"An Irish Woman speaks
First of all, thank you so much to A Woman’s Place UK for giving me the chance to talk about this. I feel like I am going mad. I’m Irish and I live in Ireland. We introduced self ID in 2015. At the time, I was supportive of it, because I believed what I was told: that this had no implications for women; that it would only benefit trans people.
I didn’t think about it again until I saw men I know on Twitter, bullying and insulting women that they called ‘terfs’. I assumed that the women were in the wrong. But I don’t think you persuade anyone by insulting them, so I went on to some website or other to find out what they really thought, so I could engage with their arguments properly. I found a list of questions written by a gender critical feminist: What is a woman? What is gender identity?
I believe that a woman is an adult human female. I don’t have any gender identity that is separate from that fact: I experience being a woman because I have a female body and because that female body means that society treats me in a particular way. So in what way did I believe that trans women were women?
I listened to and read what a lot of trans people were saying in the hope of finding out what a gender identity was, but it always came down to stereotypes. Then I read about what was meant by ‘cis’, and I resented it. Not because I hate trans people, but because I do not identify with society’s idea of women, I have always been disgusted by it.
I saw people who were, in every practical sense of the word, men, say that they were women purely because they said so. And I started worrying what this meant in practical terms.
A while ago I was in my local swimming pool, and a man swam across the pool from the men’s rooms and entered the women’s changing rooms. I was there on my own. I ran to get the gym staff and they got him to leave. I spent the next few hours afraid he would spot me and recognise me as the woman who had got him thrown out.
But now, I don’t know if I could get him removed. I don’t know what the law means, and nobody will tell me. I know that a barber was sued because he mistook a trans man for a woman. When I write to TDs (Teachtaí Dála – members of the Irish parliament) they ignore me. I’ve stopped using the pool and the gym.
The worst thing is, I can’t talk openly about any of this. The same men who say ‘When women tell you about sexual assault, listen to them’, will call me a terf and say I should be punched if I say I’m afraid of male people when I’m vulnerable and there’s nobody else around. In fact, even if I say trans women are biologically male, I will be accused of hate speech." (continues)
womansplaceuk.org/an-irish-woman-speaks/