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

[GingerAndTheBiscuits]

I’ve been pointed in the direction of this tweet following some debate about the Madigan situation/ the GR bill in genera tonightl:

twitter.com/christineburns/status/932376223640154114

Can anyone recall if there was similar debate in Ireland upon the introduction of this legislation and if not, any ideas why that might have been? Also interested in any identified implications of self-Identification 2 years post implementation?

twitter.com/christineburns/status/932376223640154114

Thanks fellow Ginger

No. It totally slipped under the radar. But the trans issue isn't debated in Ireland. If you question the ideology you get shouted down, blocked, banned from feminist groups. It's infiltrated everything, there's no corner of feminism that's untouched.

I wonder if they’ve seen the same inexplicable jump in female rapes? Was just reading the 2015 prison stats for England and Wales and of the 24 long sentences handed out to women, an undisclosed number were for rape.

And while it is technically possible for a female to be charged with rape in spite of not having a penis to rape with, I would suspect that that’s not the case here, and it’s a Davina Ayrton situation.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-hampshire-35726292 for those who don’t know who that is.

I have seen practically no discussion of it in mainstream media, it slipped under the radar with the only comment being that this was another sign of us being more progressive, after the huge success and national pride in the gay marriage referendum.

I think most people think of transgender as being like Lydia Foy which is patently not the case for most of the transactivists today. In fact, for transexuals who have been through the gamit of treatment, it must be pretty galling to see all the support for those who just want to wear dresses and high heels

There are a few discussions online, for example politics.ie but I've only once had a conversation in real life about it, and basically no-one believed me when I pointed out the problems for sport and for refuges (as well as issues in hospitals). I was just told I was being ridiculous - discussing sport I was told "that wouldn't happen". I know people were looking at me and thinking I was a bigot.

The trans issue is still considered by everyone I know to be supporting an oppressed minority, and and of course the universities have jumped on that bandwagon. I've attempted to talk to my children about it. ds thinks it's a load of attention seeking rubbish, but dd appears to be more brainwashed (though I'm chipping away). dh now believes me, purely because I keep sending him sport related links; sport has been the only way I can convince him that transwomen are actually harming women.

It also appears that our Labour party are on board. The LabourYouth Women's Officer is now a Women and Trans Officer (which I suppose is still accepting that there is a difference).

I really can't answer fully...we're in the north ..

Given that the dup are still finding homosexuality and abortion difficult I would imagine transgender would blow their minds..

I'm sure it won't be too long until Arlene makes a public faux pait however...

I tried looking up this site: theukdatabase.com/ but it only has child sex offences. I’ve found one N Irish female and zero Republic of Ireland females so far.

The Irish prison population is only 75 per 100000 as opposed to the UK’s 153 per 100000 though, so coupled with a much smaller population you have hardly any women in prison.

I’ll keep looking though.

Thanks all, this is all really interesting

www.teni.ie/attachments/0ce15fc2-69f4-4b3b-94df-a7c90a11e53b.PDF This is the Health Services Executive' guidelines to GPs.

They've swallowed the cool-aid - they refer to reversible puberty blockers. Everyone is referred to TENI which appears to be unquestioning support of transition.

Although they suggest referring to CAHMS, the system is so stretched I can't see there being much critical assessment unless a child presents with other issues (and even then, getting support for eating disorders, ASD, mental health issues of any sort for children is very difficult.

The Tavistock appear to come to Ireland for outreach.

I'm Irish and I don't remember this at all or any discussion about it

Ireland also doesn't have the NHS. Income based medical cards are available but the health service is chronically underfunded.

I didn't come across any discussion either.

The only conversation I've had about it with anyone outside my family was with a Consultant Child and Adolescent psychiatrist in a very well known facility in Dublin. DD was under him at the time. It came up because he asked what we had been chatting about on he way to the appointment and it happened to have been a chat about trans stuff (DD wasn't having gender issues herself, it was just a random chat). I mentioned some of my reservations about self-identification. He told me he was seeing a rise in gender "stuff" and that he wasn't of the opinion that transitioning was going to make people happy long term.

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

Sorry, MayFayner

Thanks americano

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.