The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 resumes in the Seanad today.
The Bill in its definition of “gender” in Section 3 (2) (d) says that it
“…means the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female,”.
This is an entirely new definition of “gender” and defies the reality of there being only two sexes or genders. It sets a very dangerous precedent in our legislation if it is passed.
Although the “hate speech” element of this Bill has been postponed for now the fears that women and girls especially (e.g. in schools) are already expressing surely deserve consideration when such a significant change in legislation is planned.
Under this Bill women and children may feel unable to object to or challenge any man or boy who enters their single sex spaces or sports for fear of being said to be “hateful” given the protection to be afforded in the Bill to those men claiming to be a gender other than male e.g. such as female or non-binary. Women claiming an identity other than that of being female don’t pose a risk to women and children.
There are only two sexes or genders. People who were once referred to as “intersex” have one or 40 or more Variations or Differences in Sex Development(DSDs). However, these DSDS are experienced by people who are either male or female. It’s impossible to change sex with hormones or surgery, we remain the sex we were conceived until death.
Since there are only two sexes it follows that there are no people who are “transgender”, “non-binary” or any other type of “gender” beyond male and female as determined by our sex. There are only men and women who assert that they identify in some other way. This does not and cannot alter the biological reality of them being either male or female.
Dr Ray Blanchard coined the term “autogynephilia” in 1989 to describe men who get sexually aroused at imagining themselves to be female. Autogynephilia extended the definition of transvestic fetishism to include these men. In 2010 Dr Blanchard estimated that of those men who identify as women 75% were autogynephiles who are mostly heterosexual. In 2019 he said the number “might be even higher now”.
According to the 2015 US Transgender Survey no more than 12% (see Fig 7.14 below) of “transgender women” have had any surgery to their genitalia so the vast majority of such men are fully intact males. Women are disproportionately the victims of sexual offences and it is accepted that women need to be protected from any risk of men encroaching into spaces in which we are particularly vulnerable such as in states of undress or when incapacitated, such as in a hospital ward or nursing home.
Girls and indeed boys are socialised from early on to be careful around male adults they don’t know. This time last year we learnt of the case of a girl Scottish former butcher Andrew Miller lured into his car before sexually assaulting her in his home. The judge in the case was reported to have said that “…Miller being dressed as a woman was an aggravating factor as he doubted that the girl would have gotten into the car if Miller had presented as a man.”
Official figures released by the UK Ministry of Justice in 2018 show that half of all known transgender prisoners counted in April 2017 had at least one previous conviction for sex offences. In Ireland in 2023 three out of four males in prison here claiming a female gender identity were sex offenders. Fair Play for Women UK found that:
“Using the limited and incomplete data set available to us, we conclude that at least 41% of TIMs (trans-identifying males) in prison in England and Wales are known sex offenders (46/113). This is a conservative estimate and the true figure is likely to be much higher. It is significantly higher than the average percentage of male sex offenders in the male prison estate as a whole (17%).”
The Equal Status Act 2000 recognises the well understood and accepted societal need for single-sex provision in certain circumstances such as where privacy is an issue, but also for single-sex schools, sports and so on. Dr Blanchard points out that
“Modern trans activists reframed transsexualism/transgenderism as a political problem rather than a clinical problem. The flat denial that autogynephilia exists became a canon of modern trans activism, trans activism become a sub-department of the Social Justice Movement, and the Social Justice Movement became a primary combatant in the ongoing, pervasive Culture Wars.”
The unchanged reality of biology and the well understood and accepted requirement to respect the wellbeing of women and girls requires Government to consider our needs also.
