"Ireland has had self ID for years, and there haven't been any problems"

The horror story of Barbie Kardashian is just beginning for female prisoners in Ireland.

When promoting the absurd concept of organising our societies along the principle of self ID, which states a man legally becomes a woman the moment he says he is one, its proponents claim that of the few countries - most notably Ireland - that have introduced it, none have seen any problems as a result.

This is an argument cited by trans activist professionals, trans organisations, celebrities and is even used in the introduction to self ID on Wikipedia.

Self ID was introduced in Ireland in 2015 - without any national debate, media coverage or almost any Irish citizen even being aware that it was being brought in (so much so that a trans organisation praised Ireland for “latching trans rights legislation on to more popular legal reforms rather than taking public-facing approaches”).

However, it isn’t actually the pure version of self ID that the above activists seem to want the rest of the world to adopt. The legislation doesn’t apply to children, while with adults, its implementation results in an incoherent mess. For example, male prisoners can self ID into women’s prisons, but they are ‘kept separate from the rest of the prison population at all times’. This is partly why prison officers in Ireland have demanded procedural guidelines on how to deal with inmates who say they are transgender.

The legislation also isn’t quite as popular as the ‘no problems’ narrative should suggest. A poll last year found just 17% of Irish people support self ID - it’s not known how many of the 83% who don’t support it are aware that they actually have it in their country.

But now the argument that there have been no problems even with this restricted and unpopular version of self-identification has been blown apart.

Barbie Kardashian is a man who says he identifies as a woman, and has a history of physical and sexual violence towards usually women, including tearing the eyelids from a female care worker.

He was housed in a women’s prison.

He’s now been found guilty of threatening to rape and murder his mother.

This isn’t the only example of gender ideology potentially causing women harm in Ireland.

And it isn’t the only example from this week of the media pretending that violent male criminals are women.

But it is perhaps the first time that the self ID supporters will have to look to another country for their example of the legislation being unproblematic.

There is, of course, always Canada.’

‘Jessica’ Yaniv