Women removed from the maternity act Ireland

[yellowtwo]

The Countess women's group in Ireland have found out that the words women/woman and female will be removed from the Maternity Protection Act 1994.

twitter.com/TheCountessIE/status/1532836396414681088?s=20&t=nEw3VkmgRFn1Wx77m15ZBQ

Annie Hoey, in this interview, said the reason RTE was called in before the Oireachtas Committee was because a man misgendered someone on live radio.
From memory, Brian, the father of a teenage lesbian, accused of Transphobia for not wanting to date a biological male, was the only GC male on the programme.
He misgendered (possibly inadvertently) a convicted sex offender when he asked another caller how a female sex abuse would feel about being incarcerated with the sex offender. The female caller was horrified that the sex offender was misgendered, but expressed no concern for the feelings of the female sex abuse victim.
If this is the reason RTE have been called in then I am not surprised some TD's are calling for a "pre trial settlement" for want of a better description.
They really aren't going to want any more members of the public realising what has been happening "under the radar".

podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/dublin-pride-rte-and-free-speech/id92316752?i=1000566615819

It really is jarring, It's the Catholic Church all over again shitting on women and we sleep walked right into it under the guise of progressiveness

Indeed. I used to wonder about how women could pile so much cruelty on other women in the Magdalene Laundries. And yet here they are all over Twitter shutting down women and arguing on behalf of males.

Modem day Mother Superiors.

Annie Hoey is an absolute embarrassment and another nail in the coffin of the Irish Labour party. I remember when it stood for workers' rights not this hyper individualistic bullshit.

Annie also claims she is "queer" even after her big white hetero wedding that was in all the papers, and posted on Twitter that "T**fs can suck coal"

She is such an embarassment, shes been elected on the Agricultural panel (only scraping the quota on the 20th count) but has declared herself "Senator for students" and doesn't seem that bothered with anything ag. Doesn't seem to have any life experience outside student politics.

Went on her instagram out of curiousity, she can't even be consistent with her own nonsense, she was going on about "women" in relation to the national maternity hospital, in relation to abortion services etc shes clearly a TERF herself, the NMH is for people because its people who get pregnant we can't be exclusionary and say women unless you're part of the inquisitor class

Anyone notice how all the discussion has shifted away from women? I've seen both Taoiseach, Tanaiste, myriad other TDs and senators asked about the liveline issue but not one has been asked about the word women being removed from the Maternity Bill, surely thats an important question in the context.

Two letters on liveline in the Irish Times, one from a former head of compliance at RTE rightly suggesting that the BAI is the appropriate forum for these complaints but that groups seem to want to bypass them even though they can levy heavy fines if necessary and would be able to offer clarity on the issue of free and respectful speech www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2022/06/17/transgender-discussion-on-liveline/

The other is from a newly formed group calling themselves Trans Equality Together that alleges the liveline callers were from co-ordinating groups (given their use of similar language and speaking points) and were as women wanting to speak about their rights seem to be consistently accused questioning trans peoples "right to exist". Not surprised at most of the organisations in this new group but I am surprised at FLAC being a part of it, they're supposedly independent, surprised their declaring speech that a UK court has said is protected under the UK Equality Act (very similar to the Irish Equality Act). What would happen if a GC person came to them looking for advice?
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2022/06/17/trans-equality-together-responds-to-liveline/

Also one in the indo, again with the denying existence nonsense, almost like they've co-ordinated their language www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/rte-debates-on-gender-are-harmful-and-undignified-41761578.html

www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-40897046.html
Thank you, Alison.
Nuanced and gets to the heart of the issues.

From that article:
At the height of it this week I received an interesting text on the matter from a national politician saying a number of colleagues in Leinster House are also concerned about the removal of the word “woman” and other issues, but “we’re afraid of getting cancelled...if certain groups take a set against you, they can literally take you out and end your career....there wasn’t this much fear on the 8th amendment and that is saying something."

How infuriating that our politicians are such a bunch of cowards, they started this mess by bringing in bullshit legislation in 2015, and now they want to put their heads in the sand and ignore the consequences for women and girls.

Also, the fact that politicians acknowledge that speaking about this publicly sparks a backlash that they are afraid of, just shows that TRAs are successfully shutting down debate in a worrying way, by bullying and intimidation.

That is not how to debate public issues, that is not what a democracy looks like. How long are we going to allow them to terrorise us all into submission?

I'm so sick of Irish politicians being such wet blankets.

Amen to all that.

But look what happened to Graham Linehan? He was utterly cancelled. Once the cancel mob descends, it’s hard to present the blood letting.
Thats a brilliant article from the Examiner.

Anyone notice how all the discussion has shifted away from women?

Yes it's incredible. Women were refused access to a womens meeting and now it's all about the men with hurt feelings.

I despair

Not sure if anyone posted this article by Colette Colfer

thecritic.co.uk/the-gendrification-of-ireland/

Excellent summary by Colette, shes a very articulate woman

It's up to us though isn't it? Come the next election, we need to mount a doorstep campaign, similar to the British "Respect My Sex"* one. They need to know how many of us there are.

*We can't call it that though, because the TRAs will try and have us dismissed as Terf Island infiltrators.

Wanderingowl
It's up to us though isn't it? Come the next election, we need to mount a doorstep campaign, similar to the British "Respect My Sex" one. They need to know how many of us there are.*

You're right, it is up to us - but there are very few decent options out there to vote for. All the major parties are behind this, so who do we have? Maybe one or two independents but unfortunately, they are not going to make any real change.
Not to mention, the next general election wont be for more than 2 years.

Also, Self ID legislation was brought in without real public consultation, so it's not like they even cared about whether we supported it or not. It just shows a complete disregard for women and girls.

We have local elections coming up in 2024. If enough of us tell the candidates who come to our door how we feel, by the general election in 2025 we just might see some politicians speak out about it. We have no-one to vote for because they are afraid to say anything GC because they know they would face a cancellation attempt. If they knew that they would not only survive the cancellation attempt but might actual thrive because of it, that would change.

Look at that boards.ie thread. Boards has consistently been a really good barometer of Irish opinion over the last few years. It's clear as day that people are either sick of being silenced or just learning what's happening and not happy. The majority feel like us but nobody knows.

I never get canvassed so I emailed my local soc dem candidate ahead of the last general to ask about their policy document where they want to make all homeless services and mental health wards gender neutral, sent along all the data about how many women were assaulted in mixed sex mental health wards in the UK (as there was no data I could find about Ireland). No response, I didn't vote for him and he lost his chance on a seat by less than a hundred votes.

Bairbe Kardashian is being sentenced on July 28th after a mental health report being presented to the court. Will the media be too kowtowed to report if there is anything critical said about whether or not this person is manipulating things in order to be in a womens prison.

Uplift contacted 336k people to ask them to complain about Liveline and 1k of them did
www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40897364.html

It’s same in Scotland. Much ❤️❤️❤️❤️ And 💪💪to my Irish sisters

Regina Doherty, speaking to the Scottish parliament’s equalities committee recently:

Seanad leader warns of ‘summer of discontent’ over trans issues: ‘Very small but growing campaign’ seeking repeal of Gender Recognition Act

Video of her evidence:

Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee Wednesday 22 June 2022

I've fumed overnight thinking back over Regina's comments in that Irish Times piece @Genesis1v27
"We never had any of the divisive debates that we would have seen in the United Kingdom, both in America and Canada......We didn’t have those types of divisive debates in Ireland during the 2015 enactment or during the review of 2019. We are, for some reason, not driven by any changes or proposed changes in the legislation, we’re experiencing that divisive debate starting now.”

Regina, darling....
No. 1 .... there was no debate during the 2015 re-enactment. I am a nerd about reading daily papers, and listening to the news (in the shower.....á la Mary O'Rourke ). There was no debate about gender recognition. I am an old hand on this board (I am Spartacus, long go, long go) and I would have noted it, and thought about it, and spoken about it.

No.2 ... the "divisive debate" that you are seeing now, is not, not, about proposed changes in the Gender Recognition Act (emphasis for the hard-of-understanding). I, and the majority, am in favour of same-sex marriage, the rights of transgender people to have their identity recognised, and women's right all at the same time.
No. 3.... what the current debate is about, is the notion of erasing WOMAN from Maternity Legislation.

Of course, it's important to remember, that Regina isn't talking to women.
She's talking to the youth electorate, that she hopes will re-elect her to a Dáil seat.
It must be galling for Regina to see Helen McEntee's success.

Oh FFS this is not. Get a grip. The church stole and sold babies. They buried them in mass graves. They abused the vulnerable women in their care.

In response to Eilis O'Hanlon's piece last week, Women must be free to speak without fear of trans backlash, the Sunday Independent have today published a selection of the letters they received, the majority of which are supportive of her piece, and the wider necessity of rational, respectful discussion based on fact:

Readers have their say on Eilis O’Hanlon’s transgender comment piece

There is great awareness of what is going on among voters, and disquiet, to put it mildly. The changes to the Maternity Act were an overreach, compounded by the overreaction to Liveline. Now, to make our politicians see sense and change course.