Thanks! I will definitely go to this!
It was heartening to read some sense being spoken in the Irish independent today by Brenda Power. She is speaking out about the media's portrayal of the Tumble Ridge shooter in Canada as 'female'.
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/brenda-power-if-male-murderers-like-the-canadian-shooter-are-described-as-female-crime-statistics-are-meaningless/a853805664.html
Brenda Power: If male murderers like the Canadian shooter are described as female, crime statistics are meaningless
Agenda being stealthily advanced by media and political cowardice must be challenged
Since 1979, there have been just two school shootings carried out by teenage females in the United States, claiming a total of four lives. There have been none in Canada.
So the news, as reported by RTÉ’s Morning Ireland last Wednesday, that a woman had shot dead eight people in a Canadian school was shockingly historic for two reasons. Not only was it one of the worst school shootings in that country’s history, but also the deadliest ever, in North America, by a teenage female.
You would think, then, that as a trusted news organisation RTÉ would have hastened to clarify this alarming development for its listeners the following morning. Because the shooter — curiously described in initial reports as “a female in a dress with brown hair” — was not a “woman”, but a man identifying as a woman. But RTÉ continued to refer to the shooter as a ‘she’.
The 18-year-old, Jesse van Rootselaar, had apparently begun “identifying” as a woman some years earlier. It also emerged that he had multiple mental health issues and had previously been prescribed antidepressant and antipsychotic medication.
Most, including in our own media, used female pronouns to describe the killer, for fear of misgendering a multiple murderer, or else referred to him as “the gunperson”.
There was something of a false dawn last April when the UK Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling decreeing that women are biological females, not men in dresses.
Initially, Sinn Féin’s health spokesman David Cullinane welcomed the ruling as “common sense” and suggested it should be “examined in this State”.
Perhaps he had briefly forgotten his party leader, who has spoken publicly about her relationship with her trans sibling, might take a different view, because the next day he deleted the post, apologised and referred to a “complex issue”.
Since then, efforts to deny, ignore and countermand that court statement of a basic biological fact, and substitute ideology for reason, have been relentless, nowhere more so than in Ireland.
The rights of men to invade spaces and facilities where women are vulnerable — refuges, rape crisis centres, changing rooms, prisons, toilets — are being stealthily advanced by media and political cowardice.
Replying to Claire Byrne’s suggestion that RTÉ was fearful of tackling the trans issue, director general Kevin Bakhurst recently denied failure to cover it was a “loss of nerve”, and said they simply had “more important” matters to cover.
Let’s see if that’s true, taking that UK Supreme Court ruling as an example. I looked back at Morning Ireland’s news coverage from the day after, April 17, 2025. Those more important issues included a wildlife charity making plans for orphaned animals, the sale of a taxi app and US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s visit to Paris.
Human beings cannot change sex
Notably neglecting any follow-up on the seismic tragedy of a female school shooter in Canada, last Thursday the national broadcaster’s flagship news programme’s “more important issues” included a warning not to eat a parsnip-like plant called “Dead Man’s Fingers” if you find it on Laytown beach.
There was markedly little political pushback against a clear exercise in “misinformation” by a state-funded NGO, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, last month when it produced a document wrongly suggesting that Department of Education guidelines obliged schools to use pupils’ “preferred pronouns” if they were transitioning.
News in 90 seconds, Sunday February 15
In fact, no such guidelines existed, although the department has now commissioned a policy review by researchers in Maynooth University.
Given that Maynooth’s own guidelines decree that “every effort should be made” to use preferred pronouns, and a prompt apology and “adjustment” of language must ensue if you get it wrong, I’m not holding out much hope for the new regime to reflect the Cass Review finding that using a young person’s preferred pronouns was “not a neutral act”.
Human beings cannot change sex, and indulging confused children in the belief that they can do so is arguably abusive. The Canada shooter was just 12 when he “transitioned”.
Dr Hilary Cass speaking about the publication of her report. Photo: PA
Dr Hilary Cass concluded that facilitating “social transition” made it more difficult for children to grow out of their distress and pushed them towards lifelong medication and surgery.
But that, it seems, is the path upon which our education system is set. Children and women are the primary victims of this quasi-religious movement, which essentially proposes that gendered souls can somehow end up in the “wrong” body.
Last week, the European Parliament passed a resolution trashing the UK Supreme Court ruling and calling for “the full recognition of trans women as women”, guaranteeing them access to female single-sex spaces.
Couched in a “status of women” declaration, there’s no mention of trans men — only women are to be relegated to the status of sub-species, being lesser, penis-free males.
If males are also females, and women have penises and prostates as well as breasts and cervixes, then there is no such thing as women’s healthcare. If male murderers are recorded as female, then crime statistics are meaningless. If males can compete against women as boxers and swimmers, then women’s sport ceases to exist. But what matter so long as men’s feelings are prioritised at all costs?
You’ll hardly be surprised to hear that six Irish female MEPs voted to give biological males all possible access to safe female spaces on demand.
Germaine Greer said that women have no idea how much men hate us. Not half as much, it seems, as we hate ourselves.