A chara, – Many thanks to Emer O'Toole for boiling the blood of women in Ireland ("Irish feminists must avoid British trap of transphobia", Opinion & Analysis, March 12th).
I know of no better way to get us to be contrary than to tell us what to do, how to think and who to associate with.
There is no trap, no colonisation 2.0. Women, here, there and everywhere are perfectly capable of reading, reasoning and forming our opinions all by ourselves.
And we’ll be twice as quick to do it now we’ve been told not to. – Is mise,
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GERALDINE HALPIN,
Dublin 7.
Sir, – Emer O’Toole’s article on the recently formed Irish Women’s Lobby and its webinar on International Women’s Day this week does not reflect the very many who welcomed it and found it both interesting and informative.
Writing from Montreal, Ms O’Toole may not realise that Irish women are well able to think for themselves and are belatedly realising that legislation was passed and is planned which has not had the benefit of input from the most critical stakeholders, women and girls who stand to be most affected by it.
Last month Niamh Smyth TD asked, but didn’t receive an answer, about the implications of the Gender Recognition Act and whether or not it means that men can access women’s facilities and spaces.
Three years ago an investigation by the Sunday Times found that almost 90 per cent of reported sexual assaults, harassment and voyeurism in swimming pool and sports-centre changing rooms happen in unisex facilities, which make up less than half the total.
Here in Ireland, we already have three men with gender recognition certificates who have been sent to women’s prisons which house some of the most vulnerable women in society.
In 2019, 81 out of 163 transgender prisoners in England and Wales had at least one conviction for a sexual offence.
Irish women have every right to ask what consideration has been given to our safety in allowing men to “self-id” by filling out a form so that “the person’s sex becomes that of a woman”. – Yours, etc,
JILL NESBITT,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – While many scramble to obscure the fact that trans-identified males are statistically no less likely to commit rape or abuse than any other male, what they have not been successful in hiding is the tendency of some trans-identifying men, specifically porn-addled autogynephiles, to belligerently out themselves as violent misogynists.
This is plain to see on the many social media networks where such people and their allies dominate the conversation around trans ideology.
The fact that these men are promoted as the most oppressed of women, as well as many other valid and pressing concerns, is what necessitated the formation of the Irish Women’s Lobby.
That Emer O’Toole and others would have us believe the easily led, backwater gullibility and proclivity toward hate and othering of Irish women has caused this country’s feminists to mobilise to such a degree should be enough to alert any reader that there is something very much afoot. – Yours, etc,
JENNIFER
LANGAN,
Donegal.
Sir, – Along with more than 500 women from Ireland, the US, Britain, Canada and Europe, I attended the launch conference of the Irish Women’s Lobby for International Women’s Day on March 8th.
I listened to eight female speakers from Ireland, Britain, Sweden, France and the US.
All had powerful, informed, compassionate and profoundly moving contributions to make on prostitution in Ireland, on violence against women, on class-based misogyny, on pornography, on the importance of women’s rights and spaces, on the silencing of women’s voices in academia and much more.
I was therefore very surprised to see an opinion piece which, without providing a shred of evidence, sought to cast the organisers and speakers as transphobic.
As Fine Gael now has policy to lower the age limit for self-ID, this is very much a moment for our politicians and women’s organisations in all their diversity to ask serious questions about protections and risks for girls and women in sport, in prisons, in single-sex spaces.
Asking these difficult questions and finding practical solutions that work for all is not an act of cruelty or phobia, but an absolute necessity and a responsibility in a democratic society. – Yours, etc,
TRISH
LAVELLE,
Skibbereen,
Co Cork.