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.

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’.

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.

Why politics needs passion: on tone policing, Repeal jumpers and rational reasoning

Is tone policing the new master suppression technique?

What is a master suppression technique? you ask. It is a way to suppress and humiliate an opponent, according to Norwegian psychologist and philosopher Ingjald Nissen, who articulated the framework of such techniques in 1945.

And tone policing? A tone argument is one which isn’t strictly concerned with what is being said, but rather with the tone in which it is expressed. Tone policing, consequently, is a strategy of dismissing arguments irrespective of their legitimacy or accuracy. It’s a derailing tactic and, I would suggest, a master suppression technique on the rise.

Ireland boasts an impressive selection of recent examples of the latter, thanks to a series of articles published across various national dailies arguing that the problem with the public conversation on reproductive justice and a repeal of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution is not in its sheer existence or even the motivations behind its existence, but rather in what it sounds – and looks – like.

“Abortion is, understandably, an issue that arouses deep passions but that shouldn’t preclude an effort by all sides to listen to opposing views and try to understand the reasoning involved,” argued Irish Times columnist Paul Cullen yesterday. He was writing in the hope that today’s debate wouldn’t have to resort to “plumbing the depths” the same way it did in the 1980s – yet, he noted, “the signs aren’t good”.

Much of the recent criticism of the pro-choice movement has engaged in some or a great deal of tone policing. In the most literal sense, those who fear for the outcome of the debate have pointed out that shrill tones and anger won’t win over middle Ireland, that extremists with fists in the air are not exactly attractive. Similarly, Cullen dismisses the “strident voices on the two ends of the spectrum, each group deeply attached to absolutist views on the subject”.

Others have pointed to a naivety, suggesting that the pro-choice campaign doesn’t engage with the important moral debates, instead increasingly resembling a trend-conscious clique. “The push for liberalising abortion law sometimes feels more like a marketing campaign than a political debate,” Cullen chips in, pointing to the Repeal jumpers and focus on personal stories.

But that’s exactly where the tone police get it wrong: this very much is personal.

I was thinking a while back about why I felt so angry when a friend – a male friend, I should say – told me he identified as pro-life. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, and I’m sure there are plenty of his kind in my network of friends and acquaintances. But then it hit me: the privilege of putting the opinion out there, of making me aware of his stance against my right to bodily autonomy, and then suggesting that we agree to disagree in this supposed ‘debate’ about my life and health, is absurd to the point of being offensive. In saying it, he didn’t just side with the people who insist it is right to see me endure pregnancy against my will, give birth against my will, and parent a child against my will just to allow for a potential life to develop; he also equalled his right to staying true to a principle to my right to make decisions about what happens to me, my body and my life. An opinion against a feeling; an argument versus a lived experience.

We talk about reason and rational deliberation as cornerstones of a functioning democracy, about needing to prevent emotions from running high and stopping us from thinking sensibly. This notion of emotions as the antithesis of rational thought is nothing new, especially not for anyone familiar with rational choice theory, which sees citizens voting to maximise individual utility, completely free from emotional and societal bonds. But is this really a useful interpretation of society?

Studies of citizens and different social contexts have shown that, perhaps unsurprisingly, passion and talk of personal experiences are mostly seen to belong in the domestic, private sphere, while rationality should prevail in the political, public sphere. Activists are painted out to belong to an extreme fringe of society, while power and leadership is almost exclusively represented in media by serious figures of authority with no feelings and no displayed personal interest.

But the notion of rationality and passion as mutually exclusive has time and again been questioned by political engagement theorists. ‘Apathy’ means ‘without passion’, argues researcher Cheryl Hall, so the problem with apathetic citizens is a lack of political passion. Cognitive attention is not enough to spark political engagement – citizens need to care about something and have a vision in order to act. Put bluntly: politics needs passion.

At the end of his opinion piece, Cullen writes about Kathleen Sebelius, Barack Obama’s former health secretary, who identifies as anti-abortion but pro-choice. She believes that life begins at conception but accepts that it is not her business to impose her views on others. “Perhaps it is time we started hearing more of those voices,” the Irish Times columnist concludes. Ironically, those voices are very much heard throughout the pro-choice campaign: for instance, the work of Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, has been circulated and celebrated widely of late, and she too is almost coldly rational about how the notion of life from the moment of conception is compatible with passionately pro-choice views; and many others, myself included, have written extensively about the complexities of notions of life and pregnancy loss, yet without for a moment compromising on our pro-choice conviction. Perhaps it is time we started listening to more of these voices – even if they are angry. Perhaps it is time the mainstream media started amplifying them – even if they are shrill.

It is easy to write calmly, sensibly and rationally about just about anything, irrespective of how passionately you feel about it; you may notice how I haven’t been interrupted once in the almost 1,000 words in this post thus far. But the “productive national conversation” Cullen is calling for won’t take place on the opinion pages of our national newspapers – it will have to be a two-way thing, and it will cause friction.

I’m convinced that the huge majority of people agree that we need a productive national conversation on reproductive rights, but I think that the liberal rational choice ideal has sold us a lie about what such a conversation should look like.

Passions are informed by reason, and personal experiences inform our political beliefs. Show me a supposedly superior moral principle and I’ll show you the door; wear your heart on your sleeve and I’ll listen.