Letter from Irish feminists to British "Terfs"

[SoupyNorman]

Link here. All sorts of issues bound up in this, but it got a lot of traction on Irish Twitter last night.

One point it does make is that the equivalent of Gender Id has been the case in Ireland for a couple of years, and yet the sky hasn't fallen in for women. Is that the case? Can any one living in Ireland confirm that? I sort of think you're not comparing like with like when it comes to the trans community in Ireland and that in the U.K., but I'd be interested to hear other thoughts.

MarDhea

It was organised by one woman. The same woman incidentally who has just been kicked out of the Labour Party. As I said before, I didn't understand why Dublin was included in the tour but there really is no need to have the sneery tone 'There are No TERFs in Ireland, you bigoted Brit batards'.

And my parents are Irish btw so there is no imperialism coming from me I assure you

DodoPatrol - I will try to find it but don't have it to hand. I think it may have been from a submission a Canadian campaigner - Paul something? - made to his parliament when their self-ID laws were debated.

I disagree with almost all of the letter, but I don't know why the "we need to talk about the GRA" is going to Ireland as it's a different country and the law is entirely different.

On the last paragraph in the letter, many British women do and have given support to Irish women and their fight to access abortion (not least the fantastic Abortion Support Network who help women come from Ireland and Northern Ireland to England to have abortions - who from looking at their website are a mixed Irish/British group).

I think it might be difficult to know if there are women who have been negatively affected by the GRA in Ireland. Lack of media awareness doesn't necessarily mean nothing is going on. Presumably there could be, eg disabled woman who have been asked to accept trans women providing intimate care, but unless those women speak publicly about it how would we know? Or perhaps there isn't the aggressive trans activist movement that we have here?

I think the "we need to talk.." needs to keep its focus on the UK as we can't hope to change the laws in other countries - and certainly we need to get our own house in order first given the craziness that is currently happening.

To be fair to Jiggly, I think when she said "It's an irrelevance" she wasn't talking about the population of Ireland but about the numbers of trans people being so small that self-ID is irrelevant to most of the population, am I right?

I think that so far self-ID hasn't been an issue because we don't seem to have the numbers of aggressive autogynephile older TRAs, at least not showing themselves. Things like toilets are being more reasonably considered, with standalone toilets being made "gender neutral".

While I agree with everything MarDhea saysHowever, I think we are being very naive about the longer-term implications. For example I know a very male-looking (despite loads of make-up and high heels every day) student nurse who is going to be treated as female for the purposes of treating patients (intimate care for older people, no chaperone etc. I don't think the "privacy rights" vs "trans rights" have been tested yet, and it will be interesting to see which way the law would go.

Also sport - we in Ireland win very few Olympic medals. When an Irish woman athlete loses out to the first male Olympian the shit will hit the fan.

As an aside, though, I think the most important thing for women's rights in Ireland in many years will be the Repeal the 8th Referendum.

I do hope it doesn't become a platform for displaying trans rights as well - it's going to be a hard task to convince older people especially to vote FOR abortion. Giving them any excuse to say "all these nutters are voting for this, I'm going to hold the line against it all and so vote NO" - which I think is a real danger.

And actually, having seen the first line and the list of names on that letter I know where it's coming from.

It's students who have drunk the Kool-Aid [sigh]

Even female health care professionals should be offering a chaperone. It's a misconception that only males need to have a chaperone present. It's best practice for both sexes, regardless of the sex of the patient they are treating.

Aside from that, I'm glad Ireland haven't seen issues with gender self ID. But the two countries are different, culturally, in population size, and in the exact laws proposed. So it's not directly comparable.

Yes, that's pretty much what I meant. Just that the demographics are so enormously different that you can't really draw any useful comparators between the two countries. You're never going to get the critical mass of TRAs

TBF, once it's a done deal, everyone has to roll over and take it and "issues" aren't permitted.

Ahh, I see what you mean now.

I have seen Irish women wishing "is" well and urging us on in SM, so clearly there ARE Irish feminists felling that, post-legislation, all is NOT rosy in the Emerald Isle garden.

They're probably posting from their priest holes.

"Us"^

In Ireland a boy in a frock would be told to fuck up if he carried on like some of the Trans in the UK do. British people are more inclined to put their heads down and not involve themselves. Bullshit isn't tolerated as much.

Interesting that a group of men who feel like they're women have made greater strides in being taken seriously as the most oppressed group ever than all the women in Ireland who still can't access abortion.

And that the many women (straight & gay) who campaigned for Equal Marriage, haven't had the same support from men (gay or straight) about changing those abortion laws, either in the Republic or NI.

And that the many women (straight & gay) who campaigned for Equal Marriage, haven't had the same support from men (gay or straight) about changing those abortion laws, either in the Republic or NI*

They are two completely different issues.

But I think that they signify equally a desire for people to live their lives as they are moved to do so, and have autonomy over their bodies - whom they choose to partner with, and how they control their fertility.

It's noticeable that the progressives' support for equal marriage is not matched by progressives' support of a woman's right to control her own body.

In fairness, the letter is right about the complete lack of knowledge in the Uk about Irish feminism. We're hardly ignoring abortion issues, it's in all the newspapers constantly, did you even know there's a referendum in May? A slightly bigger issue for us than whatever changes are being proposed for U.K. laws.

It's rather ironic that the letter both tells women in the UK that Ireland is completely different and that they don't want British women coming over and doing their Empire shit at them (quite rightly) and then, in the next breath, tells us that actually self ID is all working tickety boo in Ireland so it will be exactly the same here.

Either you can draw parallels or you can't. You can't have it both ways (although that is exactly what TRAs do with everything else so I don't know why I'm surprised).

the letter is right about the complete lack of knowledge in the Uk about Irish feminism. We're hardly ignoring abortion issues, it's in all the newspapers constantly, did you even know there's a referendum in May

Fair point, @Phuquocdreams I do know about the "Repeal the 8th" campaign (I also had reason to know about the "Waking the Feminists" campaign vis a vis the Abbey Theatre).

I suppose I was lazy in my expression: that the Republic passed equal marriage legislation - pushed by gay men for a minority of the population - before legislation enabling 50-51% of the population to control their fertility.

But I also take the point of the letter writers about the history of misunderstandings (and worse, ahem) between Britain and Ireland. Again, fair point - even if I disagree with the letter writers about their "centring" of trans issues.

OTOH, the letter writers might need to understand that things are different here too.

Could you start a thread on current activism around Repel the 8th? I know I'd like to learn more about the current work going on in Ireland around issues of female bodily autonomy.

Self id has been talked about since 2009/2010 and it was Aengus O'Snodaigh TD who took it to the Dail a year or so later so I'm not sure it had anything to do with SSM.

Did you mean to come across as such an ignorant arse?

With all due respect MarDhea, I’m an Irish woman. Who voted in an Abortion referendum in the early 80s. Just because ‘Ireland does better on sex-Equality measures’ than the UK doesn’t mean that all the biggest problems have been resolved.

Nobody said all the biggest problems have been resolved, vango. But the point remains that Ireland is not in a bad place at all when it comes to sex-based inequality (relatively speaking, for a western democracy) and your "bigger fish to fry" whataboutery was unhelpful at best and insulting at worst.

I do apologise if I was incorrect in assuming you were ignorant of the current state of play regarding equality and sexism in Ireland. If you're still living in Ireland and well aware of what's going on regarding the 8th amendment etc., then it's clearly not a case of ignorance.