Stella O'Malley on the cowardice of the Irish media

[ItsCoolForCats]

Really blistering article from Stella O'Malley on the failure of the Irish media (particularly the Irish Times and RTE) to report on the trans issue. It's in the Irish Catholic (one of the few publications in Ireland that will run these type of articles).

It's a familiar and depressing tale of capitulation by organisations following bullying by trans activists. The Irish Times is now in a reflective mood about Woke 1.0, and Stella isn't having it.

Not sure if those on X will be able to read this. Are there any alternatives to Nitter?

https://x.com/stellaomalley3/status/2095532646839271615

😄

I admire Stella so much.

It’s readable on X, she’s posted screenshots of the print.

Agree, she is great.

Thanks, I just wasn't sure if anyone without an X account would be able to read it.

So the great panjandrums of ' liberal ' media have been outflanked on women's rights by the Irish Catholic. Who'da thunk it?

I’ve some admiration for the RC Church, despite all the obvious. I was v impressed, when I married a catholic, at the questions I was asked by the priests, like was I happy, sure, not being coerced, was I pregnant and if so did I know that didn’t mean I had to be married - there was a leaflet on this - I could have the child single and get support from the church and the child be welcomed… my fiancé wasn’t even a regular churchgoer.

The older I get, the more sides there seem to everything.

DH and I were asked to attend an RC pre-marriage course which actually asked lots of great questions. For example, we were asked to discuss how we would approach one of us wanting to move home for a new job and the other not wanting to do so. I also remember being asked to discuss which one of us would clean the toilet. The point was to get us communicating with each other, and one of the couples subsequently broke off their wedding as a direct result of the course. Which is sort of a good thing, I guess.

'The Catholic Church in Ireland' has always been a multifaceted thing - the bishops in their palaces shuffling child abusing priests around from one parish to another, the claustrophobic and frighteningly powerful hold on people's minds and behaviour, the cruelty against children in institutions, the unhealthy yoking together of state and church on both sides of the border, 'A Protestant state for a Protestant people' [James Craig] in Northern Ireland, a more-or-less Catholic state for a mostly Catholic people in the Republic.

And yet, the 1937 Irish constitution was careful to guarantee protection and freedom to all religions, including the non-Catholic ones that had been used as a stick to beat the Irish for centuries [and - significantly in Europe in the 1930s - specifically guarantees the rights of the Jewish community].

The Irish Catholic church isn't just the bishops in their palaces and the abusive clergymen: it was the comfort and strength of a despised people through centuries of cruel and violent oppression; it is also social justice campaigners and activists and do-ers, like Sister Stanislaus and Brother Kevin, it was the [mostly] nuns who nursed and taught and inspired and helped the outcasts of society - who were, yes it is true, outcast by the other parts of the Church, but many of them devoted their lives sincerely to keeping heads above water, when the impoverished new state could not afford a safety net of benefits.

It is the Liberation Theology priests who were silenced by the Vatican, the trendy-Leftie clergy trying desperately to be 'relevant' to the youth, and it is also the people who queued to see the relics of St Therese 'on tour'.

It has never been a monolith, it has always evoked mixed feelings in lapsed-Catholic-atheists like myself, so if the Catholic press is now one of the few parts of the media open to sex-realist thought - it's just another quirk in the relationship...

It's unfortunate, because it reinforces the erroneous association of gender critical/sex realism with Christianity and 'the right', but... what can you do?

I agree that Stella O'Malley is great, and she is another sex realist/GC woman who has suffered for her beliefs - she used to be a regular, popular and respected media contributor, but I doubt if the phone rings much these days...

Billboard Chris has spoken about his visit to the UN and the discussions he had there. The Catholic Church and Iran are strange bedfellows but we are living in strange times.

Ireland has drunk deeply of the koolaid

Do you think it has, or is it only in certain circles? I've not lived in Ireland for years. My family back home (not in a city) have no idea about any of this. They are very much live and let live, but I can say categorically that they would not be ok with men breastfeeding or with men and boys playing in women's GAA. I think lot of this stuff goes under the radar.

Also, the Irish Examiner gets a lot of criticism for unquestioningly embracing woke. My dad reads it religiously because it's still the Cork Examiner to him, but he is definitely not woke 😂 I must ask him about it.

I think it’s a response to decades of dogmatic control by the Church. But they have just swapped one dogma for the new woke dogma.

Paddy O’Gorman speaks on You Tube about amount of government subsidy the whole media industry in Ireland receives and how the industry thus peddles the government propaganda. It’s very interesting from an academic perspective- not so much from a free media perspective.

Newstalk hasn’t been bad on trans issues - I think?

In our media and political landscape, like the UK, there will have been NGOs and interested individuals meeting with editors and producers and politicians over the last decade or so to bring them around to the idea of adopting the TRA stance as a #BeKind neutral thing to do. Pushing the notion that Trans is the new gay etc and that objections are from the wrong sort of people.

This strategy was outlined in The Denton’s Document as having been successful in Ireland and Malta and therefore recommended as a possible method for use in other countries too.

There were two items on Irish radio the other day, one was about women's health and was all about health issues that are specific to women as in biological women. By a woman. No hesitation prevarication apologies or circumlocution: women's health, full stop.

Then a while later there was an interview with a man who is a specialist in the obstetrics kind of area. [sorry if I'd realised it would be so quotable, I'd have paid more attention to names!].
It was very interesting about 'matrescence' which is the range of changes, hormonal, psychological, physical etc which occur when a woman gives birth.
He said it was as significant as adolescence, and needs to be recognised, support given, etc etc.

However, although he was talking about a most essentially female experience. he kept referring to the changes in the new mother 'and father' and the importance of supporting the couple through matrescence.
He also consistently referred to new mothers as 'the patient'.

Two things struck me, apart from the obvious one that no man goes through matrescence:🙄

Given the high number of single mothers, constantly referring to the parents plural. and automatically referring to the father/ the couple used to be frowned upon, as so many mothers do not have partners. It looks like that has been overturned. There is always a man involved now.

It was also frowned upon in the recent past to over-medicalise pregnancy and childbirth, so calling new mothers 'patients' seems to have been brought back into use to avoid having to say 'mother'..

I think these two items on Irish radio, only a few hours apart, are indicative of two tiers - lots of people, probably most people, not buying into TWAW at all; and on the other hand, professionals going out of their way to avoid speaking the words 'woman' or 'mother' - even if that overturns previous 'sensitivities' around single mothers and the over-medicalisation of childbirth.

I posted this on another thread. Sall Grover was on Newstalk and she was magnificent. Well worth a listen

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7rumi3SgdLFtItB9yOeIg7?si=23AHuyjgQc6J32vUMIkdFQ&utm_source=copy-link

As a midwife with over 20 years of service, my experience is that “patient” is simply a traditional, old-school medical term used in healthcare. It certainly wasn’t coined or adopted to avoid specifying the sex or gender of a pregnant or postpartum woman.

Patient is a perfectly appropriate term in many maternity contexts, particularly given how much obstetric involvement many women have throughout pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. A woman undergoing a caesarean section, receiving obstetric interventions, requiring specialist antenatal monitoring, or needing significant medical care following birth is undoubtedly a patient within that clinical context. Her status as a woman or mother does not somehow negate her status as a patient.

I would make a distinction when referring to a woman who has had an entirely straightforward, low-risk pregnancy, a normal vaginal birth and an uncomplicated postnatal recovery, with no obstetric intervention or medical input. In that context, I would refer to the woman as woman/mother/her name. My point is that these terms are not mutually exclusive, and context matters. Calling a woman a patient does not erase her identity as a woman or mother, nor does it necessarily imply anything about gender identity. It is a longstanding clinical term that has a legitimate place in maternity care.

Sorry one last point @MarieDeGournay The man you mentioned on the radio was an obstetrician. An obstetrician is a doctor whose role is to provide medical and surgical care in pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. So it was entirely natural and appropriate for him to use the word 'patient' In these circumstances. It reflects the professional relationship and the care being provided; it is not an attempt to erase or avoid acknowledging that she is a woman.

In sum, 'patient' is an established term in healthcare, and there is nothing inherently dehumanising or ideologically motivated about its use in maternity care.

I don't have X & I can't read it! Anyone got those images?

Full-size images:

https://ugc-assets.mumsnet.com/images/202610/HBbYkNXuHvVyZ4TKcEJZfxpV5hhSyZmFrN992Lrn.jpeg

https://ugc-assets.mumsnet.com/images/202610/t67vtsQRuToFxM7tdKPF3j69kjkc9TG4H36AexC4.jpeg

Thanks for all those points, Oki, especially for providing me with the word 'obstetrician' which had evaded me when I was writing my post

Maybe I'm showing my age by being surprised that women giving birth [he was talking about 'matrescence' in general not problem births] are referred to as 'patients'.

I recall very very strong insistence that giving birth was not a medical event, even if it happened in a hospital, that childbirth is a natural event and that mothers are not patients. (barring problems requiring medical intervention of course).

It must be one of those old feminist-y things from the past that have gone out of style. 'Patient' definitely grated on my ears, which must be old feminist-y ears