Author Archives: Sinéad Redmond

How to talk to your children about abortion

Posted on January 16, 2019 by Sinéad Redmond

This is a slightly reworked repost of a piece I wrote for Parents for Choice in the run up to the referendum on abortion rights in Ireland.

I have two daughters, who are 6 and 3. My six year old has been really interested in pregnancy, and pregnant women and bumps specifically, since she was three or four, and my three year old’s interest in pregnancy has started following suit in the last year. I think it’s really important when talking to children to try and reflect your own view of the world as honestly as possible in the words you use to them. My own view of pregnancy, particularly in the early stages, is that the developing pregnancy is something with the potential to grow into a baby, but not the ethical and moral equivalent of one. Because of this I’ve always made a deliberate effort to talk about a pregnancy as a “baby seed” rather than a baby. I don’t tell her people have “a baby in their tummy”, we talk about people having baby seeds that are growing into babies. When they’ve finished growing into a baby they’re ready to be born.

I use these terms because I don’t want to have to explain to a child who’s asking questions about abortion that actually a 7 week embryo or whatever isn’t actually “a baby in someone’s tummy” as I’ve been telling her all along, and so that it won’t strike her as something as immediately shocking as I think it otherwise might. We’ve looked together at diagrams and drawings of embryo and foetal development and talked about how they’re not ready to be babies just yet, that they are growing into babies.

I also talk to my six year old about how growing a baby seed into a baby is a really hard and difficult and sometimes dangerous thing for a body to do, so I think everyone should get to decide for themselves whether they do or not. And I tell her some people think everyone should have to grow baby seeds into babies whether they want to or are able to or not. It helps that she remembers my pregnancy on her younger sister, in which I nearly died and had to inject myself with heparin for the remainder of the pregnancy, so we talk about that too.

She pointed out one of the “baby” posters during the referendum campaign when we were in the car and passed one. I said “Actually that’s a baby seed but the people who paid a lot of money for those posters made it look like a baby on purpose, because they think everyone who has a baby seed should have to grow it into a baby whether they wanted to or not.” And that I think that’s telling lies and shouldn’t be allowed.

I was pregnant with her when Savita died, in 2012, and in 2017 I took her to one of the vigils in memory of her for the first time since she was old enough to ask questions. I actually found hers engagement with the vigil and its cause really poignant; I explained to her in the car on the way in that we were going to a vigil to remember a woman who died called Savita Halappanavar (she said her name very carefully) who died before it was her time to die, because she was growing a baby seed and sometimes growing a baby seed can make us very sick because it’s an awful lot of work for our bodies. So sometimes people don’t want to grow baby seeds and sometimes people are too sick to grow baby seeds. And that I think doctors should be allowed to help people who don’t want to, to stop baby seeds from growing, but here they aren’t allowed to. And because they weren’t allowed to stop Savita’s baby seed from growing, even though her body wasn’t able to grow it, she died.

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Posted in Abortion, Education, Health, Reproduction, The family. Bookmark the permalink.

Our bodies, our babies, our births

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Sinéad Redmond

Before I write the rest of this piece I feel the need to lay out my mothering and birth ‘credentials’. I am a mother to two daughters; I’ve given birth twice, both times vaginally, neither time without intervention. I found one birth traumatic and one deeply and intensely healing. One pregnancy was life-threatening and high risk, the other was not. (The traumatic birth was not the one which resulted from the life-threatening pregnancy.) I’ve breastfed both daughters, both exclusively for 6 months, and for an extended period beyond that. 5 years in total with some crossover in babas being fed at the same time (only once literally at the same time thankfully, I HATED that). I’ve spent the entirety of my life as a mother in the struggle for bodily autonomy in pregnancy (whether ended or continued) and birth. Here in Ireland, with the 8th amendment limiting our rights in both, it was always clear to me that pregnancy and birth are a continuum and the restriction of our rights in one aspect of it will be used to restrict our rights in others. The fundamental right to ownership of one’s own body has always been to me one issue.

I do not care how anyone births as long as it’s the way that’s right for them; one they have chosen as freely as possible, one they feel safe and supported in, and in a pregnancy they’ve chosen to continue. Likewise I do not care how anyone feeds their baby as long as it’s the way that’s right for them; one they have chosen as freely as possible and one they have, if problems have been encountered, received appropriate, accurately informed, and timely support for. Unfortunately when women run into problems with breastfeeding this is all too often not the case. I don’t just mean the kind of ‘support’ that involves telling brand new mothers with bleeding nipples to ‘just’ pump instead (the casual disregard for the work and time of women inherent in this is enraging), though. I also mean the kind of support which ignores the realities of that woman’s life, particularly when she already has other very small children around to care for, on top of feeding herself, and no other adult in the home for most or all of the day. The kind of support which pretends the problems of capitalism and patriarchy, where women’s work of feeding and raising babies, doesn’t exist, being instead part of a magical and wonderful nurturing process that is bestowed on us by some earth mother fairy godmother type at birth, and that all will magically come right if you just ‘feed feed feed’. Peer support and advice can only compensate for so much; without an additional set of hands there in the home, many mothers will simply be unable to complete all the separate tasks they must do in a day to ensure each of their children, as well as themselves, are safe, clean and fed. For this to happen, that set of hands would need to be a paid worker, provided by the state, because the state recognises that mothering work, and the work of bringing babies into the world and feeding those babies once they’re there is work of value. I do not believe that we will see this happen while we continue to individualise the ‘problems’ and place the ‘responsibility’ for breastfeeding or not on each mother. As I once said to a friend in the aftermath of her own journey to breastfeed ending earlier than she wanted, with a baby who just wouldn’t latch, I am an advocate for women, not for breastfeeding. I want to support people, not a process.

This piece has been brewing in my mind for some time now, with much of it brought to the fore by some of the response to a US study that found in a cohort of 6,000+ women, induction did not raise the risk of c-section, and that a woman who chose not to have an induction at 39 weeks was more likely to have a c-section. I certainly think there are questions to be asked around this study – I would love to know the outcomes of the 16,000 women who declined to participate. The interrogation of the concept that there may be an element of self-selection in the participants is a welcome one too, and I would like to know to what degree that matters. I also think societies which consider free maternal healthcare to be a basic right for all may not be directly comparable to a society in which those who cannot afford maternal healthcare must go without it. I would question too if it is reasonable to compare c section rates in a country in which some hospitals and indeed states will compel women to have c sections against their will to those which do not. I would also find far more interesting a trial which, for once, took into consideration the feelings of a large cohort of women about their births. There is a strong distinction to be drawn between the sometimes unavoidable damage to our health and bodies that pregnancy and birth can inflict and the always avoidable suffering and trauma that the denial of our autonomy wreaks upon us. As someone who has experienced both in different pregnancies, I found the former far easier to recover from.

In much the same way as I view breastfeeding, I do not believe in nor agree with the privileging of ‘natural’ pregnancy and birth above all else in the birth advocacy world. Not least because the insistence on ‘natural’ pregnancy as a process seems to me to be at odds with the struggle for our rights to choose to end or continue our pregnancies as we see fit. Please do not misunderstand me here; the fight for ownership of our own bodies in continued pregnancy and birth is frequently one that takes the path of having to defend our rights to say no to external intervention in pregnancy and in birth, rights which are all too often trampled on. But I simply do not agree that the one overarching goal of the entirety of the maternity and birth rights movement should be the prioritisation of ‘natural’ birth. I worry that the focus of this movement has shifted from our right to have the time and space and care to have the best birth for us, to the idea that there is only one best type of birth. It would be easy to understand how this might have happened, in societies in which all too often a medicalised pregnancy and birth is presented as the only option and in which it can frequently seem as though the intervention-free birth is only possible in one’s own home. But I am concerned that this focus on ‘natural’ birth, as distinct from the right birth for each birthing person simply creates a parallel between natural birth advocates and the paternalised medical system which so many of us have negative experiences of. Again, I want to be an advocate for women and each individual woman or person’s right to own their own unique experience, not an advocate for a certain kind of pregnancy and birth. I don’t always believe that what’s ‘natural’ is best for each and every woman, but I do believe in every pregnant and birthing person’s right to fully informed choice. And I believe with that right, and with supportive, informed, qualified, involved carers, from whom the person giving birth has had continuity of care throughout pregnancy, everyone giving birth would have the perfect (though perhaps not natural) birth for them.

As a final note, I haven’t mentioned anything about babies, their rights, and their best outcomes in this piece. This is a deliberate choice on my part, in part because I believe that information (as pertaining to breastfeeding in particular) is pointless without the resources to implement it, and in part because I don’t believe that the outcomes for babies should weigh on anyone who is not their mother making decisions about their mother’s body. Nor do I believe it is my role as a mother who breastfed to advertise breastfeeding to other women. Each individual woman is the only person who is or ever will be in her shoes and is the only one possibly qualified to make the right call for her and her baby in their best interests.

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Posted in Reproduction. Bookmark the permalink.

No more than she deserves

Posted on August 13, 2018 by Sinéad Redmond

In a country which voted overwhelmingly only a few months ago to return ownership of our bodies to us, it was dispiriting, though not surprising, to watch the mob turn on a young homeless Traveller mother, Margaret Cash, for the crimes of being young, a mother, a Traveller, a woman and homeless. The mob has spoken, and it has decreed that she has too many children (though it has failed to specify which exactly of her children should not have been born), that she is in some way to blame for her circumstances (though the housing and rental crisis is in no way of her making), that she should have taken the housing options she was offered (though she could not afford them, had no way of getting to them, and indeed in one case they could not take all of her children with her). The mob would presumably let them all rot on the benches of Tallaght garda station indefinitely. The mob also does not give a toss that Margaret Cash’s children are listening while it bays that they should not exist.

Why is it that we can talk about “the housing crisis” or “the homelessness crisis” in the media as one under which people are suffering, yet when a mother in pure desperation shares a photo of the straits her children and her family are in, she is torn apart for it? Are people that desperate to believe it couldn’t happen to them that they will peer through every tiny chink into a family’s life through Facebook posts and deem them unworthy and undeserving on this tiny, one-sided, skewed angle of perception? That is surely a part of it, but there is a darker truth here too. The habit of misogyny and of blaming women and mothers for their societally created and enforced suffering is one that has long been pervasive in Ireland. However much you may like to believe that your Together for Yes twibbon frees you of the need to interrogate any of your beliefs about women – especially mothers – if you believe that you have the right to a say in anyone else’s reproductive decisions, particularly in the wake of their being already made, you are a part of Ireland’s misogyny problem.

Let me be perfectly clear; if you are one of those people who last week thought or said or posted or tweeted or commented that Margaret Cash had surely some part to play in sleeping in a garda station along with her children, you are one of those people who would have said the same about the mothers and the children in the Magdalen laundries and the Mother and Baby homes. If you believe that it is in any way acceptable for you to suggest going through Margaret Cash’s Facebook posts in response to a family being so utterly failed by the society they live in that they are forced to resort to trusting to a policing force that automatically sees their ethnic grouping, including their children, as criminals, to house them, you are one of those that would have looked straight at those women walking together with shorn heads in ragged uniforms down the main streets of Ireland’s towns and never seen anything amiss.

To want a home in which to have and raise children, and to be supported by society in so doing, is a perfectly feminist ideal and to suggest otherwise is pure misogyny. The work of having and raising children is work of value on which society depends; indeed without the work of mothers in growing, birthing and raising our children society as we know it would end within a generation. This is not a new feminist ideal; it has been widespread since the Wages for Housework international campaign of the 1970s. Most of the demands of the Wages for Housework campaign (paid maternity and parental leave, women’s right to work outside the home, equal pay, and social welfare supports) have passed into the accepted needs of society as a whole and are taken entirely for granted as part and parcel of our fought-for and hard-won rights in feminist circles. There is however one area that hasn’t yet been assimilated into society; the concept that the work within one’s own home, of raising one’s own children, of contributing to society the thing it needs most to keep going, should be paid work. That a mother’s work is valuable because it has a price; not worthless because it is of no monetary value.

The reason this vital part of the Wages for Housework campaign did not succeed as its other demands did? Simple; ‘business’ (by which I mean of course capitalism) does not directly benefit from it in the same way that the opening up of a new supply of workers (mothers) to the workforce does. Capitalism requires that this work not be seen as ‘real’ work; that it be done silently and alone without pay, that one employee who wants to have a family must have another person in the home doing the unpaid labour of caring for that employee and the family. Without that person and their unpaid labour the edifice of capitalism begins to shudder, to be seen as the imprisoning behemoth it is, beneath the weight of which all of us are being slowly crushed.

Margaret Cash and her children are today’s sacrifice to Ireland’s continued worship of the combined gods of capitalism and misogyny. We cannot continue like this; leaving the children of ‘undeserving’ mothers to be trodden underfoot by the rest of society, nor can we continue to declare the system is not broken beyond repair in the face of the growing thousands without homes and safe places to stay while the massive landlords that are banks and the vulture funds are given tax break and bailout hand over fist. In much the same way that we reclaimed ownership of our bodies, so too is a movement where we seize back our basic, fully achievable right to homes and safe shelter the only way from here. The ongoing refusal of the State to provide for our obvious needs while women and families suffer and die is an all too familiar echo of the decades gone past. We know they would not have listened to us then had we not risen up and made them. It’s time to make them listen again

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It’s been two months now

Posted on July 27, 2018 by Sinéad Redmond

If I have to tell you what it’s been two months from there’s probably not much point in you reading this.

We won and I didn’t feel like I thought I would feel. I thought I would feel joy. I thought I would feel vindicated. I thought I would feel loved and supported. I thought the 26th would be a celebration. Instead it felt more like a wake. I found myself stopping many times, just where I was, to cry. On the footpath while taking down a Together for Yes sign for my wall. At home in the morning. In the car on the way to the count centre. While tallying. Every time I saw the unofficial Limerick Together for Yes results. Seeing women I love and work with sharing the victory together without me, in places far from me. When I saw the ratio for the tiny village I cast my vote in come in at 67% yes. When I had to accept that I was so exhausted I needed to ask my friend to bring me home at 5 o’clock that evening instead of being able to dance and sing as I thought I would.

I thought I would feel energised. I thought I would feel empowered. Instead I am more shattered than I would ever have believed possible. 6 long years of the intensity I pursued this with has left me in pieces; burnt to the socket and beyond. I had some intensely ugly feelings during the last 13 weeks of the campaign, from when the referendum date was announced. I found myself carrying a frightening dark resentment for people who were able for far more than I was; whose energy reserves hadn’t been as completely sapped as mine. I felt judged for not being able to do more than I was; for not being able to give more than the everything I already had done and was still giving. I felt an indescribable level of bitterness for the lauding of male political and medical figures as leaders of the campaign, particularly those men who’d opposed us every step of the way back in 2012 and 2013. I found depthless fathoms of rage inside me for the shaping of a campaign I’d once had the opportunity to be a key part of without me; without any voices in the struggle near me. I discovered I was and still am fighting not to be consumed by rage at personal betrayals by people I’d thought were my allies and my sisters. I find my fingers shaking when I try to respond to people who describe the last 13 weeks of that fight, without thinking, as “the campaign” in its entirety. (No, not all of these feelings were fair. Not all of them are without hypocrisy. I am sure many people in this fight far longer than me have felt the same things about me, including my beloved sisters-in-struggle at Feminist Ire. Fairness is not the point about dark, ugly feelings, it turns out. If you’re reading this and worrying it’s about you, it’s not; it’s about me.)

I am grieving the loss of untainted first years with my children and with my partner as parents to this struggle. It is difficult to put into words the intensity of the driving force to fight for abortion rights and bodily autonomy I found awaking inside me in 2012. It grew with the pregnancy I was carrying inside my body, that of my first child, the first of my two daughters. It exploded into engulfing fury in November of that year, when those of us outside Galway first heard of the unnecessary death of Savita Halappanavar. I found the pro-choice movement growing with my daughter; my drive to keep going through Parents for Choice intensified with my 2015 pregnancy with my second daughter. I spoke at the 2015 March for Choice when 8 months pregnant with her about my near-death pregnancy-induced event early on in that pregnancy; it brought home intensely to me the experience of being 8 months pregnant in 2012 on the Never Again march for Savita.

I remember thinking victory would bring freedom; that it would bring peace. I never once imagined it would bring grief, exhaustion and anger beyond I ever think I remember feeling in the depth of the struggle. I feel selfish even for writing this, this first piece I’ve been able to write in months. I thought I would be invigorated by the need to capture all of our own voices and our own stories; to talk to the incredible women I have been inspired by for years, who I am privileged to know, to count as friends. Instead I have had weeks I cannot even leave my own house, never mind get to Dublin for events I desperately long to be able to attend. I thought I would be able to turn to the rest of the many injustices on which I long to work, in conjunction with those who suffer from them, on putting to rights. I am simultaneously deeply jealous of the women I see doing this work and filled with self-loathing for my own incapacity.

When I stop and think about it I know that surely this will pass; that I will heal from this as I have healed from all the other wounds inflicted on my body and my self by the 8th before. But still at my core I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to trust that I will ever be truly made whole from the scars and the suffering from this, the last indignity, the last sufferings it has ever caused me. I am in pieces and I do not see how this shattering will ever be truly pieced together again.

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An open letter to the organisers of the “We Need to Talk Tour” from a group of feminists in Ireland

Posted on January 22, 2018 by Sinéad Redmond

We write as cisgender feminists in Ireland to the organisers of the ‘We Need To Talk’ speaking tour who plan to hold an event in Ireland in February.

The main purpose of the ‘We Need To Talk’ tour is to promote opposition to the proposed reform of the Gender Recognition Act in the UK. The reformed act would allow people to self-declare their gender (currently in the UK people are forced to go through the indignity of medical diagnosis in order to have their gender recognised). This proposed legal reform is a necessary and urgent step toward undoing the stigma, discrimination and violence that trans people in the UK currently endure. The organisers of ‘We Need to Talk’ are making a stop here in Ireland, under the guise of talking about abortion. However, their motives remain clear to us, and we write this letter to show that their exclusionary, discriminatory attitudes to trans people – in particular trans women – are not welcome here in Ireland. We will not sit in silence while the organisers of this meeting peddle ideas and opinions that are actively harmful to the well-being and safety of our comrades.

Trans women and men in Ireland have the legal right to self-declare their gender. Trans people and particularly trans women are an inextricable part of our feminist community. The needs of trans people are part of our campaigns. There is no difference between ‘feminists’ spreading transphobic and transmisogynist ideas or spreading racism or homophobia. We want no part of it, and we don’t want it here. So yes, we do need to talk.

We can see from your social media posts about your tour and its contents, that your opposition to the GRA is based on the idea that feminist organising and women’s rights will somehow be harmed through trans inclusivity and organising with our trans sisters. We know this is not true. We, the signatories of this letter, organise hand in hand with our trans sisters. Together, cis and trans, we are Irish feminism. Trans women are our sisters; their struggles are ours, our struggles theirs. They were our sisters before any state-issued certification said so and will always be no matter what any legislation says, either now or in the future.

In the south of Ireland*, trans women have been able to declare themselves women and have the state change their documentation to reflect that declaration since 2015. The sky has not fallen. Cis women have not lost anything whatsoever from this. If anything, all of Irish feminism has gained: our struggle for bodily autonomy gains in strength and momentum through this victory for our trans sisters. There are few things as feminists in Ireland we can say we have been pleased to see passed by the state. This, although flawed in its lack of recognition of trans children and non-binary people, is one.

So tell us: what is it that you know of Irish feminism that you feel entitled and authorised to come here and lecture us on? Dublin has not been part of the UK since 1921, yet you originally described ‘We Need To Talk’ as a UK tour while still including Dublin on your list of venues. This gives us some idea of how little you know about Irish realities, north or south.

We do not need you here. We have not had your support in our fight for #repealthe8th, our fight against the historical and ongoing impact of the Magdalene Laundries, our fight for taking back control of our hospitals from religious orders, our fight for justice for women and babies tortured and entombed in Mother and Baby homes.

Do you know, for example, that in the north of Ireland, legally part of the UK, women still cannot access safe and legal abortion? Have you campaigned on this in any way? If you have, why don’t we know about it? Did you strike in solidarity with us on March 8th last year? Did you even know we were striking and for what? Do you have any kind of concept of what a feminism in a country shaped by struggle against Empire looks like? Did you take even a second to consider that, in assuming you have the right to come here in any kind of position of feminist authority, you’re behaving with the arrogance of just that imperialism? We have had enough of colonialism in Ireland without needing more of it from you

We neither want nor need your lecture tour. You’re not welcome here.

Read the rest of this entry →

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Laying the groundwork with young children to talk to them about choice

Posted on May 27, 2017 by Sinéad Redmond

I’m sharing this for any other parents of younger children who might find it useful. My 4 year old is OBSESSED with pregnancy at the moment, has been for a good while. Discussions on how to talk to your children about abortion come up a lot in Parents for Choice. I haven’t done that in detail yet with her though I have mentioned once or twice that sometimes people don’t want to stay pregnant.

What Makes a Baby children’s book

BUT what I am doing is being very careful in the language I use about pregnancy. I don’t tell her people have “a baby in their tummy”, we talk about people having baby seeds that are growing into babies. When they’ve finished growing into a baby they’re ready to be born. This book is great for a basic explanation of conception that suits all kinds of families (definitely not the case for the vast majority of pregnancy books which are obsessed with married straight white couples) but where it falls down for me is talking about a 5 week embryo as a baby, so I do some editorial reading with Ailbhe and talk about these as baby seeds until the 38 week one which is a baby. It works really well and makes sense to her, we’re growing a sunflower from a seed in our windowsill at the moment. She demanded her daddy read it to her the other day while I was at work and informed him they were all baby seeds up until the 38 week one!

I’m doing this because I don’t want to be trying to explain to a seven year old who’s asking me questions about abortion that actually a 7 week embryo or whatever it is isn’t actually a baby in someone’s tummy as I’ve been telling her all along and so that it won’t strike her as something as immediately shocking as I think it otherwise might. I’m posting in case it might help others in the same situation.

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Posted in Abortion, The family and tagged abortion, children, choice, parenting, pregnancy. Bookmark the permalink.

Cop on Comrades

Posted on May 25, 2017 by Sinéad Redmond

We are a group of activist women from a wide variety of backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. Last week, a good number of the left-wing men we work and organise with seriously disappointed us. These men – our friends, our fellow trade unionists, activists, writers, organisers, and artists – shared and commented on a reductive and damaging article written by Frankie Gaffney, which was published in the Irish Times.

We live in a world where our advantages are tangled up with the things that disadvantage us – some of us are working class, some queer, some of us are poor, some of us come from minority ethnic groups or have disabilities or don’t enjoy the security of citizenship. As well, some of us have had a multitude of opportunities in our lives while some of us have had to fight our way through. It is an obligation on all of us to honestly look at our different positions within the structures of oppression and privilege under patriarchal racial capitalism. It is only by acknowledging all these differences that we have any chance of imagining and building a better world that includes us all.

Working-class ‘straight white men’ in Ireland don’t have it easy these days. They never did. They are ignored by a political class that couldn’t care less about them. They should have a say in the decisions that affect their lives, but they often don’t.

However, that doesn’t make them immune to critique. We all have to examine ourselves as oppressor as well as oppressed – because we are all both. The response to the article felt like a silencing to us and we are writing this because we are way past putting up with that. You will see from the names on this letter that we are women who have been in the thick of things. Whether in political parties and organisations, education, trade unions, or grassroots and community-based movements, we are tired of being accused of ‘bourgeois feminism’ and of betraying the struggle when we raise our voices. No campaign in this country could survive without women, without us – our work and energy and knowledge and organising have been instrumental in all the progressive movements in this country. When we say we need to be recognised and respected within our movements, we need you to listen.

The article expressed the view that identity politics is good for nothing except dividing movements, using language and narratives that have been made popular by MRA (Men’s Rights Activist) groups and the alt-right. According to such narratives, straight white men are the new most oppressed group. This ignores the struggles of women and others at the sharp end of misogyny, racism, anti-trans and anti-queer violence. It aims to silence those who will no longer tolerate the violence, abuse and marginalisation we have suffered for so long. These alt-right arguments have been used by people on the left to support the view that women, and feminists in particular, are to blame for the rise of the far right – for instance, for Trump’s election – and for neoliberal capitalism, which is seen as having damaged working class men in particular.

In this version of events, straight white men are made to feel uncomfortable about being ‘born this way’ by social media-fuelled ‘political correctness’. They are too afraid to say what they think or express opinions for fear of online retribution. Men who claim to be silenced in this way might try a week or even a day as a vocal woman or person of colour online and see how they deal with the rape threats and threats of racist violence that follow.

We are not concerned here about one opinion piece by one person. Rather we have all been aware of the increasing trend towards this particular new type of silencing of women from our supposed fellow activists on the left. The arguments mounted here and elsewhere are apparently to criticise some of the worst aspects of ‘call-out culture’, as well as the lean-in type of so-called feminism that disregards class and race. Yet they seem to be used now by some of our left-wing activist comrades as an excuse not to deal with the complexities of gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation in our political organising. These excuses, when accepted, prevent us from seeing clearly the state of our movements – who is taking part in them, who is heard and represented, who is doing the work. These are massive issues that have to do with how we are creating mass movements, which need to be addressed and faced to ensure that people of different classes, races, ethnicities, sexual orientation and gender have not just a voice but leading roles in our struggle. Without this solidarity in working together, we are simply imitating the oppressive structures we want to fight – the structures that say “not now, your life comes second.” It is not the straight white men who are being silenced when this argument is made.

We are working-class women, women of colour, migrant women, trans women, Traveller women, disabled women, queer women, women who are sex workers, women with children, and women who are none of these, active in our communities and committed to an anti-capitalist struggle. We are well aware that a right-wing, neoliberal distortion of feminism and what is called ‘identity politics’ exists. We know this because it erases our experiences and struggles and we resist this erasure through our work as activists every single day. It is distressing and enraging that we also have to fight against the bad faith of fellow activists on the left – mostly men, sometimes women – who, for their own reasons, blur the distinction between this kind of middle-class neoliberal faux-feminism, and a truly radical feminist politics that has class struggle at its very core. This hurts us because it erases and undermines our realities, our suffering, our analyses, and our organising, and gives more strength to the powers that are ranged against us. For many of us, it is heart-breaking to look at some of the men around us and realise that they are nodding in agreement with this erasure of their working class women friends and comrades.

Most of us have grown up learning to appease men. How to give them our space, how to deal with the fact that they dominate any political discussions, that they are paid more, heard more and believed more. However, most of us expect that the men we work with in all the social justice movements we are part of should have at least considered how they are complicit in this domination when they refuse to recognise that it exists. Patriarchy forces men into roles that damage them as well as us. Most of us have men that we love, admire and respect in our lives and for that reason, not only because it damages and diminishes the life experiences of women, we should all be fighting patriarchy together.

Niamh McDonald

Zoe McCormack

Jen O’Leary

Aline Courtois

Emily Waszak

Theresa O’Keefe

Sinéad Redmond

Aislinn Wallace

Hazel Katherine Larkin

Linnea Dunne

Natalia Fernandez

Helen Guinane

Maggs Casey

Stephanie Lord

Anne Mulhall

Eileen Flynn

Ellie Kisyombe

Elaine Feeney

Wendy Lyon

Sarah Clancy

Brigid Quilligan

Emily Duffy

Clara Purcell

Aoibheann McCann

Aoife Frances

Shauna Kelly

Eilís Ní Fhlannagáin

Dearbhla Ryan

Michelle Connolly

Siobhán O’Donoghue

Aoife FitzGibbon O’Riordan

Stephanie Crowe Taft

Denise Kiernan

Aisling Egan

Donnah Vuma

Kate O’Connell

Natalia Fernández

Fionnghuala Nic Roibeaird

Mary McAuliffe

Marie Mulholland

Margo Harkin

Avril Corroon

Juliana Sassi

Ailbhe Smyth

Kate McGrew

Ciara Miller

Aoife Dermody

Emer Smith

Francisca Ribeiro

Jerrieann Sullivan

Marie McDonnell

Kathleen Gaul

Liz Martin

Laura Lee

Roisin Blade

Kerry Guinan

Gráinne O’Toole

Edel McGinley

Máiréad Enright

Erin Fornoff

Sarah Fitzgibbon

Cliona Kelly

Ciara Fitzpatrick

Bronwen Lang

Shonagh Strachan

Dervla O’Neill

Hilary Darcy

Jane Xavier

Emma Campbell

Clara Rose Thornton IV

Linda Connolly

Nomaxabiso Maye

Rosa Thompson

Liz Nelson

Eavan Brennan

Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Elaine D’alton

Anne Rynne

Elaine Crory

Jodie Condon

Clare Kelly

Catriona O’Brien

Meireka Radford

Lisa Keogh Finnegan

Fiona Dunkin

Lelia Doolan

Jacinta Fay

Mary O’Donoghue

Mariel Whelan

Aine Treanor

Flavia Simas

Meabh Savage

Noirin Lynch

Claire Brophy

Liz Price

Linda Kavanagh

Linda Devlin

Aileen O’Carroll

Anita Koppenhofer

Vicky Donnelly

Marianne Farrelly

Aisling Walsh

Ronit Lentin

Sarah Ferrigan

Neltah Chadamoyo

Rosi Leonard

Tara Flynn

Sinead Kennedy

Anna Visser

Taryn de Vere

Marese Hegarty

Tracey Ryan

Orlagh De Bhaldraithe

Eimear O’Shea

Jen Fagan

Aoife Martin

Lorna O’Hara

Nicole King

Laura NicDiarmada

Maeve O’Brien

Maija Sofia

Izzy Kamikaze

Karen Mulreid

Niamh Byrne

Sophie Long

Gormla Hughes

Mary McDermott

Mary Cosgrove

Amy Moran

Chamindra Weerawardhana

Sarah Vanden Broeck

Karen McDonnell

Kate Quigley

Charlotte Gordon

Kerry Cuskelly

Susan O Keeffe

Inga Wójcik

May Watson

Máire Ní Giolla Bhríde

Maria O Sullivan

Gillian McInerney

Claire McCallion

Deirdre Flynn

Janet O’Sullivan

Alexandra Day

Jeannine Webster

Ann Farrelly

Georgina O’Halloran

Zoe Lawlor

Angela Coraccio

Kathryn Keane

Sorcha Fox

Anastasia Ryan

Sinéad O’Rourke

Kerri Ryan

Mara Clarke

Chelley McLear

Georgina Barrow

Breda McManus

Ceile Varley

Kate Quigley

Gala Tomasso

Louise Kelly

Catherine Lawless

Sonya Mulligan

Sarah-Anne Buckley

Lily Power

Angela Carr

Dervla O’Malley

Sinéad Mercier

Jane O’Sullivan

Irena Koroleva

Sarah Cavanagh

Margaret Ward

Emer McHugh

Miriam O’Donovan

Mhairi McAlpine

Deirdre Wadding

Sarah Wright

Lucy Michael

Maria Deiana

Sinead McDonald

Mairead Healy

Eleanor White

Ellen Reid

Laura Maloney

Liz Quirke

Jackie O’Toole

Amy Walsh

Sarah O’Grady

Catriona Finn

Audrey Bryan

Janet Horner

Donna Cooney

Maureen Tucker

Sarah Davis-Goff

Lynda Whyte

Cíara Molloy

Ciara Kenny

Joanna Hickey

Yvonne Murphy

Rose Murphy

Robyn Maguire

Tina O’Toole

Rachel Quigley

Clare Hayes-Brady

Adrienne Lynam

Amy Ní Mhurchú

Jennifer Dalton

Yasmine O’Connor

Vawns Murphy

Darina Roche

Norah Elam

Kelly Doolin

Muireann Meehan Speed

Grace Costigan

Anna Richardson

Rebek’ah McKinney-Perry

Kelly-Ann Daly

Maggie Bent

Cathie Shiels

Deirdre Mullen

Aoife Cooke

Debbie O Rourke

Rachel Watters

Chelley McLear

Paula Dennan

Kieran Ann Clifford

Lisa Carey

Catherine Vallely

Honor Harlow

Grian Ní Dhaimhín

Polly Molotov

Jesse Jones

Ceara Martyn

Jess Kavanagh

Trish Brennan

Sarah Marie Slattery

Mary Berney

Saoirse Bennett

Claddagh Róisín

Lynda Sheridan

Margo Carr

Noreen Murphy

Farah Mokhtareizadeh

Lisamarie Johnson

Leanne Doyle

Aine O’Driscoll

Maila Costa

Susan Walsh

Janica Ribeiro

Kellie McConnell

Aoife Cooke

Sharon Nolan

Michelle Doyle

Stephanie Fleming

Evonne Reidy

Caroline West

Alexandra Soares

Fíona Cuffe

Suzanne Daly

Jessica Traynor

Evelyn Richardson

Síomha Ní Aonghusa

Syd Delz

Michelle Coyne

Roisin Kelly

Amy McDonald

Gabriela Lobianco

Tracy Radley

Nikki Newman

Noirin Mac Namara

Maureen Mansfield

Rebeccah O’ Donovan

Tais Forner

Catherine Morley

Rachel Robinson

Lauren Foley

Emma Gilleece

Carly Fisher

Angela Carr

Katie Moylan

Kelly Fitzgerald

Alice Rekab

Liz Brosnan

Susan Miner

Ciara Thornton

Caroline Kelly

Nick Beard

Aisling Bruen

Keeva Carroll

Bebhinn McInerney

Manuela Palacios

Jene Hinds Kelly

Siobhan O’Riordan

Mel Duffy

Annie Hoey

Áine Ní Fhaoláin

Deborah Madden

Stephanie Rains

Lorelei Fox-Roberts

Ari Silvera

Melíosa Bracken

Orla Breslin

Janet Allen

Muireann O’Cinneide

Aislinn O Keeffe

Leigh Duncan

Muireann Crowley

Bebhinn Farrell

Emma Regan

Aisling Crosson

Maggie Feeley

Anna Cosgrave

Sharon Crowley

Leighanna Rose Walsh

Nyasha

Claragh Lucey

Shahidah Janjua

Róisín Garvey

Siobhan Greaney

Dominique Twomey

Janice Parr

Ingrid Kaar

Nicola Moffat

Carol Swanson

Ruth Fletcher

Aoife Riach Kelly

Stacey Wrenn

Laura McAtackney

Sinéad Noonan

Emma Gallagher

Kate Walsh

Caroline Kearney

Leah

Siobhan Curran

Elle Berry

Deirdre Duffy

Dianne Nora

Aisling Twomey

Linda Kelly

Emma Hendrick

Sarah Ann Behan

Catherine Ann Cullen

Dorcas Mac Nally

Emma Burns

Karen Twomey

Angel Bellaran

Charlie Bayliss

Anna Mac Carthy Adams

Fionnula MacLiam

Jen McKernon

Emer O’Toole

Anita Byrne

Noreen Murphy

Siobhán Schnittger

Paula Leonard

Michelle Byas

Mitzi D’Alton

BeRn

Caroline O’Sullivan

caroline kuyper

Rachel McTigue

Emma Delahan

Leonie Hilliard

Siobhán O’Dowd

Melissa Spencer

Ger Moane

Darina Roche.

Sive Bresnihan

Alicia Byrne Keane

Emma Jayne Geraghty

Aine O’Driscoll

Grace Walsh

Joanne Nolan

Aoife O’Neill Gormley

Colette Laffan

Marian Relihan

Jacqui Johnston

Pauline Cullen

Sarah O’Toole

Valesca Lima

Fiona de Londras

Mary Treasa Cahill-Kennedy

Niamh Keoghan

Sonny Jacobs

Sharon McDaid

Susanne Breen

Joan Brady

Anna Harris

Martina Hynan

Siobhán Cawley

Edel Geraghty

Orlaith Hendron

Nuala Ward

Krystle Higgins

Grainne Blair

Siobhán Madden

Ciara Dunne

Rose Foley

Audreyanne Brady

Helen Stonehouse

Kathy D’Arcy

Linda O’Keeffe

Catherine Charlwood

Devrim Gunyel

Sarah Monaghan

Yvonne Hennessy

Julia Tor Rojo

Eileen Wetherall

Siobhán Murphy

Leigh Brady

Gwen kennedy

Rosaleen Tanham

Karen NíDhíomasaigh

Kim O’Donnell

Sunny Jacobs

Theresa O’Donohoe

Anja Bakker

Fionnuala McKenna

Jackie McKenna

Bláithín Pringle

Sinead Pembroke

Ciara Coy

Geraldine Moorkens Byrne

Carmel Daly

Marie Walshe

Jessica Maybury

Ursula Barry

Patricia Walsh

Aileen Ferris

Mary Buckley

Rebekah Brady

Monica Ferreira

Sinead Owens

Leah Doherty

Ailbhe Ni Mhaoilearca

Saoirse Anton

Ursula Barry

Siobhán Cleary

Réaltán Ní Leannáin

Deborah Allen

Kellie White

Janet Colgan

Fionnuala Mc Kenna

Ann Marie Duffin

Cora Coleman

Moira Jenkins

Jess Lynch

Neasa Hourigan

Cara Ní Mhaonaigh

References:

Power in Society

Women of colour suffer more under austerity

Women hit harder by cuts than men

Suffrage & Socialism

Women & Class Privilege

Why Class is a Feminist Issue

White privilege and male privilege

On cultural appropriation

More women attempt suicide than men

http://www.healthpromotion.ie/hp-files/docs/HSP00612.pdf (pg 10)

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Posted in capitalism, Equality, feminism, gender, Politics, queer, Racism. Bookmark the permalink.

TERFS Out

Posted on April 23, 2017 by Sinéad Redmond

British TERFS who are suddenly all caught up in how we’re doing our fight for abortion rights and bodily autonomy wrong over here cos we do it arm in arm and hand in hand with our trans sisters: FUCK OFF. Where were you any time the last 10 years? Not talking about #repealthe8th anyway that’s for damn sure. Not even giving oxygen to the @maglaundries issues, nor to Catherine Corless’s research on the #TuamBabies nor even batting an eyelid about the women like Mother A and Ms B dragged through Irish courts about their fundamental rights in birth. And if I owned my house, which I don’t, I’d bet it on not fucking one of them even knowing about the fucking SCANDAL of the ‘Sisters of Charity’ (hollow laughter) being given, GIVEN our National Maternity Hospital AT THE EXPENSE OF THE STATE by this fucking government. Would also bet my house on them not knowing/caring that even their cis sisters in what is allegedly the UK don’t have abortion access if they live in Northern Ireland. So yeah. FUCK OFF and don’t come telling us we’re doing it wrong because we don’t fucking need you. Which is just as fucking well really cos look how utterly uninterested in our struggles you are until we show up your bigotry.

This post is a recap of a thread I posted on Twitter a few days ago; you’ll find it and the interactions here.

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Posted in feminism, gender. Bookmark the permalink.

On learning in intersectional feminism as a privileged woman

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Sinéad Redmond

This post is adapted from a post I wrote for a specific feminist facebook group.

So this is a post I’ve been thinking about for a while. It’s coming out of my own experience of having grown up as a very privileged woman, who bought into a very media-pushed, capitalist, patriarchy-lite version of feminism that was essentially the feminism of the second-wavers, and over the last 8 or so years doing a massive amount of learning around how flawed and damaging and still oppressive a view of the world that is; if you are making your way to the top of the pile but stepping on other women to do it, women’s oppression isn’t ended even though your job title might be CEO of all the world.

The word learning doesn’t necessarily sound immediately difficult to lots of us I’d imagine; it certainly didn’t always carry those connotations to me. I learned in school very easily and quickly; I performed well, I garnered plaudits and praise. The kind of learning that I’m talking about now though isn’t that kind of easily, painlessly (for me) absorbed knowledge transfer; this kind of learning is difficult, often painful, and frequently inducing of defensive behaviour (for me). It’s learning that involves facing your own privilege and acknowledging when and where there are others with more lived experience of other oppressions than you and who have considerably more of a right to speak on some topics and lead feminist thought on some issues than you; as someone who was very used to the feminism I was familiar with being White Feminism™ the concept of not being capable of speaking with authority on matters affecting women as a class, as a broader group, was a difficult and yes, painful, one to process and absorb. I frequently embarrassed myself in feminist discussions around this. My toes are curling up with cringe thinking of some of the defensive, hypercritical and unhelpful ways I responded (mostly, thankfully, online and anonymously, back in the days of discussion forums) to others who were sharing their opinions and theories backed up and borne out of their own lived experiences of their own oppressions.

It’s learning that has been of, and I mean this literally, priceless worth to me though. Those discussions in which those women and people used up their valuable time and labour in explaining to me and others the way in which the world operates on more than one oppressive axis, and why my white, middle-class view of the world is not a comprehensive or indeed accurate one, taught me more than anything I ever learned in college. I genuinely value this learning more than I value my degrees; it was harder come by for me, which is again my privilege talking – but I’m putting this out there because I know there will be those of you now who are where I was then on my journey.

I’d like to share some of my thoughts and the things I have learned though on what in my experiences from both sides of the fence, how the least painful for all involved, way to explore someone else’s reality and opinions born of their lived experience, without trivialising, dismissing, or walking over their real and valid emotions and hurt. This is really not meant to be preachy. I’m sorry if it comes across to anyone like that. It’s meant to offer help.

When someone expresses an opinion that contradicts my view of the world in a way that challenges my acceptance of the status quo (by which I mean the capitalist and patriarchal hegemony we all live under), particularly if it elicits a very defensive response in me, I do my utmost to take the time to sit with that feeling for a while until its immediacy passes. This might take a few minutes; it might take a few days. It might take longer.
If the person talking is oppressed in a way that I am not, I take the time to think on what they’ve said and process it inside my head until I have absorbed it as truth; their truth. If there are aspects of their opinions I can look for further reading on via Google I do that. I only read feminist-slanted reading on it.
If I would still like to be enlightened on some of how they have come to the stance they have, and if I think that it would not hurt them to be asked, and if they have not expressly said they haven’t got the spoons to do the emotional labour of teaching me, I try to ask in as minimally demanding a way as possible if they could possibly explain a small bit of where they’re coming from on this.
I do my utmost to accept however they respond in good faith and with good manners. A vital part of this is to accept what they respond with as fundamental truth and assume that all of their interactions with me are meant as well as that person can possibly mean it at that moment.
I thank the person for their time and energy.

There are certainly times I am sure people reading this will have seen me NOT behaving in this way online in conflicts; those times are when I’ve been hurt myself by people insensitively treading on me in ways I’ve been oppressed and damaged. Those times though have really helped me to find empathy for others I see responding with anger and hurt when questioned or queried.

Most of all I do my best to approach women/trans people with, at a minimum, respect. If I can manage it, I approach them with loving kindness.

I am posting this in the hopes that it may help someone who is where I was a few years ago; not to set myself up as some kind of expert in conflict resolution in feminist circles, because that I most certainly am not. I am posting to try to share what I have been given from others.

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Remembering Savita

Posted on October 28, 2016 by Sinéad Redmond

Savita Halappanavar died on this day 4 years ago in Galway University Hospital. She died in suffering and in pain, because she was pregnant, having been denied basic medical care she and her husband Praveen repeatedly requested.

She died because abortion is illegal in nearly all circumstances in Ireland and even now remains so; but she also died because she was a pregnant migrant woman and a woman of colour in Ireland. Migrant women are twice as likely to die in pregnancy in Ireland as women born in Ireland and the UK. Nora Hyland, Bimbo Onanuga, and Dhara Kivlehan are all names of migrant women who’ve died in or after pregnancy in recent years in Irish maternity hospitals who should be alive now with their children. Only a few months ago Malak Thawley died in an operating theatre of the NMH after basic surgical equipment “could not be found” to stop her bleeding to death.

Our maternity service is not a sufficiently safe place for migrant women, Traveller women, and women of colour; the denial of access to abortion in it only renders it more so, as demonstrated most recently and horrendously with the barbarities the Irish state perpetrated upon Ms Y.

I remember Savita and I remember the tears I cried for her on hearing how she was left to die unnecessarily. I remember Bimbo and how she was told she was exaggerating the pain which was a symptom of the uterine rupture she later died of, and how it took her partner and AIMS Ireland THREE YEARS of fighting to even get an inquest opened into her death. I remember Nora Hyland and how she died of a massive cardiac event after waiting over 40 minutes for a blood transfusion that never came, and with three times the recommended dose of Syntometrine in her body, a component of which is known to have adverse cardiac effects. I remember Dhara Kivlehan and how her doctor told her husband as she went undiagnosed of a fatal liver disorder that it was harder to diagnose Indian people with jaundice, a key indicator of liver failure.

I remember all these women, their partners, and their families and how they were not only mistreated appallingly by the Irish maternity system in life, not permitted as pregnant women to have the final say on their own bodies because of the existence of the 8th amendment, and how further indignity and injury was heaped upon their grieving families by the Irish state and maternity hospitals in refusing to address properly the causes of their death, apologise for them or treat their partners with the respect they deserved. I remember and I fight for change that sometimes seems as though it will never come, especially on days like today where the darkness closes in early and the memory of the horror and outrage and grief of 4 years ago weighs heavily on me. But I do fight.

Solidarity and love to those of you who fight with me, those of you who’ve fought for years and decades longer than me, and those of you who’ve seen more suffering caused by Irish law and Irish maternity hospitals than I can imagine. We will remember and we will bring about change.

This is my third time of posting this. I said this last year, and the year before; I say it again this year, and will every year until everyone in Ireland with a womb owns their own body.

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Posted in Abortion, Reproduction. Bookmark the permalink.