Julie Bindel on the situation in Ireland, where an open letter signed by major Irish NGOs, including Amnesty International (AI) and the National Women’s Council (NWC), has called for the removal of media and political representation for women who won’t capitulate to the demands of trans activists.
‘We call on media, and politicians to no longer provide legitimate representation for those that share bigoted beliefs, that are aligned with far right ideologies and seek nothing but harm and division,’ reads the letter. ‘These fringe internet accounts stand against affirmative medical care of transgender people, and they stand against the right to self-identification of transgender people in this country… they stand against trans, women’s and gay rights by aligning themselves with far-right tropes and stances.’
"Far-right tropes and stances" - as, for instance, the idea that biological sex is real, or that trans women - biological men - have no place in women's prisons.
Dr Christine Gaffney is a social scientist specializing in gender equality and a member of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Alliance Ireland (LGBAI). She is furious about Amnesty’s latest stance: ‘Why have human rights organizations like Amnesty abandoned women and girls? Is it simply policy capture? Either way, they have sold women out.’Rachel Moran is an Irish writer and feminist who’s spent 10 years campaigning for global women’s rights. What she has to say about the NWC is no more flattering than White’s assessment of AI.
‘The idea that the NWC speaks for Irish women is laughable. They have dismissed, sidestepped and flat-out ignored direct questions regarding the adult male sex offenders walking around the women’s wings of our Irish jails,’ says Moran. ‘To refuse to address this is reprehensible, and classist to the core.’ Moran is right. The women in Mount joy and Limerick prisons are among the most vulnerable in society, and the vast majority have been sexually violated by men. ‘An organization that willfully ignores the psychological violence of incarcerating women alongside sex-offending men has no right pretending to speak on behalf of women,’ says Moran. She calls the NWC-signed letter ‘a direct and totalitarian act of aggression and a staggering betrayal of Irish women’....
For Ceri Black, a founder of LGBAI, extreme transgender ideology leads to the bullying and silencing of lesbians. Black says the women supporting the notion that ‘trans women are women’ are the most privileged, with the least to lose.
‘To hear rich, white, self-proclaimed “feminists” expound from inside their gated communities and ivory towers the thesis that trans women are women and belong in women’s spaces sticks in my throat. It is the absolute definition of elitism. There they sit, smugly proclaiming, facing none of the consequences of their dangerous words. “For thee, peasant, not for me.”’
This comes after Amnesty stripped Alexei Navalny of his “prisoner of conscience” status after they were "bombarded" with complaints highlighting xenophobic comments that he'd made in the past, even though an Amnesty spokesman admitted that the wave of requests to "de-list" Navalny seemed to be part of an "orchestrated campaign" to discredit Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic and "impede" Amnesty's calls for his release from custody.
They seem to have rather lost their way.
Like many other charities, Amnesty have benefitted from those people who gift them legacies in their wills. This makes them completely independent of public opinion & effectively the personal property if whatever motivated faction manages to gain control of the central committee.
Posted by: Martin Adamson | February 28, 2021 at 01:00 PM