Happy Birthday to the Irish Gender Recognition Act 2015!

52 replies

BeeSouriante · 15/07/2025 11:47

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2015/act/25/enacted/en/html

Ten years ago the GRA 2015 was enacted - self-ID legislation far more progressive than anything even proposed in the UK, allowing trans people to get legal recognition for their gender. The skies did not fall in and many other European states have followed suit*

Keep embarrassing the socially conservative Brits, Ireland..Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Portugal etc etc

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MissScarletInTheBallroom · 18/07/2025 08:08

NebulousWhistler · 18/07/2025 07:29

One of the key reasons Self-ID legislation passed in Ireland is rooted in our national desire to distance ourselves from the oppressive, conservative Catholic Ireland of the past. For decades, our identity was shaped by rigid religious doctrine that stifled individual freedoms, particularly for women. In recent years, Ireland has worked hard to be seen as progressive, liberal, and inclusive — a modern European democracy.

Self-ID was embraced by the political class almost as a badge of honour, a way to signal how far we’d come. But in that rush to shed our past and prove our progressive credentials, there was little space for genuine debate or scrutiny. The potential consequences — especially for women and girls in areas like sport, prisons, and single-sex spaces — were largely ignored or dismissed as bigotry.
And now, if you speak to many in the so-called chattering classes — media, academia, politics — they’ll still tell you Self-ID is a good thing, more out of social signalling than engagement with the complex realities it creates. It’s a tragic irony: in our desperation to break free from a conservative past, we may have created a new kind of orthodoxy — one that again silences women’s concerns.

Do you think that in their haste to break away from one patriarchal religion, Ireland has failed to recognise gender ideology as another patriarchal religion?

I realise they are far from alone in the western world in mistakenly believing gender ideology to be progressive and kind, but the particular enthusiasm Ireland seems to have for this is suggestive of the kind of politics which still doesn't recognise women as full humans and thinks that is normal.

Whereas on TERF island people are starting to wake up and say, "Hang on a second, we were doing pretty well with women's rights until recently, what has happened here?"

TheKeatingFive · 18/07/2025 08:43

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 18/07/2025 08:08

Do you think that in their haste to break away from one patriarchal religion, Ireland has failed to recognise gender ideology as another patriarchal religion?

Whereas on TERF island people are starting to wake up and say, "Hang on a second, we were doing pretty well with women's rights until recently, what has happened here?"

Edited

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Absolutely.

The misogyny in Irish society runs very deep.

The elite (political and otherwise) is also more uniformly left leaning than the UK and has gotten a bit drunk off its 'progressive' credentials.

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