Women's rights under attack

Yes I mean this is really the crux of it: "you have to be able to say unambiguously what a woman is". The problem is that most people didn't measure the significance of "be kind" and "inclusion" for a long time. Including myself. We assumed (well we were told) that nobody would ever abuse that and it was just about making a few people happy. But the truth is that when you have people riding electric bikes to hold Strava cycling records - yes, seriously! - it's inevitable that some men would choose to participate in the female category because that way they have a better chance of winning.

And when you're not ever supposed to say "Hey that's a man!" because it's "not kind", there's no way to identify those who are genuine from those who are in bad faith.

Oh look!

And a more serious reply is that it's not a left/right divide. There are violent men on all sides of the politicial ideology.

A man who wants women to believe that men on his side of politics are inherently better for women is not being honest. He's just promoting his own political agenda.

But if you want to discuss the subject, what's your opinion of the 16 year old being put in a wrestling match against a biological male without being informed of that, and then being sexually assaulted by him during the match?

What has that to do with right or left wing politics?

Yes I pretty much agree with this too: women used to be at the mercy of men because they had no other way of providing a decent living for themselves, so a woman who was badly treated by her husband had little choice but to put up with it in all but the most extreme circumstances.

But now, while claiming that women are being given a choice because they can go out to work, in practice they're just becoming another working unit, expected to be as productive as men while often still doing much of the work of looking after children and indeed the household generally.

It's true she can now leave an abusive husband - and that's a really important gain. But the downside of both parents needing to work just to keep things going is real too. There was a lot of poverty in the past, and both parents working has pretty much ended that. But I think we need to find ways of making life easier for young families, whether one or two of them are working. The housing crisis, which is one of the biggest problems, is not a right/left issue either: our supposedly left wing president has a work record of defending the banks against ordinary people in repossession cases - and it didn't even stop her getting elected. Because the claim that she had no choice because the taxi rank principle applied is untrue - that's only an issue for criminal cases, not the banking repossessions.

And yet that's all it takes to negatively affect all the women in Limerick prison forced to put up with the hateful behavour of three violent men put in the female estate because they claimed to be women.

One violent man affects dozens of women. And men who claim to be women are no different in that respect.

Currently, a pre-operative, pre-hormone therapy, male-to-female transgender prisoner is being held in Limerick women’s prison. (…) When before the court last July, the prisoner was in possession of a gender recognition certificate.

It is understood that the prisoner was assigned a high level of monitoring after being convicted of ten counts of sexual assault and one count of cruelty against a child. The prisoner is accompanied by two officers at all times while in the common areas of the detention facility.

Robert Purcell is chair of the Law Society Criminal Law Committee: “The law that was enacted in 2015 did not envisage this situation, and it puts the Prison Service and the courts in a difficult position because, obviously, if somebody is self-declaring that they have to be recognised, then they have to be dealt with on that basis, even though physically, they have not have made the [physical] transformation.

“I don’t think the legislation envisaged the ability of transgender people to be able to self-declare; and it didn’t foresee the problems it would cause if a transgender, self-declared person was held in a mixed prison,” he said.

It's an example of what I described in the OP - the TDs didn't think the legislation through. It was no doubt well-meaning but is turning out to be ill-advised. Well, for anyone who cares about women's safety. For TDs and people in the media who wanted to score political points "See how modern and prgressive we are in Ireland now?" it looked great, and they're finding it hard to admit any failings now.

They had the same problem in Scotland with rapists being put in a women's prison just on the rapist's say-so. And in Australia:

You didn't make a comment about this being for the ladies, though did you?

As far as I know, men are entitled to join in here, so why would it being in the Ladies Lounge be so off putting? I didn't tell him not to post here. Anyway, I know he stalks me, I've seen him do it before.

Here's the thing though - I don't follow people I don't like around the place just to disagree with them.

I do know how the front page works: you saw my name and hastened over to disagree. It's sad but kind of funny at the same time.

And the sherry comment is abusive and pathetic.

LOL you're the one who complained. Typical DARVO mind.