aha noway

Resurrected this account to engage with contemporary feminism & daft cult films. Follow me at your occasional confusion.

[aha noway @acardiganne]

@nwci Declaring that being a woman is a matter of choice rather than material reality is antithetical to any cogent feminist advocacy. The goals you claim to pursue are not in accordance with the ideology you preach.

[M. O'Donnell @modonnellDL]

Strides don't follow a linear direction & the graft is thankless, glacial & often imperceptible & difficult to capture. But when an orgnisation has managed to position itself next to the coaliton ear, elevated itself ad go-to body for women, while alienating & publicly 2/

[wicklowwomen4women @wicklowwomen4w1]

This High Court refusal is a gut punch for every Australian woman who wants single-sex spaces. Without new legislation, the law now says sex is not biological and males can claim womanhood. Women’s rights to privacy, safety and fairness just took a massive hit. Legislation is the only path left. #GiggleVTickle

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Let me introduce you to a brave young woman from my country, Iran.

Her name was Hadis Najafi. She was only 22 years old.

The morality police in Iran killed Mahsa Amini over a few strands of hair. Hadis Najafi responded by taking off her hijab entirely and going into the streets to protest the Islamic Republic.

Before going out to protest, Hadis filmed herself walking in the street. She said:

“I hope that years from now, I can look back and be happy that I went out to protest, because everything changed.”

She never got to see those years.

In September 2022, after Iran’s morality police killed Mahsa Jina Amini because they decided her hijab was “improper,” Hadis went into the streets of Karaj to end this barbaric regime.

She went for Mahsa. She went to demand freedom from a murderous regime.

Hadis was unarmed. Her voice was her only weapon. But Security forces opened fire.

I spoke to her family. They told me how they saw the pellet wounds all over her body her face, her neck, her chest.

Hadis was killed. And killing her was not enough.

The authorities pressured her family to say she died naturally. They withheld her body and tried to silence them.

Her family refused.

Even at her funeral, security forces surrounded them. They could not even mourn their 22-year-old daughter in peace.

Think about this:

First, they killed a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa, over a few strands of hair.

Then they killed another 22-year-old woman, Hadis, for protesting her killing.

They tried to erase Hadis.

Instead, she became a symbol.

Today, more women across Iran walk publicly without compulsory hijab.

Hadis dreamed that one day she would look back and see that everything had changed and Iran will be free from Islamic Republic.

That dream is not dead.

What shocks me is how many young people I meet at universities and colleges across the free world who have never heard her name. They know so many heroes from history, but they don’t know the heroes who are making history right now.

That is why I tell these stories.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

We’re in a bizarre phase where knowing exactly who the women are and pretending to not know who the women are is happening simultaneously and both positions are being used to punish women.

[Helen Joyce @HJoyceGender]

The commonality between approving of female exclusion from this event and approving of male inclusion in female single-sex spaces is that both take from women and give men what they want. I suppose there have always been women who are fine with that https://t.co/HsqGIHZy3X

[wicklowwomen4women @wicklowwomen4w1]

The ALCI has dropped Jacob Engelsman from the line-up of their upcoming conference, which has now moved online.

This is welcome.

The ALCI has not demonstrated any reflection on its judgement in inviting him however, or in capitulating to a version of inclusion that facilitates men to satisfy their egos, desires, wishes, demands and fetishes by putting babies to their nipples.

Rather it has claimed threats forced it to go online, has promised to organise education on gender diverse lactation (this includes men) at a later date for its members, has used the 2024-2028 LGBTQI+ Inclusion Strategy for cover, has claimed it has been misrepresented, and has been supported in all of this by the HSE.

Cuidiú, Le Leche League, local breastfeeding groups, and universities are similarly captured, many funded by the tax-payer.

Continuing education points for IBCLC re-registration are linked to conference talks and seminars with credits attached. There is an unspoken coercion to go along with this, or at least be silent, for those lactation consultants and breastfeeding volunteers who feel so viscerally how wrong this is.

Politicians with a few honourable exceptions are silent.

This is one talk, at one event, that is not going ahead in its initial form.

It is good news. But is just an outcome on one story that is a symptom of the rot in infant feeding. There has been a pernicious hyper-individualistic, adult-centering destruction of the mother-baby dyad, which is by design a unique, inimitable, exclusive pairing of mother and baby.

All of this allowed by practitioners who long since should have said No, and held the line.

The Government is banking on its refusal to engage, its silence, to get it through the news cycle.
The IT, Indo and RTE ignored it. The Daily Mail accurately reported on it, The Connacht Tribune also. NewsTalk and Tipp FM did pieces, and Live Line wasn’t interested.
This story is about Ireland’s latest State-sanctioned child abuse.
Child abuse, but make it ‘progressive’. This time the cover is Being Kind, and those speaking out are framed as bigots.

@CarrollJennifer has refused to make a statement so far.

@NormaFoleyTD1 has refused to make a statement so far.

We must all continue to push for answers, push for change, and demand accountability until this is stopped. We are in this for the long haul.

@HSELive
@OCO_ireland

[Sorority @no_women_rights]

"Si un movimiento declara que un hombre puede definir lo que significa ser una mujer basándose en sus sentimientos, pero una mujer no puede definir ser mujer basándose en su realidad material, entonces es un movimiento por los intereses de los hombres."
-Tasia Aránguez

[aha noway @acardiganne]

@UnityakaAontu @NWCI They don't believe that women are female, that they are distinct from men. Their advocacy is hollowed out by their deference to the demands of men. They are the smiling face of misogyny - pretending to speak for women while campaigning to take language away from them.

[wicklowwomen4women @wicklowwomen4w1]

‘Breastfeeding is hard enough without being dragged into gender wars’.

https://t.co/O5ka8Rh9YN

The first half of Alison O’Connor’s article in The Times will resonate with many women who struggled with breastfeeding due to lack of support, internal or external pressure to breastfeed successfully, and fear at the enormity of sustaining a baby while feeling ill-equipped, inexperienced, and overwhelmed.

What follows, disappointingly, is a shrug: how can we really know what’s true, since we don’t know how the ALCI invitation to Engelsman came about?
There is an acknowledgment that Engelsman states that a man latching a baby to his nipple can be for sexual gratification. This is followed by reporting that the ALCI say their support for “lactating families” is “not about encouraging or endorsing male lactation in any way whatsoever.”

Then comes this patronising take from O’Connor:
“To imagine that it was anyway is a massive conflation. But given the sensitivities involved here, when deciding to invite someone to speak on supporting gender-diverse families, it is reasonable to ask whether this controversy could have been avoided”.

The evidence doesn’t support O’Connor’s uncritical reporting of the ALCI’s claim that it doesn’t support male lactation in any way, and that to think so is a massive conflation.

-Families don’t lactate. Mothers do.

-The ALCI stood over Engelsman’s inclusion, stating it was “consistent with the wider Irish policy context,” citing the National LGBTIQ+ Inclusion Strategy 2024-2028.
-The HSE subsequently backed this, saying Engelsman’s talk on lactation support for gender-diverse families was in line with equality legislation and inclusion strategies in Ireland.

-In their now deleted “Meet the Speakers” blurb, the ALCI said Engelsman would discuss working with transgender and non-binary patients, including how testosterone and oestrogen affects lactation, and lactation after enhancement or reduction surgeries.

-The ALCI has hosted an article titled “LGBTQ and You - Dispelling Myths, Understanding Terms and Sharing Cases to Create an Inclusive Environment for ALL Families to Optimise our Care!”
-Written by an Irish IBCLC in 2019 after a conference in the U.S it describes, positively, two men who “chestfed” a baby for six months using formula and expressed milk from a surrogate via a supplemental tube feeding system. It gives this troubling definition from Stephanie Wegner of chestfeeding. It is the:

“Term used for either anatomical, psychological, sexual or gender reasons for any person who considers their nipples (or lack thereof) to be part of a chest and not a breast and uses that part of their body to comfort and/or nourish a baby.”

-About 66 of the IBCLCs on the ALCI website list LGBTQ services in their bios. The G is all men, and some of the Bs and TQs in that acronym are also men.

-This isn’t happening in a vacuum. UCC hosts a midwife next week who wants “perinatal practitioner” to replace midwife, and who claims men who say they are women can produce milk nutritionally equal to, or superior to, what women make.

This is a safeguarding issue of gargantuan proportions, enabled by the organs of the State, NGOs, a complicit media, and captured breastfeeding orgs.

It relies on an illusion of consensus, manufactured and sustained by the threat to livelihood facing those who know this is wrong but fear the often very real consequences of saying so.

We need clear statements from the Health Minister and all breastfeeding orgs in Ireland re their position on men lacating or using supplemental feeding systems to feed babies.

@thetimes @alisonoconn @CarrollMacneill

[wicklowwomen4women @wicklowwomen4w1]

“Somebody has to shout stop this. Everybody is so afraid to come out against this dangerous and sinister propaganda.”

Thank you Senator Sarah O’Reilly for stating it so plainly and correctly.

The Irish Daily Mail continues to do a stellar job highlighting how the Irish government is funding events that platform those who support men putting babies to their nipples.

It’s the Health Research Board this time, funding an event in University College Cork, and hosting midwife Ash Bainbridge, who calls it chestfeeding if the man identifies as a man, and breastfeeding if he identifies as a woman.

Where are the rights, needs, and safety of the babies in all of this?

Why is taxpayers’ money being used in this way?

[aha noway @acardiganne]

Useful summary of recent tax-payer supported breastfeeding education controversy as part of the creeping erosion of women's language, advocacy and respect in Ireland.

[Róisín Michaux @RoisinMichaux]

Welcome to our live show! https://t.co/yOl6B9EWmt

[Paddy O'Gorman @paddyjogorman]

This morning on @IrelandAMVMTV summary of newspaper headlines the Irish Daily Mail exists again. Unlike yesterday or last Saturday when, without explanation, it was omitted. Those two days IDM led on "chestfeeding" controversy. They don't want their viewers to know about that.

[wicklowwomen4women @wicklowwomen4w1]

It is past time for a national conversation on the legislation and policies in Ireland that are in direct conflict with the safeguarding of babies and children, the rights of women and girls, freedom of expression, and the wishes of most people.
The pushing and funding of ideology throughout all our institutions must be replaced with reality-based governance.

[Sam Morgan @CrunchAlias]

You quite literally want to change the concept of "women" from being full humans, to being a subjective feeling men can have, and yet you call the people opposing you "dehumanising".

[Sandra Adams @AdamsSandr4794]

Says the shower that, in 2022, called for women in Ireland to be denied legitimate political and media representation for not believing men can be women. Jog on.

[Genevieve Gluck @WomenReadWomen]

At a debate over "trans women" at UC Berkeley, a molecular geneticist said:

"Women have internalized misogyny to the point where the man's comfort takes precedence over the woman's safety.
This is the most insane thing that has happened in my life, that women are a feeling now."

[The Countess @TheCountessIE]

Why did @EOBroin hide this reply?

[Sandra Adams @AdamsSandr4794]

'Why are we spending money on a dangerous illusion?'
Reem Alsalem's observation on supporting male lactation.
This is a massive child safeguarding failure @NormaFoleyTD1
Many thanks to @NewstalkFM for doing what @rteliveline would not.
https://t.co/u2OrwoYyk8

[Sandra Adams @AdamsSandr4794]

I hope I'm wrong and I am happy to be corrected but I believe @DailyMail ,edited by @JohnEdwardLee, is the only MSM outlet prepared to say that babies shouldn't be used as props for fetishism.
@Independent_ie
@IrishTimes
@Examiner
@rte
@rteliveline

[K. @K02568]

This was a problem largely confined to our universities. Not anymore. The entire Irish education system is now under threat from this ideology. These same academics populate curriculum development groups, provide the background research that informs subject development, and set out specifically to “decolonise” the national curriculum. The NCCA has been working diligently to turn every school in the state into something akin to the most ideologically captured university humanities department imaginable.

Under the redeveloped curriculum, across all sectors, our kids are no longer to be taught to pursue truth. Instead, they are being taught that there is no such thing as truth, and to “challenge and critique dominant perspectives.” Our curricular documents frame conservative or centre-right views as extreme and contrary to human rights. The entire curriculum now serves the purpose of turning our kids into “agents of change,” to be activated for social and political transformation.

@AnMailleach is 100% correct here. The only criticism I have is that it will matter very little if academics like him continue to resist the ideological takeover. In 10 to 20 years, they will not have any kids under their tutelage capable of learning. Those entering university, after spending their entire education under the new curriculum, will themselves be ideologues, literally incapable of seeing the world through anything but a “critical” lens.

[Eoin O'Malley @AnMailleach]

When ideology takes over pursuit of truth universities and academics get the derision we deserve. This week’s @Independent_ie column
https://t.co/AvkOOnQ34w