The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) has this week advertised for public submissions to the next National Strategy for Women and Girls. Submissions can be made up to 30th September 2024.
What sort of precedent is there for this type of consultation?
Earlier this month Gript reported that
"Between April and May 2023, a year before the Family and Care votes were held, an Inter-Departmental Committee chaired by Roderic O’Gorman’s Department of Equality invited members of the public to share their thoughts on the idea of a 'gender equality' referendum."
"The vast majority of submissions to the consultation indicated that respondents didn’t want a referendum at all, and that the whole plan should be abandoned. Moreover, the Department of Equality delayed releasing this material to Gript for so long, that they breached the Freedom of Information Act 2014."
"Of the individual responses received, 92.7% were negative towards the idea of such a referendum, with just 0.7% being positive (there were six positive submissions in total)."
Gender ideology was clearly behind the decision to hold a "gender equality" referendum and in a further insult to women it was announced on International Women's Day 8th March 2023.
Women's Space Ireland
But despite the overwhelming opposition which was made known to the Government in the consultation the referenda (two out of the original three proposed) still went ahead. The Government was heavily defeated with the highest rejection of any referenda in the history of the State with the "care" referendum rejected by 74% and the "family" vote rejected by 68%. These represented the highest and third highest percentage no votes in referendum history reported RTE. It led to the resignation of then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
A public consultation was also held by the same department on our equality legislation, and in particular on adding protection from discrimination to "gender identity". This Public Consultation was only held in 2021 after the commitment to do this had already been given in the 2020 Programme for Government.
In the report published on the submissions received no less than 84% of responses were to do with this contentious issue of "gender" (meaning "gender identity").
Yet the Government still plans to go ahead with this. In March Minister Roderic O'Gorman's department said that
"It is planned that legislative proposals arising from the Review of the Equality Acts will be brought forward shortly. Policy officials are seeking legal advice on a number of matters before proposals can be finalised.
The review has examined the functioning of the Acts (Equal Status Acts 2000-2018 and the Employment Equality Acts 1998-2015) and their effectiveness in combatting discrimination and promoting equality."
Genevieve Gluck explains how we got to this pass and points out that transgenderism is a sexual fetish. "Gender identity" is an ideology with no basis in reality. No one is born in the wrong body and no one can change sex, either with hormones, surgery nor with any sort of certificate. There are only two sexes and that includes those with a DSD, a Difference of Sex Development.
Under our 2000 Equal Status Act:
If the Department is to offer protection to men who claim to have a female "gender identity" (or who call themselves "non-binary" or some other "gender") and allow them to use facilities for women such as changing rooms and toilets where does that leave women's rights?
Under our equality legislation exemptions are allowed under Section 5 (1) of our 2000 Equal Status Act which state for example that it's not considered discrimination to have:
Or at Section 6 (1):
We don't even know if this Act has been superseded by the 2015 Gender Recognition Act because the current minister when asked three years ago said it was up to the courts to decide.
So how can the Department purport to ask the public's views - especially those of women presumably - regarding a new national strategy for women and girls whilst also promoting the interests of some men, many of whom are probably autogynephiles i.e. they get sexually aroused at the thought of themselves as women and want to invade women's spaces, colonise women's rights and even call themselves "women"?
And will the department take what we say in submissions to the public consultation into consideration at all?
Or is this just another box ticking exercise before proceeding once again with what the gender identity activists in our NGOs and Government want?
