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How not to run an academic institution. My Alma mater is demonstrating some worrisome (read batshit fucking stupid) decisions regarding firing female staff for having the absolute gall of teaching the ‘unorthodox’ view that biological sex is important to women and their struggle against patriarchy.
Her feminist views are apparently causing a small segment of students to feel unsafe and thus because if we are not walking on eggshells around entitled gender deluded males one must be doing the whole academic thing wrong.
“Something very wrong has happened at the University of Alberta. A professor has been fired from part of her academic job for views on sex and gender that break with current orthodoxy.
In late March, Kathleen Lowrey, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, was asked to resign from her role as the Department of Anthropology’s associate chair, undergraduate programs, on the basis that one or more students had gone to the University’s Office of Safe Disclosure and Human Rights and the Dean of Students, André Costopolous, to complain about her without filing formal complaints. All Professor Lowrey has been told is that she is somehow making the learning environment “unsafe” for these students because she is a feminist who holds “gender critical” views.
Apparently, Lowrey’s very openness about her views is a problem. Should a course have gender or sex as a central theme, on day 1 she offers a summary of her views along with the declaration that no student need agree with her about any of it, as she did this year with her course “Anthropology of Women.” As she cleaves to a feminism that asserts the continuing importance of biological sex and feminist projects of resisting patriarchal oppression, her views put her out of step with much current thinking about the nature of gender, which from the seminal work of Judith Butler forward takes sex to be a social construct. Lowrey also posts statements related to her views on her office door — something she is entitled to do. She contends that in asking her to resign from her service role the University is endorsing ideological conformity.
Lowrey refused to resign from her service role and insisted that if the University wished to dismiss her from it, it would need to put its reasons for doing so in writing. She subsequently received a letter from the Dean of Arts Lesley Cormack dismissing her from her service role without offering any specifics as to why. The letter simply declares that the Dean believes that “it is not in the best interests of the students or the University” for Lowrey to continue in it.”
This is unbelievable. Exactly what part of a healthy part of academic debate does this help?
“The University of Alberta takes the position that Lowrey had to be dismissed from her service role “for the good of the department” because at least one student claims that for the University to let her continue in the role would be for it to run the risk of the department losing students to another field of study. The argument, in effect, is that Lowrey could not be allowed to let the Department suffer a financial penalty for her views. (In the University of Alberta’s budget model, government funding “follows” students to the departments in which they take their courses.) With its worry that Lowrey’s views will have financial consequences for the Department of Anthropology, the University of Alberta lets an unfortunate development of the academy over the last few decades, in which students have become tuition-paying “customers” upon whom universities rely for more and more of their revenues, come into direct conflict with academic freedom principles. This is a very serious problem. No department at any university in Canada should be taking the position that it has to concern itself with how a professor’s intellectual views may affect a department’s bottom-line.
Finally, the University of Alberta takes the position that it had to dismiss Lowrey from her service role because if it did not do so students would feel that the University “cared more” about “supporting” the professor than it did about them. This is a terrible line of reasoning, which pits students against a professor when what ought to be of paramount concern to all is the commitment to intellectual engagement and critical scrutiny of ideas as fundamental to the University’s flourishing. Quite simply, at a university, unorthodox or controversial views must be actively debated, and never suppressed, if the university is to meet its societal obligations.
The University of Alberta needs to restore Professor Lowrey to her role as associate chair, undergraduate programs, in the Department of Anthropology, and university administrators elsewhere need to make sure that they do not fall into the University of Alberta’s mistake. It is essential that our universities never become homes for orthodoxy of any kind. “Dogma is bad for people,” writes UBC professor emeritus William Bruneau elsewhere on this blog. But for universities dogma is much, much worse. It is anathema to the academic mission.”
Kathleen Lowrey needs to reinstated yesterday. This sort of totalitarian anti-academic thinking has to stop.
Oh and email the Dean about this travesty – artsdean@ualberta.ca
“One woman died and two others were injured in a violent attack at a Toronto massage parlour in February. A 17-year-old male, who is too young to be identified under Canadian law, was charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder.
Police added the terrorism charge on Tuesday, three months after the attack, after finding what they say is evidence that he had ties to the incel or “involuntary celibate” movement, whose members believe women owe men sex and are to blame for male sexual frustration. “
Yep, you read that right. That loser of a dude was under the notion that somehow women (sexy,hot women) owed him sexual pleasure and gratification.
Just how far up one’s ass does one need to be to think that anyone owes you anything in the world? And yet, this incel movement is a real facet of society.
Check this shit out from incel.co a forum for the wankers (hyperlink through donotlink):
“Sex is clearly a vital part of every humans existence, a man doesn’t even “become a man” in a sense within society until he has sex, in essence a lot of men have not undergone their “right of passage” to become part of the “tribe” that is modern human civilization.
This is why all of these mass shootings are taking place, its started to branch off into other things like the “Thot Audit”, more and more things like this are going to keep happening until society finally acknowledges this problem and begins to make changes.
So as it stands we now have a significant and growing pool of sexually starved men, who due to this are angry, violent, irritable and suicidal, seriously how does society expect this to play out, the most dangerous animal is the one backed into a corner with nothing to lose, when someone doesn’t care if they die, worse yet they want to die just so their sad existence can end, there is no reasoning with that person, they are on a “war path”, you either kill them, give that person what they want, or you get out of their way as they proceed to claim what they want.
Society expects us not to burn the village down when it won’t initiate us into the tribe, that’s whats truly outrageous, not the violence of disenfranchised men, but the fact that society actually expects us to just remain docile and accept this reality that has been forced upon us.”
Yeah. Witness the real creme of human civilization…
To Solidarity and Liberation!
Please go and support feminist organizations that are carrying on the struggle for female rights and safety.
Also, why women are joining the Canadian Women for Sex Based Rights group:
Females need spaces away from men. Especially men who believe that woman is feeling inside their heads. Access to safe washroom spaces is a key part of women’s rights. So the ‘gender neutral’ (read male) toilet movement has to stop.
“Access to sanitation services has been recognized as a human right by the UN since 2015:
sanitary facilities are essential for men’s and women’s health alike. But despite a direct link between women’s rights and dependable access to toilets, the issue remains less visible than it should be. Even when sanitation infrastructure exists, it’s often ill-adapted to the needs of girls and women.
sanitary facilities are essential for men’s and women’s health alike. But despite a direct link between women’s rights and dependable access to toilets, the issue remains less visible than it should be. Even when sanitation infrastructure exists, it’s often ill-adapted to the needs of girls and women. Even when sanitation infrastructure exists, it’s often ill-adapted to the needs of girls and women. In 2018, 60% of the total number of people who had to resort to open-air defecation were women, and in sub-Saharan Africa one girl in ten missed school during her period. Though women are at higher risk of lacking access to dependable sanitary facilities, and such access is key to empowering them, data on this basic right are limited.
No toilets: putting girls’ and women’s health and security at risk According to the most recent available data, from 2017, over 500 million women lacked access to sanitation facilities. That means that 13% of the world’s female population was unable to use a toilet to go to the bathroom or manage menstrual hygiene. For these women, the risk of sexual assault is 40% higher than for women with access to sanitation facilities, according to a 2018 study conducted in the shanty towns of Kenya’s Mathare Valley. In India, this risk is as high as 50%. Titre Tribune Also read Toilets for more gender equality around the world Health Gender Water & Sanitation Read What’s more, a lack of access to toilets poses higher health risks for women than for men. In addition to health risks shared by both sexes—including diarrhea, dehydration, dysentery, typhoid fever, hepatitis A and even polio—problems like toxic shock syndrome, vaginal or urinary infections, and pregnancy complications affect women alone.
Illnesses due to a lack of personal and menstrual hygiene compound problems arising from contact with fecal matter, which tend to receive more attention. Hygiene, health and security: when girls and women have to choose As a 2016 study observes, attending to menstrual and personal hygiene while avoiding many of these illnesses necessitates four elements: privacy, water, soap and a trash disposal system. Unfortunately, even when sanitation infrastructure exists, it’s often ill-adapted to the needs of girls and women, according to the NGO WaterAid.
In Kenya, the sanitation facilities installed in the Mathare region are mixed-gender, few in number (with 1 toilet for every 70 to 100 people), fee-based, and often lack a door. Together with paid access, the lack of cleanliness, privacy and security drives many women to avoid using these toilets : “A third of women use a bucket or plastic bags or defecate outdoors at least once per day, and two-thirds of them do the same at night,” says researcher Samantha Winter. When toilets contribute to female empowerment In addition to being essential to girls’ health and security, access to dependable, well-designed sanitation facilities exerts a direct influence on girls’ education rates. In 2019 a third of the world’s schools lacked toilets, according to the UN. The direct result has been an increase in girls’ drop out and school absence rates when they reach puberty, owing to the lack of a place where they can change when they have their period.
According to UNESCO, in sub-Saharan Africa one girl in ten misses 20% of the school year for the same reason. For all these reasons, UNICEF is leading a program in Jharkhand, India to train women as masons. Girls who have dropped out of school because of the lack of facilities for dealing with their periods are becoming rani mistri, toilet-builders, in their communities. For its part, WaterAid has drawn up a best-practices guide in partnership with UNICEF and Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), designed for all actors involved in providing sanitation access. These initiatives have the same goal: promoting the inclusion of women in the planning and governance of sanitation infrastructure to ensure that their needs are taken into account.”
Some days I really do wonder about the social fabric of my province. There is apparently a market for human sized anatomically correct dolls in Calgary (and thus another good reason to believe nothing good comes from there except the road North).
What I’m amazed at is the everyday occurrance tone the article takes, for example…
“The whole thing takes place while the body of the doll hangs from a hook over a tub to catch the water and soap, its head removed, legs bent.
“The first thing we do is we bring the doll back here and begin our cleaning procedure immediately,” says one of the new service’s co-owners, whom CBC News has agreed not to identify because he feared repercussions at his other job, but who we’ll call Steve.
“So we disassemble the doll, we take out any removable orifices, we take off the head, then we proceed to do a rinse with hot water to get any surface bacteria or surface solids off.
“Then we begin with our anti-bacterial soap.”
Yep, nothing out of the ordinary here, just our elaborate cleaning procedures necessary to wash the spunk off of our female replica dolls.
“Then there’s the sponge on the medical pincers and more peroxide and more cleaning.
A similar process happens in a smaller sink for the head and the inserts that fill the orifices.
“Obviously, this cleaning procedure, no one does this to themselves in the shower, which just proves another point that these are cleaner than any person or escort that you could find,” said Steve.
And yes, there is documentation of the cleaning process.
But it’s not just about the cleaning, is it?”
It cannot just be me who feels like we’ve merrily skipped into the uncanny valley.
“Beyond just the physical features, like different bodies and hair and even elf ears, each doll comes with its own story and personality.
Ariana, for example, is a 26-year-old bikini model from Venezuela, while Bella “comes from an Icelandic clan of mushroom forest elves where women are forbidden from refusing sex to their lovers.”
Cameron, the sole male of the bunch, is pretty much up for anything, and while he’s not as popular as the women, Steve says he’s been kept pretty busy. “
Nope, this isn’t harmful fetish fuel at all.
“They’re not just sex dolls, they’re also great for companionship,” he said.
“They’re someone to talk to, they’re someone to listen to you, they’re someone to cuddle with and, of course, they’re just someone to be there with you in an empty room.”
He also says his business doesn’t exploit anyone, while still providing a sexual service.
“These are a much safer and legal alternative [to prostitution],” he said.
“They don’t have any feelings, they can’t be abused. They aren’t real. So there is no objectification.”
Nope, no objectification at all, the backstory of ‘Bella’ proves that completely: “Bella comes from an Icelandic clan of mushroom forest elves where women are forbidden from refusing sex to their lovers.”
Adding another plank to the large raft of evidence of the power that male paraphilia exerts on society. :(
The marchers carried more than 100 purple crosses through the capital, each bearing the name of a woman who has been murdered or gone missing.
The demonstration was called “Dia de Muertas”, or “Day of the Dead Women”.
Femicide, the murder of a woman because of her gender, kills 12 women daily in Latin America according to the UN.
Large posters showed the faces of missing or murdered women in rows of up to forty, with captions calling for justice. Another poster simply read “Not one more”.
The names of the victims were also written on the surfaces of two larger purple crosses that were carried through the demonstration.
We need to focus on the dangers females face every day, just for the ‘crime’ of being female.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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