A guide to abortion services and information for people in Ireland.

October 30, 2015April 10, 2016 Aoife O'Riordanabortion, Abortion in the Republic of Ireland, abortion information, abortion services, pro-choice, pro-choice in ireland, Reproductive health, reproductive rights2 Comments

This post is inspired by and adapted from a post originally published at Feminism and Tea, also on the topic of abortion services. However: this is me saying all of it, and I take full responsibility for that.

Picture of a coathanger and the number "8th", crossed out in red.

Abortion is illegal in almost all circumstances in Ireland. In this post is information on the legal situation in the Republic, and how you can get the services you need. I’ll be sharing information on both legal and illegal methods of accessing safe abortions. If you need to use the latter, be careful! I’ll advise you on precautions that you can take to make sure everything goes smoothly and you get what you need. Continue reading “A guide to abortion services and information for people in Ireland.” →

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Germaine Greer? The market has spoken. We don’t want the transphobia you’re selling.

October 30, 2015April 10, 2016 Aoife O'RiordanFreedom of Speech, freeze peaches, germaine greer, transmisogyny, transphobia22 Comments

Germaine Greer believes some transphobic things. This isn’t new. It’s not even the first time this year she’s been in the news saying something transmisogynistic. Back in January she told a room in Cambridge that she doesn’t believe in transphobia. She went on to say that trans women don’t know what it’s like to have a “big, hairy, smelly vagina”- implying, I guess, that the state of someone’s vag has an impact on whether they can be a woman or not. Of course, Greer has been openly spouting transmisogyny for years. Back in 2009 she described trans women as “some kind of ghastly parody” in the Guardian. As far back as 1997 she was campaigning against trans women’s inclusion in women’s colleges.

Greer is notorious, and she’s done some valuable work in her time. Her views on trans women don’t make her other critiques go away. However, the converse is also true: the fact that Greer has written interesting things about women, the family, liberal feminism and sexuality doesn’t mean that her transmisogyny deserves a platform.

Last week, a group of students petitioned for Greer to be barred from speaking at Cardiff University because of her history of transphobia. Now, it turns out that they probably won’t succeed- so far, the university is rejecting the petition. But let’s say that they did.

I’ve seen three reasons why Greer should have her university platforms. The first- that her views have merit- we can dismiss out of hand. Trans women are women, end of story. The other two, related to each other, do have merit (although I disagree with them both). These are the idea that denying Greer a platform is an attack on freedom of speech, and that even if her views are terrible, the best way to handle them is through giving them an airing- the ‘marketplace of ideas’ approach.

Both of these are wrong. Continue reading “Germaine Greer? The market has spoken. We don’t want the transphobia you’re selling.” →

Three years on from Savita Halappanavar’s death: My country still kills women.

October 28, 2015April 10, 2016 Aoife O'Riordanabortion, Abortion in the Republic of Ireland, Death of Savita Halappanavar, Pregnancy, pro-choice, repealthe8th6 Comments

Savita Halappanavar died three years ago today. She died of septicaemia. She died from a drawn-out miscarriage that went untreated too long. She died after spending a week in hospital.

A picture of a paper tealight-holder on a table with some papers. Printed on the holder is a young woman's face (Savita Halappanavar), and the words "Never Again"

Savita may have died of blood poisoning, but she was killed by the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution. Two decades of Irish governments have blood on their hands. They were too cowardly to legislate to protect pregnant people’s lives.

Three years ago, I wrote that my country kills women: Continue reading “Three years on from Savita Halappanavar’s death: My country still kills women.” →

Germaine Greer is not a woman.

October 25, 2015April 10, 2016 Aoife O'Riordancaitlyn jenner, germaine greer, TERF, trans, transgender, transmisogyny49 Comments

Germaine Greer isn’t a woman.

According to Germaine, you see, trans women aren’t women. Because trans women, she says, don’t “look like, sound like, or behave like” women.

Womanhood: how you look, how you speak, and how you act.

Germaine Greer isn’t a woman. She doesn’t look like a woman: I don’t know anyone who looks like her. Everyone knows that real women have side-mullets. She doesn’t sound like a woman: that Australian accent? None of the women I know speak like that. If people don’t sound like my friends they are strange and wrong. Women- proper women- have Cork accents. Bai.

She definitely doesn’t behave like a woman. A real woman would never be mean to Wee Daniel. Continue reading “Germaine Greer is not a woman.” →

Those People With Their Fancy Cars: A small case study in how we normalise the exclusion of the Other.

October 15, 2015 Aoife O'Riordancarrickmines tragedy, Ireland, irish travellers, marginalisation, othering, Travellers7 Comments

CN: anti-Traveller racism, discussion of processes of dehumanisation and marginalisation of the Other.

You know Lewis’s Law? It’s the one that says that comments on any article about feminism justify feminism. I was reminded of it- in a very different context, of course- when I woke up this morning to the following set of Tweets responding to my last post.

The tl;dr for my last post, to get you up to date:

Irish settled people’s bigotry toward our Irish Travellers is all-pervasive, considered socially acceptable, and utterly vile. We act as though treating Travellers as if they were subhuman is perfectly okay. In a housefire last week, ten people from two Traveller families died in a housefire, and their neighbours’ homes were destroyed too. The next day, relatives of the deceased were refused entry to a bar where they went to get lunch. And residents around the area picked for emergency accommodation for the survivors have been blockading the site to prevent their temporary homes being built.

Back to those tweets.

This set of replies is a perfect example of Lewis’s Law. It’s long, but I think that it’s useful to read through it because what we’ve got here is textbook. And by ‘textbook’, I mean that if I were teaching this stuff I’d have already set my students analysing these. This is how prejudice and marginalisation are normalised. This is how we do it. Take a look at the entire sequence:

@flyingteacosy @BolgerAnnmarie I lodge in a Midlands town where I’ve seen travellers arrested out of pubs during the day & they bounce 1/2

— Paul Butler (@PaulButler01) October 14, 2015

Continue reading “Those People With Their Fancy Cars: A small case study in how we normalise the exclusion of the Other.” →

We’re Sorry For Your Loss, But You Can’t Come In: Irish people’s hatred of Travellers is shameful.

October 14, 2015 Aoife O'Riordancarrickmines, Irish people, irish travellers, travelling community18 Comments

It’s easy to be sympathetic when you don’t have to sacrifice or change. It’s also easy to be sympathetic when you know it won’t ever mean admitting you’re wrong.

Ten people died last week in a fire in Dublin. Five adults, five children- two families. As far as I know, two people survived- a boy of 14 and his four year old brother. Their home destroyed, as well as their neighbours’.

And on one level, the way the country reacted was appropriate: with shock and condolences to the families. Our Taoiseach (that’s a Prime Minister) has asked that flags be flown at half mast during the days of their funerals- which, in a small country, feels appropriate. Sympathy has poured out from everywhere. In all the media- the papers, the radio, the TV news- we’ve heard the story of the families destroyed overnight. Of course we have. And I do believe that it’s mostly genuine. Our hearts do go out to those children, their parents, and all the people left behind.

Okay. You see, here’s where things get difficult. More difficult. Continue reading “We’re Sorry For Your Loss, But You Can’t Come In: Irish people’s hatred of Travellers is shameful.” →

How we feel is where we live: life, landscapes, and maybe a treehouse.

October 12, 2015 Aoife O'Riordanmental health, sadness4 Comments

State dependent memory. One of those things you learn about in your first encounters with psychology, along with Phineas Gage and Skinner’s rats. We remember things better when we are in the same state as when we learned them.

Of course we do. Walking past a road where we lived years ago. The smell of an old love’s perfume on a crowded street. They catapult us back.

And so with learning: you learn the thing in a state close to how you’ll need to remember it. Make associations: this pen, that song. When you walk out of a room and forget what you were looking for, all you need to do is walk back in to remember.

It’s less useful when it comes to emotions.

When I’m happy, I forget what sadness feels like. I know it exists. Can even bring it up, with a little effort. But it is not what comes unbidden.

And when unhappy- when we most need to be reminded that this is not all there is- it’s all we can remember. Our disappointments shine brightly, three dimensional. Joy hides. We’ve walked out of the room and left our meaning behind. Continue reading “How we feel is where we live: life, landscapes, and maybe a treehouse.” →

Consider the Tea Cosy

Month: October 2015