The Cost of Ignoring Women's Voices

The Case of Barbie Kardashian shows that Ireland's misogyny problem never went away

I’ll never forget the day I first heard about the now infamous Barbie Kardashian. Just home from work in September of 2020, I read an article about an “eighteen year old girl” who had threatened her mother’s life and had attacked a female care worker. Charged with numerous counts of threats to kill or cause serious harm, I was shocked to learn this young girl had been released into the community. Gardaí had issued an nationwide alert stating she was a danger to the public.

It wasn’t until Gript Media broke the reporting restrictions two days later, that we would learn that the eighteen year old girl was, in fact, a biological male who had began identifying as a woman in 2020. From that moment on, I realised that the safeguarding protections of Irish women were under severe threat.  I subsequently learned the horrific details of the crimes, the harrowing record of childhood abuse suffered by  Kardashian, and the high risk of recidivism for this deeply troubled and dangerous young man. .

Kardashian, formally known as Gabrielle Alejandro Gentile, had a visit to the Tavistock gender clinic in London, where it was said that ‘she’ outlined ‘her’ gender dysphoria symptoms without emotion and seemed to be feigning any dysphoria. Regardless, under the Gender Recognition Act 2015, he was granted a Gender Recognition Certificate through the Department of Social Protection. This certificate can be obtained without any medical or psychological assessment, treatment or diagnosis of gender dysphoria. All that is needed is a declaration of living as a preferred gender, a birth certificate and proof of address. 

On Thursday, 16th March 2023, Kardashian was sentenced to 5 and a half years imprisonment in Limerick Circuit Criminal Court. The final 12 months of this sentence are suspended, with Judge O’Donnell backdating the sentence to the trail date in May 2022. A jury found Kardasian guilty of seven counts of threatening to kill or causee serious harm to his mother, after only four hours of deliberation. The offences were committed while Kardashian was placed, by order of the High Court, in a secure unit for children aged 11-17 with serious behavioural problems, Coovagh House. During the 4 day trial, Kardashian’s defence cousel, Mark Nicholas SC, accepted that Kardashian had told staff at Coovagh House, during a meeting to plan ‘her’ release into the community, that ‘she’ planned to travel to ‘her’ mother’s house, overpower her and torture her with a screwdriver and pour boiling water on her vagina.

It was heard during the trail that Kardashian told staff:  “If I got into (my mother’s) house I would run towards her and put a knife into her body and into her genitalia…I would stab her, but not in her heart or neck, I’d want to put her through lots of torture, fear and humiliation.” (Gript, 16th March 2023)

“I would bring a screwdriver to insert inside her genitalia because I am a woman and women rape using objects…when I was living with her since I was nine or ten I was stronger than her then and I know she would be overpowered by me.” (Gript, 16th March 2023)

Kardashian has 15 previous convictions, including for sexual assault, assault causing harm, assault, threats to kill and causing criminal damage to property.

Due to Kardashian’s certificate to state womanhood, this person is now housed in the women’s prison in Limerick to serve this sentence. Paddy O’Gorman’s podcast featured a woman who had served time in Limerick prison who revealed that Kardashian and another trans-identified male would shout threats of rape and assault to female inmates. The transwomen are on a seperate schedule and are not released from their cells at the same time as the female inmates. It is reported that Kardashian is on a 23 hour lock-up since being sentenced.

If trans identified males are required to be kept separate from female inmates,why are they be placed in this prison at all? Given the nature of the crimes, surely it would be more responsible to place such offenders in Midlands, a high security prison? Why would Kardashian not be placed in a male estate, with similar security?

Are we really going to continue to uphold this lie? That no male would ever abuse the Gender Recognition Act and self-identify as a woman to gain access to vulnerable women? Irish women were told that no one would abuse self-identification, that it just never happens. But we only have to look across the water, at violent sexual offender ‘Isla Bryson’ in Scotland, at Karen White in England, and Darren Agee Merager in the US, to see how absurdly false and dangerous this notion is. 

Will we continue to house violent males in female prisons? Do we place such little value on the safety and welfare of imprisoned women? In Ireland, it appears that the emotions of violent, controlling and manipulative males take precedence over the safety of women. Such contempt for the safety and dignity of women speaks to a persistent misogyny that our country simply cannot seem to shake off. 

We should not have to petition to have this person removed from a prison for females, but that what Irish women have been doing, myself included. We have been writing to our Ministers, the Taoiseach and councillors since Kardashian was first taken into custody. We have written countless emails and letters, with our concerns surrounding the impact of Self ID laws on women’s protections, the effects it will have on children and most glaringly now, the disastrous results it is having for some of Ireland’s most vulnerable women. We have been ignored by our leaders, our voices drowned out by trans activists and lobby groups. A trans-identified male, and Trans Equality Network Ireland (TENI) employee, who called for women like me to be ‘smashed out of existence’ and suggested social media followers could ‘ambush a policitician’, was given platform at the International Women’s Day event in the Dáil chamber on 6th March 2023. Why is a trans-identified male speaking for women, when he has called for violence against us? I feel so ignored and forgotten by our leaders; Irish women have been completely let down. I can only imagine how the women in Limerick Prison feel.

Irish women are facing a new sacred class. The concerns for transgender people have taken precedence over those of lesbians, mothers, women with disabilities, traveller women, female prisoners and the women and children impacted by the Magdelene Laundries. I’ll never forget the day I first learned of Barbie Kardashian; it was the day I realised Irish women had lost their protections in the face of Self ID. We have been screaming into a void ever since.