Barbie Kardashian is in a women's prison. Taoiseach's response to questions on this are here..

Did you even read the post you quoted?

Go back and read it again. I'm not suggesting trans women be banned from anywhere.

You have some nerve saying I don't get the point when you can't bother reading my posts properly.

You can't attribute what another poster said to me, take it up with them.

I think that could easily be applied both ways though. Like it’s still being put about in the thread that a GRC does something it doesn’t do and isn’t necessary in order for men to use women’s bathrooms, as if that was an unforeseen, unintended consequence permitted by the enactment of the GRA, when in reality it never had anything to do with the GRA. It would be like arguing that marriage laws had the unforeseen, unintended consequence of permitting spouses to be violent toward their spouse or children, because that scenario wasn’t considered.

The question is why would it be, when it has nothing to do with marriage laws, in the same way that being transgender has nothing to do with being violent, nor being permitted to be violent towards anyone. The individual at the centre of this case isn’t locked up because they claim to be transgender, they’re locked up because the Judge in the case decided that a custodial sentence was warranted for the offences they had committed. Their gender or sex or even the fact they have a GRC is neither here nor there in that decision, it’s entirely based upon their being found guilty of committing an offence.

It’s the Irish Prison Service or the Governor or the management of each Prison then makes decisions about how all prisoners are to be accommodated, taking into consideration a number of factors, not just their gender or sex as recognised by the State (which is the sole purpose and function of a GRC).

In effect all a GRC means is that the person is granted equal protection from unlawful discrimination as anyone else solely on the ground of gender. It doesn’t do anything else, nor was it ever intended to do anything else, and it certainly doesn’t mean anyone has an automatic right to gain access to anywhere because nobody has that right, they simply have an equal right as everyone else to be protected from unlawful discrimination.

There are circumstances in law where discrimination is permitted, such as in relation to employment and education, single-sex religious schools for example, where an organisation is permitted to discriminate against people in very limited and specific circumstances based upon religion or sex (and in that context in law, gender and sex are interchangeable), but the greater good of society is the focus of law, as opposed to indulging in silly nonsense facetious arguments about bathroom use when there have never been any restrictions in law about which bathroom anyone could or couldn’t use, and in order to create one, it relies precisely on a feeling that women and children aren’t safe in public spaces, and there must be laws introduced to prevent men from entering those spaces, which completely ignores the reality that anyone who is of a mind to do harm to another person, doesn’t care much about any law which is intended to prevent them, or prohibit them from doing so, clearly.

It’s why the law exists with the intent to protect everyone society, but it cannot and does not monitor everyone 24/7, and if such a law were ever to be proposed, it would have to be applied to everyone equally, because to apply it only to specific groups would see it struck down immediately as placing an unreasonable and unnecessary burden or restrictions on specific groups in society based upon their membership of those groups. That’s not to mention the fact that even if such a law were passed, it would still do nothing to prevent people who are of a mind to cause harm to others from doing so, and they could only be punished after the fact for what they’d done, because nobody can be punished before the fact for what they might do if they are granted the same recognition and protection in law as everyone else has already. That was the purpose of the introduction of the GRA, because as far back as 2002 the ECHR recognised that people who are transgender were entitled to the same recognition, rights and responsibilities and protections in law as everyone else who is not transgender.

It’s been 20 years, and anyone who wants to hang their arguments on a mere handful of cases in that time of violent people who happen to be transgender, is either being disingenuous, or paranoid, because there’s nothing about violence which can be attributed to or explained by biology, and if the argument that anyone can be deprived of their rights is based upon biology, then they can’t use the threat of violence to support their argument.

The opposite is also true - if their arguments are based upon the threat of violence, then that argument isn’t supported by biology, as evidenced by the fact that the vast, vast majority of either sex are not predisposed to violent behaviour, nor are they predisposed to criminal behaviour, which is defined by violation of man-made rules which govern society and social order, and nothing to do with biology which is nothing more than the study and observation of natural phenomena in order to increase the sum of human knowledge and understanding; it’s achieved by consensus, as opposed to being corrupted to suit any one individual’s political beliefs. That was the intent of the peer review system, which anyone who’s familiar with it will be able to tell you it is fundamentally flawed because it has become a system where criticism is abandoned in favour of elevating and legitimising pseudoscientific nonsense based upon an individual’s reputation rather than their research. The Sokal experiment was successful in highlighting this issue; the ‘penis as a social construct’ hoax, not so much, it was just funnier… although the reason I may find it funny is because it’s nothing more than schoolboy humour, a harmless prank on the social sciences that was never intended to harm anyone -

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/the-penis-story-that-didn-t-stand-up-1.3162564

You know, I did not appreciate just how awesome this post was when I first read it. It really is very clever - far more so than anything I could ever dream up. It would make a brilliant key passage in a satirical short story, for instance.

Imagine writing a "I have nothing against (insert minority), but..." post.

Which is already funny to begin with. I mean who apart from people who have been kept in a time capsule since the 80's would do that? Have you somehow not been on the internet for the last 20 years or so? Surely it is in the top ten of most self-defeating things you could engage in.

But imagine not even being able to hold your nose for long enough for the space of this "I am not phobic, but" post to have the generosity of spirit and kindness of heart to refrain from deliberate misgendering an imaginary trans person, an imaginary trans person that you yourself have conjured up in order to show how you have nothing against them, but!

That is just pure art. And it is done with such economy! You evoke all this in a single short paragraph, not counting the lead-in sentence!

If I were to criticize it - and I assure you, it is but the merest quibble - then I would say that you should give the narrator at least some redeeming features in order to bring out the full tragi-comic effect. It would make the dark, dark humor all the more poignant if we have a little more reason to sympathize with your antagonist, I think.

But I could be wrong - it is not like I could achieve the little gem of biting satire that you have achieved here, not in a hundred years.

Are you doing anything with it? Would seem a waste not to make something out of it, and I am totally stealing it if you are not.

Oh I see - so I misread this and all along you wanted to ban *violent sex offenders* from all women's-only spaces?

Hmmm. I haven't really taken time to think it through, but no very obvious downsides jump out at me so far. Yeah I think we can say we have a lot of common ground there!

I don't think a GRC does that, actually. But hey - let us not quibble. I do not currently see a problem with banning sex offenders going into women's bathrooms or changing rooms. Delighted we got there in the end!

You are going to have to help me out there and explain what you are driving at, Rothko.

It's pretty obvious but I'm not surprised that you'd need help with it.

Well, I never claimed to be a genius. Or a mindreader. But go ahead? What was your point?

I would like to thank you all for your time and attention so far. I feel my little slum-safari into the underbelly of this debate has been a complete success, and it is all thanks to you guys. I have had loads of fun and I have even ended up with a wonderful trophy in the form of some absolutely *brilliant* unintended parody, which I will treasure from now on. Whenever I start to feel a little bit depressed at just how awful and unkind people can be, I will pull it out and let it remind me of just how silly and self-defeating all that knee-jerk aversion really is. You have all been very generous with your time and opinions, and I just wanted to let you know it is appreciated. Thanks!

I don't find it humorous, but you would be forgiven for thinking a lot of people do when it comes to what goes on in men's prisons.

I'll try asking once more too.

Personally myself I don't think anyone born a man should ever have access to women's spaces no matter what.

But this scenario is where activists could have had a discussion.

Does this case highlight a background check needs to be added to the process or other processes.

But the silence really says it all, no interest in a discussion or even to criticise this person.

A great opportunity for discussion but activists never seem to want any discussion around trans issues.

It's a very strange post