One of the most pernicious things about the culture wars which dominate western discourse in the present age is the way in which they make the concept of the neutral institution almost redundant. Healthy societies, throughout human history, have always had what we might call shared totems – unifying entities that bridged the divisions in a society and allowed everybody to unite around them. This is the purpose, for example, of the British constitutional monarchy. Whether it works in practice or not (and I’d argue it mostly does), the basic idea is that the King represents everybody, and takes no sides in the petty disputes of his subjects, which are beneath him. The Irish Presidency, similarly, is supposed to be “above politics”, though the current incumbent of that office has decided that keeping his mouth shut is a burden too heavy for his historic intellect – as his fans see it – to bear.
Until this week, if you were to draw up a list of those institutions in Irish society that have managed to remain as broadly neutral, unifying bodies that command respect from across society, Irish Cancer Charities would have been near the top, alongside the GAA and – maybe – St. Patrick’s Day. They are focused purely on helping the sick, and providing comfort to the dying. The Marie Keating foundation, for example, is an organisation that anybody would be proud to be associated with.
Hopefully it still is.
But it will have shaken many people’s faith in the organisation to see this:
Denise Breen tells us why it’s important that not just men over 40 should be aware of #prostatecancer.
We are so grateful to Denise for sharing her story and support @denisembreen
Learn more: https://t.co/WqE7Q38BeZ#CancerAwareness #Transgender #NonBinary #StandUp23 pic.twitter.com/bp4qSYjBlh
— Marie Keating Foundation (@MarieKeating) September 18, 2023
It’s worth quoting a little from the article linked in that tweet, which appears still on the website of the Marie Keating foundation:
Denise is no ordinary woman. She has a trans history. What that means is that when she was born, doctors thought she was male. After many years of depression and struggling, Denise began her social and medical transition in her late thirties. She made her legal transition when the Gender Recognition Act came into law in Ireland in 2015 and completed her medical transition a few years later.
Having been assigned male at birth and despite surgery to correct that error, Denise has a prostate.
What strikes me about that is the calumny perpetrated against Irish doctors by a charity that, in theory, is supposed to support their work. Doctors did not “think” that Denise was male when she was born: Denise is male. That is why Denise has a prostate. Women do not have prostate glands.
This is what I mean, when I say in the headline that the Marie Keating foundation has been used, and abused. Ask yourself: Whose interests are more advanced by the publication of that nonsense? Is it the Marie Keating foundation? Or is it the interests of transgender activists who now get to cite yet another respected institution in support of the idea that doctors can make a mistake in determining biological sex?
This is, after all, the whole point of capturing institutions: Nobody infiltrates a respected organisation with the aim of making that organisation more respectable. The capture of institutions is always about taking respectability earned over many years, and then pissing that respectability away in order to advance your own little cause. Last week, the Marie Keating foundation was a quiet and effective charity working to support cancer patients. This week, they’re the people bleating at you that actually some women have prostates. Their credibility is damaged, and at the same time the credibility of the idea that women are wandering around with testes and prostates is not enhanced.
The activists responsible for this kind of institutional vandalism do not, of course, care. For many of them, the momentary thrill of seeing another institution fall to their whim is of much more utility than the actual work the Marie Keating foundation – or any other institution they have captured – does.
The worst thing about all of this is that it will not meaningfully shift the conversation on the transgender issue one way or another: People who do not believe that women can have prostate glands (most of the population, thankfully) are not going to suddenly start reconsidering on the word of the Marie Keating foundation.
What they are more likely to start reconsidering, you’d fear, would be their support for the Marie Keating foundation itself. Nothing is accomplished, except the undermining of a cancer charity.
One might hope that the Marie Keating foundation has banked enough credibility over the years with the excellent work it does for cancer patients that this, by itself, will not make much of a dent. But be in no doubt, it will have made something of a dent.
You cannot be a cancer charity and write off half – and probably more than half – of the population as bigoted transphobes, complaining – as the charity did – of “hate speech” in response to your own blunder. Your audience gets smaller, and the audience for the nonsense gets no bigger.
The Americans have a saying along the lines of “get woke, go broke”. We’ve seen that play out, in recent times, with Bud Light losing vast sales after doing something very similar to what Marie Keating did here. The people who took the foundation down this road were not aiding it.
They were using Marie Keating’s name to advance an ideological agenda. And undermining her life’s work in the process. It is utterly shameful.
This article was the subject of a Press Ombudsman complaint by Denise Breen. Gript appealed to the findings of the Ombudsman, who had found in Breen’s favour, to the Press Council. The Press Council of Ireland upheld, in part, that appeal. The full decision can be read here.