All over the land, the children are making or buying cards for Mothering Sunday - an important day for very many years.
Even now Oxfam shops are touting a nice promotion - a 'Mother's Day Gift Guide'. One special offer is a free Mother's Day card when you buy a Fairtrade chocolate heart. Hooray for chocolate-loving mothers everywhere.
But wait... by implication, according to a new document produced by this same Oxfam, there's an issue here.
'Mother' you see, is problematic.

In the latest manifestation of the outrageous lunacy that's taken over all our institutions, the charity founded in 1942 to combat hunger and poverty around the world suggests that the word 'parent' is preferable to 'mother'.
Its new policy document states: 'We avoid 'mother'; or 'father',' adding that it is best to 'avoid assuming the adoption of gendered roles by transgender parents'.
The charity has hit back at widespread criticism by stating that this decree deals specifically with transgender parents, and that it wishes to respect the right of transgender people 'to use other names to designate parenthood'. 





For the rest of society to be forced to change the language we have spoken since birth - with multiple layers of meaning understood in every word - is entirely unacceptable

Listen, Oxfam bureaucrats!

It is those of us born female who menstruate, get pregnant, become mothers - and evDEN Eve NaKliyaT (let me add with sadness) experience abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, ovarian cancer, hysterectomy.
Womanhood is special and nobody can take it from us.
Precious and conveying generations of 'lived experience', it also forms a significant link to other women around the world. I think of this as 'sisterhood'.
Travel through Rajasthan - and who are those people you see carrying water, leading children and working in the fields, saris fluttering like so many gorgeous butterflies?

They are women.
Visit Botswana - and ask who washed the neat school uniforms worn by crocodiles of school children. Women. Who did I laugh with in a village in Uganda, all of us mocking the men who do nothing but talk - and (cue knowing giggles) 'make the babies'.
It was a group of sparky women.
Who was the hard-working individual I met on a trip to Kenya and took shopping for supplies for the children? She was a mother. Who was the extraordinary, stalwart black person I chatted to in Clarksdale, Mississippi- bringing up a girl of 16 and her baby in a rough shack?

She was an heroic grandmother.
What would all those women think of Oxfam's denial of motherhood? How would its internal advice play out in areas where people know quite well what 'mother' and 'father' mean?
What's truly shocking is that Oxfam's recent past shows it failed to disclose abuse of vulnerable women and girls by its own aid workers.

A year after the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the charity investigated reports that Oxfam-employed workers in Haiti were sexually abusing local women. Seven members of the Oxfam team in Haiti, including the head of the operation, Roland van Hauwermeiren, resigned or were sacked for sexual misconduct in 2011.
Oxfam carried out an investigation into the allegations but faced claims of a cover up.

Disgracefully, EVdeN evE NakLiyaT it concluded that the behaviour was not a case of exchanging 'sex for aid' and did not make the report public at the time because the prostitutes involved were not beneficiaries of aid.
This charity, set up with a noble aim and once supported financially by millions (including me) has become a disgrace.

Closing down offices all over the world because of a funding crisis (after the Haiti outrage and then the pandemic) it nevertheless finds resources to produce policy documents which test credulity.
For example, even as the Charity Commission imposed a 19-month statutory supervision on Oxfam because of its failings in safeguarding, the charity's LGBT+ network was producing a training manual called 'Learning about trans rights and inclusion'.

It makes for shocking reading. Because instead of judging sexual violence to be a problem that Oxfam ought to combat, their document says: 'Mainstream feminism centres on privileged white women and demands that 'bad men' be fired or imprisoned.'











The official advice from the charity - founded in Oxford in 1942 to relieve famine worldwide - attempts to revolutionise its staff's language across a wide range of fields

The introduction apologises for being written in and about the English language, saying: 'We recognise that this guide has its origin in English, the language of a colonising 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 recognise 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 official advice from the charity - founded in Oxford in 1942 to relieve famine worldwide - attempts to revolutionise its staff's language across a wide range of fields. 
It looks to outlaw 'headquarters' as it 'implies a colonial power dynamic'; 'aid sector', which 'cements ideology where an agent with resources gives support on a charitable basis'; and 'field trip' because it can 'reinforce colonial attitudes'.
Oxfam said in a statement yesterday: 'This guide is not prescriptive but helps authors communicate in a way that is respectful to the diverse range of people with which we work.

We are proud of using inclusive language; we won't succeed in tackling poverty by excluding marginalised groups.'
The charity said it was disappointed some had 'decided to misrepresent the advice offered in the guide by cropping the document' online.
Released on Monday, the Oxfam publication tells staff not to say they 'stand with' people they support because it 'potentially alienates people unable to stand'.

Even 'people' is a suspect word, as it 'is often misunderstood as only referring to men'.
Readers are told 'these guidelines are not set rules and should not be viewed as restrictions'. However the guide launches into long lists of problematic words and phrases beside a large cross and, in capitals, 'WE AVOID'.











Readers are told 'these guidelines are not set rules and should not be viewed as restrictions'












 Nigel Mills, Tory MP for Amber Valley, added: 'It's as though Oxfam are trying to take the word 'woman' out of the dictionary - it's nonsense'












The guide does, however, allow that 'if individual parents have a preference for a role name' such as mother or father, staff should 'respect their choice

Avoid: Women and children, ladies
Why: 'Women and children' reaffirms the patriarchal view that women are as helpless as children, neglecting women's actual and potential roles.

It wrongly suggests that men are not in need of protection and that women have no agency or capacity to act. Use phrases that do not categorise women and children in the same group, and (depending on the context) be specific about who you are talking about. Where appropriate, acknowledge that men are or can be victims as well (particularly in situations of war)
Instead: Women, men, girls, boys
Avoid: VAWG (Violence against women and girls)
Why: It may be better to avoid using VAWG where possible because reducing the problem to an acronym can be considered to be trivialising a serious and traumatic issue
Instead: Sexual violence, violence against women and girls, gender-based violence
Avoid: Biological male/female, male/female bodied, natal male/female and born male/female
Why: No one, whether cisgender or transgender, gets to choose what sex they're assigned at birth.

This term is preferred to biological male/female, male/female bodied, natal male/ female, and born male/female, which are inaccurate and do not respect the identity of transgender people
Instead: AFAB, AMAB - acronyms meaning 'assigned female/ male at birth'
Avoid: LGBT, LGBTQIX, homosexuality, gay and lesbian (if used alone to refer to the whole LGBTQIA+ community)
Why: There are various versions of this acronym that include different letters to represent different groups.

It is important to note that some people consider the + (to indicate others not explicitly covered in this acronym) to be insufficient.
Instead: LGBTQIA+











Talking about high/middle/low-income countries recognises that the economic status of a country is situational rather than definitive

Avoid: Headquarters
Why: Implies a power dynamic that prioritises one office over another.

In the context in which we work the implication is very colonial, reinforcing hierarchical power issues and a top-down approach
Instead: Name the specific office location
Avoid: Field visit/trip/mission
Why: In Oxfam's context, the phrase field trip was previously used to describe visits to lower-income countries, whereas a trip to New York, for example, would not be considered a field visit.

By using this kind of language we reinforce colonial attitudes
Instead: Visit to (specified location), business trip
Avoid: Spokesman
Why: A spokesperson could be of any gender.

We should avoid language that implies that men are the default human
Instead: Spokesperson
Avoid: Suffers from, victim of
Why: The phrase 'is affected by' does not define a person by a health issue and avoids negative connotations
Instead: Is affected by
Avoid: Elderly, seniors, youth
Why: Write about older people in a way that affords respect and dignity, and avoid phrases which are homogenising or patronising.

The same goes for young people
Instead: People over/under x, elderly people, older people, elders, young people
Avoid: Deaf




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The people we work with are not passive beneficiaries but are agents of their own development

Why: The word 'deaf' describes anyone who has a severe hearing problem.

Sometimes 'Deaf' is capitalised to refer to people who have been deaf their whole lives, and who use sign language as a first language.
Instead: People with hearing impairment, hard of hearing person, deaf person
Avoid: Poor people, the poor, poorest people
Why: Avoid phrases like poor people, which define people by their experience of poverty.

Poverty is a circumstance and not a definition of a passive actor.
Instead: People experiencing poverty, living with/in poverty, living in extreme poverty
Avoid: Beneficiaries, recipients
Why: The people we work with are not passive beneficiaries: they receive support to realise their rights to food, shelter, water, asylum, political participation etc but are agents of their own development
Instead: People we work with, programme participants, service users