I am commenting from the land not of Pride Day but of Pride Season. Yes, three full months of it. Canada. Headed by a prime minister whose pre-politics job was as a substitute drama teacher in a private school, a failed actor, which is why he does "sincerity" so badly.
And now to my point, besides that bit of a rant:
On the Irish government's Hate Crimes bill, now before the Seanad Éireann, the Upper House, gript.ie, one of the few Irish papers (if not the only) to cover it critically, wrote on 23 June 2023:
'The bad news for opponents of the Government’s Hate Speech bill is that on paper, all of the odds favour its comfortable passage: Having been almost five years in development across two separate Governments and three Justice Ministers, it is clearly and unambiguously a priority for the civil service, who have driven its implementation from day one. The Government has clear majorities in both houses of the Oireachtas. The media are, at the very best, ambivalent about the bill, and at their worst openly enthusiastic for it, safe in the knowledge that it is not their speech that the bill is intended to restrict. The bill also has the unfettered enthusiasm of almost every state funded lobby group that has voiced an opinion, up to and including the hilariously misnamed “Irish Council for Civil Liberties”.
'... Privately, two Government TDs described it to me [gript's John McGuirk] respectively as “a disaster” and “an own goal” respectively, and expressed serious relief that it is not coming back to the Dáil [the Lower House] because if it did, they felt, several Government TDs [like MPPs or Members of Congress] would be minded to vote against it.
''The entire reason for the present wobble is public pressure: Many bad laws are eruditely opposed at the time of their passage, but few laws capture the public imagination in the way that the hate speech bill has. What’s more, the opposition to it has largely been organic, and not as a result of hostile coverage from the usual main media organisations – RTE, for example, has barely mentioned it. Politicians have noticed this element more than any other.
'This reflects not only the unpopularity of the bill, but a shift in the way the public engages....'
That shift in the way the Irish public engages looks very much to me to be the result of a lot of hard work by those who saw its dangers. The fledgling NotAllGays, for instance, contacted all 60 members of the Irish Seanad.
It may now be common knowledge that this year's "Dublin Pride" got caught for posting on its "history" page an altered photo from Ireland's first gay rights march, in 1983, held as part of the response to the murder of Declan Flynn in Dublin's Fairveiw Park. The original photo has one placard reading, "THE POLICE AREN'T ON YOUR SIDE, EITHER." The "Pride" version has that same placard photoshopped to read, "TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS" . I think we cannot call out such mendacity too many times.
In closing, a huge shout-out to the ever-growing numbers of individuals and groups in various countries who let us know what's actually going on with the GenderBorg. If we don't know, we can't respond, can't see that what's happening far away also has real-life here-and-now implications for us.
Jun 24, 2023·edited Jun 24, 2023Liked by Dennis Noel Kavanagh
It was a great episode! Have something big here Dennis - actual video of a 2023 Mermaids Training Session. You may want to mention it in the next episode.
Great episode! I listened to it twice because I found it so interesting.
"Do you believe trans women are women?"
is just another way of asking women if we accept men have the right to define what a woman ought to be. This goes along with Dennis's point about who controls language. Men invested in patriarchy have long controlled language and, perhaps sensing they're losing control, have reasserted themselves by making the central locus of their control (sex) unspeakable.
To the point about same-sex relationships being non-conforming, I agree they are but don't believe opposite sex relationships are just stereotypical, they're REQUIRED to maintain patriarchy because they are the most basic unit of the patriarchal power structure. Even oppressed men can oppress women at home. Some believe that this is one reason oppression is so entrenched – knowingly or not, men weaken their argument against their own oppression by participating in the oppression of women.
I also appreciated the conversation about the impacts of porn, be it gay or straight. Porn naturalizes and idealizes domination and subjugation by pairing it with sexual arousal. It tells men that even if they're oppressed (or just not very powerful), they can dominate by penetrating. Fetishization of being penetrated also sells subordination as "sexy".
All of this to say targeting gender ideology by itself would be cutting off one head of a hydra, only to have three more spring up in its place. Tackling gender ideology means tackling homophobia and misogyny which are rooted in patriarchy, which is rooted in the idea of innate power based on innate difference.
Really good episode! Thanks for that. I thought Clive was totally right about homosexuals being the most non-conforming. TQIAs and their allies are the opposite, they are regressive and mostly support heterosexuality to the hilt.
The level of misogyny among the male Ts is huge these days and this always goes along with homophobia being huge. Makes one wonder how much the misogyny and homophobia of the "old" days was motored by closet AGPs, the heterosexual males the most afraid of being labeled gay...which logically makes them hate women who might expose their fetish and refuse to go along with it and hate homosexuals who they would despise being thought of as.
Some AGPs have admitted openly that they only occasionally (or maybe only once) have allowed male penetration because they think it makes them experience what women experience every time they are penetrated which is total humiliation (they don't of course unless it is rape). So of course them considering women as "bitches"/dogs they think the same of gay men. It seems to me that AGPs generally conceive of themselves as "real men"; so very many of them interact with other humans as super-alpha something or other.
As to why lots of gay men appear to still support transwomen, could it be for the same reason I think so many women support them?... internalised fear of the potential violence these men could unleash on them. This internalised fear in women should never be underestimated but of course I don't know if it exists in gay men, though it does seem a possibility as there are an awful lot of heterosexual men (AGPs included) out there who, because of their own fears of homosexuality, are capable of threatening great violence against gay men (including those Christian fundamentalists).
By the by, I liked looking at those flattering photos of you both, but like it even better when we can see you two "live"... Rudy, being an artist, could help you with your visual presentation if you are shy of being seen!
I listened to an interview in which the interviewer, when she was a journalism student, interviewed Christine Jorgensen. The issue of 'gay' came up and Jorgensen stated that: 'I am not homosexual' and 'this interview is over' and got up and left the room.
Jun 24, 2023·edited Jun 24, 2023Liked by Dennis Noel Kavanagh
Dennis, you mentioned Blaire White and I wonder what your thoughts are about him, as a gay man, who has chosen to 'identify' as 'trans,' being allowed in women's single-sex spaces. That is to say, if a 'passing' Blaire White, who is a biological male, is allowed in women's single-sex spaces (the restroom for example RR) how do we keep the other male cross-dressers out? The law is by necessity a blunt instrument at times and I see no way operationally around this need for legal exclusion of bio men other than having a so-called gender-neutral option (not converting the women's RR) or he takes his penis into the men's RR. Perhaps we need a survey of men and how many of them would mind sharing their RR w/ the likes of Blaire White and if he really would be unsafe in the men's RR--esp. in contrast to the risk to women of men being allowed in the women's RR. Just as in prisons, or anywhere else, women don't want to be men's human shields. What are your thoughts about this matter?
Bangs, salutes, cheers, and whistles, gentlemen!
I am commenting from the land not of Pride Day but of Pride Season. Yes, three full months of it. Canada. Headed by a prime minister whose pre-politics job was as a substitute drama teacher in a private school, a failed actor, which is why he does "sincerity" so badly.
And now to my point, besides that bit of a rant:
On the Irish government's Hate Crimes bill, now before the Seanad Éireann, the Upper House, gript.ie, one of the few Irish papers (if not the only) to cover it critically, wrote on 23 June 2023:
'The bad news for opponents of the Government’s Hate Speech bill is that on paper, all of the odds favour its comfortable passage: Having been almost five years in development across two separate Governments and three Justice Ministers, it is clearly and unambiguously a priority for the civil service, who have driven its implementation from day one. The Government has clear majorities in both houses of the Oireachtas. The media are, at the very best, ambivalent about the bill, and at their worst openly enthusiastic for it, safe in the knowledge that it is not their speech that the bill is intended to restrict. The bill also has the unfettered enthusiasm of almost every state funded lobby group that has voiced an opinion, up to and including the hilariously misnamed “Irish Council for Civil Liberties”.
'... Privately, two Government TDs described it to me [gript's John McGuirk] respectively as “a disaster” and “an own goal” respectively, and expressed serious relief that it is not coming back to the Dáil [the Lower House] because if it did, they felt, several Government TDs [like MPPs or Members of Congress] would be minded to vote against it.
''The entire reason for the present wobble is public pressure: Many bad laws are eruditely opposed at the time of their passage, but few laws capture the public imagination in the way that the hate speech bill has. What’s more, the opposition to it has largely been organic, and not as a result of hostile coverage from the usual main media organisations – RTE, for example, has barely mentioned it. Politicians have noticed this element more than any other.
'This reflects not only the unpopularity of the bill, but a shift in the way the public engages....'
https://gript.ie/dont-look-now-but-the-hate-speech-bill-might-just-be-wobbling/
That shift in the way the Irish public engages looks very much to me to be the result of a lot of hard work by those who saw its dangers. The fledgling NotAllGays, for instance, contacted all 60 members of the Irish Seanad.
For more on the Irish fight against the bill, see https://thecountess.ie/save-free-speech-rally-laoise-de-brun-bl/ , the many articles against it at https://freespeechireland.ie , its twitter @FreeSpeechIre, NotAllGays Ireland at https://www.notallgays.org, its twitter @NotAllGays. The list is by no means exhaustive and includes other organizations, the names of which I forget, and many, many individuals, LGB and straight.
It may now be common knowledge that this year's "Dublin Pride" got caught for posting on its "history" page an altered photo from Ireland's first gay rights march, in 1983, held as part of the response to the murder of Declan Flynn in Dublin's Fairveiw Park. The original photo has one placard reading, "THE POLICE AREN'T ON YOUR SIDE, EITHER." The "Pride" version has that same placard photoshopped to read, "TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS" . I think we cannot call out such mendacity too many times.
In closing, a huge shout-out to the ever-growing numbers of individuals and groups in various countries who let us know what's actually going on with the GenderBorg. If we don't know, we can't respond, can't see that what's happening far away also has real-life here-and-now implications for us.
Thank you for the explanation and information (and links) re the Irish situ.
It was a great episode! Have something big here Dennis - actual video of a 2023 Mermaids Training Session. You may want to mention it in the next episode.
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/mermaids-training-caught-on-camera
This is worth a look--if you have the patience and stomach for it. Thank you again for doing this needed work KFP.
Thank you so much - the article took a lot of time but it's so important to have this on record.
Cheers mate, will watch
Great episode! I listened to it twice because I found it so interesting.
"Do you believe trans women are women?"
is just another way of asking women if we accept men have the right to define what a woman ought to be. This goes along with Dennis's point about who controls language. Men invested in patriarchy have long controlled language and, perhaps sensing they're losing control, have reasserted themselves by making the central locus of their control (sex) unspeakable.
To the point about same-sex relationships being non-conforming, I agree they are but don't believe opposite sex relationships are just stereotypical, they're REQUIRED to maintain patriarchy because they are the most basic unit of the patriarchal power structure. Even oppressed men can oppress women at home. Some believe that this is one reason oppression is so entrenched – knowingly or not, men weaken their argument against their own oppression by participating in the oppression of women.
I also appreciated the conversation about the impacts of porn, be it gay or straight. Porn naturalizes and idealizes domination and subjugation by pairing it with sexual arousal. It tells men that even if they're oppressed (or just not very powerful), they can dominate by penetrating. Fetishization of being penetrated also sells subordination as "sexy".
All of this to say targeting gender ideology by itself would be cutting off one head of a hydra, only to have three more spring up in its place. Tackling gender ideology means tackling homophobia and misogyny which are rooted in patriarchy, which is rooted in the idea of innate power based on innate difference.
Thank you for those thoughtful remarks re these issues.
Really good episode! Thanks for that. I thought Clive was totally right about homosexuals being the most non-conforming. TQIAs and their allies are the opposite, they are regressive and mostly support heterosexuality to the hilt.
The level of misogyny among the male Ts is huge these days and this always goes along with homophobia being huge. Makes one wonder how much the misogyny and homophobia of the "old" days was motored by closet AGPs, the heterosexual males the most afraid of being labeled gay...which logically makes them hate women who might expose their fetish and refuse to go along with it and hate homosexuals who they would despise being thought of as.
Some AGPs have admitted openly that they only occasionally (or maybe only once) have allowed male penetration because they think it makes them experience what women experience every time they are penetrated which is total humiliation (they don't of course unless it is rape). So of course them considering women as "bitches"/dogs they think the same of gay men. It seems to me that AGPs generally conceive of themselves as "real men"; so very many of them interact with other humans as super-alpha something or other.
As to why lots of gay men appear to still support transwomen, could it be for the same reason I think so many women support them?... internalised fear of the potential violence these men could unleash on them. This internalised fear in women should never be underestimated but of course I don't know if it exists in gay men, though it does seem a possibility as there are an awful lot of heterosexual men (AGPs included) out there who, because of their own fears of homosexuality, are capable of threatening great violence against gay men (including those Christian fundamentalists).
By the by, I liked looking at those flattering photos of you both, but like it even better when we can see you two "live"... Rudy, being an artist, could help you with your visual presentation if you are shy of being seen!
I listened to an interview in which the interviewer, when she was a journalism student, interviewed Christine Jorgensen. The issue of 'gay' came up and Jorgensen stated that: 'I am not homosexual' and 'this interview is over' and got up and left the room.
Dennis, you mentioned Blaire White and I wonder what your thoughts are about him, as a gay man, who has chosen to 'identify' as 'trans,' being allowed in women's single-sex spaces. That is to say, if a 'passing' Blaire White, who is a biological male, is allowed in women's single-sex spaces (the restroom for example RR) how do we keep the other male cross-dressers out? The law is by necessity a blunt instrument at times and I see no way operationally around this need for legal exclusion of bio men other than having a so-called gender-neutral option (not converting the women's RR) or he takes his penis into the men's RR. Perhaps we need a survey of men and how many of them would mind sharing their RR w/ the likes of Blaire White and if he really would be unsafe in the men's RR--esp. in contrast to the risk to women of men being allowed in the women's RR. Just as in prisons, or anywhere else, women don't want to be men's human shields. What are your thoughts about this matter?
Die Hard is the quintessential Crimbo movie for me!