Leo Varadkar Times article - Our gender recognition law is not perfect but it's right

[Underthinker]

https://www.thetimes.com/article/1f895d94-eb13-4d6d-a88c-17b71ff34a7f?shareToken=b9a85f64620c28cb4388ddb376c29002

Stumbled on this in the Times where it was a bit hidden away. Apologies if it's already been discussed. Sorry don't think I can do share tokens.

How Gentile/BK 'Brazilian'? I have seen his parents' nationality referenced - afaik the country was not Brazil. Was he born in Ireland or in the Americas?

I get the impression this issue isn't covered much by the Irish press.

If he thinks that the problem is that some men will just never accept the word 'no', or that women's access and equality matters, then he really doesn't think much of these men, does he?

And he's demonstrating why the law for gatekeeping women's spaces is needed. So what he's proving really is that the law needs more teeth.

We don't for example shrug about depriving people of their property because oh gosh, just too haaaaard. Offenders get arrested, charged, fined and if they are not capable of stopping themselves, they get imprisoned.

Some women need and want single sex spaces. The men and women who think that's too unkind and sad-making can join those who don't want to use their sex based space in the gender neutral space and party on.

Gabriel Gentile aka Barbie Kardashian was born in co Meath to Venezuelan parents, and has the legal gender of (trans)'woman' in Irish law.

But Varadkar refers to him as a 'Brazilian man'.

it's a 'let's tell lies' article, isn't it?

I know he despises povvos, but does he really think we are SO dumb that we won't even notice.

I don’t know - my suspicion is that Ireland is still quite a religious Catholic country and maybe trans women don’t sashay onto the female rugby teams cos there would be 0 tolerance by the public.
Why do these small countries fall over themselves like this -NZ,Scotland ???

"The law as it stands does not prevent sporting bodies from creating female-only categories where female athletes — biological women — would otherwise be at a significant disadvantage"

And yet, the LGFA let male fetish club hosts share a pitch and a changing room with women and girls.

Same old misogyny, different name for the men in the frocks. Still a priest class though.

Yes it's a funny one.

I think these smaller countries are falling over themselves to be more progressive than thou and distance themselves from the us/uk, for starters. Ireland's political elite have also been desperately trying to distance themselves from the church's influence.

It's fair to say that the church's direct influence has waned significantly, but there is still very strong sense of not drawing too much attention to yourself or riding roughshod over others. However much of a male narcissist you might be, your family would tend to keep you in line and stop you making a holy show of yourself.

So Ireland (as I see it) is in the odd position of being gung ho TWAW, in the law, politics, championed by the media. And the urban elite types all nod along, but in the happy knowledge they don't really have to deal with it on the ground much.

I'm in a very middle class, trendy, progressive area and there really isn't much evidence of it being a big issue. There was a 'non binary' child in my son's class for a while, but it all seemed quite half hearted and now everyone appears to have forgotten about it. In my friends child's school, there was a teacher demanding 'they/them' pronouns, but he folded at the first murmur from the parents.

Slightly infuriatingly, all of this probably backs up Varadkar's position that it's all a fuss over nothing. In a way it kind of is, until you find yourself in Limerick woman's prison.

I think you're right there - I think your average person, 'The Plain People of Ireland' as Myles na gCopaleen used to say, have never really bought into the whole TWAW-self-ID thing.

I don't think it's based on residual Catholicism - though it is worth noting that the Catholic church has never wavered from its opposition to transgenderism, on the basis that it denies the dignity of the human being as created by god [I'm just quoting, not agreeing!]

We have a small population, so if less than 0.5% are trans - 0.2% may be more realistic - that's a very small number of people, and the mathematical likelihood of a trans identifying male trying to get onto a local women's rugby is small.

But in any case, they wouldn't be allowed in as the IRFU policy is
contact rugby for players in the female category is limited to those whose sex was recorded as female at birth.

Other sporting bodies have 'trans inclusive' policies.

I think most people have been able to tootle along with gender ideology being in force at a high level in legislation etc, but not affecting them on an everyday level.
When it has done so, there has been pushback, e.g. opposition to unisex toilets in schools, Barbie Kardashian being in a woman's prison [he was later moved after public outcry]. A proposal to limit the specific references to women in the Constitution was heavily defeated last year.

And yet, and yet.... as I said upthread, it looks like an openly full-on TWAW candidate is going to win the presidential election.

Connolly has such a wide range of positions that I find entirely objectionable, I can't even focus on the TWAW thing particularly.

A lot of people seem to be voting for her as a one up to the government kind of gesture. Humphreys is an extremely poor candidate, though she will get my vote.

I think the legacy of religion has worked in a different way. A lot of people grew up in a society where respectability had been linked to behaving as though they believed in a set of abstract ideas they had never examined. That died out in the last 20 to 30 years, but that compliant 'brain switched off, lets go though the motions' mindset is still a part of being a nice middle class Irish person.

The people who are still going to church, or at least tolerating others' churchgoing, are less conformist and more likely to question the new pieties.

It's worth saying that vast swathes of the Irish population have not one solitary clue that Ireland has self id enshrined in law. And of course the political classes have no interest in telling them.

Many gay men do not like the fact that our clubs are sometimes frequented by groups of women.

Maybe they self identify as men and just want to meet and date other men also interested in men, eh Leo.

Yes, he seems to have forgotten about that, which makes the rest of the article incoherent.

it's really not clear why his nationality has any relevance.

I think he is suggesting that he isn't really Irish, that "real" Irish trans women wouldn't do this, so dont worry.

I don't think Varadkar was delighted when John Taylor referred to him as 'the Indian'.

Nationality has nothing to do with it, except to the extent that children from minority communities (immigrants, Travellers) seem to be particularly unlikely to get state intervention when they are in abusive homes.

If Irish is such a queer language why are the gender loons trying to invent a non binary Gaeilge with a gender neutral It agus rudaí eile mar sin?

All that time studying at Oideas Gael , Leo?

I'm voting no, 1 Jim Gavin as a one up to the government. Humphries is getting my no. 2 as she's marginally less awful than Connolly.

DH is doing the same 😆

I'm hoping he gets enough votes to cause a material difference and then they have to re-run the whole thing and we might get some decent candidates.

He'd probably take it if he won though 😁

Yeah I wonder would he?

What a shitshow 🫠

The people have spoken. It would be rude not to.

That said, apparently there is some obscure rule that means the minister for housing (presumably as director of elections) can declare the election void and re-run it.

In fairness, the political class aren't hiding anything from us, it's all freely available to anyone on the Oireachtas website.
Gender Recognition Act 2015 – No. 25 of 2015 – Houses of the Oireachtas

Anyone can also read the 'debate' which preceded the passing of the GRA - not one single party raised any objection to it, in fact the worst thing said about it was that it didn't apply to people below the age of 18!
They were all - government, opposition, centre, left, you name it - out-doing each other in praising how wonderful it was to be tidying up this last reverse salient in the liberalisation of Irish society.