, who Daily Mail Australia has chosen not to identify, has led Football NSW‘s League One Women’s 1st Grade goal kickers table, with seven goals.

But it is allegations the trans athletes injured females from an opposing side in a match last weekend that has caused the ire of some fed-up parents and players.

A man who claimed to have coached men and boys’ soccer teams for 20 years said the league needed to ‘take a good hard look at itself’.

‘After what happened on the weekend at a couple of games, family and friends are looking at pulling their kids out of their teams,’ he wrote.

‘This needs to be addressed by the powers that be before anyone else gets hurt or players refuse to take the field or players quit the game.’

Last year, world soccer’s governing body FIFA and World Athletics said they were reviewing their transgender eligibility policies after swimming passed new rules that restricted transgender participation in women’s events.

However reports from earlier this year suggested transgender footballers would compete at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this July and August.

Source: Calls to ban transgender women from playing soccer in female only teams | Daily Mail Online

The pros and cons of the proposed family law reforms – Lawyers Weekly

Last Wednesday (29 March), Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus KC released two statements announcing the nature of the legislative reform the Albanese government plans to make to The Family Law Act.

The reforms aim to make separations safer for families and their children.

The first set of amendments is set to simplify the legislation, in response to issues that have arisen regarding the complexity of the act, leading to it being misunderstood in ways that have led to unsafe parenting arrangements:

These include but are not limited to:

  • Repealing the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility;
  • Simplifying the list of factors that are considered in determining the best interests of children in parenting arrangements;
  • Introducing requirements for Independent Children’s Lawyers (ICLs);
  • Ensuring the court considers the right of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children to maintain their connection to their family, community, culture, country and language; and
  • Simplifying the enforcement of parenting orders to make the consequences of non-compliance clear.

The second set of amendments aims to improve access to vital information sharing from state and territory family violence and child protection systems during proceedings. These include:

  • Introducing two new information-sharing orders for courts to quickly seek information from police and child protection agencies about family violence, abuse and neglect;
  • Ensuring these orders are available at any point during proceedings; and
  • Increasing protections to ensure sensitive information is disclosed safely

Mr Peleg highlighted where the amendments fall short: “The new definition of the principle of the best interests of the child falls short of international children’s rights law standards and best practices in other countries, despite what the government claims.”

“While it makes children’s views an inherent part of the best interests analysis, which is an improvement comparing to the law today that makes it a potential element only, the new law is drafted in passive tone, asking the court to consider ‘any views expressed by the child’ instead of using active voice requiring the court to ascertain the views of children.”

Source: The pros and cons of the proposed family law reforms – Lawyers Weekly

The Whitlam government gave us no-fault divorce, women’s refuges and childcare. Australia needs another feminist revolution

Australia’s history of women and political rights is, to put it mildly, chequered. It enfranchised (white) women very early, in 1902. And it was the first country to give them the vote combined with the right to stand for parliament.

But it took 41 years for women to enter federal parliament. The first two women federal MPs, Dorothy Tangney and Enid Lyons, were just memorialised with a joint statue in the parliamentary triangle. It was unveiled this month – finally redressing the glaring absence of women in our statues.

Iola Mathews, journalist and Women’s Electoral Lobby activist, captures the speed with which Whitlam acted on women’s issues:

In his first week of office he reopened the federal Equal Pay case, removed the tax on contraceptives and announced funding for birth control programs.

Arrow summarises what else the Whitlam government did for women. It extended the minimum wage for women and funded women’s refuges, women’s health centres and community childcare. It introduced no-fault divorce and the Family Court. It introduced paid maternity leave in the public service. And it addressed discrimination against girls in schools. Women also benefited from other reforms, like making tertiary education affordable.

From our current standpoint, the fervour of the 1970s is enviable. It’s very promising that the 2022 election brought an influx of new women MPs. But if we’re going to conquer intimate violence, women’s homelessness and the gender pay gap, we need another feminist revolution.

Source: The Whitlam government gave us no-fault divorce, women’s refuges and childcare. Australia needs another feminist revolution

The Violence in Auckland Last Week Was Appalling – & Entirely Predictable

Societal tolerance of trans activist aggression & reckless behavior by a leader combine to create a predictably volatile situation.

The clash between trans rights activists and women campaigning to claw back rights to sex-segregated prisons, shelters, sports, restrooms and change rooms, infringed by gender identity policy and law, turned violent last week in Auckland. UK campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen’s Let Women Speak tour, which features an open mic for women to discuss their objections to gender identity policy, drew increasingly larger counter-protests as it progressed through Australia, finally drawing about 2000, compared with an estimated 250 LWS supporters, in Auckland, NZ.

Immediately upon arriving to the rotunda stage in Albert Park, Kellie-Jay was doused with tomato juice by a trans rights activist who later said,”I want her to be full of blood… because she is advocating for our genocide.” Amid police failure to separate the opposing camps, and TRAs aggressively closing in on the rotunda stage, Kellie-Jay’s security team decided to escort her out and cancel the event before she even had a chance to speak. Alarming video shows an angry mob pushing against Kellie-Jay’s security team, which encircled and tightly gripped her as they struggled to move her out of the venue. Kellie-Jay later said, “I thought I was going to be crushed to death.”

Thankfully, she was delivered into a police vehicle relatively unscathed. Her supporters, however, were not so lucky. Without private security, and police standing down, the mob attacked with impunity. Women reported being kicked, grabbed, thrown to the ground, and having projectiles thrown at them. One woman’s foot was broken; another, a 70 year old, was punched repeatedly in the face by a young male trans activist.

The violence was shocking, but predictable for many reasons, primarily because aggressive de-platforming and violent threats from trans activists have been allowed to continue unchecked in many countries for years and years. Violent imagery on social media has been prolific and prompted creation of the website “Terf Is A Slur” to document the threats. So normalized is the threat of violence, that in 2018 San Francisco Public Library thought it worthwhile to put on an exhibit celebrating symbols of violence against so-called “terfs,” a slur meant to indicate “trans exclusionary radical feminists,” that included baseball bats, axes, and a tee shirt splattered with red paint to indicate blood.

No analysis of factors contributing to women’s vulnerability to aggression and violence by TRAs at LWS events would be complete without consideration of Kellie-Jay’s own actions. Too often she appears to be unwilling to heed the advice of local activists when planning her events.

Moreover, she has a propensity to taunt counter-protesters in ways that are personal – and counterproductive.

Taunts and jeers are part of street protest, but personal attacks such as these reinforce the stereotype of gender identity critics as “transphobes” and “haters.”

Kellie-Jay’s dubious connections, and the dangerous right wing characters drawn into her orbit, also increase the risk of violence at her events.

Feminists alarmed that such connections would damage the movement, and about the intentions of far right actors, asked Kellie-Jay to distance herself from them. She refused, arguing that her events platform free speech and anyone may attend.

The problem of far right actors getting involved became so obvious that even her long-time friend and colleague Kara Dansky, current president of Women’s Declaration International USA, made a point of distancing herself from the far right at Kellie-Jay’s Washington DC event.

It is unlikely that Kellie-Jay will moderate her rhetoric or her stance on far right actors. But one hopes, with planned tours in Canada, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, she will at least heed the advice of local activists and more carefully plan her events to minimize the risk of violence to her supporters.

Source: The Violence in Auckland Last Week Was Appalling – & Entirely Predictable

Older Swiss women take their government to court over climate policies

A group of more than 2000 Swiss women have taken their government to court claiming its failure to act on climate change is a violation of their human rights.

The women, who are in a group called the Club of Climate Seniors, have an average age of 73. They claim their government’s failure to act adequately on climate change is putting their human rights and health at risk. The case is the first lawsuit on climate change to be heard by the European Court of Human Rights.

The women are asking the court to “correct the course of Swiss climate policy because the current climate targets and measures are not sufficient to limit global warming to a safe level”.

“Ever-more frequent and acute extreme heat events due to human-induced climate change particularly endanger the health and lives of older women. Because case law dictates that only particularly affected groups can file an application, the Senior Women for Climate Protection’s application is restricted to women of retirement age,” the group’s website states.

The European Court of Human Rights has never ruled on a case related to climate change, which means this case could set a legal precendent. It could play an integral role in holding other governments accountable for their domestic climate change policies.

According to the Climate Action Tracker, Switzerland’s policies to reduce emissions are not considered to be consistent with the Paris climate agreement to keep global warming to 1.5°C.

The case comes as the latest IPCC report on climate change indicated the world’s current approach to climate action is insufficient to secure a liveable future. It said the choices we make this decade are critical to current and future generations.

Source: Older Swiss women take their government to court over climate policies