What do you think of this? Trans related

[NatureNeverRushes]

This is a link to an article in an irish newspaper.
Irish feminists must avoid British trap of transphobia (via @IrishTimes) www.irishtimes.com/opinion/irish-feminists-must-avoid-british-trap-of-transphobia-1.4507862
Interested in your views about it. I think there's a lot of sense in it.

It's a rubbish article. She doesn't back up any of her points with any facts or information. Very vague.

Campervan69

From the article you linked to:

The transferred inmate, according to the employee, is incarcerated for a sex offense and has “fully functional male genitalia, a history of violence and sexual depravity in the community, and has been found guilty of sexual assault against other inmates while housed in the men’s facilities.”

Also from the article:

The only prerequisite, according to the employee, is that the individual must identify as female. They’re not required to be on hormones, have had reassignment surgery, nor be in the process of transitioning, they only “have to proclaim that they identify as a woman.”

I'm staggered that people think its transphobic to want a conversation about the consequences of Self ID.

She's an Irish academic working in Canada, over a decade at this stage & her area of expertise is Irish performance studies. I actually had to Google that , the irony is strong there - she performs Irish bea.utifully
Cannot understand why she's given such platforms, esp given the quality of that article.

I agree with CrazyNeighbour above, it's a case of doing anything to be different from the auld enemy. Those of us who are somewhat older remember the solidarity & practical help that came our way from the UK pre-repeal

Whatever else, seems to me that the author has seen it as a good opportunity for a bit of Brit-bashing.

It's worth reading the comments. The vast majority of Irish women know nothing about self-id, as it was kept quiet, and never publicly debated. Of those who know, many are against it but are afraid to say so, as they are denounced as transphobic. Because Ireland is such a small country, this means a real danger of doxxing and threats to the families of anyone who speaks up.

With the likely extension of self-id to under 16s, there will be no safe spaces for girls in school changing rooms, on school trips, in youth organisations and in girls' sports.

In addition, the "gender services" in Ireland appear to have decided to ignore the Keira Bell case and continue to give untested, harmful medications to children.

Conflating womens' rights with being anti-Brit is just another baseless accusation to beat Irish women with, as if there hadn't been enough abuse of women in Ireland over the years

I think the important thing to note about self ID is not that something could happen, or has happened, it's that there are would be absolutely no spaces anywhere that women could escape to in order to be away from Male bodied people.

It's a bit vague isn't it?

That was my thought. I couldn't really see what it's point was, other than that women should be kind.

You rarely see 'lack of empathy' as the main critique of other political campaigns. I'd have liked to see specific engagement with the 'we need to talk' arguments that women's sports, prisons, refuges etc should be single sex but they weren't mentioned.

Whatever else, seems to me that the author has seen it as a good opportunity for a bit of Brit-bashing.

Yeah, it did seem weird to complain that all the Irish speakers and Irish language was evidence that the feminists were trying to hide the fact the British are in charge.

@FOJN

Campervan69

From the article you linked to:

The transferred inmate, according to the employee, is incarcerated for a sex offense and has “fully functional male genitalia, a history of violence and sexual depravity in the community, and has been found guilty of sexual assault against other inmates while housed in the men’s facilities.”

Also from the article:

The only prerequisite, according to the employee, is that the individual must identify as female. They’re not required to be on hormones, have had reassignment surgery, nor be in the process of transitioning, they only “have to proclaim that they identify as a woman.”

I'm staggered that people think its transphobic to want a conversation about the consequences of Self ID.

I throughly agree. I wish we could have some form of civil discussion in the open. There is room for respectful conversation if people are willing. Unfortunately it appears if you dont fully support and champion self id then that equals you hating transpeople and are a nasty bigot

Hey, Ireland - this isn't going to make the world forget about the Magdalen Laundries and the abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Quite the opposite.

The sky hasn't fallen in....it's only been 5 or 6 years. It takes a while for the sky to fall....

@NatureNeverRushes I read the article and thought it was ridiculous and a thinly veiled attempt to silence women in Ireland who are now speaking out about issues with self-id. It uses the slur TERF, it accuses (without even one example) a conference on women that took place on IWD as transphobic when as far as I can see it’s only crime was not to have trans women on the panel. The author has zero expertise in the area - either medically or sociologically - as she is a professor in a completely random Irish performance (?) so I would wonder why she was given this platform at all and finally the article promotes a Irish v the Brits mentality that the Brits are morally bankrupt and we need to stop them infecting Ireland with their views..... hmm now where did I hear of that before... oh yes the Catholic Church and censorship with fear over infection Irish minds and us all going to hell. I suppose hell in this context is the possibility of being ‘cancelled’, having your job affected or threatened with rape as tends to happen if someone dares speak their view on self id or be gender critical in any way.

Here’s how it’s going - 3 trans women now in Limerick prison with intact male genatalia and all with a history of violence against women/child abuse.

Hundreds of children - mostly female and large numbers of them on the autistic spectrum - wanting puberty blockers and surgery to mutilate their bodies leading to the doctor heading this area in Loughlinstown hospital to resign. Parties promoting buying these drugs online without any parental oversight.

An international women’s day event by an abortion network where the panel featured all trans women and one trans man

And this student exposing how people are too afraid to question what’s in front of them because of the potential backlash leading to an overt example of women missing out on a woman’s achievement.

gript.ie/male-trinity-student-comes-2nd-in-womens-race/

Honestly OP you sound so naive. The comments on the article were far more informed and illuminating.

Oh and I forgot about the erasure of women from all medical material - the Irish cancer society and HSE now reference ‘people with a cervix’ as those who get cervical cancer while ‘men’ get prostate cancer.

That’s right. As if womsncheaoth in Ireland hasn’t been damaged enough by the state, now women with a different ethnicity or who live in poverty or have low levels of education now won’t even be told that as a woman they risk cervical cancer. They are expected to know what a cervix is and that they have it.

The article also fails to address the key point that Self Id was brought into law in Ireland with zero scrutiny or debate. The vast majority of Irish people have no idea such a law is in place.

This is very true. So many people in Ireland have literally no idea such a law exists. It would appall many and has done when I've explained it to friends/family.

The woman who wrote that article lives in Canada. So it's a bit rich telling Irish women how to think when she's not even living in the bloody country!

In fact I'm grateful she did write that condescending article as I read it in the times yesterday and what she did was direct me to a group I didn't know existed and I'm delighted it does! I've subscribed to their website and will be following along with interest.

@jewel1968

The sky hasn't fallen in....it's only been 5 or 6 years. It takes a while for the sky to fall....

Well that and there is a media ban from reporting on any incidents that may indicate a sky fall. For example when the Gardai released that warning to the general public about Barbie Kardashian, all reports stated a teenage girl was being released and was a serious threat to the general public, so people were on the lookout for a homocidal teenage girl, it wasn't until an online newspaper broke reporting restrictions that the truth came out, and other newspapers followed slowly.

Fun fact about Barbie, they went to the Tavistock clinic to be diagnosed and the Tavistock said they were not dysphoric in their court reports, that Barbie was parroting a learned script and advised the court that they were not really gender dysphoric, but because Barbie said they were, the judge put Barbie in a women's prison. So even with expert clinical advice the judge will just do wtf the person up in court says without a care for the vulnerable women in a womens prison.

Also fun fact the writer of that article would want to go back to school, there was a time when British women met vulnerable Irish women off the boat to help them gain access to abortions (a distinctly female task, why didn't they just self id out of it), they supported us and cared for us and for that writer to suggest that Irish women need to be careful not to import British ideals is frankly disgusting, it is also ironic a woman in Canada telling Irish women to be careful of bringing in foreign ideas while she spouts at us that there is nothing wrong in Ireland.

I'm surprised the Irish Times printed that piece. It read to me as "we can't be like the British" with huge racist undertones.

Ireland's discussion on this has barely got started. Most schools are single sex so there hasn't been the incidents like in Highgate School where they had to backtrack after changing toilets to gender neutral. The whole subject has been largely ignored so far and it's easy to be liberal when it's theoretical.

Even friends with teens in school in the more liberal secondary schools say that there is little transgender discussion.

A very strange article for the very respected Irish Times.

With regards to prisons, it's worth noting that Limerick Women's Prison is currently operating at 39% above capacity www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30986926.html

It currently has 39 prisoners (whereas it was built for 28). Of these, three are male. I feel for the prison guards as well as the prisoners; management must be pretty much impossible.

Obviously we are not allowed to talk about individual prisoners. All mainstream press mention of named individuals is instantly removed from all platforms.

Schools may not yet be on board with this, but the universities are well up on it. The impact of mixed sex toilets will become obvious when the students return in person after the Covid crisis is over.

I hadn't even heard of the Barbie case before now. That shows how little discussion there actually is about this.

Thanks for the article OP!

I liked this bit:
"There was smart analysis of the intersections of class and sexism, and of migrancy and sexism;"

The ironic thing is, if the writer is from Canada, didn't they have a significant example of how the rights of different groups do conflict? (Female migrant Muslim women-only beauticians getting sued for not performing bikini waxes on someone's testicles?)

@TurquoiseBaubles I've just read that link. It doesn't say there are 3 self identifying males. You mention that these facts are airbrushed out by the mainstream media. Why is that?

@MoreCraicPlease

I hadn't even heard of the Barbie case before now. That shows how little discussion there actually is about this.

I think that the courts put a ban on any reporting as it was seen as unfair

Why should any woman be supportive of a male bodied person forcing their way into female only spaces? I fully support trans people having their own spaces, I absolutely do not ever support trans people being in female (or male) only spaces.