A Movember to Remember
November has for years been associated with men growing moustaches and beards but this November has been noted for events which may (or may not) be significant in the long term. Men have been accustomed for many years to unrelenting hostility and criticism in the media, but this November saw an extraordinary series of attacks in the Irish Times, a paper which was neutral in the past. It is not easy to say when it went full woke but there is little mistake about it now.
There was the scathing attack following his death, on Sean Connery, a true male movie icon by Donald Clarke; a long piece by Roisin Ingle on Patricia Maclean, former wife of Don Maclean, ripping into Maclean’s domestic abuse whether proven or alleged. On International Men’s Day Nov. 19, the paper asked a radical feminist to comment on it with predictable results: it was detracting from International Women’s Day and harmful for this reason. But the culmination was undoubtedly the piece by the paper’s star columnist Fintan O’Toole in which the absurdities of the conflict in which the TERFS and Transgender activists now find themselves locked, was blamed on….the patriarchy! Logic and good sense were cast aside in an extraordinary outburst of incoherence.
During times of universal deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act—Orwell
Throwing caution to the winds he launched into a truly appalling series of bizarre claims: “And we must not lose sight of the common enemy – the patriarchy that teaches us all to despise our bodies and distort our selves”. Predictably he got around to another obsession of his: “The second, equally profound, reality is misogyny.” But the crowning absurdity was his dismissal of biological science: In the first instance “Biological sex is not a simple or static idea – but it’s not a mere invention either.” But next he tells us “You need to think of biological sex as being just like gender, an invention that can be reinvented at will”. Alongside this jaw-dropping trope he placed a vindication of Orwellian Doublethink: “Sometimes, we can’t have dignity and decency unless we recognise the duty to hold in our heads more than one truth at the same time.” O’Toole is well practiced in this art of Doublethink and sees it as his duty to instruct the nation as to its benefits.
Open Letter from TENI and Consequences
It seems that O’Toole’s piece was motivated at least in part by the appearance of an Open Letter from TENI, Transgender Equality Network of Ireland, on Nov 22, which was signed by two incorrigibly woke organisations, Amnesty and NWCI. One of the topics was, in rough terms, that there is no difference between women and transwomen; all are women equally. That this can result in male-bodied persons in women only spaces is one nub of the matter.
All of this follows from the dogma that gender identity trumps, indeed replaces, biological sex as a marker of identity and the public must accept and recognise this “fact” in the laws of the state.
The absurdities in which this entraps us are labyrinthine in complexity. But the LGB Alliance has now been formed and has split away from the previous LGBTI+ alliance, in part because lesbians and gays believe in an orientation based on sex rather than gender.
The TENI letter, a long rambling piece in a futile effort to prevent this schism, calls “on media, and politicians to no longer provide legitimate representation for those that share bigoted beliefs, that are aligned with far right ideologies and seek nothing but harm and division.”
The NWC position on this delicate matter is not clear to the casual visitor to its website but is carefully hidden away at the bottom of its About page where the discreet sentence appears: By ‘woman’ we refer to any person who identifies as a woman.
Every woman is a woman. Women are multifaceted, intergenerational, international. They are limitless, formless… women are the world —
UN Women, quoting Aaron Philip, transwoman
It has now unambiguously aligned itself alongside those who would outlaw free speech. That Amnesty has done the same shows how far this once respected organisation has now travelled towards totalitarianism. Amnesty did not hide its support for this letter but NWCI did; it does not appear on its website.
The consequences of this are enormous. One is published government strategy: The National LGBTI+ Inclusion Strategy 2019-2021 must fall simply because the group to which it refers no longer exists apart altogether from the rethink of basics it must command, a formidable task in itself.
An immediate consequence for the NWC is the emergence of a new group Women’s Space Ireland which takes issue with the ideology and attempts to infuse some common sense and represent the viewpoint of mere women. As J.K. Rowling has pointed out the word “woman “ is now in doubt. See this article by Helen Joyce in which she gives a list of definitions by various certified groups which is hilarious and sends up these pompous groups for what they are.
Eating with the Enemy
In September 2020 Virgin Media put out a call on social media for participants in a new series of programmes it was planning based on the idea of two people with opposite views sitting down to a meal together.
Men’s Voices was asked to take part and agreed. It was clear to us from the conversations we had at the outset that the company envisaged that men’s issues would be one topic to be discussed. We gathered that a range of hot button issues some/all of which are considered too uncomfortable, not to say ideologically challenging, for the likes of RTE to even consider doing a programme on, would be examined. As many people are aware, there is media censorship of a virulent, ruthless kind in operation in Ireland for many years which makes nonsense of the idea that we live in a free country.
We fully expected to be facing a member of the NWC or likeminded group but on the night before the filming was to take place the other side cried off with only the vague explanation “for personal reasons”. The company (Animo) had to scramble to find a stand-in. Clearly the excuse given was not a legitimate one, the original group had shamelessly chickened out. There is nothing new about this. For decades the media has not required them to debate. They do not believe in debate; like their Marxist postmodernist allies, they prefer to cancel their opponents instead.
The programme did go ahead a couple of days later but to our great surprise we found facing us ……..a man. How extraordinary that of all the lavishly funded, much hyped and media glorified women’s groups in society, they could not put forward a single person to debate with us!
We will say no more at this point and simply await the film, assuming it appears. The programmes are expected to appear in the spring.