Letters from Ireland: On “Gendered Violence” and Media Double Speak
By Paddy O'Gorman
Natasha O’Brien, aged 24, was beaten unconscious by a 22-year-old man, Cathal Crotty, on a Limerick City street on the night of 29 May 2022. Crotty had been shouting homophobic slurs at someone and O’Brien, overhearing, urged him to stop. Crotty beat O’Brien to the ground and later that evening took to social media to gloat over what he had done.
So far, so ordinary. It’s what happened this month that has led O’Brien’s name to be on every Irish person’s lips, for her to be commended by the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and for her to get a standing ovation after she addressed the Dail (the Irish parliament).
What happened this month was that when the assault case came to court, Crotty, the assailant, avoided going to prison. The judge noted that Crotty was a serving soldier and that a custodial sentence would end his military career. Accordingly, the judge gave him a suspended sentence and let him walk free from court.
There has been widespread public outrage, which I share, at the perceived leniency of this sentence and the judge’s stated reasons for that leniency. Demonstrations have taken place throughout the country to demand that women be better protected from male violence. O’Brien herself has addressed some of these protest meetings and she is a formidable and articulate advocate for women’s safety.
Arising from the O’Brien story, the term “gendered violence”, meaning man-on-woman violence, is being heard a lot. Commentators are urging that women need safe spaces to protect them from men. And everyone knows that men are stronger than women. A man-against-woman fight is not an even contest, which is what all sane people believe. Except when it comes to men who identify as women and suddenly sane people are pretending not to believe that at all.
Consider another case where a woman got beaten up by a man who, after being convicted, got a suspended sentence. In this case, the man, unlike Crotty, had numerous previous convictions for assault and had already done a prison sentence for the same and was in prison once again for something similar when his case came up last September. The court heard that the victim was punched to the ground, received a series of blows to her head and had clumps of hair ripped from her scalp. Most shocking of all about this case, in my opinion, was that the assault took place in a women’s refuge where the victim was living and where she should have been safe from violent men. Women who were residents in the same hostel have told me, on my podcast, that the victim was a 60-year-old woman of slight build. Her assailant is a tall, strong man in his mid-thirties. So what was that man doing in a women’s refuge? The answer is he had been living there since he was last released from prison. And why did the housing authority in Dublin think that the appropriate place to house a man with a proven history of serious violent behaviour was a hostel for women? You guessed it. It’s because that man identifies as a woman.
There was no outcry over the gendered violence to which the victim in that hostel was subjected, or over the suspended sentence that the man convicted of her assault received. The media and the politicians have pretended that no man-on-woman assault in that women’s refuge ever happened. Rather the case has been reported to the public as a woman-on-woman assault. The media, and the politicians who are so vocal now on the O’Brien case, cease to be concerned about keeping women safe from violent men if such men have a gender recognition certificate and a wig.
At this point, I hear my critics say that there’s only a small number of trans-identified men (who they misleadingly call “trans women”) in women’s shelters and that my “obsession” with this small number of people is due to my bigotry and transphobia. It’s true, so far as I know, that the numbers are fairly small, but I don’t accept that this means that the effect that these men have is small. It just takes one man in a women’s hostel to put all women there in fear. Since the policy of putting trans-ID men into women’s hostels was begun by Dublin City Council two years ago there has been just one conviction that I know of for a violent attack therein, as I have described. But the fear generated by the presence of such a man in what should be a safe space for women is constant and all-pervasive. Ask any woman who has had to live with a violent man.
And these men assert themselves aggressively in women’s spaces. I’m not entirely clear what French knickers are but, as a homeless woman told me, in anger, on my podcast just recently that is what one man she is forced to share her hostel with has been wearing. Other homeless women have told me about sharing a room with a man who wears a G-string. I know what a G-string is and I have no problem understanding why women find this man’s behaviour intimidating. And disgusting. Which is why he does it in the first place.
The Natasha O’Brien story has exposed the hypocrisy of those who say that “trans women” should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. What proof is there, they say, that men have any physical advantage over women in sport? Are you a biologist? When O’Brien has been addressing rallies to demand safety for women against gendered violence, nobody has heckled her to ask what proof she has that men are stronger than women. Nobody has shouted, “Are you a biologist?” And this is despite the fact that the trans lobby have made themselves prominent with their banners at those public rallies. Those who demand that men should be allowed to compete in sports against women don’t believe their own propaganda.
The Natasha O’Brien story has exposed the hypocrisy of those who say that “trans women” who are sent to prison should be housed in women’s prisons. You can’t simultaneously say that women need to be kept safe from men and at the same time keep violent men, including sex offenders, in women’s prisons. There is a case before the courts of law right now of a trans-identified man, who is charged with making death threats on a number of occasions against women that he is in prison with. The media coverage on this case has been wilfully misleading. If you relied on our legacy media, you would not know that these alleged threats happened in a women’s prison and that the alleged victims are prisoners.
I attended Limerick Circuit Court when this case most recently came up in April and I’m keeping a watch on developments. I will tell you the truth about whatever eventually happens in this case, even as most of the rest our media has been successfully keeping the public misinformed about it.
Because my critics are right about one thing. I am obsessed. Obsessed that those who are being punched down upon (literally) should not be silenced. I’m obsessed with fulfilling my sacred duty as a journalist which is to tell the public what is going on. I have watched in dismay as so many journalists have bowed to the demands of the trans lobby and have self-censored to keep their stories within the parameters which that lobby prescribes. That the media can be so cowed should be of deep concern to anyone who believes that the media should stand up for the truth and stand up for those who are being punched down upon.
Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position.
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