The women who lived through those terrible times

James Barry on Ireland and women and the new woke erasure of women:

Enough now, Irish Twitter libfems. (Irish rant coming up). JUST because you made some noise for Repeal, and gained a few followers, does NOT make you the gatekeeper for “Irish feminism.” You’re NOT the person who forevermore gets to say “this is what Irish women are, or want.” 

It wasn’t just the young and woke who caused Repeal to happen.

Ireland was awful for a young woman in the 50s & 60s & 70s & 80s- and even 90s. ALL the women who lived through those terrible times, had a voice in the Repeal the 8th Referendum. The “repeal” doesn’t belong to any one group. 

Women’s issues in Ireland need to be treated with great care, kindness, respect, and truth. Even more so than in any other State or jurisdiction. To compensate for the very OPPOSITE way they were treated in the past.  EVERY SINGLE WOMEN’S ISSUE in Ireland needs to be examined on its own merits, weighed, looked at, in context of the past. We don’t get to obliterate women. We did that so much in the past that it is a National Shame.

Do you need me to list the shame? The Magdalene Laundries? The babies sold to America, torn from sobbing girls? The symphysiotomies? The women dead in childbirth for lack of healthcare (and I mean contraception)?

The rape and abuse of women and children, sanctioned by the Church? That abuse, covered up for generations? The girl dead in a grotto? The insult of a septic tank in Tuam?

And even, through the decades, in the small, personal stories: the menace of the parochial house, with wandering fingers. The “marriage ban”. The persistent sexual abuse and assaults in schools, in any place where a sexual predator could rise to a position of power. 

But now it’s all different, we’re told…but that’s a lie.

Because now, our new masters are the “Official Irish Feminists” who speak for All Irish Women. These self-appointed spokeswomen speak for All Irish Women, and they do so gracefully and with authori-tayyy, using the nice pedestals they got during Repeal. 

“The word “Woman” is merely a construct!” they tell us, gaily, while popping in to do a podcast with their fab woke chums. “Feminism includes Everyone Who Wants to Be a Woman!” they chirrup, while writing a column for the Phoenix about De Feminism.

They yawn at the woman in her 60s, still broken from a symphisiotomy age 23, who needs to tell her story. They’re not interested in the woman in her 50s who had to give up her baby when she was 16. They don’t much care for the girls who were abused in school in the 80s. Nope.

Because we don’t have “women’s issues” any more. Because it’s a New Ireland, now. And the word “Woman” has been excised from the literature of the Health Service Executive. Because it’s “discriminatory”. 

He’s talking about the HSE on cervical cancer:

The Health Service Executive has defended a decision to remove references to “women” in its online information about cervical cancer screening.

Under changes made last December, the HSE’s webpage about the screening programme refers to “anyone with a cervix” rather than “women” or a “woman”.

Because that’s “kinder” to men who say they are women…but much less “kind” to actual women, but that doesn’t matter because men who say they are women are more important than women. New boss just like the old boss.

Read it all; it’s outstanding.

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