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

Aw thank you!

This page is so blinded by their hatred of trans peoole that they are lauding the Irish Catholic Church as a great beacon of feminism. Are ye in a twilight world?

I am Irish feminist living in Ireland and this is risable. I cant get over how right wing this page is. Everyones religion is their own choice but the Catholic church and its guideance in Ireland is the opposite of feminism. A synod voted last week NOT to set up a womams department never mind admit female clergy. They are STILL avoiding paying "sweetheart reparatitions" to the victims of industrial schools and mother and baby homes. A referendum 3 years back kept " womens special.place in the home ( mere platitudes as opposed to actually supporting carers). This is all current.

I have come to the conclusion that this page had been taken over by bad actors as i have never met any feminist in real life who are so obsessed with trans people. Its a broad church but I hear a hell of a lot more talk about medical mysogny, violence against women, barriers in the work place but nope here its all about trans people who make up 1% of the population.

Uh?

Grates on my ears too, for the same reasons.

Right wing and blinded by hatred? Because we have a different opinion to you on this issue? 🙄

I think you've got yourself so worked up that it's affected your comprehension skills and you've missed all the nuance where the Catholic Church has been discussed. It is ironic that the Irish Catholic is one of the few publications that will print stories on how women's rights have been impacted by gender Self ID. Could you point me to where on the thread we have said the Catholic Church is a great beacon of feminism?

I am not "obsessed" with trans people. I know quite a few trans people. Some I like, some not so much, just like anyone else. What I am "obsessed" with is women not losing the protections we have in law based on our sex. For women and girls to have fair and safe sport. For women and girls to have access to single sex spaces in situations where sex matters. And I have seen first hand in my workplace what happens when you elevate the rights of one group over another and how it negatively impacts women.

And, shocker, but I also care about the things you listed at the end of your post, such as VAWG, because it is possible to care about more than one issue, especially when they're linked. Do you think women who have been traumatised by male violence should have access to single sex spaces?

Your're right, I'm of that generation of women for whom birth was a natural process and not a medical event - and who fought for the right to a home birth and for the woman remaining in control of her own birthing process. I always think of this as 'goddess feminism'. A feminism rooted in the facts and experience ( and power and strength) of the female body.

I'm really taken by what the doctor said about 'matrescence' being equivalent to adolosecence. I'd never thought of it like that before - but I think there is a profound truth in it. The surge of hormones and all of the changes they induce, at both physical and emotional level, does represent a step change in a woman's life; one in which her sense of herself and her priorities in life under-go significant revolution.

How would it be feminist to play down pregnancy as a medical event? It's challenging, dangerous, potentially life-threatening, and alters your body permanently. It is definitionally a medical event, which is why someone who's pregnant should get the utmost support and care. I remember at least one pregnant friend of mine saying how she wished people were more open about the freaky stuff your body does when pregnant.

And entry level sociological analysis obscured by emotional group think mantras.

I don't think you can have been much involved with the women's movement and certainly not exposed to its history - outside of a predicatbly small, carefully curated circle - no doubt formed in a social media age in which people don't really bother to engage fully or independently with issues anymore.

What we are most interested in is women; their rights and protections; their strength; their dignity. This specific board was set up to discuss the clash and conflict created by transgender ideology and its negative impact upon women and children. Maybe you are unaware of that.

Because one of the evolutions in the women's movement was a move towards taking back childbirth from the hands of the male obstectrians - in a bid to improve the birthing experience and recognise it as a major life changing transtional event; and to re- empower women.

Somehow it has now become verboten to discuss how positive and empowering a natural birth can be and how it can shape a women's confidence in herself as a mother, and as a woman. We are all supposed to be satisfied that "the most important thing is a live baby", and that the traumatised and brutalised women is the price to pay.

Do you not recall that there was a whole stable of feminist books in the late 1970's and 1980's dedicated to women's bodies and women's health and to the birth experience? ( 'Our Bodies, Ourselves'; 'Active Birth' ( Janet Balaskas); 'Spiritual Mid-wifery' etc). This was certainly a very formative time in my young life as a developing woman and very much shaped my experience of the women's movement. We didn't want to be subject to the routine episiotomies given to our mothers, or to being forced into a reclining position whilst giving birth; or to having our babies whisked away by medical staff and immediately swaddled etc

How wonderful to have Sall Grover on the Pat Kenny Show! Not impeded by illogical, quasi religious nonsense about gender souls being on an equal level (if indeed not overriding) biological sex.

Interestingly, in the transcript, where Sall refers to her support to the LGB community, they have written LGBT.

"This specific board was set up to discuss the clash and conflict created by transgender ideology and its negative impact upon women and children. Maybe you are unaware of that"

Now that is making more sense. From the name it was focusing on feminism. Why not just rename it Transbashing . As an Irish women I remember how much the LGBTQ community stood with women to safeguard our rights. Hilarious that a group proporting to be a feminist group is allying with the least Feminist group i know. Talking about whitewashing .

Improving the pregnancy and childbirth experience is great and I support that. I'm also sure it can be amazing and empowering. But it's still a medical event. I understand your framing, but to me being called "a patient" would mean they take me seriously. Especially if the mother's or birthing parents' well-being should be centered, which I agree with.

The 'General feminist chat' was hived off at request of people who didn't want to talk about the damaging impact of transgender Ideology. You are talking down in an ignorant and insulting way to women who have been involved in women's rights in one form or other for a long time.

I'd suggest it was the other way around. It was women ( lesbians) that stood with gay men during the 1980's - only to be abandoned by many of those same gay men once trans ideology had taken over and became the main Stonewall campaign - after gay marriage equality had been won in 2014.

You asked when this approach ( not referring to women as patients) had ever been considered a feminist one.

To me, the moment you are admitted to a hospital and become a patient you lose your individuality and become processed into the sytem. You become institutionalised very quickly.

What a load of nonsense. I think anyone who supports the rights of women (and their children) would most certainly be interested in anything that had a negative impact on their rights.

I wouldn’t be blindly following any new, faith based religious movement that wanted women to believe in the fantastical claims of men, to their own detriment.

Qui bono? Clue, it’s certainly not women.

Taking control of your birthing experience is good as long as women don’t forget that childbirth has inherent risks.
I’d never have taken the risk to have my children at home, personally, but then we’re some distance from a hospital.
I know one woman who free-birthed, so had no midwife attending. I thought she was off her head tbh.

Thanks for telling me. I associate the idea of birth being "natural" for women because we are "built for it" strongly with a paternal way of downplaying the dangers, but I understand the idea of wanting to reclaim it.

The notion of a 'LGBTQ community' is a recent invention created by sticking a T for transgender onto an existing LGB community. It is useful because it enables trans rights activists to appropriate the struggle of lesbian and gay people, and creates an illusion of a long history e.g. pushing the GRA15 through on the coattails of the Marriage Equality reference, the ahistorical claim that the Stonewall Riots in 1969 were started by transwomen, etc.

Transgender people and lesbian and gay people are two different social groups with different identities, different histories, different issues.
There is no logical reason to include a group of people who believe that transwomen are women/transmen are men with people who are sexually attracted to members of their own sex.

'LGBTQ' doesn't make sense.

How is asserting that some men are women 'safeguarding' women's rights?
By removing the social categories 'women as in biological women', specific women's rights as such disappear.

The GRA2015 created the legal fiction that some men are women, and that all they have to do to become women is to say so. The law is sometimes an ass, but that beats Banaher.

Hard-won Sex Equality legislation which protected the specific rights of women - and men, of course - were retrospectively re-interpreted, so 'sex' is replaced by 'gender', and gender means.... the kind of vague abstract stuff that the law doesn't usually get mixed up with, but it certainly no longer means biological sex.
Sex is no longer a protected category in Irish equality legislation.
In other words, women - and men - in Ireland have recently lost the specific rights that used to be guaranteed by law.

I don't see that as progress, and I don't see LGBTQ activists rallying to ensure that women's rights are restored in law.

It's challenging, dangerous, potentially life-threatening, and alters your body permanently.

None of these make it inherently “medical”. It becomes medical when things go wrong.

That said, it’s important to realise that advances in medicine (often instigated by male doctors) have helped make childbirth safer for women and their babies.

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).

Yes, absolutely! Pregnancy and childbirth are normal physiological processes. However, in England, the caesarean section rate is currently 45% and rising. It has spiked heavily over the last decade, accelerating most rapidly after 2020.
To put the timeline into perspective:

• 1950s: Only 3% of births were via C-section.
• 1980s: The rate rose to 10%.
• 2015: About 27% of babies were born by C-section.
• 2020: The figure climbed to 33%.
• 2025/2026: The rate hit 45%, officially overtaking natural vaginal births for the first time in NHS history.

So when you take the section rate and add this to the instrumental delivery rate most women in England are not birthing naturally.

I don't know the figures for the rest of the UK and Ireland but I am aware the section rates are high and rapidly rising too.

Yes, but my point was that the natural/home birth movement was a feminist one and one that was very powerful in the women's movement for some of the reasons I've given.

It is also the case that in more recent times there seems to have beome a censure on women talking about home births or natural births lest it upset women who have had more traumatic experiences. We are all supposed to accept that it is selfish and irresponsible to want more than just a healthy baby at the end of one's pregnancy. That birthing doesn't have to be traumatic, can, in fact, be celebratory and empowering is forbidden from being spoken.

This comes at a time when we are told that Cesaerian rates are rising dramatically and many women are having terrible and traumatic experiences in hospital maternity wards - with staff that don't seem to care and in a system which prioritises excessive surgical and interventional precaution, such as routine inductions, over nursing and midwifery skill.

I also think most women are capable of weighing up the conditions of their pregnancy and making an informed choice as to how and where they'd like to give birth.

I always saw it as 'paternalism' that men wanted to move in and take-over control of the birth process ( dis-empowering midwives in the process) - without any real understanding of what it means to women, nor how women experience pregnancy, birth and motherhood.

Indeed - but not only lesbians, heterosexual women too.

Without women, the gays rights movement would have stalled at the gate.

And yes, you are also right that the majority looked the other way when they were needed.