Where have we heard this before?
Misogynist ideologues are once again policing women's rights in Ireland
A few days ago, I mentioned the fact that Irish Greens Councillor Karen Power had blocked a disabled woman who asked her a certain question.
Henrietta Freeman has been paralysed since birth and currently needs the help of the women—specifically the women-- in her family to get changed and cleaned and taken to the toilet. Her question is simple; is she allowed to request a female carer? Not a transwoman, a woman. In an Ireland where Self-ID is the law of the land, does she have that right?
As Karen doesn’t want to answer Henrietta’s question, perhaps another Irish ‘trans ally’ could do so?
How about you, Colm O’Gorman?
Or you, Rory O’Neill?
Another woman, a friend of Henrietta’s, sent me this email today.
“My (very sick) cousin has actually had a man in a dress turn up at her house to help her bathe and dress. She told him where to go and called the carers office where she was told that he was in fact a woman". Thankfully my cousin stood her ground despite the gaslighting but was forced to wait around six weeks for another female carer. Her husband ,who is also unwell, managed to help her to wash and dress but it deteriorated his health somewhat.
I dread to think what would have happened to my cousin if she'd not had him or taken the agency's word for the carer's 'sex', she lives 170 miles from me and I'm disabled too so can't get to her. She lost her 93-year-old mother in July so she's fragile, mentally.”
Do you respect this woman’s right to request a female carer? Colm? Rory? Or will you simply ignore these points, as you ignore everything that exposes the incoherence and misogyny of your fashionable new religion?
I got an early idea of the way Twitter would change the world when a follower told me of a priest he knew who said of the priesthood “It’s the loneliest job in the world if you’re not gay.” That told me a lot about Ireland’s unhappy past. The priesthood in some families was often used as a dumping ground for the brothers who didn’t quite fit in. Many of those men must have burned with anger and shame at their treatment. Could they have projected that shame and anger onto the women over whom they ruled? Could this have led to atrocities like The Magdalen Launderies or the dead at Tuam?
My question to Rory and Colm; what’s your excuse?
What’s your excuse for your misogyny? You call women ‘terfs’. You dismiss and deride their concerns. You ignore any story that proves you wrong, even when the victims of those stories are still suffering. Last time I checked, the women of Limerick prison were still enjoying the company of a man named ‘Barbie Kardashian’ because of your beliefs.
Colm, my ex-wife and I campaigned with you to repeal the Eighth Amendment in Ireland and I learned what you’d suffered at the hands of the Church, so please know that I do not say this lightly: I think gender identity ideology is a new religion; Henrietta, and the women of Limerick prison are the new Magdalen workers, and you are the new priests.
You’re both gay men who have to come to prominence at a time without shame, without public homophobia (although as Susie Green’s story tells us, homophobia still exists behind closed suburban doors) and you have both found in trans activism an outlet for a misogyny so virulent it would stain the cause of gay rights if I didn’t know there were also people like Arty Morty and Fred Sargeant on the other side.
Fred Sargeant, by the way, is the Stonewall veteran who was beaten, pushed to the ground and had coffee poured on his head by trans rights activists at Vermont Pride.
Has Panti Bliss asked after his health? Has Colm O’Gorman? I doubt it. Fred is an awkward figure for them. He doesn’t believe in the new religion and bodily obstructs those who would rewrite a sacred history to centre crossdressing men. Present at every night of the riots, he saw first-hand that it was lesbians and gay men who led at Stonewall and beyond, and the efforts to sideline him by disgraceful propaganda sheets like Pink News remind me of the efforts of Holocaust deniers like David Irving, who were peddling their filth even as the survivors were still alive to tell their stories.
Unlike O’Gorman and O’Neill who go selectively blind and deaf depending on whether or not a lesbian is talking to them, gay men like Arty and Fred have responded to an emergency by throwing everything they had at it. So too have lesbians like Allison Bailey, Kate Harris, Bev Jackson and the beloved, late Magdalen Berns. These gay heroes lost friends and opportunities because the stakes were too high to ignore, and in return, they have been smeared relentlessly by cowardly, unprincipled opportunists like O’Gorman and O’Neill.
Just look at how O’Neill speaks about JK Rowling, a victim of domestic violence who wrote movingly about the importance of sex-segregated spaces for vulnerable women.
“The husk that remains”. Notice also, Panti using the “Brit” line to dismiss the many responding, something in which Colm also indulged when he was attacking LGB Alliance Ireland. A disgracefully racist technique to make Irish women fall into line; “Don’t object, or you’re a Brit”. When I was at school, we received many such warnings of British influence from Colm and Rori’s predecessors. Once again, you can take the priests out of Ireland, but you’ll have a hell of a time taking the priesthood out of some Irish men.
Colm and Rory embody a misogyny that seems baked into Ireland’s bones. O’Neill’s clownish impersonation of a woman does not give him the right to dismiss their concerns or ignore the voices of lesbians calling for help. I suggest Irish people stop being hypnotised by cosmetics and recognise him for what he is. A misogynist, pure and simple. No-one but a misogynist—who hates lesbians especially— could ignore the copious evidence he has been sent of trans-identified males coercing and gaslighting lesbians. (You will notice that the person who posted this thread of receipts has since been banned by Twitter).
Colm O’Gorman presided over Amnesty when they disgracefully erased Irish women from the scene of their greatest victory over the Church in a famous tweet that proclaimed it as a victory for “pregnant people”. My memory is hazy but it might have even been the moment I fully peak-transed. How dare they remove my wife’s humanity? I know I thought that.
He also signed a letter calling for the removal of political representation from organisations that were standing up to the misogyny of his new religious movement.
I hope LGB people will recognise that many women are wondering if gay men have a problem with them. I hope they realise that the sudden fall in support for LGBT Rights, even among the young, is a consequence of that distrust. How much do gay men care about Irish women, for instance, when Self ID was spirited into Ireland attached to the much more popular and much-debated Marriage Equality Bill? This was something that amounted to a daylight theft of women’s rights in Ireland and it tarnishes the cause to which it was so slyly attached. Irish women must feel that they put an end to the influence of one group of religious misogynists only to find them replaced by another.
I hope people recognise that it’s only the efforts of groups like the LGB Alliance that are providing an effective counter to this distrust, so I urge you to support them in their current battle against the homophobic castration cult known as Mermaids.
So, there’s a lot to address in this one, and I want to keep it simple, so let’s get back to the woman who opened this piece, and her question.
Colm and Rory, in your view, does Henrietta have the right to demand a female carer to assist her? Not a transwoman. A woman. Does she have that right? And if not, why not?
I see Colm O' Gorman has both the trans flag and rainbow flag next to his name on Twitter - trans flag is first of course.
When gender/identity/queer ideology is defeated, and it will be - what will become of those who endorsed it? They can never be forgiven, and their evils never forgotten. So, will they just remain on the fringe of society?