Posts Tagged ‘gender’
The Gender Pay Gash
In the Times, talk turns to the gender pay gash, sorry, gap:
If you thought the days of the unreconstructed male needing to rule the financial roost in a marriage were long gone, it may be time to think again.
New research has found that husbands feel a thrill if a pay rise widens the gap between their earnings and those of their lower-paid wives — but women get no such kick if the roles are reversed.
The stereotype of the male breadwinner may still be “bigger than we give credit for”, said Vanessa Gash, a sociologist who co-authored the study of views of income by gender.
Spotter: The Times
Posted: 23rd, November 2020 | In: Broadsheets, Money, News | Comment
Theybie baby: Non-binary trans parent raises child as gender non-specific
In the Guardian a story on a women who seems to have endured a tricky time growing up. The story is: a person’s gender can be whatever they want it to be; whatever feels right to them. The sex part is more defined, right? Meet parent Kori and their child Searyl, a theybie, a new word that means raising a child as neither a boy nor a girl. Says Kori:
“I’m not saying they are a girl, or they are a boy, or they are non-binary and therefore it has to be like this. My approach has been: ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t know who they’re going to be or what’s going to be important to them. What’s important to me is that I hold all of the space so that they can figure out who they are with the full menu.”
Talk and listen to your children, right? Raise them as best you see fit. Love is the key, everything else plays second fiddle to love.
“You parent based on who you are and what you believe in the world. What I believe in the world has led me to a place where of course my kid would have full autonomy of gender.”
The backstory comes in the first paragraph:
Long before becoming pregnant, Kori Doty knew exactly how they were going to raise their child.
When Doty was born in the picturesque seaside city of Victoria, British Columbia, in the 1980s, a doctor assigned them as female, but the label didn’t fit. “When I was born, a guess was made [about my gender] because nobody knew better than to do that. And that guess was incorrect,” says Doty, who now identifies as non-binary trans – meaning they are neither a man nor a woman, and that their identity does not correspond with their birth sex. “It caused some amount of complication, upset and harm in my life.”
So when Doty gave birth in November 2016, they were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Why not have fun with gender? The sex is something other…
Raising a penguin without ‘assigned gender roles’
Did you know you a human being can raise a penguin living in the UK without “assigned gender roles? This is not a parody (I think):
Meanwhile…on the Island of Dr Moreau…
Posted: 11th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment
Caster Semenya: a test of biology not gender
Michelle Garcia looks at the fabulous athlete Caster Semenya.
Immediately after that mind-blowing 800-meter final at the 2009 World Championships, some of Semenya’s fellow competitors went for the jugular. Italy’s Elisa Cusma Piccione (sixth place) insisted she was a man. Russia’s Mariya Savinova (fifth place) urged journalists to “just look at her.” Other athletes whispered, stared, and laughed at her. Then came the IAAF.
Initially, the questions about her drastic improvement were linked to suspicions of doping. When those tests came back negative, she was subjected to rounds of gender testing, reportedly involving analysis by an endocrinologist, a psychologist, a gender expert, an internist; most humiliating was a gynecological exam that included photographing her genitals while her feet were in stirrups. Eventually she was cleared to compete on the international circuit again but not before she missed nearly a year of competition during the IAAF’s deliberation over her test results. The dirty secret here is that gender testing is common for women athletes — and yes, only women athletes.
Jason Kottke says Semenya is a hit by sexism, racism, bureaucracy. I’d say that everyone deserves a level playing field. Sport is all about rules. In 2015, the Court of Arbitration for Sport stopped the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) rule that females with ‘male levels’ of testosterone could not take part in in women’s races. Before that Semenya was impelled to take testosterone suppressants. The thinking is clear: testosterone is an indicator of performance. So what of transgender athletes? David Walsh notes: “To ensure fairness we need to define what is male and what is female. It can’t be down to a person’s preference.”
Semenya is doing the best with what nature gave her. And her best is exceptional. But the need is for her to be classified as male or female for the purpose of athletic competitions. Semenya is intersex: she possesses XY chromosomes but a body that appears female. And in her chosen sport, that might give her an advantage. An unfair one? What about having longer legs in the high jump or bigger feet in the swimming pool? Which genetic advantages are acceptable and which are not? And who gets to decide?
Meghan Markle to dress ‘genderless’ baby in a suit
Meghan Markle will “break with tradition” and raise the young Prince “genderless”. So says the Daily Star. Meghan will do away with traditional macho frilly lace, broaches and knickerbockers, preferring to dress the young sire in something more masculine and yet also more feminine, like a smart business suit with complementary document wallet and sensible shoes.
The paper also notes that the royal nursery will be designed in “gender-neutral colours” of beige and grey from the corporate pallet.
Says one Royal watcher to Anorak: “It’s what Chairman Mao and Bill Gates would have wanted.”
Posted: 25th, February 2019 | In: Fashion, News, Royal Family, Tabloids | Comment
London Ambulance Service snares unisex signs vandal and other Blue Mooners
There’s a scene in Grease, the 1978 film, where the school principle vows to call in the FBI and thereby identify the three ‘Blue Mooners’ who bared their backsides at the televised dance. The trio showed only their arses but the FBI have special tools and forensics to aid detection. The London Ambulance Service (LAS) also has top people on hand. It’s called in handwriting experts to understand which NHS staff defaced signs making lavatories, showers and changing rooms gender-neutral.
Is it a man, a woman or something else? The LAS’s emergency operators have been advised not to call people “madam” or “sir”, and stop using the prefixes “Mr” or “Mrs” even if callers request it. They should consider using the gender-neutral pronoun “Mx”.
Jules Lockett, head of emergency operations centre training at London Ambulance Service, and joint head of its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender network, is quoted in the Sunday Times: “We did get a lot of people trying to rip the signs down, so we just printed a lot off and were just going round and sticking them back on.” But someone took “a permanent marker into the toilet to make changes on the signs, et cetera, that we’ve put up… What people don’t realise is we’ve had one of our directors who has collected these signs, collected the handwriting and asked for a professional analyst to compare that handwriting with the handwriting they used on their patient report forms, and we have found [a] person.”
Aside from being utterly absurd, the shared facilities are not universally wanted. Nicola Williams, of Fair Play for Women, is quoted: “Whether women have to share their private spaces with men may not matter to Jules Lockett, but it does matter a great deal to other women, including clearly to many of her own staff. This is a classic example of someone trampling on women’s rights and safety and congratulating herself for it.”
How about if Mrs Caller used to be Mr Caller and requires help to a part of the body often unique to one gender? Lockett says “it was sometimes necessary to establish someone’s birth gender because it affected the medical treatment they needed”. Well, yes. But what if they have changed their birth gender? If you get your gender change legally recognised, you can order a new birth certificate with your new gender on it. The rules are here. Right now, to change gender who you must have been “diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a doctor or had surgery to change your sexual characteristics” and have lived in your acquired gender for two years.you are then apprised by a panel. It’s an ordeal for many. One proposed change – aimed at making what the process easier – would allow people to “self-declare” their gender. To say it is to be it.
But what about women’s right? Does giving people the opportunity to self-determine their gender make women feel safer in refuges, toilets and prisons? But back to health matters? If under the terms of the Government’s Gender Recognition Bill a man can declare himself a that he is in fact a woman, and his birth certificate changed accordingly, how are they best treated in a medical emergency? Does the woman with a penis get a letter inviting her to attend a smear test? Does the man with a womb seek advice on hot flushes and testicular cancer? When do a person’s medical recodes – documented fact – become documented theory?
As for the sign scrawler, the London Ambulance Service says: “There have been a small number of occasions where discriminatory graffiti has been left. These incidents have been reported to managers and investigated.”
Round up the usual suspects:
Southampton student leader regrets vow to destroy art painted by Jewish ‘white man’ Sir William Rothenstein
Do we believe in redemption? And is redemption only possible after punishment, preferably one meted out by the court of public opinion, or something more brutal, like ‘Frothing at the Mouth With Rage, of Twitter’? Emily Dawes, student union president at Southampton University, has apologised after she told her twitter followers of her plans to paint over a “mural of white men”. For those of you not paying attention, “white men” is now an insult.
The mural Dawes wants destroyed was painted by Sir William Rothenstein in 1916. It’s a memorial to British students who served in the First World War. The Echo tells us the mural “depicts an academic procession and an unknown soldier being presented with a degree”. On planet Student Union, it seems that laying down your life for democracy and positive freedom – freedom to – is a sin if the perpetrators of this heinous act were white men.
Ban this sick filth
The Times cites another of her tweets:
She posted an image of the mural with the caption: “One of the women just said, ‘It’s nearly Armistice Day so are we covering up this tapestry??’ And Holy Shit. F*** Yes. Grl Pwr.”
A quick note about that swine Rothenstein (29 January 1872 – 14 February 1945):
William Rothenstein was born into a German-Jewish family in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire where he was educated at Bradford Grammar School. His father, Moritz, emigrated from Germany in 1859 to work in Bradford’s burgeoning textile industry…
Rothenstein was principal of the Royal College of Art from 1920 to 1935, where he encouraged figures including Edward Burra, Evelyn Dunbar, U Ba Nyan and Henry Moore. Moore was later to write that Rothenstein “gave me the feeling that there was no barrier, no limit to what a young provincial student could get to be and do”.
Jews Mourning in a Synagogue 1906 Sir William Rothenstein 1872-1945 Presented by Jacob Moser J.P. through the Trustees and Committee of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in commemoration of the 1906 Jewish Exhibition 1907
An utter swine, then. His works must be defaced and destroyed. And there’s more. The Tate tells us about the panting above – Jews Mourning in a Synagogue:
This is one of eight paintings of Jewish ritual which Rothenstein made over a two year period, following a visit to the Spitalfields Synagogue in Brick Lane, in London’s East End. The artist describes in Men and Memories (II, pp.35-6) how he chanced to visit the Machzike Hadaas Synagogue…
Rothenstein was excited by the unusual scene: ‘Here were subjects Rembrandt would have painted – had indeed, painted – the like of which I never thought to have seen in London … It was the time of the Russian Pogroms and my heart went out to these men of a despised race, from which I too had sprung… Not permitted to draw in the synagogue, which would have been a violation of the Law, and ‘determined not to waste a subject so precious’, he took a room nearby in Spital Square and persuaded some of the men to sit for him. They were initially reluctant, as they feared he might sell the pictures to churches. The first of the paintings Rothenstein made was The Talmud School, 1904. In Jews Mourning in a Synagogue, Rothenstein has perhaps misunderstood the ritual, as Jews would not have been mourning in a synagogue, and the scene is posed in a studio, in any case.
What a nasty sod, eh. My mother’s Sephardi ancestors fled the pogroms in Russia and settled in the East End. Thanks to Rothenstein’s work, I can be transported to that time. Art has power. Great art has presence. Anyone who destroys it is a fool.
Emily Dawes can be forgiven for thinking that in the binary world of identity-driven student politics, where pioneering figures are trashed and their deeds poured down the memory hole, she’d get an agreeable audience when she tweeted: “Mark my words – we’re taking down the mural of white men in the uni senate room, even if I have to paint over it myself.”
After a lot of blowback, Dawes deleted the Tweet and apologised for her words.
“Firstly, and most importantly, I would like to apologise for the offence and upset I have caused with what I have said. I never meant the disrespect to anyone past, present and future. I had no intention of the tweet being taken literally, and upon reflection have realised how inappropriate it was. My intention was to promote strong, female leadership and not the eradication of history. I do not believe that to make progress in the future, we should look to erase the past. Once again, I would like to apologise for the offence and upset I have caused.”
Students, eh, they do go to the school to learn. Ignorance isn’t always bliss…
The British #MeToo and other #iBelieve witch-hunts
The Daily Telegraph has been legally gagged from publishing allegations of sexual harassment and racial abuse made against a top businessman. Is that fair? We usually get to know the name of the accused in such case but not the name of the accuser. the BBC once hired a helicopter to get to the accused first. The paper’s story is billed, rather unappealing, as the “British #MeToo scandal”, what many see as a divisive movement, one rooted in sexual misconduct allegations about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. It was ‘Time’s Up’ for sexual aggressors – time to divide leering men who use power to abuse, belittle and intimidate women from, well, the rest of us.
The writer Lionel Shriver said #MeToo was “important to begin with to expose some of these real malefactors”, but then as she told an audience at the Cheltenham Literary Festival:
“Then it took a turn and suddenly we were talking about bad dates and bad taste or making crass remarks and it trivialised itself and I thought that was really regrettable. I don’t like the feeling that now everyone has to have their story of some kind of terrible sexual abuse in order to be able to have an opinion about any of this stuff. I don’t want younger women to locate their sense of power in their weakness, in their fragility. I think the movement has run its course and we can pretty much call time on it now.”
Whereas feminism was once about women seeking equality and opportunity through their resilience, strength, modern feminism is about seeking victimhood and demanding special zones and rights. Shriver says MeToo encourages women to “locate their sense of power in their weakness, in their fragility”. She also said: “I am concerned that we are increasingly wont to confuse genuine abuse of power in the workplace with often distant memories of men who have made failed – ‘unwanted’ – passes.”
The Telegraph would love to tell readers the accused man’s name. But maybe not knowing is better than knowing because it allows the Telegraph to make a cause from could otherwise be a good bit of gossip. “The public have a right to know when the powerful seek to gag the vulnerable,” says the paper’s leader. We learn that the accused man spent “close to £500,000 in legal fees”. Who knew that saying nothing could cost so much?
The paper lines up the guns:
A businessman has used NDAs [Non Disclosure Agreements] in at least five instances to pay employees substantial sums to stop them accusing him of sexual harassment and racial abuse. He has used considerable resources to fight disclosure, achieving an interim injunction preventing publication.
Interesting to know what pressure was applied on the alleged victims to take the money? A QC tells the paper: “A lot of claimants are forced to enter NDAs because of the sheer cost and unpredictability of litigation.” To nothing of the huge stress of going to court. But the rich can afford it. So is it one rule for them and another for us?
And what of gender? Christina Hoff Sommers, host of The Factual Feminist noted:
Powerful men are falling left and right – but not because women are second-class citizens. Just the opposite. Girl Power is real. Instead of carrying on about how frightened and degraded we are, maybe it’s time to acknowledge the truth: in 2017, we can destroy almost any man by a single accusation.
To believe the women without thinking and circumspection is surely no good. To call out illegal behaviour by pathetic men is good.
Back to the scoop, then, and there’s an inkling that however much the Tele wants to tell us the alleged cretin’s name, not telling us puts it on the side of the angels:
A High Court judge had refused to grant an injunction. But the Court of Appeal has overturned that ruling and imposed an injunction which remains in place pending a full hearing in the New Year. We have, in other words, been gagged, contrary to the age-old principle against prior restraint of the press. If the businessman had used defamation laws to block publication, he would not have been granted an injunction since this newspaper would have declared its readiness to prove the truth of the allegations.
The paper ekes four more stories from the gagging order: “Schillings: The ‘attack dog’ firm that acted for Giggs, Terry and Ronaldo”; “The day press freedoms received a devastating blow”, “How gagging orders became the MeToo war’s weapon of choice” and “This decision will discourage exposure of oppressive workplace cultures”. A huge deal. Papers need a campaign and the Telegraph has one.
Stop Press – this is important: “it is now illegal to reveal the businessman’s identity or to identify the companies, as well as what he is accused of doing or how much he paid his alleged victims”. How this pans out on twitter and areas outside the judiciary’s control remain to be seen. In 2011, the Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming “used parliamentary privilege to name Ryan Giggs as the footballer identified on Twitter as having brought an injunction to prevent publication of allegations he had an affair with a former reality TV star.” They might do it there. But don’t do it here.
The Telegraph says there is “a clear public interest in publishing the claims, not least to alert those who might be applying to work for him.” But innocence is presumed, of course. And if what we read is true, well-fed lawyers working for him were not mired by the accusations. And to repeat this to make it no less true: believe what you like, but innocent must be presumed.
Woman born a man sets world record in first race at world cycling championships
Congratulation to Canadian Rachel McKinnon for winning the women’s sprint 35-39 age bracket at yesterday’s world cycling championship in Los Angeles. Rachel is a natural, tweeting: “I broke the 200m WORLD RECORD this morning. It was my first indoor 200m…” Imagine how much faster Rachel, who was born a man and also holds a PhD in philosophy and focuses on gender studies, would go than the other women if she practiced?
And think how much better the England women’s rugby team could be with few trans players in it – we’d annihilate the opposition, literally. England’s current second row features Rowena Burnfield (5ft 10ins; 77kg); the men’s game boasts Joe Launchberry (6ft 4 inches; 118kg).
Rachel tweeted again, this time with the medal around her neck, hailing herself as the “First transgender woman world champion…ever.”
Plaudits came thick and fast on twitter. “Those poor women who trained so hard only to have this done to them,” said @stringfella_.
@Hitkicker noted: “Amazing! I was so enthused at reading this, I went out and challenged two 8 year olds to a 100m race. Guess what, I ONLY WENT AND FUCKING WON. First time running in a 8 year old’s race too!”
— James October 13, 2018
McKinnon was touched:
Well, no, I’m still forced to have an unhealthily low endogenous testosterone value…it’s virtually undetectable it’s so low…way below the average for women.
Which women is moot point?
Womxn replaces womyn replaces women at Wellcome show for people who identify as women
Wellcome Collection, the “free museum for the incurably curious, exploring health and what it means to be human through medicine, art and science” has renamed women as “womxn”. Men remain as they were, but women are now womxn because, well, you can dick around with women and not worry about the consequences. This earnest rebranding comes with a supporting show:
Typeset women back into history with #Daylighting our four-day programme of letter printing presses, zine workshops, discussions on how womxn can challenge existing archives, wikipedia 101 & more. 18-21 Oct. Explore the programme: ow.ly/sXTm30m7g98 #free
Wellcome explains:
We’ve had some questions about why we’re using the word womxn for this event. We’re using it because we feel that it is important to create a space/venue that includes diverse perspectives. It was agreed during our conversations with collaborators as the programme developed.
Oh, what utter twxts.
Replies are fruity:
Fxxl off.
— Deborah Orr (@DeborahJaneOrr) October 10, 2018
Adding:
This is ridiculous. And you are supporting it by linking to Urban Dictionary? Seriously? As far as I know, the word ‘women’ has always included women of colour. Correct me if I’m wrong. “Womxn: More intersectional than womyn because it includes trans-women and women of color.”
— Claire King (@ckingwriter) October 10, 2018
Look out for womin; for women who ‘i’-dentify as women; woden, for women with a god complex; and woken for the kind of bellends who use the word womxn.
Posted: 10th, October 2018 | In: News, Strange But True | Comment
Daily Telegraph pay: Boris Johnson promotes gender equality to deadline
You can read Boris Johnson’s thoughts in the Daily Telegraph. The Tory MP’s column earns him around £5,000 a week. The paper marks them as ‘Premium’ stories on its website. If you want to read them all you have to pay. Or you can read them on his Facebook page for free. This week, Johnson pitches himself on the side of girls. The article is entitled: “Put a sock in it men: It’s time to end the global injustices and bigotry towards women.” It’s the kind of article any newly single man whose been caught cheating on his long suffering wife, as Johnson allegedly has, will think a good way to pull the birds.
On Facebook, Johnson’s publishes the following for free:
When a mighty dam is about to burst it does not just collapse in one explosive roar; it first springs a leak. A jet of water shoots from the crack, and then another crack appears and another horizontal fountain of foam; and as the whole vast curtain of masonry finally begins to tremble the onlookers behold the valley beneath and wonder who and what will be in the path of the billions of pent-up gallons as they are released from their captivity.
That is roughly how it feels today as we watch these extraordinary feminist movements like #MeToo, and the frenzy surrounding the nomination of judge Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. We have a sense of the welling emotion behind these phenomena. We feel the rage at decades, centuries, millennia of complacency and injustice. We see women and men uniting to call for a change of attitudes, for a new and progressive sensibility…
What can possibly have triggered Johnson’s fire? One clue comes via Private Eye, which notes that the Telegraph’s new digital MD is one Dora Michail. Her twitter profile includes a rainbow flag. And recent retweets and tweets give a clue to her agenda, which takes in ‘tackling discrimination and promoting gender equality with an intersectional approach’:
So there’s Boris Johnson’s column on his drive to tackle gender equality. Fee for the social justice warrior’s wisdom: £260,000 a year. In next week’s column Boris says: ‘Time to go, Theresa May, and give a bloke a chance…’
Posted: 8th, October 2018 | In: Broadsheets, Key Posts, Politicians | Comment
They might be Her-oes: the trans debate is valid
Being a woman is easy. All that suffrage stuff was bunkum. The penis and the womb make no impact on our life experiences. You just need a dress, some heels, a wig and the mantra “I am a woman” to be one of them. That’s it. It’s why Philip Bunce, a married father of two and a director at Credit Suisse appears on the list topped ‘Top 100 Women in Business’. He is, according to the list compiled by the Financial Times as one of the “Her-oes” doing their bit for gender equality. Philip is one of those “female executives who have made a difference to women’s careers”
Philip, who alternates between Pippa, his female alter-ego, says he is “gender fluid” and “non-binary.”
All the newspapers focus on the upset caused by Mr Bunce making the cut. There is “outrage” (Mirror, Sun) and “anger” (Times). Let’s all agree, good for Mr Bunce. He can dress how he likes and call himself what he pleases. He’s evidently talented, reasoned, authentic and bright, and his gender fluidity has no impact on his ability to do a demanding job. In 2015, he wrote in the FT:
… there is a real value in allowing employees to bring their authentic selves to work, whether they be gender variant, gay, women, Sikh or simply eccentric. Companies are beginning to understand such openness increases employee engagement, discretionary effort and productivity while developing an inclusive culture within the workplace that benefits retention and recruitment… As Oscar Wilde said: “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”
Of course, if he’s in the Top 100, it means the woman at 101 isn’t. And that’s the root of all that “anger”. The anger is good because it’s form of free speech and actual open debate. And the people who are angry are also erudite and considered. Kiri Tunks, co-founder of Woman’s Place UK, tells the Times: “This makes a mockery of women and their achievements and begs the question does Bunce simultaneously feature in top 100 male executives and if not, what were his particular achievements as a woman to merit inclusion in the female list?” And:
Kristina Harrison, an LGBT activist who was born male but transitioned 20 years said ago, she would never accept a place on an all-women shortlist as it was “insulting” to women who faced different challenges. “Being a woman is not a costume you can put on, on some days and not on others. The idea that you can become a woman by donning a wig and a dress is deeply sexist.”
All good points well made. What if Mr Bunce wanted to appear on the Credit Suisse sports teams as Pippa? sports?” People born biologically male are physically stronger than biological women. Is it fair and safe for a sportsperson born biologically male and still in possession of all the tackle, to play women’s rugby? Credit Suisse sponsors the Credit Suisse Sports Awards. Sportswoman of the Year 2017 was Wendy Holdener, the Apline skier. She represented Switzerland at the 2018 Alpine Ski World Cup. She was slower than all the men in the team. So what if Luca Aerni or Mauro Caviezel wanted to compete as women? Could they her ‘Her-oes”?
How about the opinion of Professor Rosa Freedman, of the University of Reading, who says biological males should not have access to women’s refuges? Freedman tells The Times of the reaction to that: “We are talking about the aggressive trolling of women who are experts. I have received penis pictures telling me to ‘suck my girl cock’.” It’s not an isolated example. In recent times, arguing over such things has seen people accused of hate speech and transphobia.
In one notable instance, a poster put up on a billboard in Liverpool featuring the legend “Woman, women, noun, adult human female” – the dictionary definition of woman – has been removed after someone complained that it made transgender people feel unsafe. Facts are not facts. Truth can be whatever you decide it is. “We’re in a new realm of misogyny when the word ‘woman’ becomes hate speech,” said Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who organised the poster. “I wanted it to be a conversation starter but this is a new level of absurd.”
Surely gender is worth a debate? If we want to be ourselves – resilient, complex, questioning, contrary and open – it must be.
Posted: 27th, September 2018 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment
Unisex changing rooms are dangerous- Chesterton’s Fence again
A new report shows that unisex changing rooms are dangerous. Or at least claims that they are. Which brings us to an important philosophical concept, Chesterton’s Fence. The point being that if we see something then, before we decide to sweep it away, we’ve got to work out why that thing as put there or done in the first place. Only once we’ve worked out that original motivation can we think on whether it is still needed or not:
Unisex changing rooms are more dangerous for women and girls than single-sex facilities, research by The Sunday Times shows. Almost 90% of reported sexual assaults, harassment and voyeurism in swimming pool and sports-centre changing rooms happen in unisex facilities, which make up less than half the total.
Gender-neutral changing is growing as councils seek to cut staff costs and cater to transgender people. But one MP said it risked becoming a “magnet” for sex offenders and increased the danger to women and girls.
GK Chesterton pointed out that if you’re out walking in the countryside an you see a fence, well, you might well think that it doesn’t need to be there, tear it down. This may or may not be an error. In order to work this out you’ve first got to consider why was it built in the first place? Only once you’ve done that can you then go on to think about whether that original reason still holds, still justifies it:
Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities.
Hey, maybe we care more about being gender neutral than we do about complaints of sexual assaults. Thus that original reason for the segregation – it being a reasonable enough assumption that it’s going to be men preying upon women – no longer holds.
The point being that whether or not we have gender neutral or segregated bathrooms is a decision we can and should take. But we do need to understand why they were originally set up segregated. Only once we’ve one that can we decide as to whether that reason still holds. No, I dunno either but there’s near no one recommending unisex who seems to have considered the point at all.
Gender Pay Gap: Haim fires agent over male band getting 10x the cash
There is indeed a gender pay gap out there. Some of it is – whisper it gently though we must – entirely justified. Women do tend to take career breaks, there is what is called occupational segregation – people deciding to pursue careers in different occupations – and it does tend to be men who are stupid enough to think that success at work is the be all and end all of life. There are other times it’s entirely justified too – no one is going to be surprised that Tom Cruise gets a higher paycheque than whichever blonde is the arm candy this time around.
There’re also times when it’s rather less justified. And the answer there is for women to take matters into their own hands. To complain and demand that is. Which is exactly what Haim have just done:
All-female band Haim say they fired an agent after discovering they were paid just a tenth of the amount of a male artist on the same bill at a festival.
The US rock group – made up of sisters Este, Danielle and Alana – called the pay gap “insane”.
For those who don’t know these things, band pay at a festival will vary wildly. There will be those there just to get the exposure and maybe thereby get onto the radio. There will be others whose presence on the bill is what sells the tickets to the whole gig. Those latter will gain very much higher pay of course:
“We had been told that our fee was very low because you played at the festival in the hope that you’d get played on the radio,”
Well, that’s OK, as long as everyone knows the deal on the way in.
“We didn’t think twice about it, but we later found out that someone was getting paid 10 times more than us. And because of that we fired our agent.”
Maybe that is OK and maybe it isn’t. But that is the correct answer even so. Not to complain to the world nor to insist that the law must be changed, but to fire the person who negotiated the price you didn’t like.
Of course, it’s always possible that demanding more money means no bookings to play festivals but as these things work out this would also mean no gender pay gap, wouldn’t it? For we do only measure the gap among people who get hired. Those entirely unemployed aren’t included in our numbers.
Posted: 27th, June 2018 | In: Key Posts, Money, Music, News | Comment
Lily Madigan: Labour, women and a terf war
Lily Madigan was once Liam Madigan. Lily is now the women’s officer for the Labour Party branch in Rochester and Strood in Kent. She’s been in the news before. In October 2016, “Brave Lily” (Kent Online) received an apology from St Simon Stock Catholic School, Maidstone, for sending her home for “wearing the wrong uniform” and “preventing her from using the girls’ toilets and changing rooms”.
Said Lily, who threatened to sue the school: “I decided to come in dressed in the girls’ dress code, which basically meant I was wearing a top instead of a shirt. It made me feel so happy, until I was sent home.”
Lily, 19, was born male but identifies as a woman. The Times explains how her new job works:
Labour Party rules state that “the women’s officer must be a woman”.
Why? Can only women understand and represent women? Do you need to have been a girl to know womanhood?
Ms Madigan said it was “misguided” to suggest she could not fulfil the duties of the role, simply because she was born male.
That part at least sounds right.
Teresa Murray, Medway councillor and vice-chairwoman of the executive committee of Rochester and Strood CLP, says “Lily will have to work very hard to convince other people that her very presence there is not going to undermine them”. Adding: “Someone who is an accountant would probably make a better treasurer initially, but that doesn’t mean we should only give the role to an accountant.”
Accountants are born for the job, of course. It’s not something you can learn. It’s something in you. It defines you. You’re just built that way. Accounting is in the genes. But that’s not to say others don’t think accountancy more representative of their true selves. If they want to dress in grey suits, part their hair to the side and carry a briefcase, then that is their right.
Ella Whelan has more background:
Madigan hit the headlines after arguing that Anne Ruzylo, a Labour Party women’s officer in a different constituency, should be sacked for being ‘transphobic’. Ruzylo, a lesbian, feminist and trade unionist, had criticised the sanctification of the trans movement. For this, she was labelled a ‘terf’ (trans exclusionary radical feminist) and was harassed by transgender activists online. Eventually, the executive committee of Ruzylo’s local Labour branch resigned in protest at her mistreatment.
“I feel quite violated,” Ms Ruzylo told The Times. “I’ve worked as a trade unionist for 30 years and I’ve never been shut down in this way. It’s disgusting… Debate is not hate. If we can’t talk about gender laws and get shut down on that, what’s next? What else are we not allowed to talk about? We’re going back to the days of McCarthyism. It is disgraceful.”
“I don’t care if I get called a transphobe, says Whelan adds, “Lily Madigan is not a woman. At 19, he is barely even a man.”
Ouch.
One thing is certain: if you cannot express yourself, we are all the worse off for it.
The transgender teenager at the centre of a Labour Party row has applied for the Jo Cox Women in Leadership programme, angering and dismaying party members…
The leadership programme was started last year in memory of the murdered MP Jo Cox, with the specific aim of encouraging more women into politics.
Critics say that it defies the whole point of the scheme, which attracted more than 1,000 applications for 57 places in its first year, to include people who are biologically male or who have lived part of their lives as men.
What price equality?
“Women in the party are fuming,” said one Momentum activist who accused the leadership of quietly redefining the meaning of “woman” without consulting the membership.
Good grief.
Posted: 25th, November 2017 | In: Broadsheets, News, Politicians | Comment
The pay gap for women and trans is about parenthood not gender
Trans issues are to the fore. The Government is looking at altering the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA), which would permit trans people to change their legal gender without a medical process. Right now the rules are that a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is needed to begin the process. People seeking to change gender have to submit evidence that they have been in transition for at least two years.
It’s not about society, manhood and womanhood. It’s about the individual and individual wellbeing. The BBC’s Jenni Murray got into bother by saying that trans women were not “real women”. Feeling yourself to be women is not the same as being one, she opined. Countering that is Shon Fay, who writes beneath the Guardian headline: “Trans women need access to rape and domestic violence services. Here’s why – All women face similar dangers, whether trans or not, and it’s distressing that some people seek to drive a wedge between our rights.”
Growing up being perceived by others as a feminine gay boy certainly wasn’t easy, but once I transitioned, in my 20s, things radically changed. The flashes of misogyny I witnessed when I was younger are now, as they are for most women, a daily reality. Some of this is banal – like the men on dating websites who call me a “stuck-up bitch” or a “desperate slag” when I turn them down. Some is more structural: when I get into my 30s, the gender pay gap will widen and I will find myself on the “wrong” side of it.
Maybe not.
Vox reported:
The data tells us that this can’t be the entire story. It can’t explain why the wage gap is so much bigger for those with kids than those without. One 2015 study found that childless, unmarried women earn 96 cents for every dollar a man earns.
Which man? Because dad get more:
One of the worst career moves a woman can make is to have children. Mothers are less likely to be hired for jobs, to be perceived as competent at work or to be paid as much as their male colleagues with the same qualifications.
For men, meanwhile, having a child is good for their careers. They are more likely to be hired than childless men, and tend to be paid more after they have children.
These differences persist even after controlling for factors like the hours people work, the types of jobs they choose and the salaries of their spouses. So the disparity is not because mothers actually become less productive employees and fathers work harder when they become parents — but because employers expect them to.
Economist Claudia Goldin suggests more:
Many companies still richly reward people who are available and work long, continuous hours, Goldin says. They give premium pay to certain key players – mostly men who don’t take time off for children or aging relatives. So women or men who need flexible schedules obtain them “at a high price, particularly in the corporate, finance and legal worlds,” Goldin writes in her paper. Technology and science fields are better off in pay equity, as are certain health care careers. … “It isn’t, quote, a women’s issue,” says Goldin in an interview with Quartz. The pay disparity shows up equally when male MBAs need reduced schedules or time off for personal or family needs.
And then we can talk about class…
Posted: 22nd, November 2017 | In: Broadsheets, Money | Comment
A rapist locked in a prison with women: what can go wrong?
On the heels of Jessica Winfield, the rapist born Martin Ponting who was moved to a women’s prison after undergoing a sex change, and who, allegedly, was isolated from female lags after making unwelcome sexual advances, we meet Davina Ayrton, formerly David. Davina Ayrton is starting an eight year prison term for taping a 15-year-old schoolgirl in a Portsmouth garage. Davina is still in possession of her male genitalia.
And so to the moral maze: in court Ayrton expressed a desire to serve her time in a women’s prison. Is it right that rapist is housed in a women’s prison? Can it be right that female prisoners are housed with a convicted rapist? Whose rights are at stake here: the rapist who wants to be a woman; or women?
It can only be right and proper that the government works hard to understand the lot of transgender prisoners. Government figures suggest there are 0.8 transgender prisoners reported per 1,000 prisoners in custody. There are about 88,000 people in UK prisoners. Is it time for a trans-only prison?
In 2015, trans woman Tara Hudson was sentenced to 12 weeks in the all-male Bristol Prison. Her mother Jackie Brooklyn told the Bath Chronicle: “I want Tara to be the last victim of a system which desperately needs bringing into the modern world.” Hudson told the BBC: “I could tell that they weren’t really ready for a prisoner like myself. Because of my gender identity they felt they had to lock me up in segregation and keep me away from the main population of the prison. I felt like I was being persecuted by the state… I felt I had no rights.. I felt like an animal in a zoo.”
Add her ordeal to the fates of Vicky Thompson, 21, and Joanne Latham, 38, from Nottingham, who were both sent to male prisons and the picture for trans prisoners is bleak.
Something needs to be done, for certain. But housing convicted rapists with women is not it.
‘Pregnant Women’ are taboo and gender fluid children commonplace as the trans movement thunders on
Transgender news features on the cover of the country’s two biggest-selling red-tops. The Sun has news of “fury” at “Government drivel”, which advises calling pregnant women mums in favour of “pregnant people”. Absurd? Of course it is. But is it true? Can it be that a triumph of liberty – the right to be what gender you choose and shag whatever consenting adult you like – has distorted into a tyranny?
The Government department being ridiculed is the Foreign Office, where civil servants have added their advice to a draft UN human rights paper, warning “the term ‘pregnant women’ could ‘exclude transgender people who have given birth’. Instead, it should be replaced with the term ‘pregnant people’, they suggested.” The Sun musters furious voices to say it’s “nonsense” (Labour MP Jess Philipps) and “drivel” (Tory MP Philip Davies). But it only gives readers a sliver of information about the proposal. It’s not until the 15th paragraph that readers are told:
The intervention came in Britain’s official submission on proposed amendments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The FCO said: “We requested that the UN human rights committee made it clear that the same right extends to pregnant transgender people”.
That sounds fair, no?
The Times quotes Sarah Ditum, who might not have got that memo:
“This isn’t inclusion. This is making women unmentionable. Having a female body and knowing what that means for reproduction doesn’t make you ‘exclusionary’. Forcing us to decorously scrub out any reference to our sex on pain of being called bigots is an insult.”
But isn’t this just an addendum to the inclusive speech that has men saying “We are pregnant” and attending NCT classes? But, in any case, it’s not true.
In other news, the Mirror leads with the story that “50 kids a week are being sent to sex change clinics”. Is that progress?
The lead image sets the tone that all might not be well in childhood.
What about thses figures?
The number of children visiting Britain’s specialist clinic the Gender Identity Development Service, hosted by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London, has risen by 24% to 1,302 in the past six months.
Among them were two children aged four, four five-year-olds and 17 kids of six. In 2016/17 there were 2,016 children referred to the clinic. This is on track to rise in 2017/18 to 2,600. In 2009 there were 97.
Isn’t the key part of that fact the NHS’s involvement, the State’s overseeing role in individual sexual identity and personal liberation? The country has undergone a revolution in sexual liberty. But the movement for equality didn’t end with the decriminalisation of gay sex and the arrival of same-sex marriage; it simply moves on, seeking new things to overhaul. So now the focus is on children, and how they can be altered.
As Brendan O’Neill notes: “The government wants to scrap the current requirement of a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria before you can switch gender and allow for ‘self-identification’. So any bloke could self-identify as a woman, apply for the legal right to be recognised as a woman, and – boom – he’s a woman.” Moreover, you can go back and change your birth certificate, altering it from ‘It’s a boy!” to “It’s a girl!”.
And what began as a glorious pursuit of freedom morphs into something weird, non-sensical and the opposite of truth.
Leave sex out of gender roles – it’s scaring the kids
What are your criteria for selecting your children’s school clothes? Washability, durability, affordability, practicality and compliance to a dress code? What about if you see your children’s wardrobe as a chance to define your politics and your values.
And there’s the individuality. That dress isn’t just pretty, on-trend and like the one the pop star wears; it’s an explainer, an insight into the wearer’s anxieties, life goals and morals. The dress is useful if your six-year old boy is considering transitioning to girlhood, but terrible for girls, who should be wearing gender-neutral tracksuits and John Lewis’s non-stereotyping clothes “for boys and girls”.
Should the choice to dress as a boy or a girl be only for those children agonising over their gender? How does it further transgender rights and acceptance to present them as a special case?
Priory School in East Sussex, a mixed co-ed, has banned skirts, ordering girls and boys to wear grey trousers and shirt, jumper and tie. How is limiting what a girl can wear progressive?
Which brings us to the Rowes, who’ve removed their six-year-old son from a Church of England primary school on the Isle of Wight because a boy in his class was allowed to wear a dress. Last year they removed their 8-year-old from the same school when a boy in his class also started wearing dresses. Both will now be home-schooled.
Sally Rowe, 42, and Nigel, 44, plan to sue. Says Mr Rowe: “Our concerns were raised when our son came back home from school saying he was confused as to why and how a boy was now a girl. We believe it is wrong to encourage very young children to embrace transgenderism. Boys are boys and girls are girls. Gender dysphoria is something we as Christians need to address with love and compassion, but not in the sphere of a primary school environment.”
A Diocese of Portsmouth spokesman adds: “Our schools are inclusive, safe spaces where pupils learn to respect diversity of all kinds. We comply with the legal requirements of the Equality Act 2010 and believe that all should feel welcomed, valued and nurtured as part of a learning community.”
This alters gender from a fact into a problem. It recasts children not as pupils in academia, but as trainee adults conditioned to do away with today’s adult issues. Train the children to be gender neutral and gender-fluid and – whammo! – you can eradicate sexism, misogyny and the gender pay-gap. All those life-limiting stereotypes that stopped women getting the vote and told men to suck up the pain and soldier on are gone faster than you can say “unisex toilets”. Women will no longer feel a need to stuff silicone balloons in their chests and men won’t spend years of their lives bulking up in the gym.
The problem is that the boy rather likes wearing blue, dinosaurs and playing football; and the girl likes pink and belting our songs in front of the mirror and nail polish. They don’t have to. Ballet dresses (girls) and monster trucks (boys) are not prerequisites of girlhood and boyhood, respectively. They are society’s norms against which you can rebel and test the boundaries. And doing so makes for a more – dread – diversity.
Things get messier when you link it all to sex. You can wear a dress and be a man. You can wear a business suit and be a girl. You can expand what is is to be male and female. But your biological sex cannot be ended because you prefer dresses to trousers. The boy won’t experience childbirth and menstruation because he feels better in girl’s clothes; just as the girl in trousers won’t grown testicles.
The smart move is to challenge gender roles but leave sex out of it. After all, as all adolescents know, every new generation invented sex.
Images: Artist JeongMee Yoon – Pink & Blue Project.
Posted: 12th, September 2017 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment
Double rapist who underwent sex change harasses inmates in his women’s prison
Here’s one to ponder. Martin Ponting, 50, a father-of-three, is serving a life sentence for raping two young girls. Jailed in 1995, Ponting became Jessica Martina Winfield after a sex change operation paid for by the NHS. In 2007, Winfield told prisoners’ newspaper Inside Time:
“Unfortunately there is a minority of staff and inmates that give me a hard time because of my sexuality, possibly through lack of understanding and empathy.
“So not only do I have the problem of dealing with serious emotional issues surrounding my gender reassignment sex change but also added pressures and issues due to comments and abuse from certain individuals… I work in the main kitchens here at Whitemoor and the majority of staff and management, along with most inmates, have been extremely supportive. The same on my wing.
“I have changed my name to that of a female to prove to the authorities and everyone concerned that I am very serious about my gender and that I do not feel right being a man. I feel like a female trapped in a male body.
The State stepped in, helping through surgery Ponting solve any self-declared incongruence between his biological sex and gender identity, what the NHS terms ‘gender dysphoria’.
In March 2017, the rapist now known as Winfield was transferred from Cambridgeshire’s male-only HMP Whitemoor to Europe’s largest female-only prison, HMP Bronzefield in Surrey.
He’s now been segregated from other prisoners for allegedly making inappropriate advances.
One of his victims told the Sun in March: “There are not enough words to describe him and the evil he has done. It is diabolical they have allowed him to have a sex change and diabolical that he could be freed this year. He may have changed physically but his brain is still the same.”
When Winfield is released, she can use women-only colleges, women-only cab services, women-only changing rooms and women-only toilets. Might it be that feeling like you imagine a woman thinks and is does not necessarily make you one?
You might also wonder under what tyranny a rapist is housed in a female prison.
The ASA war on gender means mum gets the power drill and dad goes to Iceland
The Advertising Standards Authority once complained about this site. An advert featuring Page 3 stunna Lucy Pinder was sexist, they alleged. Pinder welcomed readers to Old Mr Anorak’s throbbing organ, which for filthy lucre had been sheep-dipped in Lynx, the stuff that drives women wild with lust. It was all a lot of nonsense. Pinder was willing. No readers were damaged. And rumours abound of a whole generation of young Anoraks. Now the ASA is going for other “gender-stereotypical” commercials, seeking to censor inappropriate ads “that feature stereotypical gender roles”.
There’ll be no more Pinder presenting her primary sexual characteristics like Saint Agatha in a bikini. No more Oxo mum feeding her family. No more Ronseal man telling us it does “exactly” what it says on the tin. And no more ads for yoghurts in which a baby-voiced female celebrity talks about her “tummy”.
Such amplification of “stereotypical gender roles” can “cause harm”. These ads “reinforce assumptions that adversely limit how people see themselves and how others see them”. It turns out that Lynda Bellingham is a bigger role model than your actual mum and dad.
So mum gets the power drill for Christmas after all, and dad gets a trip to Iceland for own-brand ketchup and other tastes of regret.
How’s that for progress?
Posted: 20th, July 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, The Consumer | Comment
Ms Sheila Michaels RIP
Sheila Michaels has died. It’s largely thanks to her that people use the term “Ms.” for women. The term was adopted for women without a husband by the New York Times in 1971. The BBC:
“I didn’t belong to my father and I didn’t want to belong to a husband – someone who could tell me what to do.”
Born in St Louis, Missouri, Ms Michaels spent some of her childhood in New York City. She was a lifelong feminist activist, biblical scholar, and collected oral histories of the civil rights movement later in life.
In her professional life, she worked as a ghostwriter, editor, and even ran a Japanese restaurant – but her obituary in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes her favourite job was being a New York City taxi driver.
Posted: 9th, July 2017 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comment
Oregon offer citizens a choice of three genders
From next month Oregon drivers can select any one of three genders for their licenses and state IDs. You can opt for M, F, or X.
The first recipient of the new rule will be Portlander Jamie Shupe, a US Army veteran, who became the first non-binary person in the United States to be officially recognized.
“Imagine I had a white mother and a black father,” Shupe explains. “I would be a mixed-race child. Well, take the word ‘race’ out of there and replace it with ‘sex.’ I feel like nature just popped me out as this mixtures of sexes.”
For ages women were defined as being the opposite of men. How would we define men and women now? Is gender fluid? Is gender constructed by society? If gender is no longer fixed is public affirmation of self all important?
Oregon has moved on. But it’s got some way to go to match the virtual world – Facebook offers over 50 gender options for people to choose from.
Spotter: The Oregonaian
Gender roles: Anything becomes all about the boy
Acting. Isn’t that about pretending to be someone you are not? One writer takes issue with indie movie Anything, staring Matt Bomer:
However, it is not Bomer’s incontestable conventional attractiveness that is setting off alarm bells. It is his off-screen gender and the consistent issue of cis performers playing people of trans experience in film.
Recent years have seen both Jared Leto and Eddie Redmanye win Oscars for their respective trans-woman roles in “The Dallas Buyers Club” and “The Danish Girl”. Chloë Sevigny, Felicity Huffman, Elle Fanning and other notable cis-gender actors have taken on parts that show trans people either during or mid transition. Almost all of these actors have collected praise from the mainstream press for doing so.
Lauding cis actors for delving into trans experiences has long been a Hollywood tradition. The frequency of those plaudits has only more regular more and more films take up the trans narrative at different angles.
Can’t we recruit actors on merit? Non-binary actor Asia Kate Dillon tells the Sunday Times:
“I feel like one thing I encounter is that, particularly with cis men, when they find out I’m non-binary, they don’t know how to be in relation to someone that isn’t something that they understand,”
The paper adds:
And yet, even as more trans stories surface across all media, actual trans actors are often shut out of telling stories that are — in many senses — theirs to tell. It’s a trend that’s been a regular source of criticism and genuine concern.
When Miley Cyrus talked about being gender fluid in 2015, some dismissed it as yet another Hollywood wild-child phase. But Cyrus is hardly alone in identifying this way, joining the likes of teen activist Amandla Stenberg, the Transparent director Jill Soloway, and the model/actor Ruby Rose, who also stars in Orange Is the New Black. The number of gender nonconforming people in the UK is growing and almost half (44%) of a poll by the Fawcett Society last year said they regard gender as more fluid than simply man or woman. Taking their cues from the real-world social discourse, Facebook and Tinder now offer dozens of gender identities.
For those still confused, this is how Dillon put it on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in March: “Sex is between our legs, gender identity is between our ears.”
So what are you? And what are you dating?
Woman accused of raping a man was born a man
Hear the one about the woman accused of raping a man – twice? The Indy delivers the facts in headline and teaser: ‘Woman appears in court charged with raping man twice – Newcastle woman will face four-day trial in December.’
Rape, as defined in English law, is:
Rape.
The elements of rape are:
(A) intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis;
(B) does not consent to the penetration, and
(A) does not reasonably believe that (B) consents
Penetration of the mouth is included.
The story of the woman accused of rape is, thus, an unusual one. The accused is named as Katie Brannen. Katie appeared at Newcastle Crown Court ‘accused of two offences of rape after allegedly attacking the man in January in South Shields’.
In all reports Katie is described as a woman, and self-identifies as such. The interesting part is that Katie has a penis. Katie is out on bail. Katie is banned from contacting the alleged victim and from all licensed premises.
Rachel Johnson tells Mail readers that Brannen was born male. Johnson says that this fact was ‘omitted in the moral panic around both privacy and misgendering, the progressive cause de nos jours. To call someone by the wrong title is considered verbal assault and even bigotry.’ This self-censorship has led to what Johnson calls a ‘fake fact – that women can and do rape men – rather than telling us the literal truth.’
It leads to all manner of questions. Is this a case of misattributed pronouns? Should we stick to gender-neutral language? Has liberation become censorship? How does this impact on the world beyond words – do we have gender-neutral prisons? To what extent can simple biological fact be altered? Is gender located not in culture, biology or society but in performance?
Transgender people should be free to identify however they choose but what about the rest of us? It’s confusing, no?
Posted: 12th, March 2017 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
