Is an abusive man running the show at the Irish Times?

A guest post by Andrea (not her real name)

Grace Lavery is a British man who pretends to be a woman. He is in a relationship with a woman who pretends to be a man. On social media, Grace famously posted pictures of his female partner with his fist in her mouth and other photos of her with clearly visible bruising and injuries. The subtext was that he, Grace Lavery, had inflicted these injuries. How progressive! Lavery recently had a book published. Despite the fact that, as per a recent article on this Substack, Lavery’s book has been either slammed or ignored by the world at large, the Irish Times gave a chunk of valuable space to a glowing review. That would be odd enough in itself but what made it really remarkable was the fact that the author was none other than Barry Pierce. 

In January, 2021, the Sunday Independent, Ireland’s most widely read Sunday newspaper, published a review of ‘Irreversible Damage’ written by Abigail Shrier, an experienced journalist and well-respected author. A furore ensued. According to the Twitter mob, the publication of the review was tantamount to a crime of some sort. Firstly, the book itself (about the indisputable fact that ever-younger girls in ever-increasing numbers are being pushed through the wholly damaging trans industrial complex) should not have been published at all. Secondly, the Sunday Indo had no right to publish a review of it. Thirdly, the reviewer had no right to state either the findings of the book or that she found the arguments therein somewhat convincing. The Trans Writers Union (a ‘union’ co-founded by a young Irish woman who claims to be a gay man) made a laughable complaint to the Press Council, a complaint that was met with a polite but firm PFO. And all the usual suspects lost their shit on Twitter. 

Barry Pierce, a freelance book critic who had had several reviews published in the Irish Times (one of them infamously nasty about Dolly Alderton’s debut novel) entered the fray when he, publicly on Twitter, announced to the world that that egregious review must have been commissioned by the female Literary Editor of the Sunday Independent. He named her and offered her private contact details to all comers who wanted to complain directly to her. Basically, he invited any loon to harass a woman who is apparently well-liked and respected in the profession, for merely doing her job as a literary editor. Anyone wishing to complain about any of the newspaper’s contents had recourse to the normal channels. But this wasn’t enough for Barry, who must have been in possession of the Literary Editor’s personal contact details due to his work as a freelance reviewer. After other Twitter users created a huge fuss and alerted various interested parties as to what this man was doing, Barry’s tweet was deleted. Who knows how many people had been given this woman’s private details by that stage?

Relevant people in the Irish Times could hardly have missed the fact that their sometime reviewer did this to a fellow journalist simply because she had the audacity to publish a review for a book that he didn’t like. We might have thought that that would have been the end of Barry Pierce being commissioned to write reviews, at least in Irish newspapers, because how could such a man be trusted after what amounted to a doxing attempt on a female literary editor? But no, just over a year later, the Irish Times is paying the same man to provide a glowing review for a book written by a man who shares pictures that seem to show him physically abusing his girlfriend on social media. A book that has received trashings in most other places where it has been reviewed. Diversity of opinion is to be valued, but this is all beginning to look very murky.

Stranger still, the review of Grace Lavery’s book came hot on the heels of another glowing review. The week before, a collection of essays by infamous transgender cheerleader, Laurie Penny, was given the same treatment. Penny is Grace Lavery’s ex-girlfriend, a woman who insists on plural pronouns and claims to be queer while in a relationship with a man. Penny’s book also received poor reviews everywhere but within the pages of the Irish Times.

Now, we must applaud newspapers for reviewing unusual books, books that go against the grain, and we surely all want to hear about books that we don’t agree with or don’t like. That is healthy. We shouldn’t have any issue at all with these books being reviewed in the Irish Times. Things begin to look more than a little off though when we discover that ‘Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality’, the bestselling and critically acclaimed book by the esteemed journalist and editor, Helen Joyce, didn’t get a mention in the Irish Times. Joyce has had a stellar career at The Economist and is an Irish woman but still, not a mention in that newspaper for her book, generally considered one of the best to have come out of the debate. Additionally, Irish women reported having problems purchasing the book from some book shops. Stories of copies being hidden in storerooms, in inappropriate sections and some surly bookshop staff making its purchase a bit of an ordeal were widely shared on social media. A nod from the paper of record might have offset some of these problems. 

The Irish Times must be free to make its own editorial choices, as must any media outlet.   But what does employing Barry Pierce, who offered the private contact details of a female editor to anyone who wanted them, say about the Irish Times’ view of women and their ability to go about their work safely? What does it say about the Irish Times when it publishes glowing reviews of books by Trans Rights Activists two weeks in a row but fails to even acknowledge the publication of a bestselling book critical of trans ideology by an Irish female author? There are so many books published every week that the value of the space in the book pages of the Irish Times is at a premium. So few books can be reviewed, so few books are written by Trans Rights Activists, yet, large chunks of that space were given to books written by TRAs on successive weekends. 

Let’s hope that this has nothing to do with the Trans Writers’ Union’s bizarre ‘boycott’ of the Irish Times. A boycott initiated by Irish TRAs who didn’t like an article by three women, experts in the field of therapy and medicine, that denounced Conversion Therapy for LGBT people but warned that legislation needed to be carefully worded. We couldn’t have that in Ireland – careful consideration of the implications of legislation. Careful consideration of that sort might have prevented violent men from landing themselves a space in the most crowded prison in Ireland – Limerick Women’s Prison – and that would never do. Careful consideration might have prevented our politicians, mostly male, from passing legislation that allows any man claiming that he is a woman to simply fill out an A4 form and thereby be granted access to any and all private female spaces no matter what the real women and girls in those spaces think about it.

The final straw for many Irish readers came yesterday when a full-page article appeared in The Gloss magazine. The Gloss is a glossy, luxury-oriented publication, a separate publication with a different editorial team which is given out free with the Times. Its books editor is ex-Irish Times. The entire article is an advertorial for an obscure book written by an obscure American mother who transed her toddler son. The headline reads “It’s OK, You Can Be A Girl”. Interesting quotes from the article include, “ I knew that most three-year-old boys did not spend long afternoons playing with plastic fairy figurines. I knew they didn’t beg their moms for ballet classes and princess dresses and everything that sparkled and glittered. I knew this was going to be more complicated, raising a boy who did not act like one.” WTAF?! 

Here are a few questions that anyone who has raised sons or indeed, anyone who isn’t a delusional lunatic might ask: How does she know that other boy toddlers do not play with plastic fairy figurines? What is wrong with boy toddlers playing with these toys? How did a three-year-old happen to have an array of plastic fairy figurines in the first place, if not because his mother bought them for him? How does she know that other boys do not want to do ballet? Does she realise that boys and men spend many long years training as ballet dancers and that male ballet dancers are amongst the fittest and strongest men on the planet? What is wrong with a boy toddler wanting a princess dress and being attracted to sparkling things? Why would any mother indicate to her child that his attraction to these things makes him inherently wrong in some way?  

This nutter goes on to claim that her three-year-old one day looked up at her, “Mama,” he said, “something went wrong in your tummy…And it made me come out as a boy instead of a girl.” The writer says that she, in a heartwarming rush of love, told her toddler that yes, he could be a girl. Isn’t that just lovely? Instead of just letting her baby son play with the toys that she, his mother, obviously bought for him; instead of letting her kid have fun dressing up; instead of allowing him to show an interest in a well-established art form, she told him that yes, some shit must have happened inside her womb that caused him to come out wonky. And she was happy to pretend that he is actually a she and start a podcast about it called ‘How To Be A Girl’. The poor kid!  

There’s no explanation for why a puff piece written by this loony American mother would be given an entire page in an Irish, advert-heavy, glossy magazine linked to the Irish Times, but there it is. There is no counter-opinion, no questioning or clarification offered. This woman is given free rein to peddle this anti-child, anti-reality nonsense. 

That’s three very strange, clearly ideology-driven pieces in the Irish Times or an adjacent publication in as many weeks. Highly unusual. Is someone high up in the prostrating themselves in front of the TWAW/let’s shit all over women, children and material fact brigade? If so, someone should alert them to the fact that nothing will ever be enough for these people. And someone should point out that women, actual women, most of them with a clear connection to the reality of life as a female, make up more than half of the population and presumably, at least half of their readership. Women make up the bulk of book purchasers and readers. Women make up 100% of mothers. So why is no one with a strong voice in Irish media telling these abusive activists to cop on? Why is attention being drawn to the bolloxy notions of these narcissists without any interrogation of the facts, while the well-researched work of Irish women writers like Helen Joyce is ignored? Why is a man who offered a woman editor up for harassment by his TRA mates being paid to write a glowing review of a book whose male author thinks physically assaulting his female partner is amusing?  Who is running the show in the Irish Times?