Ironic, isn’t it, that one of the strongest and bravest advocates for Irish women’s rights is a US-based, middle-aged man?
Our female politicians, our tragic excuse for a national women’s advocacy council, our female broadcasters and commentators will happily fling their sisters under the ‘trans’ bus if it means staying in with the cool, keffiyeh-wearing trans-rights crew.
And so it takes a man to point out how grievously we were conned and betrayed by the sly introduction of the Gender Recognition Act a decade ago, which gifted biological males with entitled access to every space where women are vulnerable – changing rooms, domestic violence refuges, bathrooms, prisons, rape crisis centres – by just claiming to be females.
Not even St Brigid escaped the distorting dogma of the craven Irish liberal elite. She’s no longer a Catholic saint, if you heeded that ludicrous video released by Helen McEntee’s Foreign Affairs Department last week, but a purple-haired, pro-abortion, candlewick-clad woke diversity ‘goddess’ who might even have been a bloke.
Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has suffered huge personal and professional damage
In Government advert, St Brigid is a purple-haired, pro-abortion, candlewick-clad ‘goddess’
This week, Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan, who’s suffered huge personal and professional damage because of his advocacy for the rights and safety of women and children, addressed the US Congress on the ‘trans’ issue.
And he echoed the weekend comments of broadcaster Claire Byrne, who cited the trans debate as a ‘difficult topic’ that RTÉ lacks the courage to broach. We’ve simply never been allowed to have a conversation, he told Congress, about ‘men in women’s prisons, men in women’s sport, children taught lies in their schools’.
‘Ireland is the country of my birth, and its women and girls deserve the debate they were denied,’ he said.
He linked the 2023 Dublin riots to the ‘silencing of alternative voices’.
The way in which the Irish Government sneaked the Gender Recognition Act past a distracted public, in the wake of the same-sex marriage referendum in 2015, has long been held up by liberal lobbyists as the perfect legislative feint.
A report by law firm Dentons praised the way it skulked beneath a ‘veil of protection’ offered by more popular measures, avoided press coverage and debate, and exploited a ‘general lack of awareness’ of the impact of the new law.
Linehan called on US politicians to put pressure on the Irish Government to confront ‘the conversation it never had.’ And with the Taoiseach and seven ministers, including Helen McEntee, heading to the US for St Patrick’ Day, his intervention couldn’t come at a better time.
Yet in this country, we seem doggedly oblivious to the evidence that the tide has turned on the trans cult.
Last year’s ground-breaking UK Supreme Court ruling, that women are biological females and not men in frocks, has been followed by a major malpractice suit against ‘gender-affirming’ health practitioners in New York.
Graham LInehan in advance of his address to the US Congress on the ‘trans’ issue this week
Last week, a young woman was awarded $2 million damages from the psychologist who ‘affirmed’ her belief that she was a boy and the plastic surgeon who cut off her breasts when she was 16.
To judge by the response of Labour’s Marie Sherlock to Linehan’s views, though, Irish politicians and commentators have yet to realise that the battle has been lost. ‘I’d much prefer the conversation to be about the lack of healthcare for trans people,’ she said, ‘than looking back on a conversation had ten years ago.’
I’d love for Marie to show me where and when that conversation took place ten years ago – remember how the trans lobby lost its rag, threatening all manner of bans and boycotts, when Liveline dared to broach the subject in 2022? Small wonder RTÉ’s been too terrified to touch it since.
We’ll be last to admit that JK Rowling was right: ‘This is nonsense and the world knows that’
Following last year’s UK Supreme Court ruling, Sinn Féin health spokesman David Cullinane initially welcomed its ‘common sense’ before having his card marked and deciding that, in fact, it was a very ‘complex’ issue.
So we’ve a cringing left-wing cohort in this country who are simply too scared to speak out on behalf of women, forced to share prison cells and homeless shelters with trans-identified males, or troubled children whose gender confusion is ‘affirmed’ to validate the warped ideology of the trans mob. Let’s hope they’re all around to explain themselves when the dam burst of medical negligence cases, taken by detransitioners against the doctors and agencies that failed them, begins to ravage our public finances.
But, even as the number of kids identifying as trans falls off a cliff in the States, and more and more sporting bodies ban males from female games, it looks like we’ll be the last to admit what other countries can plainly see: as JK Rowling put it: ‘This is nonsense and 99.9% of the world knows it’s nonsense. The Emperor is naked. He may be wearing lipstick but his balls are swinging in plain sight.’
Connolly needs to listen to ALL voices
VISITING the North this week, President Catherine Connolly, left with Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly and First Minister Michelle O’Neill, vowed to ‘ensure through my work that all voices from all backgrounds are heard, regardless of gender, age, belief, ethnicity or nationality’.
President Catherine Connolly with Emma Little-Pengelly and Michelle O’Neill
What a shame, then, that she didn’t welcome members of Ireland’s Jewish community, at a time when antisemitism is on the rise in this country, in the week after the Bondi Beach massacre – in which the targets were exclusively Jews. And while she condemned the attack, she didn’t find time to join Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan at a Hanukkah event in Herzog Park days later to pay respects to the victims. But that same week she did fit in a meeting with a member of Kneecap, and was happy to invite Greta Thunberg to the Áras, a decision that ‘troubled’ the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland for its timing. Still, must have been a diary issue.
Amal won’t monetise her children… in stark contrast to Brand Beckham
In a recent interview, Amal Clooney, left, revealed that when she and George entertain at home, they ask guests to hand over their mobile phones because they don’t want images of their kids to be snapped or shared.
They do their best, she said, to ‘minimise the impact’ of their fame on their nine-year-old twins, adding: ‘We don’t put their pictures out there, or anything like that.’
The Clooneys are worth around €500m and somehow scrape by without monetising their kids
As it happens, the Clooneys have an estimated net worth below that of the Beckhams, at around €500million, but they’re somehow able to scrape by without monetising their offspring or trademarking their names. I wonder if Posh and Becks still think it was worth it, given the devastating public bust-up with their eldest, Brooklyn, who’s accused them of caring only for the ‘brand’?
This week, after a month of global headlines, Brooklyn’s billionaire father-in-law Nelson Peltz told of the advice he offers his own family: ‘Stay the hell out of the press – how much good did that do?’ He’s wasting his breath, as it seems both sides of the feud are addicted to social media and can’t function under the radar. Brooklyn ended his explosive statement by saying all they wanted was ‘peace and privacy’ – he’s got a funny way of showing it.
A response that reeks of entitlement
FOLLOWING retired newsreader Jan Leeming’s complaint about a ‘screaming’ infant in a fancy restaurant last week, the children’s mother, Alex Edwards, has hit back.
Jan claimed the parents were indifferent to their kids’ disruptive antics, and sure enough Ms Edwards’s response positively reeked of entitlement. Her one-year-old ‘loves to wave at people’ but she noticed that ‘two elderly women’ were not ‘responding to my children in the way that people usually do’.
In other words, she does this all the time and expects other diners to suck it up. And there was more than a hint of ageism in her suggestion that old people should avoid restaurants that offer kids’ menus – I mean, how dare Jan Leeming still be alive, let alone expecting a peaceful meal in a pricey restaurant, at 84?
Mitchell an easy target in the Epstein files fallout
George Mitchell with Bill and Hilary Clinton alongside former taoiseach Bertie Ahern
Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern is hardly the only one bewildered by the decision of Queen’s University in Belfast to cancel George Mitchell, a key architect of the Good Friday Agreement, because he was mentioned in the Epstein files.
Speaking on radio, Bertie said it is ‘not clear’ to him what Mitchell is being accused of, and pointed out that Jeffrey Epstein was ‘trying to meet half the world’. He said there was no evidence the former senator replied to any emails from Epstein after the latter’s conviction for sex offences, and can scarcely be blamed for the paedophile’s continued efforts to reach him.
Despite ‘no findings of wrongdoing by Senator Mitchell’, a bronze bust has been removed from the Queen’s grounds – yet Hillary Clinton remains the university’s chancellor, even though she and Bill, above with Mitchell and Ahern, are to testify before Congress about their links with Epstein. Was the 92-year-old senator an easier target for some woke posturing, perhaps?
Hail the hero 13-year-old
Austin Appelbee, right, who swam for hours through treacherous seas to save his family
I’ll admit to sitting dry-eyed through Hamnet, despite all the sniffling around me in the cinema, but the story of Austin Appelbee, the 13-year-old who swam for hours through treacherous Australian seas to save his stranded family, reduced me to a blubbering wreck. His mum Joanne, from Monaghan but living in Perth, had taken Austin and his younger siblings kayaking and paddle-boarding last Friday, but huge waves prevented them getting back to shore. In what was almost a Sophie’s Choice-type quandary, Joanne reluctantly let Austin swim to shore, 4km away, not knowing if he’d make it but certain that, otherwise, none of them would. After four hours, she feared her incredibly brave lad had drowned – and then the helicopter arrived. Now there’s a movie worth a whole box of tissues.