The John Laws skirt saga: why do successful women defend sexism?

This week the great relic announced in his ancient, gravel tones the women he employs must wear skirts to work to please him.

Yet there they were, excusing Laws’ sexist ways and tone and skirt diktat on TV. “He’s actually a really good, decent man,” Rowe said.

No, he’s not – he’s someone treating professional work colleagues as objects of decoration.

“He’s a lovely man,” Buttrose echoed.

This is what Laws says of ogling his female staff: “I love them to look feminine. A skirt on a beautiful body is a very, very feminine thing.”

That’s not lovely. That’s the exploitation of a power dynamic in which workers are obliged to service the skeezy pleasure of the boss on top of doing their day job. Australian law says sexual harassment is not on, and the community knows anything close to sexually questionable behaviour at work is not on.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/18/the-john-laws-skirt-saga-why-do-successful-women-defend-sexism?

Australian politics explainer: how women gained the right to vote

Between 1894 and 1908 a wave of women’s enfranchisement swept across Australia. Beginning in South Australia in 1894 and ending 14 years later in Victoria, Australia’s six colonies allowed women to vote.

With the passage of the Commonwealth Franchise Act in 1902, Australia became just the second country in the world – after New Zealand in 1893 – to give women the vote. At the same time, the Commonwealth became the first country in which women could stand for parliament. It was this coincidence of voting and representation rights that made Australian women the “most fully enfranchised” in the world.

https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-how-women-gained-the-right-to-vote-74080

‘Work hard. Be bold. Have fun’: Dr Anne Summers receives honorary doctorate

“We need to be open to ideas and opportunities that might lure us away from what we thought was our destiny.

“You need not be bound by convention or tradition or anyone’s expectations – including your own. All you need is to believe in yourself. Work hard. Be bold. Have fun.”

She also urged those in the audience to embrace the future with enthusiasm and optimism.

“The world is way more complicated and, in some ways, more scary than it was when I was graduating but it is also a more exciting place.”

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/work-hard-bold-fun-dr-anne-summers-receives-honorary-doctorate/

petition: Reverse Decision to Allow Saudi Arabia on UN Women’s Rights Commission!

After a secret vote was held, the UN has elected Saudi Arabia to a UN women’s rights commission. Saudi Arabia is a country that an absolutely horrific record on women’s rights and continues to oppress women in many ways.

The Executive Director of United Nations Watch, Hillel Neuer, may have said it best: “Electing Saudi Arabia to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief.”

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/455/552/690/?z00m=29074452&redirectID=2390256742

The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’

Last November, voters in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region re-elected to the state house of representatives a man who appears to be one of the secret architects of the internet’s misogynistic “Manosphere.”

The homegrown son of a preacher, 31-year-old Robert Fisher is a Republican who represents New Hampshire’s Belknap County District 9. In addition to his legislative duties, Fisher owns a local computer-repair franchise, and in his spare time, seems to have created the web’s most popular online destination for pickup artistry and men’s rights activists, The Red Pill, according an investigation by the Daily Beast.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/25/the-republican-lawmaker-who-secretly-created-reddit-s-women-hating-red-pill.html
[cateogory global, sexual violence]

‘We need to be braver’ — women challenge ‘gender identity’ and the silencing of feminist discourse

Women who challenge discourse around “gender identity” have been largely isolated on the front lines for the past decade. Liberal feminists and progressives have chosen identity politics over feminism many times over and this is no exception.

We live in a time wherein basic feminist ideas have become unspeakable, while anti-feminist slurs and smears are widely accepted and even celebrated by those who claim to be social justice activists and progressives.

Ironically, it is university students who seem to be leading the charge — bullying radical feminist students into silence, banning women from their campuses for challenging liberal doctrine (something Magdalen Berns speaks to in her talk, as she was banned from just about every women’s and LGTB group at the University of Edinburgh in her final year — an institution that has apparently placed a “trigger warning” on radical feminism itself). I say “ironically” because it is, of all places, on university campuses that these conversations should be encouraged, as indeed higher education is about studying ideas and learning how to think critically.

http://www.feministcurrent.com/2016/09/27/need-braver-feminists-challenge-silencing/
[global, feminism]

The kingdom of women: the Tibetan tribe where a man is never the boss

Imagine a society without fathers; without marriage (or divorce); one in which nuclear families don’t exist. Grandmother sits at the head of the table; her sons and daughters live with her, along with the children of those daughters, following the maternal bloodline. Men are little more than studs, sperm donors who inseminate women but have, more often than not, little involvement in their children’s upbringing.

This progressive, feminist world – or anachronistic matriarchy, as skewed as any patriarchal society, depending on your viewpoint – exists in a lush valley in Yunnan, south-west China, in the far eastern foothills of the Himalayas. An ancient tribal community of Tibetan Buddhists called the Mosuo, they live in a surprisingly modern way: women are treated as equal, if not superior, to men; both have as many, or as few, sexual partners as they like, free from judgment; and extended families bring up the children and care for the elderly.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/01/the-kingdom-of-women-the-tibetan-tribe-where-a-man-is-never-the-boss?

Women, face it: marriage can never be feminist

The institution of marriage has curtailed women’s freedom for centuries, says Julie Bindel. So why are so many feminists trying to reclaim the tradition as a subversive act? If you want to get married, she says, just get on with it – but please don’t pretend that being a feminist changes its meaning

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2016/may/25/women-face-it-marriage-can-never-be-feminist-video

Dystopian dreams: how feminist science fiction predicted the future

Margaret Atwood’s evergreen dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale is about to become a television drama. Published in 1985, it couldn’t feel more fresh or more timely, dealing as it does with reproductive rights, with the sudden accession to power of a theocracy in the United States, with the demonisation of imagined, pantomime villain “Islamic fanatics”.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/25/dystopian-dreams-how-feminist-science-fiction-predicted-the-future?

Identity is the issue of our age: so why can’t we talk more honestly about trans women?

Lifelong feminists, especially older ones, who express any reservations about eliding the experiences of trans and cis women are dismissed as bigoted ol’ bitches – and maybe some are. But there are real ethical issues here, and they overwhelmingly affect women.

Sport is one obvious example. Male-born bodies have had different testosterone levels and muscle distribution from female ones. No one knows what the solution is but pretending there isn’t a difference is ridiculous. Then there are prisons. It’s easy to cheer on Chelsea Manning, but Ian Huntley – who now reportedly wishes to be known as Lian Huntley and be transferred to a women’s prison – is a tougher sell. Should a man with a history of crimes against women and girls really be in a female prison?

In January, it was reported that the British Medical Association advised that instead of referring to “expectant mothers”, health providers should talk about the less exclusionary “pregnant people”. Some young feminists are even asking if it’s OK to use the words “female” and “woman” – yet men are not being urged to avoid mentioning their gender. Is it any wonder some women are calling bullshit?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/18/identity-issue-our-age-talk-more-honestly-trans-women?