Groundhog Day article with all the hits

[Mermoose]

I do wonder how any journalist with even an iota of curiosity manages to write something like this in 2024. And how do editors not push them to at least acknowledge the arguments they're supposedly countering?
https://m.independent.ie/opinion/donal-lynch-trans-community-is-being-left-behind-while-the-pride-flag-flies-proudly/a409201064.html

These days, the same tropes once used against gay people are directed at the trans community; spurious concerns about the safety of minors, social contagion, issues in sport, concerns of safety in toilets and changing rooms and the very imposition of dealing with someone who is different.

It's like the Cass Report never happened, Lia Thomas was a dream, Katie Dolatowski - who's that?, polls showing schoolgirls avoiding toilets - nope, doesn't ring a bell, Isla Bryson, Barbie Kardashian, Karen White - who they?

Meanwhile, Marsha P Johnson is yet again falsely claimed to be trans rather than a gay man who was very clear about the fact. It's telling that these people, casting about for supposed trans people involved in the Stonewall riot, never mention Stormé DeLarvarie. She was no more trans than Johnson but like him she performed drag. But then she's a woman, so I guess that makes her invisible to the likes of Dónal Lynch.

I've been feeling conflicted about Pride in Dublin this year - I have friends who grew up bullied for being gay and I used to see Pride as such a positive thing. But it's seized on by so many like Lynch as an opportunity to demonise women and enforce the worst misogyny since the 8th Amendment.

The article is behind a paywall, but I can imagine the line taken.
People churn out the same unscientific inaccurate opinionated biased non-factual garbage AND get it published AND are seen as big brave spokespeople for the most marginalised group in society... 😡

Anything and everything about trans ideology is accepted as a matter of fact in Ireland. The public mood is shifting a bit since the recent Referendum decisions, but public discourse is still stuck at 'be kind'.

I believe that the presence of the T in LGBT++ is a huge problem: valid opposition to TRAs and gender ideology is lumped in with homophobia, because it's all 'anti-LBGTQ++ RIGHT WING BIGOTRY'.

The Marriage Equality Referendum showed that overall the Irish public has no problem with LGB rights - homophobia is still a problem, obviously, but overall, lesbian and gay rights are not in question.

But add the T to LGB, and any criticism of trans ideology in Ireland can be presented as right wing bigotry against lesbian and gay people as well as 'the most marginalised..' trans people.

The fact that right-wing bigotry does actually exist in Ireland and is also critical of gender ideology is a big challenge, and heavy-handed tactics to forcibly remove inappropriate children's books from public libraires has provided an open goal for accusations of 'censorship' and 'book-burning' .

But somehow, carefully and thoughtfully, we have to disaggregate the T from LBG in the public mind:
Not the same issue, not the same history, not the same people, not the same rights, not the same problems, not the same demands, not the same outcomes for society...

I've no idea how to do that though!

Agreed to all that. Here's a saved version but I never know if these links work on here.
archive.is/2024.06.30-050837/m.independent.ie/opinion/donal-lynch-trans-community-is-being-left-behind-while-the-pride-flag-flies-proudly/a409201064.html

Thanks, Mermoose, that link works.
What a load of cleverly-phrased nonsense - proving my point that the T is being dressed up as LGB to stop any critique of specifically trans issues. If you're questioning trans activism now, you would have been those awful homophobes who resisted gay rights..

And yes ,Mermoose, the hypocrisy of writing lesbian Stormé out of history in order to misrepresent Marsha as a trans woman! A good example of lesbian erasure.

Marsha was largely written out of the history of those early days by gay activists who wanted to present an image of the LGBTQ+ community that was more palatable to the mainstream.

In what befuddled mind is a Black lesbian drag artiste 'more palatable to the mainstream' than a gay man?

The point he makes ..
That Ireland has allowed people to use the public toilet of the gender they identify with since 2015 without a single reported incident of this ['forcing themselves sexually'] happening doesn’t seem to make a difference.

is also a clever one. It sets the bar at sexual assault - if no trans identifying male has sexually assaulted a woman in a women's toilet since 2015, there is no valid argument against men using women's toilets.

But there have been cases outside of Ireland of trans identifying males sexually assaulting woman or girls in women's toilets - we've probably just been lucky here. It's the principle of women's spaces being for biological women that should be paramount, not the strike rate of sexual assaults by trans women.

Thanks Mermoose. This is a really emblematic article, it showcases the kind of conflation of trans and L&G rights that is such a problem in Ireland. Probably elsewhere, too, but it's really damaging women's rights in Ireland.