Gender Critical in Ireland Part 4

[MaeveofConnaught]

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/craicnet/4777231-gender-critical-in-ireland-part-3?page=40&reply=139277391
Last thread was full so starting a new one.

And of course Bernie Linnane getting her usual tuppence in.

The Countess has released a guide on gender and law for schools and clubs. I'm reading through the schools one now and it seems very clear and informative.
https://thecountess.ie/guides/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQNp7VleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETBsSktSeUxwbG1PQ2JhdTBCc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHhfjmmH878A6v38VB4HVJxhuhHuqWJpskPIZ6oK4NzM5IXYIcEVKQE16fd9O_aem_WGOZ_7Hfy5JVXFWPP0dkTg

Can we be confident that The Countess is able to provide an authoritative opinion on the law+gender?

I'd probably agree with everything they say in their guides [but I'm not interacting with The Countess since it swerved into controversial comments on immigration - there are lots of groups already doing that, we need women's groups to keep their focus on the fundamentals] but I'm not sure 'The Countess says so' would stand up in court.

What we desperately need here is a case like For Women Scotand/UK Supreme Court. This case took a very specific point: where there is a quota for women's representation, does a trans-identifying man count towards the quota as 'a woman'?
The case was made by a strong , experienced legal team, and it obliged the UKSC to actually define what 'a woman' is in order to answer the question put by FWS.

Although the ruling that 'woman' means a biological female strictly speaking only applies to the UK Equality Act 2010, it defies logic to say that that is its meaning for one piece of legislation, but in a different piece of legislation 'woman' can also mean 'man'.

The huge problem we have here is that our Equality laws have somehow been retrospectively altered so that there is no protection on the basis of sex, only on the basis of gender, whereas UK equality law has maintained not only sex as a protected characteristic, but also has always allowed single sex spaces in certain circumstances - here, a space has to be open to both sexes because the key is 'gender identity' not biological sex.

But a High Court ruling that in law 'woman' means biological woman would be helpful, and would weaken the foundation of the GRA2015, GRCs and self-ID, which seriously undermined women's rights.

Without a legal ruling, we'll just have opposing groups claiming to have the definitive take on the law and gender.

Yes, we do need test cases in court. But it's good to have something on the gender realist side written down as a starting point for people to agree or disagree with.
I must admit I'm assuming that what the Countess has written is accurate in law as as far as I know, they have lawyers on staff (Laoise de Brún) so it is probably as accurate as it can be. I don't think there are many specialist lawyers working in this area in Ireland (yet!). We have such a tiny population compared to the UK, I do wonder if test cases ever will arise?

Other than Enoch Burke's, who is fairness is not a great poster child for the issue, judging on how he's portayed in the media ( which I take with a pinch of salt).

Enoch Burke is not a test case. He's in prison for contempt of court. He was fired for his abusive behaviour towards the principal of the school. His stance on gender identity is irrelevant to his case.

But yeah, he and his family are nut jobs and they certainly don't do the sane gender critical position any favours.

Edited to say - while I don't know how accurate his portrayal is in the media, I do know several other members of the family are are every bit as bad as he is portrayed. I know two people very well who have had direct, personal experience with two of them and they are bad!

Point taken! I think he thinks his case is about being forced to use pronouns though. He would do well to just hire someone else to represent him and get his family (and himself) to keep quiet in court.

He would but then he wouldn't be Burking properly. This is their modus operandi.

The mammy and the sister have now been jailed for 2 weeks for contempt. At least it's just a defined term and they don't have to purge their contempt to get out. Otherwise we'd be paying their board indefinitely too.

They're the kind of people who have ridiculously bloody-minded determination (which can be both terrifying and admirable at times) but they also hamstring their own case because they can't stay within the boundaries of common sense, they're almost too theatrical.

They are utterly arrogant. They believe their way if the only way and that their beliefs are fact and must be upheld at all costs. The are also ridiculously aggressive in their approach and show no respect to anyone who doesn't share their views.

I'm not sure that a test case is possible to the same extent here, given the word salad conflation of sex and gender in legislation.
As for Enoch - well he thinks he's being punished for his beliefs, and sadly so do a good percentage of the people in general, but as Ochon says above, he's really not!

Forget pinkwashing on International Women’s Day – this is what Irish women need – The Irish Times

She makes some good points, but wouldn't it be nice to get our stuff back for IWD, starting with the word 'woman' itself, and then our protected status under equality legislation, our single-sex spaces etc etc etc..

I see Enoch Burke is now invoking The Almighty against the courts - he accused the judge of 'mocking God' and that the judge will have to give an account of himself to God, and 'you are not a good man'.

The Burkes are so far beyond the realms of decency and respect and common sense and reason and responsibility that it's hard to know what on earth can be done with them... They obviously relish being put in prison, it gives them martyrdom status, so there is no way to limit or control their anti-social behaviour.

The Irish Times pointed out that Enoch Burke is named for an Old Testament prophet so favoured by God that he was “taken to Heaven” while still alive....

https://archive.ph/tyrHz

We are not a serious country when we allow systems like this to be abused. Absolutely no shame from the pair of them that they're taking up the spaces of genuine people who have no possibility to just move elsewhere in their country

I really hope their international protection application to live in Ireland permanently DOES NOT go through. That'll just open the floodgates for more of this carry on. We are seen as being a soft touch ( which we are) and our government needs to cop on and start thinking about Irish people and women and children in particular.

I went to a conference on the Gender recognition act 2015 act on Saturday. Speakers were Helen Joyce, Faika El-Nagashi, Stella O' Malley, Brenda Power, Fiona McAnena amongst many other fantastic speakers. It was about the GRA's impact and institutional capture and what its implications are in the law. It was amazing to be in a room with 250 like-minded people who are all aware of the dangers our country is in and to be able to talk freely about it. The upshot is we all need to continue to send letters to TDs, newspapers and talk to people about the situation we are in. Most people don't even know about the GRA.
Here's some info on the GRA 2015.
https://genspect.org/irelands-gender-recognition-act-part-1/

They recorded the talks so I'll post those when they come out.

Actually, this is a better link.
genspect.org/gender-recognition-in-ireland-charting-a-path-back-to-reality-based-legislation/

I was at the conference too @BruachAbhann it was a fantastic day! Although a lot of the speakers painted quite a dire picture (particularly Faika when she spoke about the situation from a EU legislation perspective) there was some hope that we can collectively bring about change. We need to get the message out there, not be afraid to bring it up and discuss it. Most 'normal' people simply don't know about the GRA never mind the far reaching implications of it.

It was a brilliant day alright @LifeInAHamsterWheel. I was actually quite down after it. I wanted to go back and talk to all those women again! I didn't realise how much I hold myself back in every day life and watch what I say. I'm going to be way more vocal now. Faika's speech was indeed grim but also empowering and motivating. I went to the pub afterwards and had a brief chat with Helen Joyce. She was lovely, as you would expect.

Brenda Power wrote a piece for the Daily Mail about the Wicklow Women 4 Women conference on the effects of the GRA: Our woke gender laws seem to be there to protect the feelings of men... rather than the safety of women. The text is available on archive sites for non-subscribers.

And Mick Clifford has another vapid piece in today's Irish Examiner, also prompted by the event: When the gender debate becomes louder than the people it affects.

Wow, Mick Clifford seems to have no awareness of the fact that the people impacted deeply in this debate are also women and vulnerable children, not just the 'tiny' number of trans-identified people as he claims. I can't believe he would have sat through that whole conference and not got a more balanced view of the situation.

There’s a certain kind of man who is determined not to understand that women have well-deserved priority in this struggle - they just tune us out. All the empathy and pity they save for their fellow men.

They really do seem to think that women are making a fuss rather than just being sensible/nice and compromising (i.e. giving in).

I know! How dare we want to protect our sex-based rights!

Another man-who-should-know-better is Darach Ó Séaghdha who wrote an article in the journal.ie, about John Charles McQuaid, the subject of a TG4 documentary.

All the obvious critiques of McQuaid were there, including his misogyny, then at the very end:
This final point – that McQuaid didn’t act alone – is critical not to exonerate the man or to perform a self-serving rhetorical balancing act, but to remind ourselves that the chilling effects on civil society and pressure on lawmakers that allowed McQuaid to advance his agenda haven’t gone away.

As I write this, a protest is being planned outside Dublin Zoo by people upset by the use of a drag queen in an advertisement. In Canada and the US, school and library boards are removing fine books based on the persistent complaints of an engagingly small number of complainants.

And the panic about boys and girls using adjacent changing rooms when playing sports has probably gotten worse. And McQuaid, unlike so many of today’s guardians of traditional values, petitioned the government to take in more refugees.

He just couldn't let it go, could he, he had to drag in a 'culture wars' swipe at gender critical women.
And get it right, Darach: if boys and girls had adjacent but separate changing rooms, there wouldn't be a problem. Eejit.

The trans movement is 'an engagingly small number of complainants', they are a tiny proportion of the population demanding a huge proportion of attention and privileges.

And it's 'got' not 'gotten' on this side of the Atlantic, Darach - I thought it was us GC bigots who were under the malign influence of the USA?

They just don't get it, do they? No to men in dresses telling women what to do and think, whoever they are!

edited for grammar etc

It's got in British English, gotten in Hiberno and American English.

But I agree with the rest of your points.

This type of Irish person bases their self-image on seeing themselves as being more sophisticated than, and morally superior to, the rest of us amadáns; basically I'm viewing the media and NGO class as a self-appointed replacement for the role that the church used to play. They have appointed themselves moral arbiters and guardians of the country 🙄