Please don’t ’embrace equity’ this IWD. You’re being duped

One week out from International Women’s Day and the press releases about women “embracing equity” and information regarding upcoming events exploring the theme are coming hot into the inboxes of any reporter with a slight interest in women.

The only problem is that ‘Embrace Equity” is not the official theme for IWD 2023, rather the official UN Women’s theme is “Cracking the Code: Innovation for a gender equal future’.

As I wrote last year, Google “International Women’s Day” and you’ll come across a very official-looking, we-own-all-of-this website, that claims to determine each year’s theme. The website continues to share very little information regarding who is behind it, how it’s funded and how and why it determines its theme. There is no “About Us”, no names listed or clear contact information given – other than a form you can fill out regarding sponsorship opportunities.

However, it does list a number of “corporate partners” and declares the “global campaign theme” continues all year to encourage action, and proudly declares that International Women’s Day “has been around since 1911”.

John Deere is a “proud part of International Women’s Day” – its own ad is featured there on the website. Other partners include engineering firms and at least two weapons manufacturers on the IWD partner list, including Northrop Grumman, which “specialises innovating low-cost, highly reliable and precise weapons and ammunition for artillery and mortar systems”.

So who is behind the non-official internationalwomensday.com website, that will support your event with merchandise, determine what it believes should be the theme for the year and choose official charity partners?

Scroll to the end, and it lists its “contact” details – a generic email address, followed by a postal address with a company name: Aurora Ventures (Europe) Limited.

Google Aurora Ventures and you’ll land on options for getting in contact for some “women’s equality marketing” services.

As I suggested last year, perhaps the slogans are even worse. A weapon of distraction intentionally designed to enable big businesses and governments to avoid addressing more challenging political matters around the 8th March every year.

Source: Please don’t ’embrace equity’ this IWD. You’re being duped

Education and gender: ‘Male decline’ is real, and it’s a problem for women too

Across OECD countries, there is an undeniable trend of “male decline” that is much commented upon, heavily researched and, increasingly, co-opted by reactionary forces who want to blame feminism for the difficulties of contemporary boys and men.

This decline is most remarkable in education trends. This week in NSW, the HSC school-leaving results were published, and they showed girls now outperform boys in most subjects. Girls are also gaining on boys in the traditionally male strongholds of mathematics and physics.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald report, this gender gap persists into university, with a 2022 University Admissions Centre study finding that boys enrol in university at lower rates than girls, they’re less likely to pass all their subjects, and more likely to fail everything.

The UAC study found that being male was “greater than any of the other recognised disadvantages we looked at”. That’s an extraordinary finding, and it’s not confined to Australia. In American colleges, there are roughly six female enrolments for every four male ones. “This is the largest female-male gender gap in the history of higher education, and it’s getting wider,” the Atlantic reported in 2021.

Male decline is eagerly pounced upon by “men’s rights activists” and anti-feminists who use it as proof that feminism has “gone too far” and that affirmative action and the woke agenda are displacing men.

Source: Education and gender: ‘Male decline’ is real, and it’s a problem for women too

THE PASSION OF TYRANTS: A REVIEW OF SHEILA JEFFREYS’ PENILE IMPERIALISM BY AURORA LINNEA – Women’s Liberation Radio News

 

WLRN member aurora linnea reviews Sheila Jeffreys’ book Penile Imperialism: the Male Sex Right & Women’s Subordination published by Spinifex Press.

Man saw all that he had made – a phallocentric universe dedicated to his pleasure, the whole of human society renovated into one great big sex-dungeon-cum-masturbatorium – and it was good. Sheila Jeffreys saw it, and called it “penile imperialism.” And it was vile.

Long our most unflinching historian of men’s sexual grotesquery, Jeffreys draws from her forty years of probing and mapping the dark groin of male dominion to present a big-picture view of the current catastrophe in her latest book, Penile Imperialism: The Male Sex Right and Female Subordination, released in September through Spinifex Press.

Penile Imperialism gives us what we need to become as holistic in our revolt, and as sweeping in our vision of freedom, as men in their sex-fueled reign of terror have been.

Source: THE PASSION OF TYRANTS: A REVIEW OF SHEILA JEFFREYS’ PENILE IMPERIALISM BY AURORA LINNEA – Women’s Liberation Radio News

Banks with more female directors lend less to big polluters, new study finds

Banks with more women in their boardrooms lend less to big polluting companies, according to new research by the European Central Bank.

“Female corporate directors and women in general are more likely to care about long-term societal issues, including climate change.”

The study is a world first, regarding the influences of gender on boardroom banks’ capability to “green” the economy, leading to evidence that a greater female representation in the boardroom contributes to advancing the fight against climate change.

The study also found that the “green” effect of female board members is stronger in countries with more female climate-oriented politicians.

Exploring the potential influence of women in the boardroom on banks’ lending strategies is a critical step towards fighting climate change. The study noted several other previous studies which found that women were more community-minded, altruistic and caring than men.

Female directors have a stronger orientation toward corporate social responsibility (CSR), compared to male directors who tend to be more focused on economic performance.

Source: Banks with more female directors lend less to big polluters, new study finds

Where Have All the Tomboys Gone?

Lesbians United, a group that parked a #SaveTheTomboys truck around NYC, has been waging a campaign to wrest masculine girls from the clutches of an ideology that told them they were or might be boys because they were more male-typical than female-typical. I never talked to this group, but there is some research that shows tomboyish girls are more likely to grow up to be lesbians than non-tomboyish girls.

When I interviewed affirmative but nuanced clinicians (they exist! I promise!), they told me they weren’t as worried about the “always tomboy” types, the ones who’d been super masculine since childhood—presumably, they’d be less likely to regret (that leaves aside the important question of whether they would want to transition if we had room for gender nonconformity, but that’s for another time). The clinicians were far more worried about the almost-never-before-seen cohort of teens, mostly girls, arriving at clinics self-diagnosed with gender dysphoria and demanding medical intervention: the bulk of the 4000-5000% increase in trans kids. That means that the majority of girls with this condition, and likely undergoing transition, were not tomboyish. When you listen to stories of rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria girls, they are remarkably similar, right down to being properly feminine in childhood. Thus, dysphoria is also, to a certain extent, popular.

Have the tomboys disappeared? In many ways yes—some because they identify as trans these days, and some because it’s simply not a hip style for kids. There are masculine young women who transitioned and found solace, and there are masculine young women—and feminine young women!—who transitioned and realized they were lesbians (or straight) and wish they hadn’t changed themselves. Medical associations are not developing protocols to make sure people understand the relationship between gender and sexuality, or based on the very real premise that there is no way to tell who will persist or desist, be satisfied or regretful. Instead, the culture war continues, and it looks like this:

 

Source: Where Have All the Tomboys Gone?

Police investigate apparent online threat to ‘burn’ venue hosting a feminist conference in Cardiff – Wales Online

Police are investigating an online threat made against a feminist conference set to be held in Cardiff. The FiLiA Women’s Rights Conference will arrive in the capital from October 22 until October 24 and claims to be the largest annual grassroots feminist conference in Europe.

Screenshots were widely circulated on social media of a conversation between two Twitter users, with one asking: “Is it in a building that would be a loss if it burnt down?” Both users’ accounts have since been set to private mode.

The people making the alleged thread used the derogatory term “Terf” to describe the feminist group. Terf means “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”.

In a statement in July, the trustees said: “FiLiA is a women-led volunteer organisation which seeks to build sisterhood and solidarity, amplify the voices of women and defend women’s human rights. We organise the largest annual grassroots feminist conference in Europe, bringing together women from around the world who organise and campaign on a wide range of issues.

“FiLiA supports sex-based rights. There exist some situations in which women need access to female-only spaces: in refuges, in recovery from male violence, in shared accommodation, sports, and of course in the right of our lesbian sisters to determine their own sexual orientation. Our stance on this reflects the current state of the law.

The event is set to feature speakers including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was reunited with her family in March following several years in an Iranian prison.

Source: Police investigate apparent online threat to ‘burn’ venue hosting a feminist conference in Cardiff – Wales Online

Men of the far-right and the women’s movement | Jean Hatchet | The Critic Magazine

Trans activists and their media outlets have long been keen to smear women with far-right affiliations. Just discussing the issue makes them frenzied with accusations. For the overwhelming majority of women in the UK, this smear has no truth.

On Sunday, 18 September the group “Standing for Women” organised an open rally in Brighton to discuss women’s rights. The group is led by Kellie-Jay Keen. Her “Let Women Speak” events are touring the UK and aim to give a platform to predominantly women, and some men, on the issue of women’s rights and the threat to those rights from trans activism.

Recent “Standing For Women” events have seen unpleasant and aggressive protests from trans activist thugs in black military style outfits and masks. These misogynist men are determined to silence women’s voices about the clash between women’s rights and ever increasing demands by trans activists.

Keen’s current catchphrase is “I. Never. Lose.”, but many feminist women fear we will collectively lose the women’s movement if it becomes a convenient tool of far-right men. On one side of the fence are aggressive men screaming “fascist” at women who are clearly not. On the other side, skulking in the shadows, beneath the banners of women, are men who clearly are.

If far-right activists invade the women’s movement from the shadows, they will drag it into the shadows of political obscurity. The far-right has always looked for causes with which to gain political traction and remain relevant.

Keep your eyes peeled, women. This movement is not for rent to fascist men. This is our opportunity to follow our Olympian weightlifting sisters and say, “No, thank you.”

Source: Men of the far-right and the women’s movement | Jean Hatchet | The Critic Magazine

Exposing transgenderism for what it is: A lie – Kara Dansky

To understand how transgenderism became so entrenched in our society despite its obvious distortions, one must first understand the philosophy from which it began. Starting in the 1970s, a group of people in academia started talking about postmodernism — a new philosophical and political movement that dismissed claims to objective fact and reason. It objected to the idea that anything could be grounded in material reality. One of its main proponents was Michel Foucault, a French philosopher who taught for a while at the University of California, Berkeley. Foucault was also, incidentally, a known pedophile who advocated the abolition of age-of-consent laws. For Foucault, age was just a construct, which meant that adults should be permitted to have sexual relationships with children.

Out of postmodernism came “queer theory,” the idea that biological sex is a social construct. Queer theorists in the 1990s argued from their ivory towers that the material reality of sex doesn’t exist and that it is a social construction meant to oppress. However, the “queer” theorists understood that if they tried to persuade ordinary people that sex isn’t real, they would have been (rightly) ridiculed and ignored. So they invented a new term: “transgender.” This term does exactly what it was intended to do — it persuades ordinary people that the material reality of biological sex isn’t real or, at least, that it doesn’t matter.

There very well may be people who sincerely suffer from what the DSM refers to as “gender dysphoria.” But it does not follow that it makes sense or is healthy for a society to allow people to “identify as” a gender different from their sex. In fact, doing so will only create more confusion and anxiety in those who are very often mentally vulnerable to begin with.

And before anyone asks, I am not a political conservative. I have always been a staunch leftist and, for as long as I can remember, a feminist. I registered as a Democrat the day I turned 18 years old, and I am still a registered Democrat (though I spent a short time as a registered member of the Green Party).

Some have pointed the blame at feminists for the rise of gender ideology. But that’s not a fair accusation. Actual feminists fight for the liberation of women and girls, by which we mean female human beings. Feminists aren’t confused about the category of human beings for whose liberation we fight. We are not confused about the category of people whose voting rights suffragists fought for (at great peril to their own safety). We are not confused about the category of people who are subjected to the horrific offense of female genital mutilation. (The word is right there.) When feminists complain about male violence against women, we aren’t confused about what the words “male” and “women” mean. Feminists didn’t create this “trans” monster. And we are more than willing to work with anyone, even those with whom we might generally disagree, to protect the sex-based rights of women.

Because of our opposition to gender ideology and the harms that it is doing to women, we are often smeared by the Left as traitors to progressivism. However, we are not the ones who abandoned progressive values. That crime belongs to the gender ideologues who are pushing an ideology that is politically regressive in every way. Indeed, “transgenderism” destroys the equality that women have achieved and actually enshrines harmful sex stereotypes in law, medicine, academia, and throughout all of society.

Source: Exposing transgenderism for what it is: A lie

Louise Perry: There’s no such thing as meaningless sex.

Louise Perry’s book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution argues that sexual freedom or free love came at a cost. And the price was paid by women.

Ultimately, Louise believes the sexual revolution was great… for men. Women have been “conned” into believing that sex positivity and the idea of having a lot of casual sex and being able to have sex “like a man” is a good thing, when it really isn’t.

[I]t was completely rational for feminists of the second wave to look at what had come before, and the fact that women had been so restricted in terms of their lives in general but their sexual lives in particular, and to see the links with religion in particular, and to think, ‘Okay, this is our enemy, this is our problem. This is what we need to be fighting against.’ I think this has been particularly true in America, where the Christian Right is still a very fearsome enemy, less so in UK and Australia, and other parts of the world.

“The problem with doing that though is it presents a really simplistic view of history, and a really simplistic view of how complex social norms work. What we’ve then done is say, all these sexual norms of the past, it’s gotta go. Chivalry, it’s out. The idea of chastity, it’s gotta go. And all we end up left with – even the idea that sex shouldn’t mean anything, it’s got no special status whatsoever – what you end up with is the consent framework, which says that as long as you’re capable of consenting, and as long as everyone does, then it’s fine.

“The problem with that is there are so, so many examples where actually the consent is there, but actually, it’s not fine. For instance, it is so common now for young women who have grown up in this culture where this is completely normal, to feel under intense pressure to participate in hookup culture… There are loads of reasons why someone might consent to something, even if it’s not actually in their best interest, and even if it doesn’t actually make them happy.”

“Yes, maybe everyone’s consenting, but actually, is this a healthy sexual culture? I don’t think so. I mean, definitely not for girls, who are suffering all the risks associated with these encounters, which are sometimes violent, which do sometimes result in unwanted pregnancies. And they don’t even really want to do it.

“Things like the orgasm gap – women so rarely orgasm during one-night stands. They are so much more likely to orgasm in committed relationships. In fact, women are more likely to experience pain during sex in one-night stands than they are to experience an orgasm.”

Louise thinks that it is a mistake for women to think that if we behave like men, then somehow we benefit ourselves.

Source: Louise Perry: There’s no such thing as meaningless sex.