A lesbian responds to Panti Bliss

The Irish Independent refused to print Lauren Black’s response to a disingenuous interview with Panti Bliss, so I’m putting it here. If you want to ask why this response was not published, you can write to The Independent at info@independent.ie

Dear Sir,

I read the write up of your interview with Rory O’Neil in last week’s Sunday Independent with a sense of growing astonishment. In the first paragraphs, self-pity and entitlement were on full display (shopping at Dunnes, oh the indignity!) But it was the false claims regarding “twitter transphobia” that I found most disingenuous.

I grew up proudly working class, in County Armagh during the troubles. I am a butch lesbian, co-founder of the LGB Alliance Ireland. Last week, Rory, from his Panti Bliss account, claimed that I am supposedly an English transphobe. I am a Northern woman, so you can imagine my feelings being forced to go onto Graham Linehan’s podcast to prove my Irish credentials to the followers of someone calling themselves “Panti Bliss.”

Even this did not stop the onslaught of abuse that was being sent my way by Panti's followers. I was accused (in frankly sectarian terms) of not being Irish enough. My accent was ripped to pieces, as having not spent any “significant part” of my childhood here. I was accused of “penis envy” and told that I should “drop the butch lesbian schtick” and “just transition.” I was accused of being a right-wing racist.

Even when Panti conceded that I am Irish, no apology was issued and no call to stop the abuse was made to the 74,000 followers of the account.

Rory was wrong to call me out for not being Irish, he was wrong to double down, he was wrong not to apologise, and he is wrong again, claiming that he was the victim in what happened when he was, in fact, the instigator.

I responded then, as I respond now. All the nonsense about who is properly Irish is just guff, and xenophobic guff to boot. This is the land of 1,000 welcomes, and there are rightly people who were not born here on all sides of the trans debates.

All of this is a massive distraction from the actual issues. There is a real debate to be had here, about LGB rights, about women’s spaces and women’s sports, about the huge explosion in gender-questioning children, about the medical transition of those children, about what counts as conversion therapy, and about the harms of the affirmation model, even for adults.

I reiterate my call to Rory, for a moderated debate on the actual issues. Let’s get this out in the open, instead of calling down Twitter mobs on false pretences, as Rory did, then crying victim in the Sunday papers when it doesn’t go his way.

Sincerely,

Lauren Black.