Ireland..you could not make this up

7Days I know that you, and any thoughtful person, knows that there are many other problems and other groups.

I wasn't listing them as a "litany of saints" of worthy causes, or a "look how empathetic Fiona is".
What slightly vexes me is, how there's co-opting of sympathy for this group above all others.

Yes. I'd like to know how the vulnerability manifests itself, exactly, so we can target resources efficiently.
As we all know, theres no shortage of problems in this country but resources are not infinite.

This narrative of "one of society's most vulnerable groups" is off-putting (I feel stronger than that TBH, but in the interest of fairness etc etc....)

We have, in the same paper, a letter about the relative tone of the report on the murder of an immigrant Mongolian lady, Urantsetseg Tserendorj, compared with that of Sarah Everard (RIP to them both).
Migrant women in low paid jobs, are a large group of very vulnerable people.

People living in direct provision.
Families of children with significant autism, kept awake for hours nightly, with parents who's need for sleep outweighs their ability to make noise about their circumstances.
Children under the care of Tusla- who's carers are bound by confidentiality to not go blabbing about their story on social media.
Long term survivors of Polio, dealing with the pain associated with post-polio syndrome.

I could go on and on and on and on.

I find it quite upsetting that, the "most vulnerable group" is co-opted by adult males, who have financial and social choices. [I have enormous sympathy for children caught up in it]

@XXSex

So the previous letters outlined the concerns regarding prisons, sterilising children, explaining terf as a slur etc. And the other side comes back with we didn’t call you bangers and you’re a bit mean to exclude transwomen?!!!

The Irish times try to pick the best letters on the topic out of all they receive- if that’s the best they have

Yes XXSex, concerns regarding 3 Transwomen in Limerick women's prison, teenage girls having double mastectomies, hormone treatment that will leave them infertile and have lifelong consequences .,concerns regarding ROGD, social contagion, and so much more.
Yet this is Eibhlins real cause for alarm🙄

[quote 3timeslucky]@Mermoose I saw your post on Niamh Smyth and have contacted her to say thanks and ask her to keep at it! Thanks for linking it as I wouldn't have seen it otherwise.
@saltedcaramelchocolate that's how I read it too

@intheenddoesitreallymatter personally I'm not looking for perfection or purity (ideological or otherwise) in JKR or indeed anyone else. I'll take her position and statements on this issue at face value and on this issue I am grateful to her and appreciative of what she has done. I don't think there's a human being on earth who has never said or done something that isn't questionable in the eyes of someone else. I know where I'd rather focus my energy and attention (and also I'm not willing to read Harry Potter at all, never mind with an eye to dissecting the text ).[/quote]
Just saw this and I’ll write to Niamh Smyth too. And to Heather Humphries. If she doesn’t know what the law is then she should be getting legal advice on it before answering a PQ. Who does she get it from? Is it the Attorney General?

Clearly Eibhlin has never seen the threats to rape and murder TERFs by members of
" one society's most vulnerable groups."

So the previous letters outlined the concerns regarding prisons, sterilising children, explaining terf as a slur etc. And the other side comes back with we didn’t call you bangers and you’re a bit mean to exclude transwomen?!!!

The Irish times try to pick the best letters on the topic out of all they receive- if that’s the best they have

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/true-feminists-and-trans-debate-1.4514006

Talk about irony being lost on some people. Apparently there are "true" feminists and then those who weaponise feminism......

@Mermoose I saw your post on Niamh Smyth and have contacted her to say thanks and ask her to keep at it! Thanks for linking it as I wouldn't have seen it otherwise.
@saltedcaramelchocolate that's how I read it too

@intheenddoesitreallymatter personally I'm not looking for perfection or purity (ideological or otherwise) in JKR or indeed anyone else. I'll take her position and statements on this issue at face value and on this issue I am grateful to her and appreciative of what she has done. I don't think there's a human being on earth who has never said or done something that isn't questionable in the eyes of someone else. I know where I'd rather focus my energy and attention (and also I'm not willing to read Harry Potter at all, never mind with an eye to dissecting the text ).

I have read the *debates" in the Dail and Senate when the Gra was being introduced. There wasn't a single dissenting voice. My impression was that it the impact on women wasn't even considered. They were too busy clapping themselves on the back for their progressivness.
It was such a betrayal of women and girls.

However for a politician to make personal attacks on a non political member of the public regardless of their stance unless they’re quite literally a nazi I find reprehensible. I think perhaps Ireland should look internally at their existing problems without looking to fix their own.

The fact 9/10 women in the country would have to get on a plane, stay in another country and recuperate in a hotel is fucking disgusting. Pair that with the rampant abuse claims, the Christian brothers, the magdalane laundries and the baby farms within recent memories and there’s a lot of old wounds which first need addressing.

On an aside to the trans debate the blind support for JKR makes me uncomfortable. Can we not draw support for her on international women’s day when she, a writer, alluded to the female antagonist in her series being raped as a punishment.

When Delores Umbridge was coaxed to be taken centaurs in the forbidden forest and they kidnap her and she comes back traumatised, in line with Greek mythology what will they do to her? They horrifically raped her. With so much emphasis put on Greek mythology in the books that would very much have been a fact she was aware and even though it’s an utter work of fiction for that I would also regard her an old trout.

Additionally she has supported a small business on Etsy that whilst promoting women are women pins also produced there’s no such thing as bisexual and another to the effect of lesbians don’t exist.

Yes she came out in support of a cause but she is also not herself without problems.

@3timeslucky
@Cailleach1, do you think that if there had been more women the debate would have been there? I don't see that our female representatives have been any more clued in on this that their male counterparts. Did any of those 15% raise any red flags?

I agree that female TDs have been practically as bad as the male ones, but Niamh Smyth (FF) basically asked the Staniland question in the Dáil recently, I posted about it here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4189775-TD-Irish-MP-asks-if-GRA-means-that-men-can-access-womens-spaces

Because that's the pressing issue of the day. And most importantly she gets to pat herself on the back for her work for equality today. ARGH!

FFS.

Sorry forgot link www.rte.ie/news/munster/2021/0318/1204721-kerryman-newspaper/

Bloody hell, do they not have anything better to be doing, Josepha Madigan (Minister for State for Special Education and Inclusion) is trying to get the Kerryman newspaper to rebrand

"It is about equality, she said, not about emasculating men, adding that a citizens assembly should examine the words that we use as a society."

@Cailleach1, do you think that if there had been more women the debate would have been there? I don't see that our female representatives have been any more clued in on this that their male counterparts. Did any of those 15% raise any red flags?

I'm not dismissing the poor representation of women. It is a huge problem. But on this issue I'm just not sure that they paid any more attention, or showed any more intelligence than their male counterparts.

I am happy to be told otherwise if there are women TDs who were on the ball.

@Annasgirl, agree completely.

It is very hard to see middle ground and solutions for those who believe that biological sex can be changed. Unless we can talk in terms of immutable biological sex as totally distinct from gender identity I don't know how we move forward. Our situation (the Irish situation) is particularly muddied by use of the two terms interchangeably with no clarity or definition of gender (and no sex based protections as a result).

I find it really difficult to understand how anyone can seek trans acceptance and support and in parallel try to work a system where we're supposed to pretend that we can change sex. Surely the trans experience is rooted in the reality of their biological sex and the difference between it and the gender identity they wish to adopt? I think it is so important that both are recorded (shout out to the ONS!) You cannot develop appropriate health services for trans people either nationally or individually if you don't record and acknowledge the birth sex of the people and the scale of interventions they've undergone. These are key to appropriate health care. Similarly you can't develop appropriate health services for the rest of the population if you don't accurately record sex. Same applies to prison services, refuges, specialised mental health services etc etc

I'm all about reality, facing up to it, acknowledging it and working with it and through it. I can't see a way forward without doing that.

Surely trans people are proud of who they are, of their experiences and their life journeys? Why then would they want the world to pretend they're not trans?

So yes third spaces are the obvious solution to changing rooms, bathrooms, prisons, refuges, sleeping spaces etc. Outside of those physical spaces, why wouldn't trans people be looking for representation in public life (and business and the arts etc etc) as trans people, rather than pretending that they're representing women?

I realise these are rhetorical questions and a reflection of my bafflement.

Sex was redefined at the behest of a self interested lobby group.

I read something that was interesting. It stated by the people who pushed for the GRA. It talked about the sovereignty of the transgender person to identify themselves. That is fine and nobody cares much how someone identifies themselves if it does not adversely impact on someone else. However, laws were changed without the consent of the people whom they would would most adversely impact. There was no assessment of impact and certainly no mention of the rights of others. That is tyranny. Male bodies are male bodies irrespective of how they identify. And if one male body, who doesn't pay his tv licence is put in jail and not considered suitable for the women's prison because he hasn't filled out an A4 form, who the heck thinks a rapist is suitable for the women's prison.

-Male sex offenders taken off the streets and sent to prison because they are dangerous. But then trap vulnerable women, who cannot escape, in with them.

-Safeguarding for other males, but looky here and fill in an A4 form and you have your big glaring loophole. I don't think the recommendations from all those abuse tribunals said you improve safety by allowing people to just identify themselves out of safeguards.

But of course the mainly male Dáil, many of whom are now also happy to screw women over in relation to relation to the Mother and Baby home tribunal, didn't give a f•ck about women. Waiting for survivors to die.

There were 15% women TD's in that Dáil. Is Iraq higher? No wonder things like affordable childcare provision (which affect women's ability to engage in public life) and other issues, that skew the experience of one sex in relation to another, are not addressed.

Look, a 25% quota for women in Iraq's parliament. And progressive Ireland has 15% in that 'what men want, men get have' Dáil.

www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/women-mps-the-iraqi-parliament

Iseult has always said the she supported Self ID. But she does appear to understand the GC side.
Self ID does not accept that women have a right to say no therfore GC women are transphobic. They must accept that any man that declares themselves a woman IS one.
I can't see any middle ground. Third spaces do not validate trans identity and validation is very very important to Trans activists. I would be interested to see if Iseult has any solutions.

I think the article by Iseult was an attempt to "show the other side" but Iseult is not the other side - she supports self ID and she supports drugs for children. God, I can't even fathom how she could be called a TERF. Just shows, you can never be pure enough when you go down the purity spiral.

I still think the IT need to allow the women who organised the conference the right to reply. Iseult's piece does not count as a right to reply.

The false equation to me (and one I think the government took) was that if people were ok with ME then they were clearly ok with all things "progressive" and sure isn't the T part of the LBG family so isn't it all the same thing. Another example of the lack of thought, insight, interest and intelligence of our elected representative.

Actually, I need a coffee. I completely fluffed the presidential question.

It was: (in English) Every citizen who has reached the age of twenty-one years is eligible for election to the office of President.

Off for caffeine!