Roxetten
Full Member
Women must be free to speak without fear of trans backlash
Eilis O'Hanlon
Last week, the women’s rights organisation known as The Countess launched a new campaign against certain sections of the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill.
The bill seeks, among other things, to replace the word “woman” in legislation with “person”. This is presented as minor tinkering to be more inclusive; but its effect will be to radically change the language in which contentious issues can be discussed at all.
If women are not free to outline their concerns about these attempts at erasure on the national broadcaster, what does free speech mean?
At the same time, free speech, while important, is only one part of the problem. It’s also vital not to shy away from the deeper issue of what the promulgation of a radical trans ideology is doing to young people to whom these fashionable theories about gender are presented as factually irrefutable.
A video from the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation offering advice to staff members on how to deal with primary school pupils who identify as the opposite sex asserts, as if it were a fact, that “boys can change into girls and girls can change into boys” and goes on to say that “once the pupils understood the concept” they would quickly stop questioning it.
It’s likely that most parents are blissfully unaware this is being taught to their children by teachers who are themselves being influenced behind closed doors by trans activists funded by cartloads of public money.
A growing number of children are being deliberately encouraged to “question” their gender, breeding confusion and psychological distress in many and setting themselves in some cases on course for a lifetime of medical intervention, the implications of which they cannot possibly understand.
The US-based World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has even recommended that children as young as 14 should be allowed to go ahead with irreversible medical procedures such as cross-sex hormones, and for girls to have breast removal surgery at 15, a move described by one consultant psychiatrist in the field as asking doctors to “abandon their clinical responsibility and submit to an ideological agenda which is harmful to children.”
WPATH’s “standards of care” are promoted by the Trans Equality Network Ireland (Teni), which received €263,000 from the HSE in 2020 alone, money it uses to lobby politicians and media and “work in educational settings to promote awareness and visibility of trans issues”.
Teni is, naturally, part of the new Trans Equality Together coalition. Yet when anyone tries to raise concerns about this interlinked network of influence, they are shut down by manipulative appeals to emotion.
Most would agree the rights and needs of people who are trans should be accommodated. Thankfully, they already are. There is no part of the law in Ireland that is not enjoyed equally by trans people.
However, their further demands must not be steamrollered through in a way that curbs the rights and needs of women and dangerously confuses and damages vulnerable children.
^On point.
Eilis O'Hanlon
Last week, the women’s rights organisation known as The Countess launched a new campaign against certain sections of the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill.
The bill seeks, among other things, to replace the word “woman” in legislation with “person”. This is presented as minor tinkering to be more inclusive; but its effect will be to radically change the language in which contentious issues can be discussed at all.
If women are not free to outline their concerns about these attempts at erasure on the national broadcaster, what does free speech mean?
At the same time, free speech, while important, is only one part of the problem. It’s also vital not to shy away from the deeper issue of what the promulgation of a radical trans ideology is doing to young people to whom these fashionable theories about gender are presented as factually irrefutable.
A video from the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation offering advice to staff members on how to deal with primary school pupils who identify as the opposite sex asserts, as if it were a fact, that “boys can change into girls and girls can change into boys” and goes on to say that “once the pupils understood the concept” they would quickly stop questioning it.
It’s likely that most parents are blissfully unaware this is being taught to their children by teachers who are themselves being influenced behind closed doors by trans activists funded by cartloads of public money.
A growing number of children are being deliberately encouraged to “question” their gender, breeding confusion and psychological distress in many and setting themselves in some cases on course for a lifetime of medical intervention, the implications of which they cannot possibly understand.
The US-based World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has even recommended that children as young as 14 should be allowed to go ahead with irreversible medical procedures such as cross-sex hormones, and for girls to have breast removal surgery at 15, a move described by one consultant psychiatrist in the field as asking doctors to “abandon their clinical responsibility and submit to an ideological agenda which is harmful to children.”
WPATH’s “standards of care” are promoted by the Trans Equality Network Ireland (Teni), which received €263,000 from the HSE in 2020 alone, money it uses to lobby politicians and media and “work in educational settings to promote awareness and visibility of trans issues”.
Teni is, naturally, part of the new Trans Equality Together coalition. Yet when anyone tries to raise concerns about this interlinked network of influence, they are shut down by manipulative appeals to emotion.
Most would agree the rights and needs of people who are trans should be accommodated. Thankfully, they already are. There is no part of the law in Ireland that is not enjoyed equally by trans people.
However, their further demands must not be steamrollered through in a way that curbs the rights and needs of women and dangerously confuses and damages vulnerable children.
^On point.
