Why I’m running 5k a day in September for Women’s Aid

Why Women’s Aid? It should be easy to explain, but somehow it’s not.

It was an easy choice – absolutely – and there’s no shortage of reasons. But maybe that’s the thing. There are so many reasons, so where do you even start? How do you ever do it justice?

This isn’t personal for me. I’m not a victim of domestic abuse and I’ve somehow been extremely fortunate with the men I have known and been close to. I can’t point to one event or experience and say: This is why.

I could say, of course, that 90% of women killed in Ireland are killed by a man they know, or that Women’s Aid recorded over 40,000 cases of domestic abuse last year – but when pointing to one clear and simple fact like that to illustrate the injustice that Women’s Aid’s work combats, I can’t help but immediately feel that I’m failing to paint the full picture.

It’s not one statistic, and it’s not one story – it’s a structural, systemic, relentless oppression that’s so deeply ingrained in so much of society that we’ve almost become blind to it. And one fact presented alone could easily be mistaken as anecdotal.

For me to attempt to explain why there was never really any question about which charity I would fundraise for, I need to paint a fuller picture.

I need to tell you to go watch the Netflix drama series Maid, which is based on a woman’s real-life experience of domestic abuse and a society that let her down – a series that made me cry with rage so much, on multiple occasions, that I was unable to talk.

I need to mention the experience of writing a blog post about the mainstream media framing of the murder of Clodagh Hawe and her sons by her husband and their father – a post that went viral and resulted in countless friends, acquaintances and strangers writing to me in recognition, thanking me for putting the spotlight on a reality they were all too familiar with (whereby I realised how many people I knew who were familiar with it, who had presumably been familiar with it for a very long time without my knowledge).

I need to tell you about subsequently being invited to speak at Women’s Aid’s launch of the Behind Closed Doors report and take part in the SAFE Ireland Summit, where powerful, knowledgeable speakers helped me begin to contextualise that inherent, low-level but constant exasperation I’ve always felt simmering away somewhere deep in my gut – the one that flares and burns with every new case, every mention of another injustice, every assault and every woman killed.

I need to tell you to look, any day at all, at any news source or social media platform, where there are reports upon reports upon reports of women being attacked, controlled, raped, killed by their partners.

Last week alone, you could read about the death of Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, whose partner doused her in petrol and set fire to her, and about Gisèle Pélicot, whose husband drugged her and invited other men to come to their house and rape her (more than 50 of them did; not one of the others reported a thing).

I’m fundraising for Women’s Aid because of the relentless, brutal, structural injustice that expresses itself not only in the statistics of male violence against women and the number of women who are killed by a partner or ex-partner, but in sexual assault, in rape used as a weapon of war, in children suffering at the hands of someone who should have been their safe space.

I’m doing it because it’s everywhere, in all classes and cultures; because no matter if we close the gender pay gap and representation quotas are filled and there’s universal, free childcare and well-paid parental leave, this painful injustice remains a fundamental, ever-present threat. And as I write that, I realise that maybe I was wrong; of course this is personal for me.

I’m doing this because frankly, I’ve been feeling quite powerless in my politics recently – and, honestly, what else can I do?

This is one thing I can do. It’s basic and maybe not a huge deal to some, but it’s putting my feet where my heart is, for the lack of a better term. I can get the runners on, put one foot in front of the other, then do it again, and again, and again. It’s a show of commitment, if nothing else. And when the tiredness kicks in, I think of those headlines and use the rage.

Grief at a time of Advent

It is the first of Advent and a procession of light and song fills the room. I hold the hands of my babies, almost too old for this now, reluctant to sit still on the floor of a dark room for what seems like an odd sort of slightly underwhelming concert – but I insist. I know all the songs; I’ll never forget them. Not after years and years of rehearsals starting every August and continuing all the way through autumn leaves and dark afternoons, culminating in this very experience: me as a child, then a teenager, dressed in a white gown, clutching a candle (not too close to your face or you’ll faint), performing for parents, for nursing homes, for corporate functions to celebrate Lucia – the bearer of light. Every melancholic melody takes me back, each debated syncopation and ‘s’ held too long, and it’s strangely bittersweet – isn’t it?

There’s a new Advent countdown candle this year. Instead of the numbers one through 24, printed vertically across the candle are the names of the 24 women who were murdered in Sweden last year, most of them by men they knew.

It is the day before the second of Advent and a video call comes in from IKEA: What do you want? Oh, I want it all: the gingerbread biscuit dough, the glögg, the coffee, the gingerbread-flavoured Dumle, the pickled gherkins and the Christmas cola. I don’t even like fizzy drinks, but when you put it on the table it will all be right – a perfect Swedish Christmas, like the tradition says, like it always was, won’t it?

Someone mentions in passing the girl who was raped in a restaurant toilet for five hours straight and I don’t hear where the conversation goes next or what anyone really knows about this event because that image, the girl, five hours, it makes my bones hurt and I can’t hear anything anymore, but the ache fills every cell of my body until it all overflows and I can’t stop crying and my head hurts.

It is the second of Advent and Agnetha Fältskog is singing about Christmas mice with her daughter, who’s really too young to be singing on an album, but that’s how the perfectly Swedish Christmas is done right, and so I insist. It’s a tradition at this stage: this is what we listen to for the annual gingerbread baking session, and it’s a bit silly but I get to decide, because that’s what I did with her for the annual gingerbread baking session all throughout our childhood – and now they’re part of it, sort of, aren’t they?

It’s the second of Advent and today’s name on the candle is Dana.

It is the eve of the third of Advent and Lankum sing:

“When the young people dance
They do not dance forever
It is written in sand
With the softest of feathers
It is not writ in stone
Like the walls of the chapel
And soon it is gone
Like the soft winters at home”

I try to imagine her there, in the audience with us, and I realise that I can’t. I don’t know what her body feels like now, what her presence in 2022 would be. If she was there – if she were here – would we put our arms around each other, like we did the last time I saw her on the first of Advent 2006? I don’t know who she would be now. She doesn’t know who I’ve become.

A pandemic happens and the impossible is suddenly possible. Systems we’ve always been told are untouchable, run flawlessly by the invisible hand of the market, are touched and controlled and stopped. People’s freedoms are restricted, just like that – not without a fight, but it happens. For a period of time, the world stops. Offices close. Schools close. Pubs close. Even sport, games, matches grind to a halt. (What’s going on behind closed doors, we know now, never stopped – an invisible hand of another kind, but equally untouchable.) And now we’re back, the magical market doing its thing, because you can’t just stop life, stop businesses and capitalism from doing their thing just because women die, can you? Five hours.

It is the third of Advent and she’s been gone for 16 years. Every year, it hits me by surprise, the grief, but now it all suddenly makes sense. Approaching the tenth anniversary of her death, I wrote:

“That’s the funny thing about emigrating: as you move away from those you love, escape the things that annoy you, and run away from all that which you can’t quite put your finger on but which gets under your skin, you also leave behind all the places and smells and memories that would otherwise remind you of your past. Along with the chance to reinvent yourself comes a life without all those people who know who you were at 15. At the same time, grief goes into hibernation and you never know when it might strike.”

Now I know when it strikes. It strikes when the smells and the memories come out of hibernation. It strikes when, through melancholic melodies and tireless choir traditions, you travel back in time to when she was alive, and you’re reminded that she only exists in past tense. It strikes when you buy all the things for the perfect Christmas and it hits you that something’s always missing. It strikes when you share the memory of her with her nephews, because your memories are all they’ll ever get. You can joke all you want about emigrants pathetically insisting on attempting to recreate a past that no longer exists. But it’s when I relive that past that the hole shaped like her is suddenly so painfully gaping and obvious.

He sends me a screen grab of a tweet: Grief often reveals itself as rage.

We booked a first-class flight to Sweden on the 12th of December 2006 – first-class, because that’s all that’s left when you book your flights the same day that you travel – and the first thing I heard when I woke up the following morning on a mattress on the floor of my parents’ sitting room and it dawned on me why I was there, was the sound of Sankta Lucia coming from the TV as the nation woke to celebrate an Italian saint.

Advent
noun /ˈædvent/
A coming into place, view, or being; arrival.
The fact of an event happening, an invention being made, or a person arriving.

This is what it is, grief at a time of Advent: rising and swelling at the most wonderful time of the year; the anniversary of the loss of my sister just a few days before the serene celebration of Lucia, the bearer of light; the darkest of days during the darkest of times in the northern hemisphere, as we light the stars and the fairy lights and I light a candle for you, baking like we did, singing like we did, at the most wonderful, aching time of the year.

On International Men’s Day, won’t someone think of the fathers?

It’s been a hard year. Healthcare staff have been under immense pressure. Businesses have struggled. Many have lost loved ones, some without the chance to say goodbye. Lonely people have been lonelier and vulnerable people more vulnerable. Anxiety levels are through the roof – but worst affected by increased stress caused by the pandemic are fathers in their 30s, according to a study by Aviva Life and Pensions that was published on Tuesday.

Some will look at the survey results and worry about the plight of these poor men. Personally, I’m a little surprised that we need a survey to conclude that increased parenting responsibilities tend to add to your stress levels, and that unpaid house and caring work on top of a paid job does indeed take its toll. All over Ireland, there are mothers who could tell you that.

My husband and I struggled, too, with the home-schooling, the limitations and overall pressures of that first lockdown and six months of two primary-school age children at home. In the greater scheme of things we were luckier than many, but it was hard – probably one of the hardest things we’ve been through as a couple in years. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder about all the research from my native Sweden, which has shown that couples are more equal and share the unpaid work more fairly after fathers spend a few months at home on parental leave. Maybe, amid all the awfulness of 2020, this would be an accidental but very welcome knock-on effect? It’s that age-old thing of not being able to unsee something once you’ve seen it. Once you’ve had a potty-training toddler on the toilet the moment you realise that you’re out of loo roll, you won’t forget to make a mental note the next time it’s close to running out.

Parents in Sweden are entitled to a total of 480 days, or 16 months, of parental leave paid at around 80% of their salary, and each parent has an exclusive right to 90 of those days. Anecdotally, friends of mine have acknowledged the difference it’s made to their relationships when their male partners have taken at least a few months of paternity leave: not only have the shared parental responsibilities become less of a burden and cause for arguments between them, but other household chores have subsequently been shared more equally as well. “It’s like he sees things now that he never saw before,” one friend told me. “I guess when I was always there, he never got a chance to really notice all these things. Now he’s got his own systems and his own ways of doing things at home.”

A report from last year, looking at all the Nordic countries, reveals as much: fathers enjoy far closer relationships with their children after extended parental leave and even feel like better fathers, and the relationship between the parents is improved and becomes more equal. But there’s more. The mothers’ careers see big benefits, including higher earnings. Their physical health improves, as does their mental wellbeing, and domestic violence becomes less prevalent. Interestingly, research has shown that the time when a couple first become parents is a good indication of how equal their relationship will be in the future; an equal share of parental leave in the first year of parenthood paves way for an equal future as partners and parents.

Things are different here in Ireland, not just in terms of policy, but culturally too. I’m not here to say that the Swedish model is perfect, nor that we should be copying it. It might be worth considering the lessons from the Nordics, though – and asking ourselves what that survey says about the reality of parenting in Ireland. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why fathers who are suddenly confined to their homes for months, along with their children, are suddenly experiencing unprecedented spikes in stress levels. Working from home while home-schooling, parenting and coping with the uncertainties of a global pandemic is stressful; it was stressful for almost everyone. But there’s a reason why it was more of a shock to the system for some than it was for others – possibly the same as the reason why our elected politicians (77.5% of whom are men) thought that it would be possible in the first place, simply assuming that parental responsibilities would magically sort themselves while we sit on Zoom meetings ignoring our children. Something tells me that they won’t rush into that kind of non-solution again. It’s that age-old thing of not being able to unsee something once you’ve seen it. There they are, in plain sight: the house chores and the responsibilities of running a home and raising a family. This International Men’s Day, I hope we can vow never to unsee them.

On how you can’t win as a feminist in a capitalist patriarchy – or, the right to choose not to play ball

I remember very clearly the first time a friend of mine, a self-professed feminist, mentioned in passing that she uses Botox. At first, I was just really surprised. Soon enough, I realised that I felt disappointed. Worse, I felt deceived. I’d thought we had an unspoken agreement, a feminist pact not to engage with the bullshit inventions of patriarchy. But she mentioned it with such poise that I quickly realised she knew something I didn’t, that I was the one being naïve. What was this slippery slope I’d missed? Were we going for labiaplasty next?

I have internal battles about shaving. I know that I’m modelling a lot of things for my sons, and if I shave my armpits, that’ll be what’s normal to them. Then I cut myself some slack, knowing that this, too, is a conversation starter. They too will face all sorts of external pressures, and talking about the things people do and why they do them is probably not a bad thing. I justify wearing make-up, if far from every day, but I’ve vowed not to discuss my weight or talk about body fat as a bad thing. I draw lines in sometimes arbitrary places, justifying them to myself as I go, knowing that perfection is a goal that would break me but that, as a feminist, I have to try.

My body, my choice. It’s a pertinent slogan, utterly non-negotiable. And yet, like I’ve argued before, choice is a funny word. I’m not alone in that shower, removing body hair; I’m enveloped by every single message I’ve ever been fed by the patriarchal capitalist world that raised me. I’m self-aware and self-critical. I know that, deep down, I wish I wouldn’t feel the need to – but I only have the energy for a certain amount of rebellion, a certain number of battles. Not all of them. Not this one. Not today.

Can you use Botox and call yourself a feminist? It’s a ridiculous question, of course. I’ve yet to meet a feminist whose every action is a feminist one, and I’d hate to live in a world where we set the bar that high for each other. We’re already scrutinised by patriarchy itself and put under immense pressure to conform to beauty norms, and then judged for trying too hard and called shallow when we care. Injecting a neurotoxic protein into your face is not a feminist thing to do – but a lot of feminists do it. Their body, their choice.

On the other hand, minimising the issue by framing it as one about choice alone is both naïve and counter-productive. We make choices about scalpels and needles because we’re forced into corners. Some are left in those corners without the means to choose. Others can afford to buy their way out but are left worse off than before, already paid less than their male equivalents before they even begin to splash out on beauty treatments to stay in the game. And those who come after us start younger and younger, playing catch-up in a culture where refusing to play ball comes at a huge cost.

The takeaway? I don’t believe in shame as a catalyst for change, but I think we need to dare to consider the connection between the individual and the structural. The question isn’t whether you can have Botox and call yourself a feminist. The question is how we can break the cycle – because if we don’t, more and more of us will feel the need to play along, inadvertently perpetuating the beauty norms that got us here in the first place.

Ultimately, it boils down to this: I don’t want the right to choose whether or not to inject Botox into my face. I don’t want to have to choose either to spend money and time on beauty rituals and treatments in order to just about scrape in as good enough, or to blatantly refuse to conform and end up an outcast. For as long as that’s the choice we’re given, we’re not all in this together.  

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***This post follows on from a Bits of Me podcast episode, in which I spoke to Gillian Roddie of @evidentiallyyou about body image, ageing and Botox. You can listen here!***

A waste of space of a man – on mammy memes and narratives of fatherhood

“Women are being edged out of the workforce,” says an article on The Lily that was doing the rounds at the beginning of the summer. In it, Aimee Rae Hannaford, a co-founder and chief executive of a Silicon Valley tech company, explains why she decided to dissolve the company and live off savings when the schools closed as a result of the pandemic, despite the fact that her son’s father was already on a career break at the time. “I can’t do it,” her husband had said. “I can’t watch him for this long.”

First, I rolled my eyes at this useless waste of space of a man. Then, I imagined the voices of Swedish feminists, asking who on earth would ever stay in a relationship with a guy like this, before going off to print T-shirts saying: DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND. And then, I could hear Irish feminists step in: there are plenty of men like this out there, they’d argue, and they don’t exactly come with big, fat warning signs – so stop putting the blame and responsibility on the women who end up having kids with them; put the responsibility back where it belongs.

They live in different worlds, of course, the Swedish and Irish feminists. It’s not all that easy to walk away from a relationship in Ireland when you have kids, with childcare costs being what they are and most of the school system built on the assumption that there’s a parent at home on at least a part-time basis. Sweden is the country, after all, where there was talk of parents being paid 70-80% of their wages in the eventuality that the schools would be closed in response to the pandemic, which in the end they weren’t. Then again, recent research has suggested that Swedish mothers are working the equivalent of 2.5 full-time jobs – so maybe it’s not the gender equal bliss it’s painted out to be, and maybe those DUMP YOUR BOYFRIEND T-shirts aren’t selling so well.

Around the same time as the circulation of said The Lily article, Erica Djossa shared a meme on Instagram with the headline “The invisible load of motherhood: Working from home during Covid”, featuring 12 illustrations of the different kinds of challenging situations so many of us have suddenly found ourselves in.

Like added stress as a result of reduced capacity. Like constantly switching roles throughout the day. Like managing your children’s distance learning and meeting their emotional needs. And the thing went viral, as relatable memes do, and I sat there feeling… well, almost as confused as I did when reading Hannaford’s story.

I am but anecdotal evidence. I don’t expect memes to revolve around me, nor do I think that feminism works like that: that’s not my experience, so it isn’t real. I know, I KNOW. And yet, it has to be said: in the first month of lockdown, 100% of the home-schooling in this house was done by my partner, the father of my children; he does the majority of the bedtime routines at the moment, and that constant switching of roles throughout the day has been a far greater problem for him than it has for me.

And I know that there are plenty of men out there like Aimee Rae Hannaford’s husband, plenty of useless fathers who leave their partners burning the candle at both ends, spreading themselves so thin they’re only just about still there; I know this, and I get that, to their thinly spread partners, this meme is about motherhood.

Technically speaking, though, none of the 12 things listed relate specifically to motherhood. It’s called parenting. Unless we’re willing to resort to the same kind of rhetoric that calls fathers being with their children babysitting, this is parenting. Anna Whitehouse, a.k.a. Mother Pukka, summarised the same points pretty well: “The majority of men don’t just spunk and leave. Even if not living with their partner, they’re dads, parents and they aren’t ‘babysitting’, they’re raising their spaghetti hoop-encrusted child, too. It’s hard for everyone.”

So can a mother not vent anymore, is that what I’m saying? Are we not allowed to name the reality of the unfair division of emotional labour and more, which there’s plenty of research to back up? Hell, is it not our responsibility as feminists to name it, to visibilise it, to point at all this unpaid work we’re doing and the reality of what it’s doing to our mental as well as physical health, not to mention our careers and pensions?

Of course we can, and of course we should. Maybe we need more of it. And while I wish that more mothers would take this meme and stick it on the fridge and talk to their partners about it, I recognise and respect that the mother who ended up with a waste of space of a man and is now at breaking point is not going to be having that conversation with him, nor is he going to listen – and she, more than anyone, needs to be allowed to vent.

But still, I can’t get escape the feeling that the labels matter. If, when we vent, we make parenting synonymous with mothering, we’re doing everyone – not least mothers – a huge disservice. Because the thing is, if we want to change the reality of that The Lily article, we need to change the idea of what fatherhood looks like. If we want to change the fact that women are walking away from their jobs in droves because it just makes no financial sense for their higher-earning partners to quit, we need to change the notion of ‘woman’ meaning mother meaning maternity leave and sick days while ‘man’ means none of those things, ever. And if we keep labelling all the things that relate to children’s needs as motherhood, that shift just ain’t gonna happen.

And do you know what else isn’t going to happen unless we stop this stereotyping nonsense? Mothers aren’t going to stop feeling that guilt, and they’re not going to stop prioritising everyone else’s work while their own work accumulates. I’m so tired of that image of the naturally selfless, self-erasing mother in the periphery that I think I might explode – but then, sorry, that wouldn’t be very motherly of me, would it? Memes like this aren’t just relieving fathers of the duties (and joys!) of parenthood; they’re perpetuating the notion of mothers as altogether self-effacing and naturally, ceaselessly caring for everyone but themselves.

Want to see another mammy meme that made me want to scream? This one:

Just stop it. Stop telling mothers to ‘just keep going’. Stop making motherhood a competition in self-destruction. This is not what motherhood was meant to be, this relentless keeping going, putting up with stuff and burning out, and it’s certainly not what I want to teach my sons that they should expect of women.

I’m hoping that the way we are with our two sons, the conversations we’re having with them and the choices we’ve made, will make them into sensitive, caring, responsible fathers if they ever end up having kids. But I can’t help but wonder what they’d feel if they saw these memes. I wonder about the fathers-to-be who grew up with useless, absent dads and are looking to break the cycle, what’ll they take from memes like these and the many hundreds if not thousands like them.

I wonder if it would kill us, in the mammy groups, if we edited the headlines of the memes to talk about ‘the invisible load of parenthood’ instead. And in the groups that have consciously labelled themselves for ‘parents’ as opposed to ‘mothers’, if we talked about all these things we do without immediately and explicitly excluding fathers from the conversation, would the guesstimated 1.3% of members in there who are in fact dads perhaps feel a tiny bit less out of place as they try to do all these things they’ve been raised to view as women’s work? Might they even add their daddy friends to the parenting groups?

I think we can do both. I think we can name the inequalities, point to the statistics and complain about the injustice of it all and still label parenting for what it is, so that there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind: this thing is for all of us, for mothers as well as fathers. If you have a kid and you’re not trying to meet their emotional needs, you’re doing it wrong, and you’re the waste of space. That doesn’t mean that those of us who are already doing it should stop, or that we should suffer in silence – but it means that we need to leave that door wide open.

Thoughts on sharing birth stories

I’ve seen a good few comments recently about how it’s great that we can talk more openly about our birthing experiences, but how we need to make sure to also emphasise that it isn’t always like this, that some people give birth in the dreamiest of ways and ‘bounce back’ in no time.

That’s true of course, and I get why the caveat is so often added – and yet I’m uncomfortable with the way in which it’s often framed.

Why?

Because we’re not the problem. I know most of the time, that’s not what’s implied, but hear me out. The stories we share of birth trauma, obstetric violence and difficult recoveries are real, and those of us who want to talk about our experiences must be allowed to do so without being made to feel as though the expectations of every future birthing person are our responsibility.

Approximately half of all those who give birth will develop pelvic organ prolapse. About 18% of those giving birth vaginally do serious damage to the anal sphincter. Incontinence is very common. The reality is that if a person fears birth and the various things that could possibly go wrong, the way to reassure her is not to silence those who have gone before her and pretend that she’s imagining the risks and it’s all in her head. That’s gaslighting. The way to reassure her is to make sure that the necessary support and care and services are there for her, should she need them. We’re not the problem – the persistently lacking funding, research, resources and care are.

There’s a tendency in many contexts to only really be receptive to the stories of those who’ve had difficult experiences and come out the other end – stories with happy endings. We’re not all that comfortable with brokenness, and we’re not very good at holding discomfort. But if we only share our experiences once we’ve healed and figured it all out, when we can breathe a sigh of relief and aren’t forced to scrutinise the health care system in general and maternity system in particular, then nothing’s ever going to change.

We need the discomfort, because that’s what’ll trigger action. We need to listen to those willing to speak out about their experiences – not in spite of what it might do to those hoping to give birth in the future, but because of how it might help them get the care they deserve.

There’s always a caveat, of course. Mine isn’t about those who choose to share their stories, but about those who don’t. Many of those of us who were part of the campaign to repeal the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution know that speaking out can be powerful and cathartic, but that it can also come at a high price and have a retraumatising effect.

This post is not, therefore, to say that talking is better or that anyone who’s had a particularly bad experience has a responsibility to share it – not at all. It’s to say that, when someone does, we all have a responsibility not to interject with caveats but to listen. Health care practitioners and legislators, more so than the rest of us, owe us that much.

This post was first shared on the Bits of Me podcast Instagram page.

Be grateful and stop moaning – or, why we need to talk about home-schooling

You know the professor whose kids gatecrashed his BBC interview, causing him to panic repeatedly, resulting in the whole thing going viral? Well there’s a spin-off version that shows what would’ve happened if the professor were a woman and a mother. You guessed it: she’s grand. She comforts, feeds and entertains her young children without for a second letting her focus slip or losing her train of thought - because mammies are brilliant at multi-tasking. Hilarious, eh? Dads are clueless and mothers are superheroes. Except I don’t find it hilarious; I find it infuriating.

I guess it’s hit a nerve during lockdown more than it would’ve before. The reality of video calls featuring home-schooling intervals, meltdown backdrops, accidental coffee spillage and the repeated need for cuddles and snacks is just that bit closer to home right now. But as thousands of households all over the country are grappling with this new normal, the narrative of maternal super powers isn’t helping. Let me tell you, I feel nothing like a superhero. I feel exhausted and sad and insufficient a lot of the time.

Last week, journalist Jennifer O’Connell wrote a piece arguing for staggered school openings before the summer holidays. (We could laugh at the notion of any such thing as ‘summer holidays’ at all at a time of social distancing and months-long school closures, but that’s for another post.) On Twitter and elsewhere, words like ‘eugenics’ and ‘mass murder’ were thrown around, because naturally, unless you’re willing to live under strict lockdown for a few years, until this thing has fully gone away or we’ve found a sustainable vaccination solution, that’s clearly what you’re advocating for. 

Having been mostly off Twitter for a long time until recently, I made the mistake of adding to the stream of voices suggesting that it’s not all that black and white and maybe she’s not in fact a psychopath, whereby a kind troll quickly checked my bio to make the connection with my Swedish roots, concluding that it’s unsurprising that I’m up for Nazi-style extinction strategies like those in place in my heartless home country. Most interesting, though, was the growing, confident choir of those pointing out that parents these days don’t think before they procreate, and they just want the schools to open because they hate spending time with their children. Case closed.

I committed a social media faux pas and deleted my tweets, not because I changed my mind but because trolls are annoying at the best of times, and during life under lockdown they can make a woman lose her shit. But no matter what strategy you believe in, the reality of home-schooling while working full-time is an impossible equation. You have to work until midnight and manage on extremely limited sleep, broken by strange nightmares and anxious children, and keep answering 2,987 questions an hour as your children figure out what the coronavirus is and whether famous people are always good at things and whether bumble bees like dog poo. You have to show which way to start to write a lower-case d and help pare pencils while you’re in the middle of creating yet another spreadsheet, and then you have to make snacks, endless snacks, after which you have to try to write while the Body Brothers are singing in the background. Then you have to try for the fourteenth time to add a new entry to a task on a buggy school app that needs refreshing every few minutes, while your children’s attention spans wither away and you accept, reluctantly but realistically, that you’re not going to get through anywhere near half the school work this week either. And when your kids can’t sleep at night because everything’s strange and they are human too, you have to be patient and try not to think about the emails you have to deal with before you call it a day, because children can sense anything, everything, and if you’re stressed and thinking about work they simply won’t go to sleep, ever.

Then, you have to cheer for childcare workers on the back of the government announcement of the new wage subsidy top-up scheme, because you agree that their job is one of the most important jobs in the world; and then you have to do the childcare, with no pay and in no time at all, while acknowledging and feeling urgently grateful for your own privilege, which is genuinely very real indeed. And the memes in your feed that said ‘Reach out – don’t suffer in silence!’ for World Mental Health Day only six months ago have been replaced by ‘Safe at home, not stuck at home’ and endless gratitude practices, because actually, unless you’re in intensive care or your parent is dying or you’re about to lose your home, soldiering on and suffering in silence would be preferable, thank you very much.

We’re at the end of week seven, and in our family, we’ve sort of found a groove, not because we’ve figured it out and are past the shock, but much thanks to the fact that one of my biggest clients from the past few years has gone out of business. Like most parents, I love being with my kids when I’m not actually meant to be doing something else and don’t have to prove to someone at a laptop with a shaky internet connection many miles away that I’m indeed still working and not in fact taking the piss just because a kid is having a concert in the background and another is on the toilet shouting for help to reach the loo roll. I really enjoy chatting to them about the SPHE curriculum strand of citizenship, and I love perfecting my goalie skills as I pretend to be Lindahl, the Swedish women’s national football squad’s goalkeeper, in an attempt to give them a tiny but important piece of Sweden as our Easter trip is cancelled. But that’s the thing: in this perfectly impossible mess, I’ve lost a huge chunk of work – and I’m the lucky one. 

My children are lucky, too, even though we’re never going to get through all the school work. There’s no getting away from the fact that the government doesn’t have a plan for the kids who are safer in school than at home, nor for those who were lagging behind before all this started and whose parents are simply unable to even begin to decipher the templates and curriculum notes teachers send them. Moreover, our elected representatives (I’m genuinely too tired to take the debate about the dubiousness of the word ‘elected’ in that context since the General Election we can all only just remember even though it was less than three months ago) also appear to be relying on some form of parenting wizardry, gifted, as if by an invisible hand, to parents the moment their children are born. Enter multi-tasking superhero mammy! She doesn’t need money or time to be everything a child needs at all times, even when she’s working an intense eight hours a day. Handy. And here’s me thinking I’m lucky; maybe I’m just flawed and stupid and a terrible mother and if I was only good enough I would’ve been able to do it all, work and teach and play and care and feed, for six months straight without losing focus or burning out.

It’s not, of course, working parents who are the greatest victims of this crisis. From healthcare workers to single parents and those immuno-compromised and scared shitless that they might catch this thing, there are endless people bearing the brunt of both financial and anxiety-related fears right now in a way that many parents like myself can’t even imagine. But this soldiering on we’ve become so keen on, this insistence that you’re not allowed to complain as long as you can still breathe, where will that get us? How can we build a sustainable, if temporary, new normal if we insist that our gratitude must silence us? I don’t accept that this is the best we can do. I won’t accept that the government gets to bang on about the importance of the childcare sector that’s been in freefall for years, and then send the kids home for months on end with no plan and no support. I refuse to pretend that it’s good enough. 

I can pause my social life and survive without hugging my friends. I can cancel my trip to Sweden and miss out on seeing my parents, cancel my gym membership and stop going to the playground. It’s hard, but needs must. But children’s lives can’t be paused. Their development continues one way or another, and it needs guidance and hand-holding; their bodies need movement and fresh air, and their need for love, attention and closeness is constant. As Philippa Perry says, it’s impossible for children to understand being with someone in a physical space and them not being available. What will six months of normalising that do to a child? What will six months of being forced to do that to a child do to a parent? 

Here’s a funny one. Have you read the Irish Constitution? There’s a widely debated article in there about the work within the home “without which the common good cannot be achieved”. Talk about us all being in this together – we’re bringing the kids home, caring for them and teaching them at home, all for the common good. Article 41.2 states that “mothers should not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home”. It may be sexist, but at least, for those of us lacking super powers, it’s there in black and white. Perhaps we’ll all leave our jobs and let Leo foot the bill. I’m not saying I’m in favour; I’m just saying this ain’t good enough. 

Starting the new decade right: on solidarity, ‘lagom’ and #GE2020

‘Thank you for your €4 donation to Women's Aid.’ I was sitting on the 11 bus going through town as the auto-response text message came through. There was an orange weather warning for strong winds, and the rain was coming down in sheets, sideways. Through the condensation on the bus windows, I could just about see the sleeping bags tucked away in the doorways in a desperate attempt to get shelter from the damp winter cold. ‘Like Charity,’ the text message encouraged, and I thought about the statistic that says that no other EU nation donates to charity more than Irish people do. 

As the 2010s are coming to an end, I worry about what that very statistic really means. ‘Irish people are so lovely!’ people exclaim after spending a few days here, and they’re right; Irish people are, generally and comparatively speaking, warm, exceptionally funny, and generous. But as we get closer to the next General Election, the Tory landslide over in the UK still reverberating in the air, I worry that the Irish are just too keen on giving out of their own pockets – at their own discretion and judgement – to ever give up on the low taxation and minimal financial redistribution that have caused the very problem their charity aims to fix. 

We’re leaving behind a decade characterised by natural disaster, war and frustratingly fruitless Brexit debates, a decade of Instagram influencers and British Royal wedding mania, of uprisings such as the Arab Spring and the #metoo movement. The 2010s were when the first iPad saw the light of day, when Lady Gaga walked down the red carpet in what quickly became a legendary meat dress, and when most of us developed a love-hate relationship with the absolute relentlessness of WhatsApp conversations. And, of course, it was the decade of the Nordic lifestyle trends.

I published my book, Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living, in 2017, attempting to unpack one of the many concepts that might begin to explain why the Nordic nations consistently rank as among the happiest, most trusting and well-balanced people in the world. I wrote about everything from generous parental leave and non-hierarchical company structures to a minimalist, functionalist design heritage and a penchant for making the most of leftovers. Journalists asked for endless listicles outlining the most ‘lagom’ ways to achieve a balanced life, and I obliged: I spoke about regular coffee breaks, time in nature, neighbourly friendliness – all reasonably bite-sized and manageable ways to simplify and connect, the ‘lagom’ way. 

No one seemed too interested in talking about financial redistribution and radically subsidised childcare, though – and why would they be? Journalists don’t write policy, after all, and there was no election on the horizon anyway. But there is now, and I can’t help but think of all those people who ask about Scandinavia when they hear where I’m from, wondering why on earth I choose to live here when I’m from what is practically utopia; I think about them and wonder if they’re going to vote for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael again. 

We’ve had a decade that started at the depths of a recession, continued with years of harsh austerity measures, and ended on a relative high with a semblance of hope after overwhelming majorities voted for marriage equality and a woman’s right to choose – so why is it that I don’t feel hopeful? People speak of winds of change, and yet, Ireland has never voted for any such thing in a General Election. For change from one socially conservative, fiscally liberal right-wing party to another, sure – like a tiring game of ping pong without a referee. And then some magazine reports about outstanding education in Finland, exceptionally family-friendly policies in Sweden and happier-than-ever children in Denmark, and people go, ‘How, just HOW do they do it?!’

I can’t stress this enough: it’s not because they light more candles per capita and drink more coffee than any other people in the world that Scandinavians are so happy – it’s because they’re safe and secure enough to even focus on that stuff. The secret to Nordic happiness is not really a secret: that these countries have been governed by left-leaning social democratic governments or coalitions almost uninterruptedly for a century – up until a couple of decades ago – is a well-known fact, and the policies people around the world appear jealous of are direct consequences of that. This is clearer than ever now that, in Sweden, a range of different, less left-leaning, more centrist and liberal coalitions have started to break the entire social security system down.

It’s hard to be happy when your landlord can do whatever he likes, when your private health insurance is a useless token and the hospitals have run out of trolleys in corridors to put sick people on. It’s hard to be happy when you can’t afford the childcare costs, but leaving your job means losing your home. And it’s really hard to be happy when you know that thousands of kids, thousands of fellow human beings, are homeless, and many more are stuck for years in substandard accommodation without proper kitchen and bathroom facilities. And hell yeah, I’m a fan of regular coffee breaks, but they’re not going to fix the mess that decades of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael rule have put us in.

This is what not voting for change looks like: I’m on a bus in what feels like the umpteenth storm this year, texting donations to a charity that helps survivors of domestic violence, looking out at doorways that are becoming campsites. Global warming, the safety of women and children, and the housing crisis are not the concerns nor the priorities of the people who run this country. If they were, we’d know by now. There’s no beating around the bush anymore: a vote for one of the two large establishment parties is a vote for homelessness, for a desperately crumbling health system, for complete inability to deal with the climate crisis in a meaningful, structural way, and for growing inequality between the rich and the poor. And if you ask me again about the secret to Nordic happiness, that’s the answer you’ll get.

‘So go back to your own country then, if it’s so great!’ I guess you know you’ve hit a nerve when the only retort is one infused with xenophobia. But I’m not saying that Sweden is perfect. What I’m saying is this: there’s a disconnect between the Irish generosity and the refusal to scrutinise old political habits, between a nation that wants to help those in need but that has never ever had a social security system worth its salt. The election is just one way to change that – just the tip of an iceberg, the beginning of a huge shift, and far from the solution to all our problems. But when I reflect on the decade that’s passed and think about the decade that’s to come, I yearn for that shift, for a little bit of self-scrutiny and heartfelt solidarity – for the compassion and community spirit that are the very heart of ‘lagom’: ‘alla ska med’. Everyone’s coming. No one left behind.

On mob rule, female rage, and the death of a Swedish star

I sang at a friend’s wedding a few years ago. The song was a Swedish classic, the main singer of which, Josefin Nilsson, died in 2016 after years of pain, anxiety, health complications and surgery following a violently abusive relationship back in the ‘90s – I just didn’t know that at the time.

Last week, to coincide with what should’ve been the singer’s 50th birthday, a documentary produced by the Swedish national broadcaster SVT was released. In it, her sister, best friend and band mate, along with a number of other illustrious Swedish musicians and actors, talk about her, her life and the fears the struggled with. The abuse she suffered is covered in detail, but the man who abused her – a famous Swedish actor – remains unnamed.

A couple of days after the documentary went online, a candle-lit vigil was held outside Dramaten, Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre, the state-funded place of work of the unnamed abuser, in memory of Josefin and in protest of her abuser’s continued employment at the theatre.

And soon enough, it was dubbed a lynch mob.

As a Swede abroad, initially without access to the documentary, I mostly followed the unravelling of all this through Instagram and the accounts of various more-or-less established feminist voices. And yes – they were angry. They were furious after watching the documentary and realising what Josefin had been through, knowing that her abuser had been convicted of assault, breach of restraining order and more – but released on probation. Their fury took many different expressions: some shared their own experiences of domestic abuse; others took it upon themselves to share, anonymously, the stories of those still too afraid to speak out; some wrote blog posts and opinion pieces, sharing statistics and calling for stricter sentencing; others complained to the theatre.

Some named the abuser – and thus came the verdict: lynch mob.

What does ‘lynch mob’ mean? ‘A lynch mob is an angry crowd of people who want to kill someone without a trial, because they believe that person has committed a crime,’ goes one definition. And sure enough, these people knew the famous actor had committed a crime – but no one was trying to kill him. ‘You can refer to a group of people as a lynch mob if they are very angry with someone because they believe that person has done something bad or wrong,’ goes another definition, and at this point, it starts to make sense.You can bet your life these people were very angry, and you can bet they thought he’d done something wrong. It’s no secret that he’d thrown Josefin into a wall with such force that the wall collapsed, and that he’d threatened to kill her, kicked her so badly that her spine started to rot and she required repeated surgery.

So that’s what a lynch mob is now: peaceful, justified anger?

Or perhaps the expression was merely used to invalidate the anger, to shut down the criticism and restore the peace?

***

I’ve been thinking a lot about rage lately. I carry it around – sometimes simmering and undefined, other times clear and, to me, entirely sensible. For many women, this rage has had a natural outlet in recent years thanks to the global #metoo movement, the abortion rights movement here in Ireland, and a number of other movements and platforms for feminist mobilisation and organising – but justified though that rage may seem, we are continuously told that we should tone it down. We’re coming across as just a bit hysterical.

Mind you, no one’s telling the famous, Swedish actor to calm down. He’s served his sentence. Moreover, he’s a respected artist.

Swedish feminist author and doctor of economics Nina Åkestam spoke about anger in a podcast interview I listened to recently, where she discussed the various ‘traps’ she thinks feminists tend to keep falling into these days, as presented in her recent book Feministfällan (‘The Feminist Trap’). In looking at what she defines as ‘the emotional trap’, she argues that while it’s understandable and natural to be angry, acting out the anger won’t get us anywhere – and feminism is nothing if we can’t successfully affect change. In conversation with sceptics, she explains, acting outraged about their ignorance is not exactly going to get them to let their guard down; you need to listen to people if you want them to listen to you, and you need to ask intelligent but kind questions if you really want them to start asking some questions for themselves.

There’s very little arguing with her logic here; I’ve yet to shout someone into identifying as a feminist. And still, a part of me wonders what kind of equality we’ll end up with if the methods that take us there require us to play by the rules of a system that insists on viewing us as two-dimensional characters to be managed and controlled, as people the real feelings of whom are scary and offensive. All around us, we see womanhood defined by caring kindness and soft selflessness, while men are depicted as hard, cold and, indeed, sometimes angry.

But isn’t rage a fundamentally feminine disposition in our modern, patriarchal world? I look at my friends, women past their mid-30s, trying to contain themselves as these progressively stubborn waves of frustration and ire arise inside. For most, it seems, this is increasingly what being a woman feels like: a negotiation with fury in a world that deifies the notion of the rational man. But rage as enveloped in womanhood isn’t aggressive or dangerous: we’re naming abusers and building human walls, not breaking people’s spines. This anger is dynamic and productive – not controlling, manipulative and murderous. ‘Lynch mob’ not only gets it wrong; it fundamentally underestimates it.

***

‘Why didn’t she leave him?’, we often hear in response to stories of domestic violence. ‘Why didn’t she just walk away?’

Of course, Josefin did walk away. She even dragged him through court – but she died anyway. It wasn’t his fists that became the final straw, but her pain and suffering started with him. The loss of her hair and her confidence, the morphine and confusion, the physical injuries and relentless fear – she never escaped them after his work was done. As for the actor, he was put centre stage at the country’s national theatre, celebrated as a gifted artist – complex and unpredictable, sure, but isn’t that what male artists are like?

Those who talk about a lynch mob say that we live in a democracy, and we are nothing unless we trust that democracy. By naming this abuser, they say, we cross that line into mob rule, a situation where no one is safe. He has served his sentence, they say – except of course in the end he didn’t.

I wonder what they think democracy means. I wonder how they think of the rule of law. If 20% of women are abused in their home by a partner at some point in their lifetime, and there is less than a 1% chance that the perpetrator is convicted – are we to sit and cry nicely in silence? And if public funds put abusers on stage, if we must be quiet to protect their future lives and careers, can the judicial system really claim to be just at all?

If we are serious about ending men’s violence against women, we have to stop pretending that the form of abuse he subjected her to can be brushed under the rug as a number of drunken mishaps. We have to stop getting hung up on the details of just how directly or indirectly the abuse contributed to her death, and we have to stop pretending that Josefin’s experience was one of a democratic society with a fair judicial system. It is true that his name is irrelevant. He is just one of many men, and he shouldn’t be in the spotlight here – but that’s exactly the point: he is, on Sweden’s much cherished national stage for theatre. Structuralist analysis in all its glory; if it’s so blind to individuals that you can all but murder a woman and still remain a national treasure, it is pointless.

They keep asking why she didn’t leave him. But where was she supposed to go? Into the arms of a society that cherished and protected him? Perhaps it’s time we start asking why we, as a society, don’t leave. Perhaps it’s time we start to turn our backs on abusers, kick them out of our offices, stop inviting them to our parties, tell them our theatres are not for them, and walk away.

How I cried my way to a free smear test

I started International Women’s Day by having a smear test. I guess insome twisted, far-fetched way, it is a form of self-care, after all.

In many ways, today was far from an ideal day for me to do this thing – not because it’s International Women’s Day, but because it’s my monthly deadline in work, a day I when I’m responsible for quality checking in excess of 120 pages of printed content, all while responding in a reasonably diplomatic way to more or less concerned emails from a number of other people invested in the content of said 120-plus pages. This monthly deadline, needless to say, is typically preceded by two or three equally full-on days, causing me to enter what one could refer to as print-deadline mode – a state that makes anyone who knows me run and hide. It is not, to be clear, the time for hanging around a GP surgery – but as you know if you’ve ever booked in for a smear, these things are best done at certain times of the month, and menstrual cycles don’t care about print deadlines.

This particular print deadline, as it happens, both my husband and my children had indeed run and hid, and I had a rare chance of an ever-so-slight lie-in – or I would’ve had, had it not been for this appointment to get a medical device similar to, but larger than, a garlic press shoved up my nether regions. I would’ve also had an entire evening to work on the aforementioned quality checking and maybe just chill with a bit of Netflix on my own for a while, had it not been for the fact that Virgin Media had just dropped off a new router, which apparently they do sometimes, causing the WiFi to go down and the smart TV with it – something I of course didn’t realise, because their service is so unreliable anyway, until after about an hour of phone tethering and desperately trying but failing to send huge files. This left me staring at the box with the new router, feeling like a bad, bad feminist, thinking that if I couldn’t get this thing working, then was it even International Women’s Day tomorrow at all? It was 10pm by the time I finally sat down, determined to watch something rather than going to bed, just for the hell of it and to celebrate my new status as good, self-sufficient feminist.

Back to the smear: in I went this morning, tired but armed with advice from my women’s health physiotherapist about the breathing I should be doing in advance of the procedure and the requests I should be making about the tools used and manners applied. To those who’ve had a smear test, this might sound a little excessive – but suffice to say I’ve had enough going on with my lady bits recently, and I wasn’t going to take the risk of causing further damage just to sample some tissue that would most likely end up getting lost on the way to the laboratory anyway.

I was brought in to a tiny room where a nurse took my details. “Say that again, sorry?” she said, staring confused at the screen. “Oh I’m sorry, you’re not actually due until the 16th, which is… oh that’s next Saturday! But you can just come back then, or if you want you can pay €50 and I’ll do it now?”

Take a week’s worth of stress, a dose of tiredness, nerves about the procedure itself, a bit of PMS and years’ worth of rage about the unacceptable state of our healthcare system, then add a few months of bad pelvic health news and a nurse asking me to come back during my period, after her colleague had specifically advised me not to book in for that particular time – and I lost it. I lost it, and I cried, and I knew it wasn’t her fault but it was the final straw: it was yet another piece of evidence of a broken system that fails women every day, one that failed women who are no longer with us, and their families, and every woman who has since lost faith in the system. It was the last tiny little poke that pushed me over the edge, and I was so angry I couldn’t even talk to her; I was angry about how I’d been dismissed the last time I’d been there, about how I’d been nervous for nothing, about the lie-in I didn’t get and the deep breathing I’d done in the waiting room – and I was raging over the absolute cheek of her to ask me for €50 when the smear test I’d had done three years previously might’ve never even had accurate results in the first place.

But just as I stood up and walked out, she said “Wait!” and she apologised and begged me to come back. “Let’s cheat the system. Sometimes you have to.”

The breathing was fine. The procedure was fine. It was all fine – bar the risk that the swab will be refused and I’ll have to go back for a repeat test in the summer – but I felt mortified. I had cried my way to a free smear test a week early, and it felt petty and unnecessary and deeply humiliating. “Oh, and if you don’t hear from us within three months, give me a call. These things have a tendency to go missing,” she said as I walked out the door.

Happy International Women’s Day, Mná na hÉireann.

Angry in company

The question was posed many times in the past few months: What will we do with all this time when we repeal? Rest, was one of the obvious answers from many: sleep for a week, rest for a month, take a year of just living. These were women who had spent every free moment talking and thinking about the campaign; mothers with ulcers and babies who didn’t sleep, who in spite of it all drove around the towns of Ireland distributing leaflets, recorded video tutorials and messaging workshops while minding sick children, spoke at events with babies in slings and hanging off their breasts; women who have been at this for decades, since before the 8th amendment was inserted in the first place; students who don’t yet have the right to vote but would rather fail their exams than wait another generation for a chance at bodily autonomy. When we repeal, we rest, they said – for a while at least.

But the announcement was not even out long enough for the tears of relief to have started to dry when the restlessness set in. Where next with this broken world?

Of course, a certain anti-choice spokesperson, who shall remain nameless lest his ego explodes, had us diagnosed within hours. “Your unhappiness will never be fixed by a vote, folks,” he tweeted. “The problem is the 8th amendment was never what was making you angry in the first place. It’s not the schools or the hospitals, or the ban on euthanasia either. No social reform is going to make you people happy. You’re all looking in the wrong place.”

The man’s got a point. I mean, he’s wrong in a million different ways that he won’t even begin to understand, but he’s right: I was angry long before I even knew what the 8th amendment was. Generally speaking, ironically, I’ve always been a reasonably happy, well-grounded person – serious, yes, but happy. Yet I suppose you could say that I have a propensity for anger. It seeks me out, or I grab it with both hands the moment it shows its heated face: on the streets of Chennai in India, where children’s limbs had been amputated to make them more profitable as beggars; when men who admit in court to having sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent (that’s not sex, by the way – it’s the definition of rape, folks) walk free because no one is willing to step up and say that yes, it’s absolutely definitely certain beyond doubt that they are guilty; when single mothers tell me why they’ve given up even trying to get maintenance off their children’s fathers, and people in comment sections on news websites spew vile hatred of these supposed societal leeches; when fellow Swedes put on an impressive show of historical amnesia with regards to the importance of financial redistribution and a solid welfare state for their own cosy quality of life, and suggest that maybe we can’t afford to welcome more refugees after all. I’m a ticking anger bomb watching the world, constantly waiting to go off, continuously magically relit. The nameless anti-choicer gets this.

What he doesn’t get is that, to people like us, there’s no looking in the wrong place. We may have been focused on repeal quite blindly for some time now; that’s how campaigning works. But we don’t suffer from tunnel vision – far from it. Alongside knee-jerk responses like ‘rest’ to that post-repeal question was a list longer than my arm of other places to look: direct provision, housing, homelessness, education equality, separation of church and state – you name it, we saw it. You see, our vision is three-dimensional, and we will attack a flawed society from every angle. Do we see problems everywhere or do we see potential for improvement? Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Anger can be fiercely productive; it doesn’t have to be a negative force.

I’ve come to realise that activists have a lot in common with artists: an affliction of seeing potential everywhere, of not only being unable to ignore the suffering, but knowing that there is another way – and being unable to live with that knowledge without fighting for that better place. We don’t rest while women and children and migrants and queers and homeless people suffer.

I said the day after our victory that it felt like we’d been to war. That we’d won, and I felt immensely grateful and relieved – but we were a wounded army, and we should never have had to go to war in the first place. Roe McDermott hit the nail on the head in the Irish Times when she explained why she wasn’t feeling joy after the referendum, drawing parallels to the #MeToo movement and the fact that abuse victims don’t suddenly heal overnight and celebrate when the abuse stops; instead, “we demand that they acknowledge the depth of the pain that they have inflicted, that they examine the attitudes and misogyny that led them to feel like they had the right to abuse others, that they surrender some of the power that enabled them to do so”.

As women, especially radical women, we can’t win. If we celebrate, we are insensitive, indecent, repulsive and unpleasant. Yet if we’re not happy, a nameless, high-profile anti-choicer calls us “the angriest, craziest people in Ireland”. He wrote: “The movement you are in won’t leave you fulfilled and happy. It will just leave you all angry in company. […] A momentary feeling of togetherness.”

You know, I celebrated. I cried and I danced and I hugged and I drank – the most exhausted, bewildered sort of celebration I’ve ever engaged in – and I felt all those complex, conflicting emotions: the elation and relief, and the rage and hurt over the fact that those attitudes were there in the first place, that much of that entitlement still lingers and will linger for a long time. And the comedown was rough as hell, but this much I know: the togetherness was anything but momentary. It had carried me for months; it had taught me who I am and shown me who I want to be. Of all the lenses through which to experience life, I’d take angry in company any day.

Whom do you trust?

We’ve heard it all before: a man brutally murders a woman, and everyone’s in shock. Perhaps after the debate that followed the reporting of the murder of Clodagh Hawe and her three sons by her husband a couple of years ago, journalists and editors are thinking twice, even thrice before publishing praise of Mark Hennessy, the man now found to have strangled the young Jastine Valdez to death in Wicklow. But no editor can make the words of locals go away, describing him as a “quiet man”, a “normal fellow”, “a normal dad” from “a well-respected family”.

Of course he wasn’t all that normal. Married with kids, sure – but convicted of abusive behaviour and due in court for drink driving, crashing into vehicles and leaving the scene. The neighbours did describe him as a “weirdo”, after all.

And still, everyone’s in shock. That an abusive weirdo who hits and runs would murder a young woman in the context of a small country where ten women are murdered by men every year and 42% of women experience sexual violence, is apparently unthinkable. Perhaps it doesn’t matter whether he was normal or an oddball – that a man, any man, among us would brutally murder a woman is just shocking, full stop.

In a week when we are taking to the polling stations to decide whether we trust women to make sound decisions about their families or not, this feels poignant. The NO side keeps talking about ‘social abortions’, ‘abortion on demand’ and abortion ‘for no reason at all’, while the YES side insists that many reasons are in fact pretty good, important reasons – but even those of us who believe it barely dare to say out loud that maybe women should just be trusted to decide themselves which reasons are good enough and which aren’t. Because that would just be a bonkers notion, wouldn’t it – trusting women, no rules. Giving them rights, not regulations.

The evidence shows that it makes sense: you can trust women to make their own reproductive decisions. No floodgates tend to open, and they don’t tend to go off having a load of abortions – that’s what the statistics say. They still have kids, families still prosper, despite the lack of a constitutional amendment forcing them to. It just seems unlikely, shocking almost. Trusting a man is easier, somehow – even when the evidence shows he’s a murderer.

How many family men must go rogue for it to become a trope? How long must we behave for the trope of the selfish, loose woman to go away? When a man like Hennessy all but murders a woman, raping her and leaving her pregnant, then whom do we trust? Then an abusive weirdo continues to walk among us, and she becomes the criminal.

If the polls are right, we might just win it. Not unregulated access – but some access. A little bit of trust, within reason. Yet it’s looking close enough still that it’s clear that a huge amount of voters in Ireland are genuinely convinced that women would have abortions ‘for no reason’ if you only let them. Enough people think that women’s judgement is so poor that they don’t even realise they’re ready and able for pregnancy, birth and motherhood, so clouded that we need to be forcibly kept pregnant in order to demonstrate the value of motherhood. Then we’ll live happily ever after – or maybe not, but at least our babies will be born.

That’s reasonable to a huge number of Irish voters. Sensible, normal – not shocking in the slightest. With the week that’s in it, I have to admit that’s pretty hard to stomach.

Change or no change - let's talk about fears

I want to talk to you about your fears.

I know you’re torn. I know you agree that there are exceptional circumstances that make abortion acceptable – circumstances where you’re willing to concede, despite the fact that your gut tells you it’s wrong. I know that you feel that abortion should be a last resort, and you fear that the government’s proposed legislation fails to acknowledge that.

I won’t judge you. You’re not alone.

But what if I was to tell you that maybe you don’t need to feel so torn?

Hear me out – respectfully, non-judgementally. Because I actually do think there’s a middle ground here.

I think that you agree with abortion in cases of rape. Do you? Do you empathise with the girl who’s been violated so fundamentally, who is just about coping on her own, let alone with a child?

A yes vote is the only way to ensure that those pregnant as a result of rape can access abortion care, should they need and choose to seek it. No future parliamentary bills or negotiations will ever result in legislation that allows for termination in the cases of rape, if we vote to keep the 8th amentment – because any such legislation would be unconstitutional.

The need to report rape and relive the experience of it in order to qualify for a termination retraumatises women and girls who are already in an extremely distressing situation. Legal processes are time-consuming, and proving rape within the timeframe required to go ahead with a termination before the pregnancy progresses too far is pretty much impossible. Even if it was possible, such a process would be highly illadvised as it would lead to later abortions – something nobody wants.

The only way to care for rape victims who need abortion care is by providing access without the need to disclose the reason in the early weeks of pregnancy. This isn’t possible as long as the 8th amendment remains in place, and there’s no way around that.

I think perhaps you also agree with terminations in the cases of fatal foetal abnormalities. Do you? Do you feel the pain of the parents who learn that their very much wanted and longed-for baby won’t survive outside the womb?Unfortunately, as things stand, these parents face no other option than to walk around waiting for their baby to die, or plan a costly trip abroad for a termination. This is because a pregnancy of this kind – while sometimes a significant threat to the mother’s health sooner or later – doesn’t pose an immediate threat to the pregnant person’s life, and as such the constitution won’t allow a termination.

This won’t change further down the line with a different vote or another proposal. As long as the 8th amendment remains in the constitution, doctors’ hands remain tied. The only way to provide the medical care needed to those who face a fatal foetal abnormality and decide that they cannot continue with the pregnancy is by repealing the 8th amendment, and there’s no way around that.

I know that you feel that this is unfair, that you’re faced with a choice between two evils. I understand that you want to show compassion with those who are suffering, but you feel like the government has put you in the impossible position of having to vote for something you fundamentally disagree with if you want to do so. And I know that people who feel that way are inclined to err on the side of caution and vote to defend the status quo.

Why can’t they just offer you the middle ground?

Because that’s not how the constitution works, and this referendum is about the constitution.

The only thing you are voting on on the 25th of May is whether the 8th amendment should be removed or not. The government has put forward proposed legislation, which may be enacted should the yes vote win – but the words ‘may be’ are crucial.

Let’s say that the referendum goes through. Let’s say that the 8th is repealed. Immediately following its removal from the constitution, abortion will still be illegal in Ireland and punishable with 14 years in prison, because of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act. Nobody knows or can say what will happen after that.

If the current government stays in power, their proposed legislation could likely be enacted, ensuring that victims of rape are appropriately cared for. But if the yes side wins by a very small majority, it’s possible that the government might interpret the demand for change as minor and opt to legislate for termination only in very exceptional circumstances. If a general election takes place before legislation is enacted, change might take a very, very long time.

But what if the proposed legislation does become reality – how would you live with that? Maybe you’d focus on the fact that the Joint Oireachtas Committee also recommended that free contraception and improved sex education be provided, as there is an obvious link between the provision of these and lower rates of crisis pregnancies. In other words, rather than allowing them to take place abroad, you might have actually contributed to minimising the number of abortions needed. Surely that can only be a good thing?

You might also try to be pragmatic and focus the reality that those who need an abortion will seek one out, if unsafely or at huge personal expense – so while you can’t prevent abortions from happening, you can allow them to happen in a dignified and safe way for those who feel that they have absolutely no other option. The type of abortion you fear is already happening, and there is nothing you can do about that; the type of suffering you’d like to help minimise, however, you have a very real chance to do something about.

It is also worth mentioning, since the no campaign likes to highlight that the right advice or support can help a woman change her mind before she has the time to get on that plane, that the proposed legislation requires that 72 hours pass between an initial consultation with a GP and the termination being carried out. There will be time for reflection, and there will be time for someone in a desperate situation to ask for help and support, knowing that there are people around her who won’t blame and shame her. I’m not sure that the same can be said for someone who books expensive flights in secret, feeling judged by their own community and maybe even family.

We only know one thing for sure: nothing can change as long as the 8th amendment stays put. I ask you to consider whether you’re happy with the current situation; whether you think it’s right that rape victims have to travel for care; whether you are happy to send parents whose babies have been diagnosed with a fatal condition overseas, away from the support of their families, often having to leave their babies behind. This is what a no vote means. If you want any of this to change, you have to vote yes.

I ask you also to think of me, a mother of two, and to think of my sons and my husband. I beg you to consider whether you think it’s right that a potential pregnancy might risk them losing their mother and wife, due to a constitutional amendment that countless obstetricians and other medical professionals have said is unclear, unworkable and outright dangerous.

I ask you to think of the constitution for now, about change or no change, not the heartstring-pulling arguments of those who want you to fear abortion on demand. We can work on the demand in countless ways, and we can discuss and change statute legislation over and over. But a no is a no, and we know exactly what it looks like. We won’t get another chance to repeal the 8th and affect change for compassion with those who need it most for a very long time.

Love thy neighbour

She’s a lovely woman. She often stops by to chat when she’s on her way somewhere and my two sons are playing in the front garden. She tells me they’re adorable, such a gift. And she’s right – they are a gift. She means it in a slightly different way to how I see it, of course; she thinks of them as gifts from God. But we agree that they’re a blessing, if in a non-religious sense for me.

When we first moved in, she asked if we were renting or had bought. She wanted to know if we were truly settling, I guess. She told us she’d grown up around the corner, one of 11 siblings. They’re tiny houses, even tinier back then. Eleven of them! That would’ve been cosy – at best. And she loves the area, loves seeing new families settle and make it their home.

And so today she came to my door and called me a murderer. She said there was a special place in hell, waiting for me. And I knew she wasn’t trying to hurt me; her intent was someplace else altogether, wrapped up in gory images of babies branded as aborted foetuses that in reality never looked that plump and fully-formed, in notions of motherhood as holy and children as gifts from God. I don’t know why I even opened the door. This was a no-win situation.

Nor do I know why I asked that we remain respectful to each other and leave it be, our ‘Yes’ sign proudly on display in the window. Of course she couldn’t respect a baby murderer. Of course she wouldn’t hear me when I said I lost a baby, I lost him. Those images don’t wash away that easily – I get that. And I wasn’t trying to convince her, I wasn’t trying to win her over. I didn’t want to lecture her, nor to make her feel uncomfortable or upset. So I stood on my doorstep, a lovely old neighbour repeatedly accusing me of being a murderer.

And yes, we’d bought – we were hoping to settle here.

What has the Catholic church done to us as a society? What has it done if we can no longer talk to each other, listen and disagree, hold the hurt and pain and still live side by side without calling each other names? How did the teaching of loving thy neighbour so utterly fade away?

I grew up in a religious family – not a religious family like the one she came from, and not of that same religion, but one where faith was present, however unorthodoxly. And in everything I saw, in everything I was taught, there was one sentiment that overpowered them all, an omnipresent message that came to define my values and politics long after I left the church: we all have intrinsic value, and we all deserve to be loved and respected and treated as equals, regardless of where we come from and what we look like and how we choose to live.

For me, that’s what this referendum is all about. It is about the right of that woman whose baby is dying inside her to be surrounded by her family and non-judgemental medical professionals when she grieves. It is about the right of a woman whose health – mental or physical – is at stake to be treated with respect, whatever decision she makes when she discovers that she is pregnant. It is about the right of a woman in an abusive relationship to be trusted when she says that she is not safe if pregnant, and of a mother of four whose contraception fails to be met with compassion and support when she realises that there is only one decision her finances and family are able for. It is about the right of a student who always wanted to be a mother to give in to the feeling that it couldn’t possibly come at a worse time, that it just can’t happen right now – and to own that decision, whether she ends up regretting it or not.

This referendum is not just about abortion, but about those core values we as societies and communities owe each other to uphold, even when the posters we display in our windows don’t match. In some ways it’s not about abortion at all, because abortion is a fact of life and always has been; but it is about how we deal with it and how we treat those who need it – with trust and compassion, however reluctant, or with promises of a special place in hell.

She’s a lovely woman, and I don’t need her to agree with me to think that about her. I can see beyond the God that promotes silence and shame and sweeping secrets under the rug and crying behind closed doors, see that beyond that, we share a faith in defending what we believe is right. But this referendum isn’t going away, and one of us is going to be at the losing end.

It won’t be easy, but I’m hoping that – with time – we’ll be able to smile at each other in the street and she’ll find it in her heart to compliment my children again and ask how we’re finding the neighbourhood. Because I can accept and respect differences of faith and conviction, even reach above and around them, celebrate them – but I can’t let you walk up to my door, call me a murderer and yet claim to ‘love them both’.

Toy guns and toxic masculinity

Pow pow! I struggle to get the boys, just gone three and five, to stay in their seats. The boy behind them on the bus has a toy gun and is pretending to shoot his sister, then aiming the weapon at strangers in the street outside. Pow pow pow!

We never allowed our lads to play with guns. They build weapons of Lego, chew their toast into what just about resembles a pistol, and they use their hands; I can’t control their imagination, nor would I want to. But buying plastic imitations of the tools of war, intended to kill – that’s where I draw a big, fat line.

I know I’m in the minority here, and even in literature the verdict is still out on the benefits and dangers of playing with guns. Kids make sense of the world through play; how are they supposed to make sense of war if they can’t pretend to be killing each other?

Raising sons to be emotionally mature, sensitive, kind and strong in the deep, gentle sense is a challenge to say the least, but as a parent of two boys I see it as one of my most important tasks. When we talk about toxic masculinity, some men get defensive and protest: the state of modern society is not their fault. And I agree – to an extent, at least. We’re all products of the society we grow up in. Put a toy gun in the hands of your three-year-old, and you can’t be surprised when they turn to violence in their teens or struggle to solve problems by talking things through.

My sons aren’t dealing with the ethical implications of war; they’re not trying to make sense of their experience of it, because they have none. Their desire to play with guns doesn’t come from within. I’m pretty sure that the first time they ever saw a gun was in a toy shop – and they saw plenty of them there: aisles upon aisles of ways to be a man, most of them consisting of dark colours, toughness and ways to attack and defend. The superheroes they’re presented with are not kind and sensitive; they don’t outsmart their enemies and relate to people’s emotions. They judge and attack – BAM.

Boys will be boys, I hear the comments echo. They need loose-fitting clothes for running and climbing, durable toys that don’t break when they smash them off the walls. And they need guns to make sense of the world, to channel those inner urges. It’s almost as if we’re afraid to talk to them about respect. You’d nearly think we view their inner urges as uncontrollable, their desires as entitlements.

I’m not trying to make my sons into one thing or another – I’m not trying to take their personalities away or make them less like boys, whatever that means. I want them to be happy, and I want them to be kind, and they can be those two things any way they wish. I’m not the one who’s trying to shove my kids into ready-made moulds here; the toy shop aisles, on the other hand, don’t leave much room for improvisation. Be hard or be a girl, the latter of which is the worst insult imaginable.

Kids make sense of the world through play. I wonder how the kids who have come here from war-stricken countries make sense of this world when their classmates get the guns out. And I wonder how my sons will feel in moments of weakness, when their inner superhero is all but silent and they realise that they’ve never quite made sense of difficult emotions and learnt to talk things through. Is that when they reach for the guns?

I’m not worried that my kids are going to go out and kill people. I’m not worried that they’re going to grow up to start wars – not literally speaking. But I’m worried about a generation, many generations, of boys who become men without having ever been taught how to hold their weakness, how to ask for help and check in with their friends – genuinely – to see how they’re feeling. I’m worried about a society where the only way to be a man is one of physicality, audacity and aggression.

Look at the world around you. Look at Weinstein, and look at Trump. I wonder what they played with as young boys.

No woman is an island

“Happiness is within,” they say. Within you, within that cup of herbal tea and a gratitude journal and deep, deep breaths. You should try yoga. We’ll all have our 15 minutes of fame – if we just find that strength within. We’ll all be somebody, more than just selfless mothers – we’ll make our lives into works of art, copyrighted, patented, and with no one to thank but ourselves.

One for the gratitude journal: we’re safe from floods and earthquakes. But calm as the waters may be, the 8th ships us across the Irish Sea, sweeping secret upon secret under a rug woven of intricate age-old lies. “I’m drowning in post-natal depression,” says one, as another numbs guilt with a bottle of Tesco’s Finest. A third perfects the art of covering bruises with concealer and a new fringe, while 12 a day are exiled. Shame – our greatest export.

“Happiness is within,” so the self-help books say. But what is self-help if the self needs help, reaching out and away for respite, for togetherness? Sure happiness must be within when the outside and beyond is cold and lonely, bills unpaid and children hungry, wombs a battlefield and homes hollow as ghosts. You must find strength within to get up early in the morning, pay your taxes, look after your own, never complain – good man. When there’s no such thing as society and Thatcher rests in peace, take a deep breath, try yoga. Down by the Central Bank, placards of blood and flesh make religious icons of grotesque purity, flaunted by big, strong men who know nothing of hormonal battlefields but are certain that a heartbeat is a heartbeat because God tells us so. Four of them, maybe five, the placards huge like altarpieces. Just a couple of yards away is a woman, alone, red tape across her mouth and a small hand-written sign asking the big, strong men to mind their own battlefields. Then a stranger walks up, joins in silence, grabs her hand. Up by the Dáil, another man with a sign – on strike for that same heartbeat, demonstrating his right to refuse to eat so that others can be force-fed. Up walk 25 handmaids, all dressed in red, a long line of white bonnets. Solidarity in silence. Yes, there is such a thing as society. There’s a soup kitchen just around the corner, serving mugs full of steaming hot care and smiles, and three lads on Facebook offering free grass-cutting services and hugs to old, disabled, sick people and single parents. Hope in a social media post.

I don’t think happiness is within, but in between, in what holds us together – in showing up and grabbing someone’s hand. I think it is in marching side by side, 20-30-50-thousand, unapologetically through the streets that are our own, refusing to throw another woman under the bus and in the sea, turning the streets of Dublin from battlefields into a weft of compassion and solidarity. I think hope is in drinking that tea together, taking a deep, deep breath and listening to each other – disagreeing, maybe, but respectfully, without judgement. Marching, stronger together, until the ideas of ‘mind your own business’ and self-realisation for 15 minutes of fame no longer shape our policies and our dreams and our health; until we refuse to swallow our pride along with guilt and shame and tears, and admit that some days giving up feels easier than leaning in and reaching for what was once a seed of happiness within; until we can say out loud that today it hurts, and I need help. It’s not your fault.

This, to me, is self-care: surrounding myself with other people who care, mothers who haven’t slept in years but spend every free minute writing down facts and engaging in debates and finding pills for those who need them; women who have been abused and ignored, who are scared and hurting but won’t stop talking; and those born with all the luck and privilege in the world, who would give it all up in a flash if it meant those born without could be heard. No man is an island. No woman is an island. When I despair, I put my faith in community and I seek out these warriors. And then, together, we cry the world better.

To the woman who told me all my child needed was a hug

You came into our lives at about 8.10am this morning. I was standing outside my house, my youngest kid kitted out and ready to go, his older brother screaming hysterically at the top of his lungs, quite possibly waking every single person in Drumcondra our side of Griffith Park. See, he didn’t want to go to school by scooter. “Awww,” you said, tilted your head and looked at my son, and I ignored you.

“Give him a hug,” you said then, with a tone that struck the perfect balance between empathy and demand. If my morning had started off in a bad way, it shot up on the crappy-morning metre at this exact moment, but I kept ignoring you. You couldn’t know that I’d had no more than four hours of very broken sleep, that I had a splitting head ache and was running out of patience as well as hugs.

Then you walked through the gate, into our garden, right up beside me to where my child was now hiding behind my legs from the strange woman suddenly practically in our home, repeating your “awwww”, and I couldn’t ignore you anymore. “I think I’d better deal with this myself – thanks,” I said, softly, and it suddenly became clear that you were not going to listen to me. “But the child needs a hug,” you repeated.

“You need to let me deal with this myself,” I said again, colder this time, possibly even raising a hand slightly. “Please leave now.” I was getting upset but holding it together. You were definitely crossing a line or five, but you couldn’t know that he’d had plenty of hugs and the clock was ticking and we’d reasoned it out and gone through options and choices, and I was desperate.

Then you turned around, returned to the path, stood there and looked at me: “It’s very clear he doesn’t want to go wherever he is going.” I don’t know what you thought I would do with this information; child doesn’t want to go to school, so child stays at home – was that your thinking? But the thing is, Sherlock, that the child did want to go to school, and he was starting to miss out. It was the scooter he didn’t want, and a long list of other things that had already happened and I could no longer do anything about, such as me having closed the door, us having had no ham for his lunch box, and a million other things that probably had very little to do with scooters and doors and ham but became really very important and hysteria-inducing at this very moment in time.

“I’ve worked with children for years, it’s very clear that…” and that’s when I lost it. See, I’m a great parent of other people’s children too. I know how to prevent their meltdowns, how to get them to eat what’s on their plate and maybe even sleep through the night. I know how to help them snap out of hysterical meltdowns and distract them through a long walk they don’t want to take. Perspective is a beautiful thing, but it requires exactly that – perspective; it can’t be passed down in a moment of desperation.

I was angry, shaking, and could no longer stop the tears. I told you that this isn’t how it works; you don’t get to go around giving unsolicited advice to parents in stressful situations, especially when they explicitly ask you to leave them alone. I told you that you didn’t know a thing about my morning, how long this had been going on, how many hugs I’d already tried and how we got to a situation where we were standing outside of our house waking the entire neighbourhood. And I put on quite the show. I had to, because you didn’t take a hint, nor did you get it the first few times I told you to take your unsolicited advice and shove it somewhere it hurts, far away from my sight.

So how did we get to a situation where we were standing outside of our house waking the entire neighbourhood? Why was the scooter so important, why had I run out of hugs, how did my son get so tired and overwhelmed that the only way he could communicate with me was through a meltdown over a scooter, and why, when things went from bad to worse, did we not simply step back in? These are all questions worth asking, and questions I’ll be asking myself for the rest of the day – note: I’ll be asking myself. Because as much as I believe in democratic principles in parenting, my parenting is not a democracy. You don’t get a vote. You don’t have to live with the guilt and regret either, so happy days.

I’m not proud of my performance as a parent this morning. I mean, it was definitely in my top-five worst parenting moments ever even before you came along, and by the time you walked away I think I can say that it had raced all the way up to the very top. I hope that makes you feel good. I hope you’re proud of approaching a mother who was just holding it together, and tipping her over the edge.

We made it to school, my son happily skipping in only about five minutes late – scooter in hand – and I said I was sorry and gave him a big hug, and he kissed me and told me he loved me. Maybe there’ll be extra hugs tonight. I’d say most certainly there will be extra hugs tonight – but not because you said so. My relationship with my child has nothing to do with you, stranger, and my hugs are not yours to give away. I know that the job of being a parent comes with a responsibility to provide endless hugs, and that by running out, I failed. I know that the first rule of parenting is never ever to be in a rush, but then life happened, and school, and lunch boxes and unexpected toilet trips and insomnia. I’m a person too, complete with feelings and frustrations and flaws and occasionally very insufficient patience – and I’d like to think that I’m teaching my kids that that’s OK. I guess I’m also teaching them that when someone crosses that line and starts to interfere with your business in a way you’re very much not comfortable with, you have every right to tell them to get lost. It’s kind of ironic when you think about it, isn’t it?

PS. A Freudian analysis of the above would quite possibly look back at my childhood and a moment when my mother threw me out the door into inches-deep snow wearing nothing but moccasins, and my snow joggers after me, in pure frustration. It would suggest, I guess, that I’m acting out trauma from childhood experience. Or, I don’t know, maybe it would simply say that I’m getting what I deserve. Maybe this is it: it’s payback time.  

So you think you were hired on merit? Gender quotas and the perception gap

‘So, I guess you support gender quotas too, then?’

I’m sure I’ll have to fend off heaps of pantsuit accusations for writing this post, but a colleague asked, and I’m not going to turn down the chance to explain why yes, indeed, I do support gender quotas.

I think the thing that makes gender quotas hard for some liberals to stomach is that, in contrast to issues like bodily autonomy and ending violence against women, they don’t seem quite as immediately right and fair. If equality is what we want, surely we should be treating everyone equally?

Cue that illustration that’s been doing the rounds lately, explaining how the word ‘equality’ can in and of itself be a tad problematic: if social justice is what we’re after, giving each and every one ‘equal’ treatment won’t get us very far, because we’re all born in very different and in fact unequal circumstances. Instead, we should be focusing on equal opportunity, and to provide that we’re going to have to rely on all kinds of different support systems – including breaking down a whole horde of barriers preventing us from building a truly just society.

I do find it funny how many people look around, shake their heads at the thought of gender quotas and say that, no, we can’t do that because nothing is fairer than merit. We have offices and boardrooms full to the brim of straight, white, middle or upper class men, and yet people talk about merit. Even in environments traditionally dominated by women, we see a load of men at the helm – and they keep talking about merit. What these people are really saying is this: men are simply better at all this stuff. They think all these men have got where they are just because they worked hard.

I hate to burst that bubble (OK, I don’t). Not the one about hard work, that is; I’m sure they all had top marks in school and studied very hard and are paying off a load of student loans and have taken their career oh so very seriously. It’s just a bit smug to think it’s that simple.

Let’s talk about objectivity and non-partisanship. Because of what the world looks like, and because of how women’s experiences are routinely silenced and invisibilised, we have developed a skewed perception of gender equality. As the Geena Davis Institute for Gender in Media found, crowd scenes on screen tend to be made up of about 17% women – and we’ve gotten used to it as the new (old?) normal. Men experiencing said crowd in a room tend to estimate that it consists of about 50/50 men and women. Increase the number of women to 33% and men will say that there are more women than men.

Sady Doyle writes in In These Times that:

“… men “consistently perceive more gender parity” in their workplaces than women do. For example, when asked whether their workplaces recruited the same number of men and women, 72 percent of male managers answered “yes.” Only 42 percent of female managers agreed. And, while there's a persistent stereotype that women are the more talkative gender, women actually tend to talk less than men in classroom discussions, professional contexts and even romantic relationships; one study found that a mixed-gender group needed to be between 60and 80 percent female before women and men occupied equal time in the conversation. However, the stereotype would seem to have its roots in that same perception gap: “[In] seminars and debates, when women and men are deliberately given an equal amount of the highly valued talking time, there is often a perception that [women] are getting more than their fair share.”

Our perception is so severely twisted we wouldn’t know merit if it slapped us in the face. Since we perceive women and men differently, we can’t hold them to the same standards, no matter how hard we try. The job description might be the same, but what does ‘forthright’ mean and how do we perceive it in a woman and a man respectively? If we expect of a candidate to demonstrate leadership qualities, can we be sure we won’t find one of them ‘bossy’? You think one candidate talks too much – but does she really? I’m not sure we even know what objectivity and non-partisanship look like anymore. TV3 sure doesn’t, and neither does Newstalk. Academia? Nope.

More explicitly HR-related research is unequivocal, too: so-called ‘resume whitening’ at least doubles job applicants’ chances of being called for an interview, while women are consistently ranked as weaker candidates than men with identical CVs. In addition to such ‘latent biases’ in regards to gender, there’s a cultural bias as people tend to employ candidates they can relate to and understand – future buddies, basically. At the extreme end, we tend to hire people who remind us of ourselves.

Too long; didn’t read: lads hire lads, and male-dominated boards won’t change because women get more qualified and ‘lean in’.

With gender quotas, at best, we get a few women into positions of hiring power, and we start to see change as they begin to hire people who are more or less like themselves and girls grow up to see people other than duplicates of their grandads in positions of power. At worst, these women too carry the biases so ingrained in society and media narratives, for instance in the form of internalised misogyny, that this simply isn’t enough.

A reactionary drop in the ocean? Sure. Gender quotas won’t smash the patriarchy, nor will they undo capitalism. Here’s what else they won’t do: address the injustice.

Back to the illustration. Gender quotas are in the middle, a far-from-perfect image number two, propping up a broken system by making its flaws less ugly, but surviving it – sometimes marginally, other times beautifully. And I don’t like it either. I don’t like hiring by numbers, I don’t like box ticking, and I don’t like focusing on those who have already done so well that they can even begin to think about what that glass ceiling looks like. But until we remove the systemic barrier that is all of the above, all the patriarchal indoctrination and the new normal, it is better than nothing, better than the status quo.

Nobody wants to need those supports – or, as the anti-quotas camp likes to put it, no one wants to be hired because they tick the quota box. But by the same token, I don’t think anyone wants to be hired based on a skewed perception of what they are, or what their competition is not.

What’s that, you’re sure you were hired on merit alone? Really?

Infighting on the left and a real left-wing alternative

Oh, the infighting on the left. If only they could get along and get their act together, and maybe they’d achieve something.

In the aftermath of #coponcomrades, and after a couple of years of complete lack of consensus around Corbyn’s Labour leadership in the UK, it is easy to feel like the infighting on the left has become a pet peeve of many, interestingly especially those who aren’t actually that far out on the left. And I’m starting to feel frustrated by it. Not the infighting, that is – but the opinions.

As things stand in Ireland, billionaire business man Denis O’Brien is the owner of Communicorp and significant minority shareholder of INM, the companies that control significant media outlets including the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent, the Herald, the Irish Daily Star, Newstalk and Today FM. News Corp, of which the Murdoch family controls 39% of the voting rights, owns the Irish Sun and the Irish edition of the Sunday Times. Our government, at the same time, is fighting the European commission’s call for Apple to repay billions in back taxes, while adding new tax breaks to make up for the phasing out of the double Irish tax structure – anything to please the big multinational players.

What I’m saying is this: Ireland is a fan of neoliberal fiscal policy, and its mainstream media isn’t going to be asking any questions.

But what’s that got to do with infighting? Quite a lot, if you ask me.

I had already left London when Jeremy Corbyn, somewhat controversially, took the helm of the UK Labour party, but the divisions were clear: there was no way he’d ever be a successful leader of a Labour party in a country with a first-past-the-post electoral system, centrist Labour voters said. The hard left was told to give in and accept a softer, more liberal leader. In Ireland, their peers are singing to a similar tune, as the left decries the lack of a viable left-of-centre alternative to end the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael ping-pong game. If only the infighting on the left would stop – then we could all hold hands, laughing all the way to the Dáil.

Except, of course, a conversation like that around #coponcomrades is never going to go mainstream enough to impact on the potential for a real left-wing alternative in Irish parliamentary politics. And sure enough, if we had a Corbyn equivalent, the O’Briens and the Murdochs would fry them long before they became party leader – just like the UK media tried to do.

My problem with the criticism of the infighting on the left is that it’s almost always populist; the idea is that we’ll never make a realistic enough alternative to Varadkar and his crew. We need to get it together and seem like we’re all on the same page; we need to agree on some not-too-leftist policies and bring them to the ballot box – and then we can iron out the details. It’s almost as if people thought that ‘the left’ was this homogenous anti-Varadkar gang, all subscribing to the same politics and the same worldview; as if anyone who doesn’t tick O’Brien’s boxes must be anti-market liberalism enough to be happy to throw just about any other principles under the bus for the chance of a bit of redistribution of wealth.

A republic with a single-transferable-vote system and a neoliberal mainstream media will never make a good breeding ground for new lefty alternatives. The voting system alone is designed to perpetuate status quo in order to favour stability, and a media that plays by the rules of the free market is bound to play into the hands of neoliberal values. Combined, they’re a Fine Gael dream and couldn’t care less about infighting on the left – though given the chance, I’m sure they’d use it if they had to.

If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution. Give me a left-wing alternative that throws working class women under the bus, and I’ll pass. If it’s not intersectional, it doesn’t matter how proud Robin Hood would be.

The left, in and of itself, is anti-establishment; it feeds on the criticism of the neoliberal status quo, not the waltzing with it. So you say we need to play by the rules of the market to get in the door, before we can change the rules of the game? Fine – who will we sacrifice along the way? How much can we play ball and still call ourselves a lefty alternative?

I know so many people who are burnt out right now, activists who are on a break, who care too deeply to stop – until they’re so broken they have no other choice. People give and give and give, because that’s how important this is.

When you say that we need to stop the infighting, you are inadvertently saying that the details don’t matter, that maybe some minorities can wait. Or, if that’s not your intention, you are blind to the power of the status quo and a media that funds the already rich and drinks pints with those already in power. A left-wing alternative was never going to walk in the front door all suited up, shaking hands with Varadkar. And if it wasn’t willing to take the difficult conversations, it was never a true alternative in the first place. 

Police brutality and punching down

I was standing in the airport security queue at Heathrow Airport when a group of middle-aged women started laughing, indiscreetly, at a trans woman just in front of me in the queue; and I wanted to say something, yet I didn’t want to cause a scene, didn’t want to make the experience any worse for the woman in front of me than it already was. Then we approached the security belt and staff started laughing and pointing, even less discreetly than the women had done, and I couldn’t contain the rage. I ended up telling them off; I ended up in tears, shaking. The woman informed me that she was fine – this was her everyday life, after all. She was used to it.

With hindsight, perhaps it wasn’t the security staff that broke me. With hindsight, I was definitely already sad, probably already broken. What broke me was the story of the woman who killed herself, the activist whose mental illness episode ended in police arrest as she wandered the streets of Dublin naked – an arrest that was videoed, shared, watched on Facebook by 130,000 people before, just a few days later, she took her own life.

More than upsetting, frightening and enraging, the behaviour of the gardaí proved a point, proved that she’d never been a real, valued person in their eyes, having grown up in an estate they didn’t touch but sneered at, a world they didn’t care for – one they protected the privileged classes from, despite exclusion being the heart of the problem in the first place. From being ignored to being abused, she was worthless to them. And people are offended when they hear people say that all cops are bastards. That’s what broke me.

All cops aren’t bastards, yet everything they touch turns to muck. Records of millions of imaginary breath tests; false allegations of sexual abuse, leaked personal information, lives ruined. Once entangled in a system of corrupt power relationships, even the most well-intended citizen will struggle to tell right from wrong. But what breaks me is that those who know that indeed all cops aren’t bad are so busy defending them that they refuse to see the abuse by those who are, refuse to see how one thing leads to another, how police brutality is killing working class people, literally.

All cops aren’t bastards – just like #notallmen, indeed #notallmedia. But try to tell the same people that not all travellers trash hotels, that not all muslims are terrorists, and they’ll insist that it’s hard to see the wood for the trees, that when you see it happening more than once it’s hard not to come to expect it. The good and righteous should take responsibility for their tribe, they say. But who takes responsibility for the gardaí when they share footage of a distressed woman at her most vulnerable?

‘I don’t get it,’ some say about transsexuality, as if their ability to empathise and identify with others writes the rules, as if ‘not getting it’ equals forgetting everything they’ve ever known about human decency and thinking it’s OK to point and laugh at a person who is never allowed to feel normal. There are a lot of things to feel sad about in the world right now, but perhaps that’s what’s worst of all: the fact that so many so often will fail to stand up for other people who don’t already have the upper hand, fail to empathise with anyone but those already in power. That so often, people are willing to tar everyone with the same brush as long as they’re already oppressed and powerless, to play along with Varadkar’s game of ratting on those most desperate in society, those already left out. That #notallanything only ever punches down, never up; that it only ever serves to silence.

And that’s what breaks me – that I’m only really feeling this now, protected my entire life by the privilege of boredom. That I’m crying in an airport while the security staff roll their eyes at me and keep on laughing, and the trans woman soldiers on – because this is the world she’s used to.