Mick Hartley

How do they plan to celebrate International Women's Day in Ireland? Well…

A transgender activist who has previously called for female campaigners to be “dealt with”, “made terrified” and “smashed out of existence” is amongst the speakers at an Oireachtas event to mark International Women’s Day this morning, Gript Media can reveal.

Keeva “Lilith Feereyra” Carroll – known as Kevin Carroll until 2017 when he obtained a gender recognition certificate and became legally a woman – is to represent the taxpayer-funded Transgender Equality Network of Ireland (TENI) at the event, being held in the Dáil chamber at 11am this morning. The event is being promoted by the Ceann Comhairle’ s Office, the Oireachtas Women’s Caucus, and the state-funded lobby group “women for election”, which seeks to promote the election of women to public office.

In 2020, Carroll – who has a long record of hardline rhetoric in support of the transgender cause, tweeted that “TERFS” should be “dealt with by Cis Women not just us…. And by deal with I mean make them terrified and their lives a misery…. They need to be smashed out of existence – be anti terf!!!” …

According to the organisers, the event is designed to “envision what Dáil Eireann could look like with a 50/50 gender balance that is truly reflective of our society”. A photographer will be on hand, the organisers say, to capture the proceedings and take a group shot of a “chamber of women”. They say “the overall aim is to promote a more diverse and representative parliament and we hope that this event will be a defining moment on the journey to 50/50 representation in politics”.

"Truly reflective of our society". Well, they've probably got that bit right.

In a statement, the Countess – a group which advocates for the rights of women based on their biological sex, and which opposes what it calls “transgender ideology”, questioned whether the organisers had done “due diligence” on Carroll, and issued a statement from its founder and CEO, Laoise Aodha de Brún BL, reading as follows:

“Lilith Keeva O’Carroll is in good company addressing the Dáil. O’Carroll calls for “terfs” to be smashed out of existence, whereas senator Aine Hoey says they should “eat coal”. Perhaps the Women’s Caucus and the NGO, Women for Election, should focus on supporting actual women with the structural constraints that hold women back from the public sphere like motherhood, childbirth, breastfeeding, being up in the night or absent from work with sick children, running households, the schools & health admin and the caring for elderly relatives.

These are the structural inequalities that hinder a gender balance in the Dáil. Not to mention the rape threats and sexualised abuse that female elected representatives face online. How callow to wheel out a male as some sort of totem or shorthand for diversity when they will never experience the reproductive and biological constraints that come with motherhood or the cultural expectations placed on women. And worse still, someone who is, in fact an agent of hatred towards women online.

Once again – as with the National Women’s Council – we are witnessing a complete disconnect between the reality of women’s lives and those groups that women pay, via their taxes, to represent them.”