Editorial: ​Hollow victory for ​Féile an Phobail over ordinary women from all walks of life

​The west Belfast charity who removed a women’s group from its festival after a backlash from transgender activists may have succeeded in shutting the group out for now, but it is a short term victory.​

Féile an Phobail will not host a Women’s Rights Network (WRN) event, after the two organisations came to an agreement during a legal case brought by the latter.

It was immediately hailed by ​Féile as a “vindication” of their decision to cancel WRN, or as they put it – of “standing up for those who are marginalised”.

These ordinary women – from all walks of life – are not a threat to marginalised transgender people. They are a threat to the nationalist political establishment in Northern Ireland which is terrified of letting ordinary people speak on the trans issue, lest people start to make up their own minds.

Organisers of the west Belfast festival attempted to present the backlash against their decision as evidence of some sort of wider plot to damage it and to “attack the West Belfast community”.

A convenient distraction, which will fool some. But many nationalist voters in the area will see right through it.

People like Kathleen, a west Belfast mother who called into the BBC Nolan Show last week. She wanted to attend the WRN event, and has concerns about men calling themselves women accessing female-only spaces like toilets, used by her daughter who is a vulnerable adult.

These are legitimate concerns for people to express, and they are the concerns of nationalists in west Belfast just as they are of unionists in the east.

Yet ​there is still no room at Féile for women to express their own concerns.

At some point, groups like Féile are going to have to let all women speak.

Silencing them now is a hollow, short-term victory – the discussion will happen.