Irish women - literary wokeness

[notyourhandmaid]

“I think transwomen are women, transmen are men, and trans rights are human rights,” she says. “I find it deeply distressing that this targets a group who we all know have a higher incidence of violence and suicide. I really don’t understand why people [who call themselves feminists] have an issue with them. It’s like Flavia Dzodan says: my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bulls**t.” - Sinead Gleeson in today's Irish Times (www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/sin%C3%A9ad-gleeson-i-wanted-it-to-be-a-mix-of-canonical-and-contemporary-1.4361654)

Not a surprise to see this but a tad depressing that someone who writes about the female body and anthologises women's short stories goes into slogan-mode here.

"When I try to draw Ahern on the challenges of writing a woman of colour, especially these days when writers are under scrutiny like never before, often employing “sensitivity readers” to avoid causing offence, she is cautious. I go on to mention JK Rowling and John Boyne as writers who have been criticised in recent times for aspects of their work, but she does not want to offer a view except to say that kind of attention is not something she “goes after”."

• Roisin Ingle on Cecelia Ahern, also today (www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/cecelia-ahern-i-don-t-have-small-worries-i-have-big-worries-like-the-end-of-the-world-1.4362541)

[swingsandroundabouts1]

I see Estelle Birdy has pulled him up on his tweet. I remember she posted here some months back about online abuse she received for her GC views. I remember at the time she was very frightened.
Well done to her for refusing to be cowed.

[MarDhea]

@Bedroomdilemma

That’s quite a good article with John Boyne, I think. One undercurrent which I don’t really see acknowledged here much is the extent to which the gay marriage and abortion referendum meant t many people became activists or voted for both women’s rights and gay rights, and the issues became entwined. This dynamic, where both women and gay people were oppressed by the conservative society and both won freedoms around the same time, doesn’t exist to the same extent in the UK. And then trans rights get bound up in that.

THIS!

[notyourhandmaid]

@Bedroomdilemma yes, indeed!

(This forum is where the smart feminists are.)

[XXOnly]

[quote irishfeminist]@7days a young bearded bloke no less. What are they even doing hiring someone like that as communications officer for one of the country's largest maternity hospitals? His Twitter bio says "views my own" but clearly associates him with his workplace.[/quote]
He can always go work for AIMS, they show similar scorn for “pregnant people” who believe in biology.

[justforthisnow]

Found my people. A thought; if a female applied for a GRC, legally was recognised as a male, and then applied for the priesthood, in Ireland, what would happen? Thanks to Earleggmcmuffin for sparking the thought from a post upthread.

[irishfeminist]

I'd imagine the same thing that would happen if a transman in the UK tried to inherit a male title or a seat in the house of Lords - they would be told to take a hike. Funny, that.

[justforthisnow]

But there's no self ID in England, so there'd be grounds for telling them to take a hike, whereas in Ireland self id is in, so legally where would the Church stand I wonder?

[irishfeminist]

I think someone needs to do this, so!

[EarlofEggMcMuffin]

Sorry to burst your bubble on the Catholic priest one.
I think there is a specific exemption on this one (there would be wouldn't there ) but I cant find a link to confirm it. I'm sure I read it previously though.

Even if you cleared the legal burden in Ireland, there's this....->

in 2019, the Vatican released “Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education,” its first extensive statement on transgender identity. While including a call for love and respect, the document rejects the idea that gender is distinct from biological sex. A transgender identity, the document asserts, seeks to “annihilate the concept of nature.”

[miri1985]

Sorry to burst your bubble on the Catholic priest one.
I think there is a specific exemption on this one (there would be wouldn't there hmm) but I cant find a link to confirm it. I'm sure I read it previously though.

The only exemption in the act is that a person who has acquired the other sex through the GRA process can still be convicted of crimes of their birth sex, apart from that the act contains no exemptions www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2015/act/25/enacted/en/print.html

The equal status acts allow religious orders to only admit one gender but the GRA gives someone that acquired gender. It could be challenged in court but there is no current exemption.

Same sex schools are protected on religious grounds because its ostensibly for under 18's but no one knows what would happen if someone with a GRA tried to gain access to a religious same sex school

"Section 7(2) of the Equal Status Act 2000 specifically prohibits discrimination in relation to the admission or the terms or conditions of admission of a person as a student in an educational establishment. Further it prohibits the access of a student to any course, facility or benefit provided by that establishment. This general protection however is subject to two important exemptions.

The first exemption, contained in section 7(3)(a) of the Equal Status Act, notes that where an educational establishment is not a third-level institution and admits students of one gender only then section 7(2) is deemed not to apply. The second exemption, commonly referred to as the ‘ethos exemption’, is contained in section 7(3)(c) of the Equal Status Act. This exemption permits a school which, in pursuing the objective of promoting certain religious values, can legitimately refuse to provide the requisite accommodations for transgender students on the basis that transgender identity does not form part of the religious ethos of a school." irishlegal.com/article/stephen-kirwan-pitfalls-and-uncertainties-in-ireland-s-gender-recognition-laws

[miri1985]

Found my people. A thought; if a female applied for a GRC, legally was recognised as a male, and then applied for the priesthood, in Ireland, what would happen? Thanks to Earleggmcmuffin for sparking the thought from a post upthread.

I would think an easier situation would be what if two people both visibly of the same sex but one with a GRC tried to get married in a Catholic church.

With the priest one, essentially you're applying for a job and if they were smart, they would turn a woman applying for the priesthood away by saying that they didn't think she was ready or that they felt she had more discerning to do etc. Although thinking about it I think most priests would be fairly blunt and just say you were a woman.

A grifter could be making a fortune off cases like this in the workplace relations commission. Although I imagine the Catholic church would have the resources to fight it more than that barbers did. We have no idea what the higher courts would make of the GRA

[Cailleach1]

I think religious got an exemption under the Act. Yeah! Don't worry the 85% male Dáil made sure all discrimination against women was still provided for. The so, so progressive f•ckers.

[EarlofEggMcMuffin]

@miri1985 thanks for that- seems I was wrong.

[Cailleach1]

May have been a bit previous. The exemption was in Equality Acts.

Interesting read:
www.utrechtjournal.org/articles/10.5334/ujiel.dh/

They never banged on about how women were discriminated against. Not an issue that women were excluded by the immutable characteristic of sex. Just when men may identify themselves as women by abracadabra and then it is discriminatory.

www.education.ie/en/Publications/Education-Reports/ge_schools_and_equality.pdf

Gender – Being male or female. (The European Court of Justice has held that discrimination against a transsexual person constitutes discrimination on the ground of sex.)

God, that is so mixed up. Sex isn't 'gender' woo.

[Cailleach1]

The Bill blurb stated that it would apply to public, civil and commercial society. Religious wouldn't really belong to any of those, would they?

I would be amazed if women would be protected from any discrimination by the Gender Recognition Act. Double protection for males, allowing them to play as they like. They can walk all over women and also reassert the privileges of being male where discrimination against women exists.

Section 17: Effects of gender recognition certificate generally
Section 17 provides for the fundamental principle of the legislation which is that, once a gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes the preferred gender for all purposes, including dealings with the State, public bodies and civil and commercial society.

data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2014/116/eng/memo/b11614d-memo.pdf

[purplepizzabunny]

The rotunda communications officer has deleted his tweet. And I am now blocked so he must have been busy as I didn't even comment

[miri1985]

The Bill blurb stated that it would apply to public, civil and commercial society. Religious wouldn't really belong to any of those, would they?

I think the church is considered part of civil society, although I could be wrong as I can't find a legal definition anywhere but I did find this IT article where Bertie said " [t]he Church is an important part of civil society"
www.irishtimes.com/news/taoiseach-strongly-defends-role-of-catholic-church-1.1184637

[Nara2k]

He's deleted, locked his ac & removed his job from his profile @purplepizzabunny he got a bit of correction via tweets but certainly no death threats

[swingsandroundabouts1]

@purplepizzabunny

The rotunda communications officer has deleted his tweet. And I am now blocked so he must have been busy as I didn't even comment

I don't subscribe to the cancel culture. But while he said his views were his own, it was very clear where he worked. A communications officer that did not grasp the inappropriateness of the tweet, clearly isn't very good at communicating

[Cailleach1]

I'm not sure. The state has separated civil marriage from the religious aspect.

It is just because so many people get married in a Catholic Church, they are recognised by the state to do the civil registration bit too. Rather like the CoE in England.

I think you'd find out pretty quick if you called the Gardaí because there was an objection if a woman with a self ID GRA Certificate sat in the men's section of the mosque. Most immediate clarification I can think of.

[notyourhandmaid]

@Nara2k

He's deleted, locked his ac & removed his job from his profile *@purplepizzabunny* he got a bit of correction via tweets but certainly no death threats

I find it endlessly frustrating that people go 'there's terribleness on both sides' when there is exactly one side who do the death threats and one side who go 'could you please give a shit about women'. I think he had 4 responses, the delicate creature. Compare to Sarah Anderson getting nasty DMs from trans activists when she wanted the word 'women' put back into cervical cancer info alongside trans-inclusive language.

[Goosefoot]

Yes, I think that’s absolutely right. People are just thinking of ‘trans rights’ as something that should self-evidently be supported, like voting for abortion rights or gay marriage, without thinking at all about the erosion of women’s rights.

Isn't this part, maybe a big part, of the problem among many progressives? If you can on the surface sell anything as progressive or not what the right-wing people think, they believe supporting it is self evident. Nothing should be self evident, and almost every issue has more than two ways to think about it anyway.

I hate to say it but in the last five years it seems like there is really almost no intellectual engagement by the supposed left on these issues, at best people repeat arguments they have heard, often not quite correctly or out of context or clearly not really understanding what they are saying.

[CousinKrispy]

I have to say “if your feminism doesn’t include vulnerable women then your feminism is bullshit.”

Sorry, don't know how to do a quote properly, but love this, Delerium. Really useful.

[irishfeminist]

Goosefoot, I despair constantly at the lack of real discussion. We had the painful decades of culture wars - the 1980s in particular felt like the country was tearing itself apart - and now it's as though we've settled into a cosy consensus where everything is self-evident, the good guys have defeated the bad guys and nothing ever needs to be discussed ever again. It's like a collective brain death.