Woman Completes Marathon Carrying Save Women’s Sports Flag

November 14, 2019

This is what Emily had to say about carrying the Save Women’s Sports flag during the entire marathon, “I’m doing this to protest the inclusion of biological males in women’s sports. I chose “Save Women’s Sports” as the prominent message because it both conveys the concept I’m fighting for and is the name of an actual organization to which I’m hoping to draw attention. I also included “woman = adult human female” to make it clear who should (and should not) be allowed to compete in women’s sports. A male can never be a woman, regardless of how he identifies, what medical procedures he undergoes to make his body mimic a female body, and regardless of whether he was incorrectly sexed at birth because of a disorder of sexual development. A woman is an adult human female – period. Women’s sports must be exclusive to people who fit that definition.

Source: Woman Completes Marathon Carrying Save Women’s Sports Flag

Toronto’s Meghan Murphy Meltdown: A Case Study in Media-Driven Social Panic – Quillette

Is Murphy a Nazi? A war criminal? Perhaps a hooded KKK leader who appeared at the podium under a burning cross? Well, not quite. Meghan Murphy is a young Vancouver-based feminist activist and writer who says out loud what most Canadians think: that the rights of trans women must be balanced against the rights of girls and women as a whole, and that the admission of male-bodied individuals into spaces where women are vulnerable is an issue that can’t be resolved by screaming slogans or Tweeting emojis. As National Post columnist Chris Selley wrote after he attended Murphy’s Toronto event, the substance of her speech wasn’t even that controversial. The true scandal was out on the street, where progressive hypocrites yelled at Murphy’s feminist supporters in the way that Westboro Baptist Church members berate women entering an abortion clinic.

It is an understatement to say that this issue is rich with irony. Consider, for instance, that, in response to Murphy’s speech, leaders of Pride Toronto may ban the city’s public library from inclusion in 2020 pride events—to go along with the existing ban on police participation in Pride’s annual parade. Yet when you watch a video of Murphy’s fans leaving the library on Tuesday night, what you see is a group of professional police officers defending a group of besieged feminists, while a bunch of unhinged woke men scream at them.

Source: Toronto’s Meghan Murphy Meltdown: A Case Study in Media-Driven Social Panic – Quillette

The first fairytales were feminist critiques of patriarchy. We need to revive their legacy

The women who created the first fairytales were far more radical than the Brothers Grimm have led us to believe.

Performed and recited in literary salons, from 1697 the fairytales of D’Aulnoy, Comtesse Henriette-Julie de Murat, Mademoiselle L’Héritier and Madame Charlotte-Rose de la Force were gathered into collections and published.

D’Aulnoy and her peers used exaggeration, parody and references to other stories to unsettle the customs and conventions that constrained women’s freedom and agency.

The conteuses created the archetypes of our classic fairytale heroines: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel. They were bestselling writers in their day, their popularity continuing into the 18th century, circulated throughout all levels of society by publication in the Bibliothèque Bleue, a series of cheaply printed and readily affordable chapbooks.

In the 19th century, when the Brothers Grimm began their project of collecting and publishing folktales, they dismissed the conteuses as inauthentic, as not representative of the voices of the common volk. But the Grimms’ theory that fairytales had a linear relationship to folktales has been exposed by scholars as a nationalist – and masculinist, as the teller was usually an illiterate female – bias. A furphy.

Source: The first fairytales were feminist critiques of patriarchy. We need to revive their legacy | Melissa Ashley | Books | The Guardian

Migrant sex workers in top of the south deported

Five migrants have been sent home since September for unlawfully working in the sex industry in Nelson and Marlborough.

READ MORE:
More than 350 foreign sex workers turned away at New Zealand border 
Exploitation of migrant workers a focus for immigration minister
Teen sex contract deemed as prostitution

During an investigation last year, INZ visited 57 small owner-operated brothels across the country. No brothels were visited in the top of the south.

As part of that investigation, 66 migrant sex workers were identified. Of those, 36 were on visitor visas, two on student visas and the remainder on resident visas.

All sex workers but one were Chinese nationals.

Source: Migrant sex workers in top of the south deported | Stuff.co.nz

Ignite Her Curiosity: 75 Children’s Books About Girls and Women Who Love Science

A Mighty Girl’s top picks of children’s books about real-life women of science and fictional stories about girls who love science!

Source: Ignite Her Curiosity: 75 Children’s Books About Girls and Women Who Love Science | A Mighty Girl

If the government tracks women’s periods, why not track male ejaculation, too?

Missouri, which has a population of over 6.1 million people, has only one abortion clinic. For rightwing zealots, however, that is one too many. An administrative hearing was held this week to decide whether the state can revoke the license for Planned Parenthood’s St Louis clinic; a ruling is expected in February. If the license is revoked Missouri will become the first state without a functioning abortion clinic since 1974.

As it turns out, the DHSS is so concerned about women’s health it has been keeping spreadsheets tracking the date of Planned Parenthood patients’ periods, in an attempt to figure out which of them “had undergone failed abortions”. Let me just repeat that: American government officials are tracking the menstrual cycles of thousands of women. But, you know, it’s for their own good so don’t worry about it.

Source: If the government tracks women’s periods, why not track male ejaculation, too? | Arwa Mahdawi | World news | The Guardian

Microsoft women greeted by sceptical court in unequal-pay case

Women engineers who claim Microsoft Corp. discriminates against them for pay and promotions faced tough questions from a federal appeals court weighing whether their ground-breaking lawsuit should become a class action.

The lawsuit against Microsoft is the first in a series of gender-pay-disparity cases against big technology companies to reach an appeals court over the question of class-action status.

The three plaintiffs want to represent about 8,630 peers who have worked for the company since 2012. Pursuing the case on behalf a large group would give the women much stronger leverage in settlement negotiations before a trial.

Women employees at Twitter Inc. lost their bid for class-action status in July 2018 in San Francisco state court. Similar cases against Oracle Inc. and Google are pending.

Source: Microsoft women greeted by sceptical court in unequal-pay case

Co-founder of Stonewall calls for calm

Fanshawe believes that the Stonewall of today is undermining the rights of lesbians and putting women and girls at risk by “unthinkingly” merging the rights of lesbians and gays with those of trans people  . . .

“I have never seen a feminist placard that says, ‘Death to trans people’ but I have seen many placards that say, ‘Death to Terfs’ [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] or ‘Punch a Terf’. The violence coming towards lesbians is completely staggering.” …

“And what is absolutely awful about this is the way debate is being shut down. There is a group of people who are also actively trying to get people out of their jobs.   . . .

One of the problems with self-identification becoming the basis for law is that it affects women. Negatively. Because it creates confusion between biology, social identity and the law. So firstly, you can’t change sex. I mean, that is really clear and intersex people are really fed up with being thrown under the bus about this.

So transwomen are not women, transwomen are transwomen and I respect them for that. When I went out to campaign for gay equality, I didn’t campaign to be heterosexual. I went out in the streets and I said, ‘I’m gay’. I am different, I may be a minority, but I want equal treatment under the law. I want trans women to have equal treatment under the law. I want them to be free from bullying and harassment and violence, but I absolutely can’t accept that they are women.

And if you allow self-ID to become the basis for the law, which means that a man on his say so can be treated legally as a woman, it then means that men can claim discrimination against them as women. There are implications for a whole set of things around that and bad law drawn up around self-ID ends up with the famous wax my balls case in Canada, where a man with male genitalia is legally saying he’s a woman.sment and violence, but I absolutely can’t accept that they are women.

What we are saying is that we will not support a law that defies biology and defies the history and importance of women’s-only spaces and rights.”

Source: Co-founder of Stonewall calls for calm

Gay parents to get both names on child’s birth cert in Ireland

Same-sex parents will be able to legally register both their names on their child’s birth certificate from next May under new regulations to be signed by Health Minister Simon Harris today.

(ed: Complete erasure of mothers increasingly viable)

Source: Gay parents to get both names on child’s birth cert – Independent.ie