Once upon a time, Oxfam was an organisation which sought to alleviate poverty by providing assistance to people in developing countries, and raised lots of money to do so.
A casual browse of their website shows that this is still their main pitch, and potential donors are shown photos of people needing aid in East Africa and Syria, while also learning that countries like Ukraine and Turkey are in dire straits because of war and natural disasters. These are, of course, worthwhile endeavours.
Oxfam Ireland raised more than €17 Million in its last fiscal year alone – with €5 million coming from ‘Charitable Activities’, that is, mostly from the taxpayer – and another €12 million or so coming from the generosity of donors, either directly to the charity or by supporting in one of Oxfam’s many shops which are popular throughout the country.
Most Irish donors likely believe that Oxfam doesn’t get involved in culture wars, or in the kind of pettiness that would alienate hundreds of thousands of people who would happily contribute to the good cause of ending ‘poverty and injustice’.
Sadly, they’d be wrong. Oxfam has now released probably the most idiotic and divisive ‘Inclusive Language Guide’ possible, which includes all of the absurdities you’d expect from a lobby group like, say, Stonewall.
It manages to insult everyone from mothers to pro-lifers to people who speak English, and a vast array of other people who are just heartily sick of this nonsense.
The guide was produced for Oxfam International by Helen Wishart who is the “Intersectional Feminist Communications Lead at Oxfam Great Britain”.
The introduction to their instructions for What Words you Can and Can’t Use says that it was written “in collaboration with a huge number of people from across the Oxfam confederation”.
This does beg the question, it has to be said, as to why an aid organisation is wasting resources on this virtue-signalling, woke nonsense.
If, as we are told, people in Syria and Turkey are in “urgent need of assistance”, and East Africa is suffering “dramatically” increased levels of poverty and inequality, why is Oxfam busying itself with Intersectional Feminists whose job seems to be to find problems where there are none.
Why would starving people experiencing famine, or those living in war-torn areas, care about these increasingly mad demands: such as that we shouldn’t say the word ‘mother’ or that women are ‘people who menstruate’.
You’d really need to read the guide yourself to see just how awful it is but here are just some of the outlandish claims and tropes which Oxfam seems to think we need to hear to end poverty.
(We are also sternly warned that ‘silence is violence’, so no slacking off in the back there).
There’s the usual claptrap about ‘avoiding’ the word ‘mother’ – and the tying-oneself-up-in-knots around breast-feeding and menstruation.
Parent, we are told, is the preferred word, and there’s some guff about the “patriarchal culture” and “trans parents” having a “preferred specified gender role”.
Then there’s “breastfeeding people” – because “not all people who breastfeed identify as women” – and also some bizarre scolding about the phrase “feminine hygiene” being disallowed because “it further assumes that menstruation is innately feminine”.
(Spoiler alert: menstruation is innately feminine, even if that’s not inclusive. Menstruation doesn’t want to be inclusive, its just a biological process that women have to put up with.)
The guide says that most of us, people unconfused about gender, should be described as “cisgender” because “if there is no language to describe a person whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth, then this is assumed to be ‘normal’, the implications of which contribute to the ‘othering’ and marginalization of transgender people.”
The grievance Olympics in full throttle.
The term ‘expectant mothers’ is also another no-no, apparently, because it “reinforces gender stereotypes” and “assumes that the woman in question wants to continue the pregnancy/will carry the pregnancy to term”.
Wow.
We’re told that “Pregnant women’ is a more neutral, less loaded term. To be more inclusive of gender non-binary, trans men, or gender non-conforming people, the term ‘pregnant people’ or ‘people who can become pregnant’ can also be used.”
I’m sure the women of the developing world who are crying out for real improvements in maternal healthcare – medicines, midwives, clean and safe surroundings – are delighted to know that SOMEONE is prioritising inclusive language.
East Africa, for example, has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world – 11 times that of developed countries – and most of these deaths occur because of a lack of basic care. But men getting pregnant is a focus for Oxfam.
And there’s more. “We further recognize that this guide has its origin in English, the language of a colonizing nation.”
“We acknowledge the Anglo-supremacy of the sector as part of its coloniality. This guide aims to support people who have to work and communicate in the English language as part of this colonial legacy. However, we recognize that the dominance of English is one of the key issues that must be addressed in order to decolonise our ways of working and shift power,” the guide says.
It’s actually hilarious stuff. Like a bizarre parody.
Hopefully all those awful English speakers giving millions to Oxfam are rightly ashamed of themselves – and are at this very moment abasing themselves in as fervent and as public a manner as the charity is.
Readers are also cautioned that the phrase ‘standing with’ is dodgy: “We avoid'” the phrase, the guide intones, because it might alienate “people who are unable to stand.”
The madness continues for pages. How can people get paid to write this rubbish?
Strangely enough, the guide, which is insistent that all sorts of people can identify as whatever they want, gives no such latitude to pro-lifers. They are smacked down firmly and aggressively with no thought as to how that might damage diversity and inclusivity.
“We avoid” the term ‘pro-life’, the guide spells out, saying it prefers “anti-abortion” or “anti-choice”.
“The term ‘pro-life’ is emotive and misleading. Anti-abortion is accurate and avoids negative connotations that cause discrimination against people that need or choose to have abortions,” it goes on.
The term ‘pro-choice’ is hunky dory, however.
What if I identify as pro-life though? Or what if a woman in East Africa, meeting Oxfam’s team, identifies as pro-life? Will she have her world view – and her identity – corrected by the Oxfam thought police?
The hypocrisy is blatant, but maybe its time for all those terrible pro-lifers – the 33% of people in Ireland, the 723,000 people who voted No, the people who give endlessly to good causes because they believe in helping others – to check Oxfam’s privilege.
You don’t get to dictate and diminish and talk down to people and then squeeze them for money for Oxfam projects which seem to be less about poverty eradication these days and more about pushing gender ideology and woke blatherology.
So Oxfam, if you want to ‘avoid’ and erase women, and pro-lifers, and people who speak English, and all sorts of ordinary, decent people, at least be honest enough to spell out that mission instead of using photos from the developing world as donation click bait while you waste resources on this nonsense.
This absurd, laughably bad, nonsensical ‘inclusion’ guide is actually a two-finger to donors. Maybe its time donors gave the same back.