What no one is saying about Ireland’s “sexist language” referendum

Kit Knightly

Today is International Women’s Day. It’s also the day Irish public goes to the polls for a referendum on the “sexist language” of article 41.2 of the Irish constitution.

The article currently reads:

If the “yes” vote wins, this text will be changed to:

From politicians to the press to the public, the debate on this issue has been almost entirely about gender, what it means, how it’s defined and traditional vs modern roles.

The old wording is sexist, the yes voters say. The new wording undermines female identity, the no voters counter.

Everyone is saying this is an issue of gender politics.

And everyone is wrong.

The important question here is not about gender, it’s about the weakening of legal protections and guarantees.

That said, it’s not hard to see why or how the “sexist language” issue has taken hold of the debate, not least because it is partially true.

The wording of the current version is somewhat outdated, and the issue taps into the swirling zeitgeist arguments on gender roles, female identity and the transgender debate (for a thoughtful read on that check out Sinead Murphy’s article from yesterday).

Of course, the press and political establishment have encouraged this dynamic, partly because the blanket global policy right now is to entrench divisive and over-zealous identity politics, and partly because they don’t want people to notice their linguistic sleight of hand.

It’s all part of a concerted effort to get everyone focusing on the wrong words. Even staging the vote on International Women’s Day is part of the trick.

Let’s read the current version again, looking past the words it uses to what it actually says [emphasis added]:

While the language may seem somewhat dated to modern ears, the law itself is not in any way sexist.

It doesn’t say women belong in the home, it doesn’t say women are not permitted to work. What it says – in plain unvarnished language – is that no Irish woman should ever have to choose between working and raising her children based on financial considerations.

That last part is the important part, it’s also the part they’re taking out.

Essentially, it says “Raising the next generation of human beings is vitally important work, and you should be respected and compensated for doing it.”

Is that not an entirely feminist position? Does the new version make that same promise?

The old version of the clause is explicitly financial, is that true of the new version?

Mark the words that are now missing. “Ensure” and “labour” are gone, as is “obliged by economic necessity”.

The language is now soft, not hard. Vague rather than specific.

The reference to “mothers” made it clear this was about support for raising children, now it could be about almost any definition of family, and as such can no longer truly be read as a protection of parental rights.

The new version means almost nothing.

At the end of the day, this is not about “woman” and “mother” vs “members of a family to one another by reason of bonds that exist among them”.

It’s about “mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour” vs…well, nothing.

The new language turns a specific guarantee of financial support into a vague effort to sort of maybe protect an undefined concept of “care”.

The end result of a “yes” vote won’t be less sexism, it will be fewer guaranteed legal protections and potentially less financial support for mothers.

That’s why the government is pushing so hard for that “yes” vote.

That’s what’s really going on here. Under cover of “fairness” and “equality”, they are trying to trick socially conscious Irish women into giving up their legal rights.

And that’s what the hypnotism of hardcore identity politics is all about, tyranny disguised as justice. Stripping everyone of everything in the name of “fairness”.

In that way it’s very much a referendum on the modern world.

Do we want laws which are fair or laws which sound fair?