IRELAND: Where young men assault young women with impunity. We had been hearing reports of gangs of boys throwing coffee/water over female joggers. Now this. This young woman could have been killed. These girls are being forced to run the gauntlet to access public transport. 1/ https://twitter.com/OxfordDiplomat/status/1391436254315700224

One gets spat on, one gets a high kick to the ribs & one gets thrown into the tiny gap between the train & the platform. Before we delve deeper, is it not the responsibility & indeed the whole purpose of the man in the high-viz vest, to make this platform safe for passengers../2

to embark the train?? The young man who pushed her in does not immediately run off, like his mates. He seems shocked. He is the one walking over, hands to head, peering over. Not the employee, who is frozen. All of this could have been prevented instead it was let play out.../3

"ah, sure what is a few young girls getting harassed by young men. It's so....'normal' isn't it? Just a fact of everyday life. Why does the culture think this? Why does the man, whose job it is, to keep that very platform safe for passengers, turn a blind eye?? 4/

bc in this country "a girl is a half-formed thing." Not worthy of her full humanity. Evidentially, its ok for girls to get threatened & assaulted while boarding a train. No one intervenes. It is only a news story because this time, 1normalised harassment ends in catastrophe. 5/

And so into this toxic stew of misogyny & apathy, our department of education has had the bright ( but not original) idea of solving 'bullying' by striping schoolgirls of their single sex toilets. From now on they will open that cubicle door into....a mixed sex toilet block 6/

What could possibly go wrong? Maybe it doesn't matter to the State, not really. Not deep down. Did we not lock up young girls, some as young as 12, for 80 of our 100 years, for getting pregnant? It was not an aberration nor was it a blip. It happened on an industrial scale, /7

and it was funded & inspected, in fact, by the State. The same state that brought in self-ID, who never once considered the impact on women and children. Not once! Nor did Argentina or Malta. All racing to get that progressive goldstar. All with cultures & political structures/8

based on historical misogyny. We see the direct line from the homes ; the incarceration of women & their babies, the shaming by state and church of their sexed bodies, the denial of reproductive rights, the obliteration of sexed based rights...It is a continuum. /9

It is a turn of the same wheel. Nothing has changed. In fact it is worse. Even in our darkest days we would have all agreed that girls deserved and required and needed their own toilets. No more. Nowadays, we are told it is no longer necessary because " Society has moved on", 10/

What does this axiomatic phrase mean? like TWAW, it is meaningless. As long as one sex harasses and rapes the other, as long as we live with the male gaze and porn, we must have single sex spaces. #KeepToiletsSingleSex #WeWillBeHeard https://thecountess.ie/mixed-sex-toilets-template-letters/

Make your views heard on the proposal for mixed sex toilets in light of the culture of misogyny that young girls experience in this country. Please use our template above to write to your TD & the minister. #WeWillBeHeard