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.

But it was organised by ONE woman

The rest of us 'TERF' bastards couldn't give a slimy fuck

But that made us Brit bastards more colonial. Imperial.

The colonialist / imperialist rhetoric is probably a Sinn Fein influence. Sinn Fein like to focus their energy these days on championing the more extreme leftist end of any policy debate. Pushing a TRA agenda would be right up their street.

The pointed reference to 'the south of Ireland' is the clue. Sinn Fein-ers only regard a fully united 32-county Ireland as worthy of the title 'Republic of Ireland' so the current 26 counties state is not a valid political entity to them.

I get it. I know all the songs. I know all the history

The Dublin talk thing was organised by one woman.

Using any current example of 'British politics' or 'British views' to make a point about the 'British' is always going to be inaccurate at the moment because we are split right down the middle in a sort of civil cold war since the Brexit vote.So whilst, as an insult, it might work for a section of the British populace - it probably doesn't work for the people it was thrown at - which therefore makes the person doing the insulting look a wee bit reactionary - just firing off anti-British rhetoric for the hell of it.

Yes, but that doesn't really matter to the person saying it - to them, the one they're calling colonialist is truly acting that way, and then after that it's just generalising for the reaction.

When it's said about white people you get the attitude of "well considering the stuff white people did to poc over the centuries, a harmless name is nothing" and you'd get the same here. But I do believe that some British people never really grasped the concept of Irish independence and how strongly a lot of Irish feel about it, and the Brexit talks brought that view to the fore.

I think for me it’s the hypocrisy. The setvthrmselves as being so lovely, tolerant, welcoming snd accepting. If only everyone could be as lovely as them unlike TERFS saying nasty mean things - jumping to conclusions and generalising about a whole group of people. Unlike lovely on the right side of history us.

Why do so many transactivists and 'transgender' people assume other peoples 'genders'? I am not a 'cis' woman. I am an AFAB transwoman. For the whole 'I am special' thing to work, I udnerstand that they need everyone else to be boring old 'cis', but I don't think I know one person who is actually cis. Does anyone on this thread know anyone who follows every single sex stereotype? I don't. I have NO gender identity as I don't 'feel like' a woman, I just am one. So by their many many labels I am either a-gender, or genderqueer. As I imagine most feminists are.

No, they seem to have no problem jumping to conclusions about other folks gender.

@DonkeySkin I think you have hit the nail on the head with this comment:
"Why do they keep calling British women colonialists and imperialists though?

To me that read more like wholesale importation of US-style SJW 'intersectional feminism' - this language is par for the course in US feminism, where if you disagree with a feminist perspective - say, opposition to the sex industry - you denounce it as 'white feminism': racist, colonialist and imperialist. As Irishwomen they can't really go with the 'racist' accusation, but they can certainly weaponise 'colonialist' and 'imperialist'. "

I think this is what is going on. Also whoever wrote and organised looks like they are also coming from a particular republican perspective (as the language indicates).

I found the letter very odd myself, almost ahistoric, implying that feminists in the UK had not helped women here out and that they had not supported campaigns that they actually had (though the letter's comments on this are especially weird seeing as they don't want UK people actually involved in Irish issues. Trying to have it both ways I think). I also hazard a guess that they have no idea what this "terf" stuff is about.

Well looks like I have gone full Terf myself now. I even posted an article about the use of the word Terf (from Feminist Current) on my Facebook page.

My gay Facebook friend (who I know and have worked with politically in real life) removed most of my posts on the trans issue from his facebook page. I went in and made a comment so that people would know he had been removing comments. I had put a lot of thought into my comments and they could not be described as transphobic.

He said he didn't want a debate on the issue on his page because of transgender friends, yet he is happy to leave the original "joke" about Terfs on his page.

I now have a transactivist (don't know if they are trans or not) calling me a Terf and tantamount to an alt-right facist who wants to exterminate transgender people (I am a socialist, and my friend knows this). Sigh. Of course my "friend" is fine with leaving that stuff up.

We are both in a political group that is meeting next week and apparently it was on the agenda to discuss something about transrights so I am currently writing something out to circulate and hope to go. I am chronically ill and disabled from it though (and the venues are not normally accessible) so I might not make it.

Hi @
@SweetGrapes

Where did you see this regarding the prisons?

Sort of answering my own questions now. This is interesting (if nothing else in the contradiction of saying it is worse in prison for trans people and then admitting that there is no evidence for this)

^Prison can be a particularly dangerous place for gay, bisexual and transgender inmates (LGBT) but the Irish Prison Service does not have particular policies to deal with their concerns, the authors of a study on the topic have said.

LGBT prisoners interviewed for a study commissioned by the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) told researchers of their experience of harassment and bullying and the way they felt it made their lives in prison easier if they hid their sexual identity.

The researchers did not receive any direct reports of sexual violence or victimisation in prison but said the international literature suggests it remains a high risk for LGBT prisoners.

...Broden Giambrone of Transgender Equality Network, said that since the Gender Recognition Act 2015 people can self-determine their gender by way of a statutory declaration, yet the prison service allocated people to male and female prisons based on their genitalia or their birth certificates.^ www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/irish-prison-service-has-no-policies-to-protect-lgbt-prisoners-1.2519426

To Feministire people reading the thread, two questions.

Can you define 'woman' without giving a circular definition?

If gender is purely a social construct, how can you be assigned the wrong one at birth?

I'm really starting to hate post-modernism.

Waiting for Feministire to admit they believe in brain sex or the gendered soul.

Now now, they might be busy deciding which one of the 8 million or so genders they are today

Yeah that's feminist. I guess it's the ultimate misinterpretation of 'gender is a social construct'.

I suggest Feministire people read Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender. It explains what 'gender as a social construct' actually means.