From Graham Linehan's email about it: The deadline for submissions is quickly approaching – 12:00 noon on Friday the 19th of May. That's fewer than 24 hours left to express your views on Barbie Kardashian, and the GAA chancer, without possibly being arrested for it.

To submit your response, just end an email to genderequality@equality.gov.ie with the subject line 'Submission - Referendum.'

SAMPLE LETTER

Dear Sir/Madame (biologically-based descriptions both),

I would like to state that is unnecessary to amend Article 40.1.

This has never been used to restrict a female person's rights or economic choices.

Furthermore, we have hitherto always used gender as synonymous with sex when referring to human beings. ('Gender-roles' are something different and are not a concern of the matter at hand).

But 'gender' as it is currently being used by the government means no more than a person's subjective beliefs based tropes and social characterisations associated traditionally with one or other sex which are then construed to constitute an identity.

The proposed changes would remove the recognition of biological sex and replace it with this insubstantive, non-existent metaphysical belief.

In addition, recent moves by the government have shown that they intend to widen this nonsensical 'gender identity' ideology to encompass a limitless scope of fictional, subjective, fantastical identities.

None of the proposed changes should have any place in Irish Law, nor should our Constitution have these falsehoods placed within it.

Two hours to the deadline!

Here's what a woman in my house wrote - she is more eloquent than I and is happy for me to share this here.

"Dear Sir or Madam,

I wish to make a submission to the considerations for the proposed gender equality referendum.

It is important that there is no confusion in the drafting between 'gender' which is the set of behaviours that are currently deemed socially acceptable for each sex class, and 'sex' which is the state of being biologically either an adult human female (a woman) or an adult human male (a man). In other words, sex means biological sex; gender means stereotypes.

There is a tendency to use the word 'gender' as a polite euphemism for the word 'sex' - possibly for the reason that 'sex' can also be a short form of the term 'sexual intercourse'.

An example of this can be seen in the term 'gender-based violence' which is intended as a politeness to indicate violence carried out by men against women without necessarily involving violence including rape or sexual assault. This is well intentioned but an inaccurate use of language. In this case, it would be better to use the terms misogynistic violence or femicide.

Problems will arise if sex (biological sex) is conflated with gender. For example, if a woman with disabilities wishes to have a woman carry out her intimate care, she will be done an injustice if the person who arrives to look after her is a trans woman (a biological man with the gender identity of a woman) as that is not what she would want. If her stated wish is that she would want someone with the same body as her, that is what she should have. For another example, if gender and sex are conflated, if a trans man (a biological woman with the gender identity of a man) becomes pregnant, the trans man will not be entitled to the rights and protections afforded to any other woman under existing maternity law, and that would be an injustice.

If a referendum is needed, as Irish people, we are well aware of the damage that can be done by ineptly and inaccurately written amendments to our precious constitution. I urge you to make sure that there is no conflation or confusion between the terms 'sex' and 'gender' in the interests of equal rights for every Irish citizen."