Category: Herstory

Scotland closer to formal apology for those accused of witchcraft

More than three hundred years after the Witchcraft Act was quashed, a member’s bill in the Scottish parliament has secured the support of the Scottish National Party to clear the names of those accused of witchcraft.

Campaigners for the justice of those accused and convicted under the Witchcraft Act 1563-1736, including the Witches of Scotland group are set to receive official apologies for the people who were tried as witches – two-thirds of whom were executed and burned between 1563 and 1736.

A total estimated number of 3,837 people – 84 percent of whom were women – were sentenced to their violent deaths after being accused of witchcraft, such as cursing the king’s ships, shape-shifting into animals and birds, or dancing with the devil.

Source: Scotland closer to formal apology for those accused of witchcraft

EXCLUSIVE: Major developments in Kathleen Folbigg’s case may prove her innocence – Lawyers Weekly

The 2003 conviction of Kathleen Folbigg for the smothering deaths of her four children over a 10-year period branded her Australia’s “worst female serial killer”, despite there never being any evidence to support the supposed cause of death. Almost two decades on, new clinical research and expert evidence shine a light on what really happened and expose crucial flaws in the criminal justice system.

Earlier this year, a legal team behind Ms Folbigg circulated a petition containing new research into an unreported cardiac mutation found in two of her children, Sarah and Laura, that explains how they likely died from natural causes. In a development shared with Lawyers Weekly, that mutation has been added to the list of mutations in ClinVar, a worldwide authoritative database used by clinicians and geneticists.

Alongside barrister Dr Robert Cavanagh, Ms Rego has prepared a submission for pardon on behalf of Ms Folbigg and has handed it over to NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman. In this exclusive interview, Lawyers Weekly breaks down the submission, including more on the research that designates a natural cause of death to two children. We also look at where the justice system got it wrong the first time and the ramifications should it falter again in deciding Ms Folbigg’s future.

Since releasing the petition earlier this year, Ms Rego and Dr Cavanagh have pulled together expert reports – discussed below – to support the submission to Mr Speakman. As part of that, they explored where and how it went wrong at both the initial trial and the 2019 inquiry. For example, the argument that there were no known cases of three or more infant deaths became a focal point for the prosecution.

Another major flaw in the prosecutions’ argument was that it heavily relied on Meadow’s Law, the now-discredited theory that “one infant death is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder until proven otherwise”. Although discredited prior to Ms Folbigg’s trial, Ms Rego said it “pervaded the tone and approach of the case”.

Source: EXCLUSIVE: Major developments in Kathleen Folbigg’s case may prove her innocence – Lawyers Weekly

Castrating Children in the Service of Male Sexuality

Ritual castration dates back thousands of years and can be observed throughout cultures around the world. Eunuchs existed in China 4,000 years ago, were imperial servants 3,000 years ago, and were common as civil servants by the time of the Qin dynasty. Eunuch singers are known to have existed from the early Byzantine Empire, and Italy famously castrated young boys to preserve a feminine singing voice. At the height of Italy’s fascination with the castrati, in the 1720s and 1730s, it has been estimated that upwards of 4,000 boys were castrated annually. The hijras of India, now often referred to in Western media as trans women, traditionally underwent not only castration but also participated in prostitution, a practice that continues to this day.

Castration also figured in a number of religious castration cults. During the late 18th century, for instance, a religious sect emerged in Russia that preached self-mutilation, particularly of primary and secondary sex characteristics. The Skoptsy, as they were called, could be compared to Orthodox Christians: they believed in saints, heaven and hell, and that Jesus Christ died on the cross. Unlike mainstream Christianity, the Skoptsy sect also believed that Christ was castrated.

In decades past, the overwhelming majority of those claiming to suffer ‘gender dysphoria’, or a strong wish to inhabit the body of the opposite sex, were adult men with transvestic fetishism. These days, gender dysphoria is used broadly to refer not only to a male preoccupation with his status in society and the size or shape of his own genitalia, but to a discomfort with one’s sexed body in general. In this way, the male sexual practices of feminization and castration — whether surgical, chemical, or metaphorical — have been expanded to include women and children.

The reasons that women and girls experience discomfort with their bodies are profoundly different from the ways adult men express their desires to become “sissy sluts”, to “grow boobs” or get “girl skin”, or to otherwise inhabit female bodies for the purpose of arousal at being treated like, and degraded as, a woman. Therefore, I propose that what is really meant by “inclusivity” is the forced integration of women and children into male fetishistic proclivities in order to normalize them. In this, women and children are being treated as collateral damage.

Just as the Skoptsy, the hijra, and those responsible for the castrati actively indoctrinated children into self-mutilation, sometimes by force, so the modern transgender movement tirelessly targets youth. Through children’s books, social media, television programs, celebrities, and influencers, young people are being told that masochism and dissociation are not only to be celebrated, but an expression of identity.

It was necessary for the Skoptsy to alienate children from their families in order to achieve this; similarly, gender ideologues claim that parents are abusing their children when they attempt to protect them from harm. Gender ideology represents a new iteration on the strategies of previous self-harm cults. From the Skoptsy to the Castrati, women and children have long been mutilated to normalize the practices — whether religious, cultural, or sexual — of adult men.

Source: Castrating Children in the Service of Male Sexuality

The Behavioral Ecology of Male Violence

Understanding patterns of lethal violence among humans requires understanding some important sex differences between males and females. Globally, men are 95 percent of homicide offenders and 79 percent of victims.2 Sex differences in lethal violence tend to be remarkably consistent, on every continent, across every type of society, from hunter-gatherers to large-scale nation states.

To understand why this pattern is so consistent across a wide variety of culturally and geographically diverse societies, we need to start by looking at sex differences in reproductive biology.

Noting these sex differences in reproductive biology and parental investment is important because they help explain why males tend to engage in more violence than females.10 Aggressively engaging in violent conflict is more likely to reduce a female’s fitness, as it may bring unnecessary danger to her offspring, or cause an injury that may prevent her from reproducing in the future. For a male, however, violent conflict can potentially increase his reproductive success through increases in status,11 or by aggressively monopolizing access to key resources.

Source: The Behavioral Ecology of Male Violence

Is Kathleen Folbigg innocent? New evidence suggests she is – Lawyers Weekly

Kathleen Folbigg has been branded Australia’s worst female serial killer but new research into the deaths of her four children, backed by the world’s leading experts, may instead make her Australia’s worst miscarriage of justice.

Backed by genomic testing, a group of eminent scientists have cast doubt on Ms Folbigg’s guilt and her 2003 conviction for the manslaughter of her son Caleb and the murders of her three other children, Patrick, Sarah and Laura. With a new petition, Ms Rego and others on Ms Folbigg’s legal team hope to see her free.

“This case should be of concern to everyone because it establishes that hard scientific facts can be pushed aside in preference of subjective interpretations of circumstantial evidence. That is scary and, frankly, one that every lawyer, every person, should be concerned about. It’s not just about Ms Folbigg,” Ms Rego said.

Source: Is Kathleen Folbigg innocent? New evidence suggests she is – Lawyers Weekly

The Real Way to Figure Out How Smart Someone Is | by Jessica Wildfire | Aug, 2021 | Medium

[T]he word genius is gendered. The word itself evokes images of disheveled men. Everyone knows what Albert Einstein looks like. Do you know what Lise Meitner looks like? Do you even know who she is? She discovered nuclear fission, but it was her male colleague Otto Hahn who received the Nobel Prize for her work.The word genius comes from a sexist heritage. Kant himself thought women were barely human, utterly incapable of rational thought.(So did Aristotle.)For most of history, women have been excluded. Pick up a book on history or philosophy by a best-selling author. How many great female historical figures does it mention? Probably not that many.

Source: The Real Way to Figure Out How Smart Someone Is | by Jessica Wildfire | Aug, 2021 | Medium

The Tokyo Olympics are supposed to be a ‘landmark in gender equality’ — are the Games really a win for women?

Tokyo will feature the most female athletes ever at an Olympics. But the Games do not have a good track record when it comes to gender equality.

The Olympics do not have a good track record when it comes to gender equality. At the end of the 19th century, when it was founded, the modern Olympic movement deliberately excluded women. Games patriarch Baron Pierre de Coubertin argued an Olympiad with women would be:

impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper.

The Tokyo Games will feature the most female athletes at an Olympics, with 48.8% of competitors set to be women.

Noting this is actually shy of 50%, this is nonetheless up from 45% at the 2016 Rio Games and 44.2% at London 2012. At the Tokyo Paralympic Games, 40.5% of athletes will be women, compared to 38.6% at Rio.

To put this into a historical context, at the first modern games in Athens in 1896, women were banned from competing (although there are reports at leaset one woman ran the marathon).

At the 1900 Paris Olympics, women were allowed to compete, but they were only 22 out of 997 competitors. Women were also restricted to a select number of five “ladies” events: tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrian and golf.

Women also make up significant proportions of the IOC organisation, but the numbers remain low at the leadership level. For example:

  • IOC membership (recruited by the IOC itself) is 37.5% female
  • the IOC executive board is 33.3% female
  • women account for 47.8% of the members of the IOC’s commissions, which advise the organisation on specific issues, such as ethics, science and athletes
  • more than half (53%) of the IOC’s administrative employees are female.

Some Olympic leaders also have a long way to go in terms of the way they view women and women in sport administration. In February this year, the head of the Tokyo Olympic Organising Committee, Yoshiro Mori, resigned after complaining to a Japanese Olympic Committee meeting that women talk too much.

Source: The Tokyo Olympics are supposed to be a ‘landmark in gender equality’ — are the Games really a win for women?

The Forgotten Life of Einstein’s First Wife – Scientific American Blog Network

Albert Einstein is celebrated as perhaps the best physicist of the 20th century, one question about his career remains: How much did his first wife contribute to his groundbreaking science? While nobody has been able to credit her with any specific part of his work, their letters and numerous testimonies presented in the books dedicated to her(1-5)  provide substantial evidence on how they collaborated from the time they met in 1896 up to their separation in 1914.

Albert and Mileva were admitted to the physics-mathematics section of the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich (now ETH) in 1896 . . .

By the end of their classes in 1900, Mileva and Albert had similar grades (4.7 and 4.6, respectively) except in applied physics where she got the top mark of 5 but he, only 1. She excelled at experimental work while he did not. But at the oral exam, Professor Minkowski gave 11 out of 12 to the four male students but only 5 to Mileva. Only Albert got his degree.

[N]obody made it clearer than Albert Einstein himself that they collaborated on special relativity when he wrote to Mileva on 27 March 1901: “How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on relative motion to a victorious conclusion.”

Zarko Marić, a cousin of Mileva’s father, lived in the countryside property where the Einsteins stayed during their visit. He told Krstić how Mileva calculated, wrote and worked with Albert.

Gajin and Zarko Marić also reported hearing from Mileva’s father that during the Einstein’s visit to Novi Sad in 1905, Mileva confided to him: “Before our departure, we finished an important scientific work which will make my husband known around the world.”

Mileva’s brother often hosted gatherings of young intellectuals at his place. During one of these evenings, Albert would have declared: “I need my wife. She solves for me all my mathematical problems”, something Mileva is said to have confirmed.

The first recognition came in 1908. Albert gave unpaid lectures in Bern, then was offered his first academic position in Zurich in 1909. Mileva was still assisting him. Eight pages of Albert’s first lecture notes are in her handwriting. So is a letter drafted in 1910 in reply to Max Planck who had sought Albert’s opinion.

In 1919, she agreed to divorce, with a clause stating that if Albert ever received the Nobel Prize, she would get the money.

Source: The Forgotten Life of Einstein’s First Wife – Scientific American Blog Network