Seanad leader warns of ‘summer of discontent’ over trans issues

Fear that “we might have a summer of discontent ahead of us” in Ireland due to debate over transgender issues has been expressed by leader of the Seanad Regina Doherty. “There’s a very small but growing campaign looking and seeking for us to repeal the Gender Recognition Act of 2015″, she said. The Act had been working well “until very, very recently,” she said.

“We never had any of the divisive debates that we would have seen in the United Kingdom, both in America and Canada,” she said. “We didn’t have those types of divisive debates in Ireland during the 2015 enactment or during the review of 2019. We are, for some reason, not driven by any changes or proposed changes in the legislation, we’re experiencing that divisive debate starting now.”

Senator Doherty was speaking to the Scottish parliament’s equalities, human rights and civil justice committee as it heard evidence on its gender recognition reform (Scotland) Bill.

“Every human being, regardless of their gender, deserves to be treated with respect and compassion and humanity. I think we’ll hold on to the values that we espoused in the legislation of 2015,” she said. It had been opposed “a very small grouping of what we would call politicians to the right of centre”, she said.

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They spoke “a lot about a theory of gender identity, whereas in actual fact it is a reality for people who are living the experience; but the debate that we had was very respectful, which is not something I’ve seen in other jurisdictions”. However, she felt “we’ve a growing debate in Ireland at the moment and it’s not respectful”.

“We didn’t have a huge amount of negativity” in 2015, she said. “We do have today, however, in light of how we’re changing a piece of employment legislation in the next couple of weeks. And we’re proposing to change the language in the maternity part of the Bill from `pregnant women’ to `pregnant people’.”

What the Government was doing “is recognising that there are other genders in society who can absolutely get pregnant, we have non-binary people presenting having babies,” she said, and that “the `pregnant people’ terminology was decided by our Attorney General as a catch-all phrase”.

Over recent weeks “a number of women have come together around the idea that, first of all, that you won’t disrespect women and you won’t diminish my role in society by bunching me in to `pregnant people’. The whole debate is around `people can’t get pregnant, only women can get pregnant’; that’s the narrative that has developed over the last number of weeks,” she said.

She did not think “my womanhood, my femininity, my role in society as a mother, I don’t think any of those things are diminished because there are trans women, trans men, non-binary, intersex,” but she did think that “we need to have a proper conversation with some women who might think their role is being downgraded, but it’s not being downgraded”.

It was a “fact that generations ago there were two genders, there were two sexes, there still are two sexes but today I think we have probably nine genders. That doesn’t diminish any other gender within the gender identity set,” she said.

For the first time in Ireland, on the census form this year “you were allowed be either `male’, `female’, or `neither of the above’.” There had been debate on “why don’t you ask the questions? There’s nine genders, put the nine genders in, stop trying to be afraid of the fact that there are other genders.” Anyway it was too late, she said: “We’ll make sure we do it right in five years’ time.”

On the debate in Ireland around safe spaces for women, she said “all women have safety issues with regards to male violence” but she found it “fanciful” that a man would change gender to get access to women. “I don’t think a man who needs to be violent towards a woman needs to go to the extent of changing his gender through a certificate so that he can get access to me,” she said, adding: “I think it’s a false misnomer.”

Concerning two people in Limerick’s female prison “who identified as female after they had been arrested and charged” she said it was up to prison authorities “to mitigate against all risks ... regardless of gender”.