Report on the Let Women Speak Rally in Dublin
17/09/23
A long awaited Let Women Speak Rally was finally held in Dublin on September 16th, coinciding by chance with the anniversary of the murder of Masha Amini by the Iranian Morality Police a year ago and more distantly with the murder by Pinochet of the Chilean folk singer Victor Jara.The rally had to contend with a counter protest organised by Men’s Rights advocates such as People Before Profit and assorted collection of former leftists from Sinn Féin, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party amongst others. On the day there was no trouble, as the Gardaí did put up barriers to keep the Men’s Rights contingent apart, though they let them near enough to be heard. (read more)
Leaflet: Defend Women's Rights Reject Gender Ideology
16/09/23
Today’s rally in Dublin takes place on the first anniversary of the murder of Iranian woman Mahsa Amini by the Morality Police for her defiance of diktats on how women should behave and dress. While a different time
and place Irish women are well aware, many by their own lived experience, of the abuses that follow from the enforcement of religious dogma by state institutions. In a struggle that extended over decades, they had to fight against an alliance of state and church for control over their own bodies, for abortion rights, for contraception and divorce, and
against discrimination in the workplace. (read more)
Enoch Burke: gender questioning teacher jailed indefinitely
15/09/23
On Friday 8th September teacher Enoch Burke attended the high courts in Dublin and was jailed a second time for standing outside Wilson’s Hospital School, his former place of employment. The imprisonment is indefinite, although he can seek release by agreeing that he will stay away from the school.Mr Justice Mark Heslin said that there “was no dispute” that Mr Burke had “flagrantly breached” the previous injunction to stay away from the school. (read more)
Dublin Pride rewrites history of struggle to fit gender ideology
22/08/23
In the Soviet Union there was a practice of revising the historical record to fit the latest position adopted by the Communist Party. A much-ridiculed element of this falsification of history was the alteration of old photographs to remove people or slogans that had fallen out of favour. However, it would be wrong to think that such deceptions are harmless curiosities from a different time and place. The recent example of the doctoring of an iconic photograph of a gay rights protest from the 1980’s by Dublin Pride shows that these Stalinist methods are very much alive in contemporary Ireland. (read more)
Women spoke in Belfast despite attempts to silence them
17/04/23
Kellie Jay Keen a.k.a Posie Parker came to Belfast on April 16th as part of her Let Women Speak rallies. The rally was well attended with lots of women there and also a number of men too. And it had the usual counter rally made up of Trans activists, who had sabotaged the sound system and tried to drown out the message from the women.It followed its usual format of allowing women to come forward and speak on the issue, with no attempts made to hinder or censor them. (read more)
Report on the International Women’s Day rally in Belfast
09/03/23
Around 2000 people attended a rally in Belfast to mark International Women’s Day. The event went off from Writer’s Square without any problems and the march ended at City Hall where there was a long list of speakers to address the audience.The slogan for the march was; “Stand Up - Fight Back” but it was difficult to see a common action programme uniting the marchers. Many seemed to share the trade union position of bringing back Stormont so that it could aid women and the working class, but the record of the local assembly was so awful that few chose to say this clearly. (read more)
The institutional sexual assault of prison staff
05/02/23
The recent cases in Scotland have focused attention on the holding of sexual offenders in the female estate or their request for transfers there. The issue became so public and clear that the reactionary First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon was forced to do a U-turn on the slogan Trans Women are Women and say well yes, they are but not this one, nor that one either and let’s press the pause button to think of a way out of this woke mess we have got ourselves into. (read more)
Scotland’s prisons and the rape and abuse of women
28/01/23
Scotland has been making the news recently and none of it for good reasons. Sunak stepped in to overrule the Scottish Parliament on its gender recognition legislation, playing a populist agenda on the trans issue, as the Tories are the ones who brought in the Gender Recognition Act in the first place. However, the issue is important.At the same time as the Scottish PM was busy attacking women’s rights, a number of cases came up in the courts that highlighted the danger and wanton disregard for women’s rights and safety that Sturgeon was demonstrating. (read more)
Enoch Burke: Women’s rights and workers’ rights at stake
28/01/23
Enoch Burke has now become a household name, thanks to a controversy surrounding the mandated use of they/them pronouns and a name he was instructed to use for a child, by management at the school where he worked. The school in question is a Church of Ireland mixed boarding school charging 9,500 euros per year.It is important to get the background to this story in order to properly understand the issues at stake. (read more)
Academics Supporting Censorship and Suppression of Ideas
14/12/22
When we think of censorship and the suppression of ideas, we don’t usually think of academics engaging in either. Historically, that is not the case. Academics have been wheeled out time and again to support reactionary ideas and even the suppression or censorship of ideas they do not agree with or offend their paymasters. Recently academics at Edinburgh University have engaged in both through their union, UCU, of all things.The recently produced documentary Adult Human Female is at the centre of the controversy. (read more)
Women’s Space to Speak conference
14/11/22
The battle for women's rights and for the re-composition of the Irish women's movement took a major step forward at the 12th November Women’s Space to Speak conference, organised by Women’s Space Ireland. There were 200 attendees including a substantial turnout from northern activists and men with a history of supporting women’s rights.The conference was called in response to an alliance of trans activists, NGOs and politicians who deny biological reality and Women’s sex-based rights. (read more)
Iranian Women’s Revolt, the Left and Liberals
28/09/22
Women in Iran, and indeed many men, are in open revolt against the reactionary theocracy following the murder of a young woman, by the Morality Police. That even such a force exists, should tell you everything you need to know about the case. Yet it is undoubtedly something many liberals and erstwhile socialists would prefer to go away as their past record is one of appeasement to Islamists and the silencing of feminists who dare to speak out. (read more)
Gender ideology in Ireland - the role of the trans activists
19/09/22
The latest controversy in Ireland involving gender identity involves teacher Enoch Burke, who has failed in a bid to be released from prison after breaching a court order. He was jailed on 5 September and can be held indefinitely until he agrees to stay away from the school where he worked. Burke claims that he was told to address a pupil with a “gender neutral” pronoun, namely to use They as a singular pronoun. He believes that this conflicts with his evangelical Christian beliefs. The school argues that the injunction does not relate to the pronouns issue but to a row with the principal following the pronoun direction. (read more)
The HSE and gender transition - an issue of accountability
27/08/22
In July the NHS in Britain decided to close the Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic - a centre dedicated to sex transition for adolescents - following a critical report by consultant paediatrician Hilary Cass.However, when the details of this decision had been absorbed in Britain, a further controversy arose in Ireland, when the Health Service Executive (HSE) announced that it would continue to use the service up to the point it formally closes and would seek alternative arrangements in Britain where a similar service might be offered. (read more)
Cass Review of gender transition
24/03/22
Paediatrician Hilary Cass has completed an interim report (The Cass Report) into the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust in London. It follows last year's judgement in the case of Keira Bell, banning under 16s from puberty-blocking drugs. The ruling was quickly reversed, but criticism of the unit has continued. Last spring, the Care Quality Commission demanded monthly updates on numbers on waiting lists and actions to reduce them in a highly critical report on GIDS. (read more)
Report on the Save Our Spaces protest in Belfast
07/03/22
A protest in support of the rights of women and girls to female-only, single-sex spaces and services took place at Belfast City Hall on Saturday (5th March). Organised by the feminist group Women's Rights Network NI and endorsed by a number of other groups (including Radicailín and Sex Not Gender NI), it expressed opposition to the influence of gender identity ideology over public policy. (read more)
Women's rights protest pushes back against gender identity ideology
28/11/21
A protest in support of the rights of women and girls to female-only, single-sex spaces and services took place at Leinster House on Saturday (27th Nov). Organised by the feminist group Radicailín and endorsed by a number of other groups (including Socialist Democracy), it expressed opposition to the influence of gender identity ideology over public policy. (read more)
What’s a woman? That’s a tricky question
22/11/21
O’Hagan and those who affect to share her uncertainty on the reality of biological sex want people to be kind. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in the real world it is always women who are being obliged to be nice. They are being told they are bigots if they don’t want men in their changing rooms, refuges or even in their prisons. Unlike the radical intellectuals, working class people know what the difference is between a man and a woman and in their majority are accepting of people who don’t conform to gender stereotypes.(read more)
Let’s see what is at the bottom of this rabbit hole
04/11/21
Some socialists sincerely believe that a person can
change their sex because they self-identify as different from their biological
body. Others believe that you can choose whatever gender identity you want but
you have no choice over your biological sex. These differences of opinion are
frequently not expressed in the most comradely terms, but one would have
assumed that some common ground remained. For example, a worker should not face
calls for dismissal for saying what most people believe. (read more)
The ousting of a material girl
31/10/21
Kathleen Stock, philosophy professor at the University of Sussex and author of the book Material Girls, has resigned after a concerted and threatening campaign based on her assertion that gender identity does not displace the reality of biological sex. Police had advised her that it would not be safe to attend the university campus. (read more)
A week of triumph and setback for English feminists
28/10/21
A dangerous precedent has been established in English higher education. Kathleen Stock, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Sussex, has beenforced out of her job by a small group of masked protestors who had been demanding her sacking because she believes that while people can adopt any gender identity they want, biological sex is immutable. (read more)
Defend a woman’s right to tell the truth
20/10/21
The Irish and British left, with modest exceptions, refuse to stand up for women facing this severe harassment. As a result, the right and extreme right from the Tories to Jim Allister are able to present themselves as advocates for women’s right to speak freely. The good news is that in Britain a new grassroots feminist movement is developing. To the extent that the left acknowledges its existence, it does so only to denounce it as bigoted and transphobic. (read more)
Review: Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism
30/07/21
The recent publication of Kathleen Stock's new book Material Girls is one of a number of publications dealing with what are termed transgender issues and the public discussion around them, not to mention the campaigning and lobbying by Trans Rights Activists (TRAs) as well. Stock has a very clear and easy to read writing style, which is perhaps surprising for a lecturer in philosophy. It is however, written with a certain defensiveness. (read more)
Puberty Blockers: An unregulated live experiment on children
17/04/21
TIn this article I will talk about the diagnosis of gender dysphoria in children and the potential complications of medical interventions. I am not a medical professional but will do my best to present evidence which shows that there are some serious concerns over medicalising gender non-conforming children. I think the evidence speaks for itself. (read more)
Feminists are not fascists - a reply to RS21
05/04/21
The British socialist group RS21 has, at its core, members who left the Socialist Workers Party in disgust at the way that organisation supported a man accused of rape. However, its politics are otherwise indistinguishable from the larger organisation, it just doesn’t have the bureaucratic infrastructure to function in the same way. (read more)
People before Profit lead reactionary university witchunt
28/03/21
The People before Profit society at a Galway university is actively targeting feminist and LGB Rights activists for no-platforming on that campus. They are doing this via a motion entitled “Opposing fascism, Far-Right Extremism, and all Forms of Discrimination”. It included a list of groups the party wants to see being ‘No-platformed’ by the Student Union at NUIG. (read more)
People before Profit student society calls for ‘no-platforming’ of feminists and LGB rights activists
25/03/21
With apparently no sense of embarrassment after the scandal involving the Galway-based People before Profit election candidate last year, and subsequent allegations from branch and ex-branch members that the leadership had, for years, ignored complaints about his behaviour —not to mention the more widespread rumblings about how some allegedly abusive males in and around the party were dealt with by the leadership — now the People before Profit society at a Galway university is actively targeting feminist and LGB Rights activists for no-platforming on that campus. (read more)
International Women's Day in Ireland
11/03/21
Two very large and very important online meetings took place on International Women's Day in Ireland. Rather than commemorating a story of ongoing advances for women they chronicled horrific attacks on women's rights, a decay of some of the organisations meant to protect them and the rise of ideologies proclaiming equality that in practice act to dismiss the need to defend women. (read more)
Vulnerable children being seen at Gender Clinics
06/03/21
Most children who have gender dysphoria, or a desire to be the opposite sex, do not persist in this desire by adulthood. This shows us that this is not a definite or fixed identity but can change over time. Clinicians have no definite way of knowing which children will persist in wanting to be the opposite sex/continue to suffer extreme discomfort with their own sex, and which won't. (read more)
Sex work is not work. A Marxist Feminist analysis of Prostitution
February 2021
Laura Briggs exposes the fraudulence of the notion, popular on the centrist Left, that the sale of sex is simply a commodity exchange, posing the question; “if sex is a commodity freely available in the domestic sphere why do 'customers' buy it in the marketplace?” (read more)
On the Reactionary Roots of Queer Theory
28/02/21
Queer Theory, a product of postmodernist thought, has been defined by its removal of all boundaries from sexuality. This in turn is expressed in the current denial of objective reality by the so called “sex spectrum” at the heart of transgender ideology, which includes homosexual people on a spectrum with straight transgender males who 'identify' as queer and which, as Rubin's theory infers, implicitly extends to the sexualisation of children. In this article the author warns of the perils of adopting queer theory for the left. (read more)
Placing Men in Women’s Prisons: The New Woke Fad
26/02/21
The recent decision taken in California to place men and women in the same wings of prisons as a response to the violence meted out to trans prisoners is a nascent issue in Colombia, but sooner or later it will get here. So, it is incumbent upon us to analyse it in time. The prison situation in the US is unique in the world and the statistics on violence, rape and also the number of prisoners is incomparable with any other part of the world. (read more)
A new front in human liberation, or a medical scandal in the making?
09/01/21
The gender identity movement promotes bodily alienation. It does this by suggesting to children that their brain or personality sometimes doesn’t match their physical sex, that they can be “born in the wrong body”, and that they can access medical interventions to “fix” their (healthy) body. (read more)
Irish “socialist” TD’s and NGO’s join forces to disenfranchise women and materialists
27/11/20
In a stunning move Ireland’s NGO elites, including Amnesty International, supported by Paul Murphy TD and Thomas Pringle TD, have published an open letter in Gay Community News attacking those who would seek to “defend biology”, as well as attacking those who defend: the right of women to have some areas of privacy and safety away from males, such as changing rooms, shelters, and prisons. (read more)
Gender Identity Ideology, the Trans Rights Movement, and homophobia
27/09/20
I mentioned in a previous article that many Gender Identity Ideologists believe that people can be born with a female brain or soul in a male body and vice-versa. This is one of the justifications for ‘transitioning’ people to appear to be of the opposite sex. Another driving force behind ‘transitioning’ is homophobia. With both sexism and homophobia the push for ‘transitioning’ seems to come from an urge to ‘fix’ people who are not conforming to sexist stereotypes. (read more)
Socialism, Feminism and transgender politics
07/09/20
In this series of articles I will try to explain why a conflict has arisen between women’s-rights activists and trans-rights activists. Until more of the left make a serious effort to understand where many women are coming from they will continue to misunderstand what the sources of conflict are, and potentially alienate women and pro-science advocates. (read more)
Transgender reading list
01/09/20
During a recent online discussion on “Socialism, Feminism and Transgender politics” a number of participants asked where they could find further information the topic. So, in conjunction with the speaker at that meeting, we have produced the following reading list. These sources present a broadly socialist feminist (or gender critical) perspective on the issue of transgender. (read more)