Calling Irish posters - was there the same debate before the GRA 2015?

Yes Maryz, the older feminists are being sidelined if they don't drink the kool aid. I saw a 50something woman who'd campaigned against the 8th amendment in 1983, someone who had stood on street corners of conservative small towns and fought that battle firsthand - being told by a bunch of kids she was a "fucking terf" and a "transphobe" for objecting to "pregnant people" and all that nonsense. It was depressing. Meanwhile they fawn over the "brave and stunning" types who manage to make the fight for female reproductive rights about them and their right to take hormones cos obviously it's the same thing.

morningrunner yes it's interesting how quickly the "awakening" has happened in the UK, I've followed the debate for about 2 years now and there is far more openness and critical thinking.

I agree absolutely cuirderussie, it's ridiculous. There are some wonderful young (and old) role models in the Irish women's movements over the years, any one of whom would have been more relevant.

I still don't think Vanessa, after over 40 years as a man, has any business giving a keynote speech at a feminist conference for young girls/women. Nor do I think that sense of entitlement would have been there 10 or 20 years ago.

I've encountered several young "transmen", they are centring themselves in the pro-choice movement, demanding we say "pregnant people" and sonon. One addressed the last Repeal march, with a long poem likening people misgendering her, sorry, him with the Tuam babies scandal and other Irish injustices, it was a bit hard to take tbh. Really, we're getting it on both sides unfortunately.

I'd be interested in Dil's take on it.

Vanessa Lacey is a fully transitioned "trans-sexual" according to the old-fashioned definition of the word. I wonder how she feels about all the "don't bother transitioning, just feel it" crap.

Dil Wickremasinghe has an interesting background. She is a feminist and a lesbian who has faced a lot of discrimination because of her sexuality I'm interested in how (if at all) gender critical she is.

I don't think "transwomen are women" dogma has hit here yet; we are still at the "the boys won't let them play, so us nice girls will let them tag along with our gang" mentality.

I wonder if transmen are excluded from such a conference? Because at the moment young girls identifying as male are in need of a lot of support, I would have thought, but they are falling through the cracks of "women's groups" and I haven't seen many men's groups trying to offer them anything

www.eventbrite.ie/e/femfest-2017-tickets-39449789382

Femfest, an event for young women. With added shite about preferred pronouns, gender neutral toilets and a speaker from the Trans Equality Network. Just fuck off. What has any of that got to do with young women and their issues?

I've just read that Rollercoaster thread and recognise arguments from here (well made) together with a lot of misreading of those arguments and a fair bit of leaping to conclusions.

Tipping point for me was Caitlyn Jenner winning some woman of the year award - firstly what does she (I have no issue in calling her she, or her name by the way) know about being a woman and what has she done to be "woman of the year" and secondly her acceptance speech said something about the hardest thing about being a woman was clothes/makeup/high heels - thus showing complete ignorance of the reality of life as a woman. Twat.

quarks I know exactly who you're talking about, there are a couple of very nasty characters shoving themselves to the centre of the pro-choice movement and making it about them. And the clueless young women fawning over them don't get it at all. I agree with a pp about Ireland being in its infancy re human rights. Sometimes it seems we've swapped one kind of regressive dogma for another.

It's on the 'Chit Chat and Trivia' board BTW

I was involved in a very heated discussion on www.rollercoaster.ie last week (the thread is called Caitlin Jenner on the Late Late) there's a fairly even split of WTF and people who've drank the cool aid. It's worth a look to see the level big confusion and misinformation out there.

QuarksandLeptons

No, I hadn't seen any trans connection to the repeal the 8th movement, wow, I'm really shocked by that, i need to look into to it more

I think the undercurrent of those articles is "trans people use disabled toilets until they can "pass" at which stage they use the toilets of the gender they are presenting as" - which presumes they are (a) transitioning and (b) trying to pass.

Which is all very well until you get into the gender neutral bollocks. There is a boards.ie thread about Jonathan Rachel Clynch which is mostly saying wtf?

This is my view on things as they stand in Ireland at the moment.

Trans is very much conflated with being lesbian and gay (not so much bisexual, especially if male, which is still a big issue in Ireland). So the rainbow umbrella has coincided with lesbian and gay marriage and lesbian and gay equal rights. Now that might seem simplistic, but Ireland is just emerging, a toddler in social terms really, from being a state that has been effectively dictated to by the teachings of the Catholic Church.

I haven't seen any TRA demands in Ireland. In fact, here the bathroom issues seems to be addressed by virtue of providing gender neutral as well as single sex bathrooms, and people seem to be happy with that - see articles about Trinity and DCU

A quote from the Trinity article:

"Trinity’s Gender Identity and Expression policy states that “it is not acceptable to restrict a trans* person to use disabled toilets or other unisex facilities”, and describes it as “good practice” for Trinity to provider “non-gender specific facilities where possible”.

They have taken any single toilets, or easily adaptable ones and made them gender neutral, while leaving the main men's and women's untouched. This seems to me to be very sensible, as long as the relabelling of the disability bathrooms doesn't mean less access for disabled students and staff. Though I worry about whether new buildings will have gender neutral only, it's not clear.

It wouldn't keep the UK or American transactivists happy, I don't think, and I also don't think legally a transwoman who wanted to use the womens could be stopped. It doesn't seem to have happened - yet!

Any students I've talked to are still at the "eyeroll, does it matter" stage, until I point out that women should be able to go into the loo in a nightclub if they feel threatened and know for sure no man can follow them

At that point I can see tiny little glimmers of comprehension. But it's slow going.

Very interested to hear more Irish perspectives - we had a bit of a look on the thread below and my feeling was that the culture is very different, but that might be changing.

Thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3061682-Can-I-ask-a-question-about-the-gender-identity-bill

On prisons:
the prison service allocated people to male and female prisons based on their genitalia or their birth certificates and according to Director of Care in the (Irish) Prison service in his eight years in the prison service, he had dealt with two transgender prisoners (there were at least 80 a couple of years ago in the UK prison service).

It did seem though that many of the trans stories featured in the Irish press are:
-"traditional" transsexuals - gay men (sometimes gay women) who transition in their early 20s or younger.
-crossdressers who cross dress in secret

Cross dressing is still allowed to be mentioned e.g www.dublinlesbianline.ie/crossdressing.html
www.thehiddenpeople.ie/

BUT there does seem to be a significant and increasing amount of press coverage of transgender children (dresses/toys etc). And late transitioners who describe cross dressing in wives clothes.

Finally - you can't have genital reassignment surgery in Ireland and you need to travel to the UK
www.independent.ie/irish-news/health/hse-forked-out-850k-for-sexchange-operations-in-britain-35461961.html

There were only 28 people in Ireland in 2016 going through medical transition on the health service and Four patients travelled abroad for the treatment in 2014, five in 2013 and 12 in 2012.

It's really ironic that in a country where accessing anti-depressants for suicidal teenagers is pretty much impossible "because medicating children isn't a good idea and there are too many side effects", it now appears acceptable to give puberty blockers to (possibly) suicidal teenagers

The whole abortion/women's rights bollocks is all mixed up. The left are so gung ho about supporting trans rights they don't care about women, the right are so misogynistic they also don't care about women. ffs, in Ireland it seems that even women (a lot of them anyway) don't care about women.

To be fair about the trans issues, though, I think people in the UK are coming late to this (see the progression in gender critical thinking on MN in the last few years), and in Ireland the law just went through before anyone had any idea what it would lead to.

Most Irish people are still at the stage of thinking "poor trans people who are so unhappy they've gone through years and years of surgery and hormone treatment, what harm will it do to be a bit understanding". I'm sure most, if they actually knew what trans means nowadays, would be horrified.

Trinity66

Yes, I think it’s part and parcel of the same attitude coming from the left & right. And in fact I think the men on the left in Ireland who aggressively silence women regarding trans issues see women exactly how the old school conservatives do. I.e, men know what’s best in all situations.

Also, it’s been horrible to see the abortion movement- Repeal the 8th hijacked by trans identifying men. Have you heard them saying that it’s about them now as they deserve bodily autonomy to be given free hormones & surgery? Likening elective cosmetic life style choices to that of a woman carrying an unwanted pregnancy. I don’t think anyone could have imagined that connection being made 15 years ago

QuarksandLeptons - kind of on the same topic as what you're saying, as you know we have the abortion referendum here in Ireland next year and there has been alot of discussion about that, in particular I'd listen to that on radio shows and by far the vast majority of callers to these shows who disagree with bringing abortion into Ireland are men

There was no discussion about it at the time in the press and in general life and there’s been none since.

I’m from Ireland originally and literally no one I’ve spoken to even knew it had gone through. That’s including a friend who is a journalist at one of the main broadsheets as well as my parents who are educated and liberal and keep up to date with the news.
When I’ve explained the implications, there’s been a bit of a shrug response.

There definitely are those in Ireland who are very on board with trans ideology.
My feeling about those who are enthusiastically embracing letting men be classified as women is that it’s a direct line tracing from Ireland’s very sexist, regressive, patriarchal past. The people who are aggressively attacking women who voice concerns are the same ones who would have turned a blind eye to wives being beaten, girls being sent to institutions when pregnant out of wedlock etc. They love to see themselves as really progressive but actually they are probably going backwards from their parents generation in terms of how they view women as agents of their own destiny.

Thanks americano

Sorry, MayFayner

(Not relevant to the thread, but I love your name MayFayne )