Joyce activated, issue 10
On Saturday June 4th I was invited to a lovely lunch in Dublin, with about 60 women from all over the island of Ireland who are working in various ways to defend sex-based rights. The Republic is in serious trouble on this, having passed a full self-ID law in 2015 with no public debate and almost no legislative scrutiny. More of Ireland’s conformist, clientelistic media has played three wise monkeys ever since, ignoring everything from the roll-out of anti-scientific and sexist lessons on gender identity in schools to rapists and woman-beaters identifying as women to gain access to women’s jails.
And so the women at the lunch were a beleaguered crew, and yet the mood was celebratory. In part that was because they have found each other, and though their position is poor compared with that of their counterparts in the UK, it is far better than it was a year or two ago. Some had to hide their faces in photos—using the now-customary J.K. Rowling masks—but others were willing to be identified. There was even some media coverage, including a rather silly writeup by Sonja Tutty, a reporter who wasn’t there, and a far better one by Brenda Power, a columnist who was. And as well as Power, I met two other Irish journalists who are pushing through the wall of silence, Eilis O’Hanlon and Colette Colfer.
I was asked to say a few words towards the end—lessons learned in the UK; advice for Irish sisters, that kind of thing. I’m not sure how coherent I was. I’ve been thinking ever since about what I should have said—and so here I go.
The first thing that’s needed in this fight is critical mass. This isn’t the majority aware of and angry about the issues that you’ll eventually need in order to force political and legal change from the bottom up, but a core of committed campaigners that is large enough to get things done. I think you need several thousand angry, engaged people willing to give their time and energy, and to form active networks in real life and online. Since the island of Britain has a population ten times larger than that of the island of Ireland, gathering that critical mass was much easier in Britain—the number you need is, roughly speaking, absolute, not relative to population size.
Having that many campaigners means several things. First, they can protect, support and comfort each other, on social media, in private WhatsApp groups and in person. Having people to bat ideas around with in vital, to help you understand what is happening and to strategise ways to change. It’s also a great comfort to have people you can turn to when the craziness is getting to you. Otherwise you can start to think it’s you that’s going mad, not the world around you.
With that many people on your side, you have a decent chance of finding any specific expertise you need, whether it’s political campaigning, media relations, equality and human-rights law, school governance or medical-malpractice complaints. It’s also a large enough number to be able to subdivide into viable “affinity clusters”—groups that gel politically and personally, and have the same primary motive.
Some people come to this fight for child safeguarding, others freedom of belief or freedom of speech, still others women’s rights or gay rights. It is of course important that they work together for a common goal. But that is easier when they don’t try to all fit under the same broad tent. Imagine trying to fit an old-school Tory whose main concern is the way gender-identity ideology in schools is intruding on parents’ rights, and a Marxist lesbian separatist who worries most about what that ideology is doing to women-only spaces, into the same organisation. If each has their own mini-group and all talk to each other and co-ordinate, they can have a beautiful friendship without clashing. Indeed, this is how it is working the UK, where the profusion of groups may look like chaos but is actually very fruitful.
Reaching this critical mass is a matter of getting the word out via whatever networks you have. It is emphatically not a matter of converting everyone you meet, or even everyone close to you. If there’s a gender ideologue in your circle, I’d advise backing off—find a polite way of saying you aren’t interested in discussing the topic with them, and that you won’t bother them with it if they don’t bother you. This is particularly important with self-righteous younger relatives. (I don’t mean you should do nothing if a child is seriously considering transition! I’m talking about the ones who want to lecture you and set you straight. I’ll try to write something soon about what to do if you need to get through to someone you think is heading towards self-harm.)
I know very well it can feel like a betrayal when your brother turns out not to understand anything about misogyny, or your best friend thinks women should just “be kind” or the child you carried for nine months and gave birth to wants to lecture you about how womanhood isn’t “defined by biology”. But direct argumentation almost never works to change people’s minds; it just entrenches them in their position. I cannot advise strongly enough that you declare the topic off-limits. Unless this person is actually influential in the wider world, your time and emotional energy could be spent more fruitfully.
Ireland certainly hasn’t reached this critical mass yet, but it is getting nearer. And finally the media are helping. Recent weeks have seen not only the coverage of our lunch, but days of debate and phone-ins about gender self-ID on Liveline, a widely listened-to radio show from the national broadcaster, RTÉ. It started when a grassroots group, The Countess, which is fighting against the removal of the words “woman” and “mother” from maternity legislation (do watch their powerful video, “These Words Belong to Us”), protested about being shut out of the National Women’s Council AGM. (In case you’re wondering, the name is short for “The Countess Didn’t Fight For This”, a reference to Countess Constance Markievicz, an Irish nationalist who took part in the 1916 Easter Rising, and a Suffragist who was the first woman elected to the British Parliament—she didn’t take her seat.)
Ireland definitely has the feeling of ice cracking that I remember so well from the UK in, I think, 2018, when the grassroots opposition to legal self-ID started to take off. Before that only a couple of journalists (Janice Turner, Julie Bindel) were writing about gender issues, and each article felt like a lifeline. And as the UK shows—and America is starting to show—once stories about the consequences of sex-denialism start to circulate more widely, ordinary people are horrified. It then becomes harder for the self-appointed thought leaders and righteous folk to insist that everyone except a few dinosaurs and bigots agrees with them. And some of the newly awakened are sufficiently enraged that they look for ways to do something—and there the campaigners are, ready and waiting to bring them on board.
My second piece of advice is that, once you achieve critical mass, you no longer need to focus on getting the message out. It’s not efficient to try to wake up the entire electorate, one by one—and once you have critical mass, you can create news events and make connections with sympathetic journalists, so that press and publicity tick over nicely without too much effort. At this stage, you need to turn your attention to institutions, because that is where gender self-ID is becoming embedded—in workplaces, political parties, policies drafted by public officials and, above all, in schools.
Every poll suggests that hardly any voters think that gender identity should override sex in sensitive situations—in hospitals, prisons, schools, sports and so on—and yet that is what is happening because committed ideologues in powerful positions inside institutions are writing their policies. It’s bad enough in the UK, where sex-based rights have not been overwritten in law, as they largely have been in Ireland, where a small minority managed to grab the levers of power and push through an undemocratic measure without anybody noticing. As long as the ideologues have hold of institutions, you could have almost everyone on-side and still not be able to make a difference
One institution close to most people’s lives is their employer. I’d advise thinking very hard before outing yourself as gender-critical to your colleagues, however, even in the UK post-Forstater. Obviously I did it, and it worked out fine, but other journalists I know lost commissions and even staff jobs. If you’re in the UK you can get Sex Matters to write to your employer, or if you’re feeling brave (and your employer doesn’t ban statements of political allegiance) you can print out a desk flag or poster. But err on the side of caution: as employment lawyers like to say, it’s better to have a job than a strong case for unfair dismissal.
A better focus for many will be on their children’s schools. It’s harder for schools to retaliate than it is for employers, and it’s in schools where the next generation is being indoctrinated, and where gender dysphoria is being suggest-sold. If possible, gather a group of like-minded parents, so that it’s harder to dismiss you as a lone crank.
Ideally find at least one man—men are granted much more societal latitude to speak frankly, and are much less likely to be shamed for being unkind. It’s also best to have a mix of races and religions. If you’re all white, you’ll be dismissed by identitarians on that basis; if you’re all from a conservative religious background school leaders and teachers will assume you’re backward and bigoted. If at least one of you is gay or has a gay child, so much the better, not just because it gives you intersectionality points (I hate playing their game, but it’s true), but because it makes it much easier for you to point out the homophobia inherent in sex-denialism.
And then keep banging on, politely but insistently. Ask to see what the school is teaching about sex and gender identity. Ask for materials, books and lesson plans. Ask to see safeguarding policies. Ask whether the school is protecting single-sex spaces and sports, what it’s doing to ensure that girls are protected from sexual harassment in mixed-sex spaces, and check that it’s not reinforcing sexist stereotypes in its narratives about sex and gender. If anything in a lesson or school policies concerns you, write to the head teacher, safeguarding lead and school governors. Follow up with in-person meetings and insist on explaining how, contrary to what the trans lobby groups say, it’s not progressive to define girls as “people who are girly”. Consider trying to get on the board of governors yourself.
And finally, think laterally. Institutions like schools and workplaces may have elaborate policies called things like “equity, diversity and inclusion manual” or even more specifically “trans inclusion plan”, and these may be awful, and may have been copied wholesale from some trans lobby group. But they are still bound by broader legal principles, in particular non-discrimination, freedom of belief and speech, and safeguarding for vulnerable individuals, much of which is codified in international treaties.
Since sex-denialism tramples over all these, refuse to be fobbed off with the policy, and insist on talking about these principles. To give a few examples, injunctions to use preferred pronouns trample on freedom of belief and speech. Self-ID in sports is indirect sex discrimination. In women’s prisons, it’s cruel and unusual punishment. To win this fight, we must attack on many fronts.
End-note: Regina Doherty, an Irish senator, gave evidenceto a committee in the Scottish Parliament on June 22nd. She burbled about how Ireland legally recognises seven genders—or was it nine? (This is total nonsense that she seems to have invented herself, and sadly no one on the committee asked her what they were.) I’ve never been so ashamed to be Irish. My Scottish friends tell me it was actually quite helpful to their last-ditch efforts to publicise the dangers of self-ID—one said a journalist had messaged her and asked if Doherty was a gender-critical plant.
I’m afraid book-posting has come to a halt, because I have covid and feel awful. So please forgive the lack of pictures, and any typos that slipped through. And there won’t be an audio edition this week—my throat is too sore. (Poor me!) I hope to feel better by the weekend, when normal service should resume.