Linnea Dunne's Blog, page 2

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.

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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.

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How I cried my way to a free smear test

I started International Women’s Day by having a smear test. I guess in
some 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.

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Policing women’s lives, the Sweden edition

There’s this post about the dilution of feminism that’s doing the rounds on the Swedish feminist scene today, a post describing a worrying development within modern feminism. Sadly, it’s not describing how privileged women are failing to listen to those less privileged, and it’s not talking about class and race – quite the opposite, in fact, and it’s giving me a headache.

The post is produced by Kvinnosaken, a Facebook page “for radical, unafraid women”, which is quite telling, come to think of it, because it’s pretty clear that the author of the post isn’t struggling with all that much fear. What they’re struggling with is make-up. Make-up and breast implants and selfies and porn – because these things are exactly what men want, so how can we be liberated if we’re not revolting?

It’s a nice argument, almost ideologically coherent. That’s how I’ve come to recognise Swedish feminism: it likes ideology, even when it hurts. Indeed, as the post was shared, it came with exactly those comments – proclaiming that this post hurts, but it’s true. But I’m not so sure the notion that we must question the habit of wearing make-up hurts white, thin, reasonably traditionally beautiful, able-bodied women in Sweden all that much. It involves a moment of self-examination, sure – pats on the backs all round – but not wearing make-up as one of those women, especially one with a huge feminist audience on Instagram, isn’t really going to hurt that bad. If anything, it’ll probably boost their feminist cred.

Yet the author takes issue with feminists’ supposed failure to reflect on feminism as a collective struggle. “We can’t encourage the coming generation of women and men to believe that women’s liberation can come without us needing to change our lifestyle and our view of what’s normal and right,” they write, eventually turning to what’s apparently the elephant in the room: porn. “Porn and the purchase of sex are never feminist, and what satisfies the male gaze will never liberate us.”

I get it. This is the feminism that made me. How can you call yourself a feminist if you shave your armpits? How can you fight patriarchy if you surrender and, out of fear, refrain from walking alone at night, thus allowing it to control you? How can you even believe in women’s liberation in the first place if you don’t agree that men paying for a woman’s body is unacceptable and should be banned and punished?

The idea of refusing to succumb to the pressures of patriarchy is lovely. We all want to be strong, independent women who don’t care what anyone thinks, right? In reality, though, who suffers when you call out feminists who wear make-up for not being feminist enough? Not men. Not the beauty brands that capitalise on our sense of inadequacy. Just the women who are suddenly not good enough – not for beauty magazines and potential future partners, and now apparently not even for feminism. Where’s the collective struggle in that?

Internalised misogyny sucks – and yes, let’s talk about how twisted the beauty industry and mainstream media are, but don’t feed me fucked-up ideals and hatred with one hand only to beat me with the other when I feel I need a shield to feel strong in a world that hates women. Male entitlement sucks – and yes, let’s talk about where toxic masculinity comes from and how mainstream porn contributes to rape culture, but don’t march down the streets chanting ‘my body, my choice’ and then shrug when sex workers tell you that the Swedish model has made their livelihood unstable and outright dangerous.

But you can’t buy another human being! they protest. Can you not? Make of it what you wish, but most of us sell our hands or our thought processes or our emotional labour to pay the bills every day. But working in an office or waiting tables is not the same as selling sex! they add. Sure, and there are jobs I wouldn’t do and others I might only do if they paid well enough to make up for the pain of performing them; I’m privileged that way. But we all need money, at the end of the day – some of us to feed our children. But that’s not a free choice! If your circumstances demand that you sell your body, you’re not free! they exclaim.

Bingo. The problem here isn’t the women (or men, for that matter) who end up selling; it’s capitalism. Under patriarchal capitalism, men will continue to want to pay for sex; under patriarchal capitalism, women are never truly free. But the solution is not to further limit and penalise women. If someone who ends up in sex work, however willingly or reluctantly, can be safer and gain the right to pay tax and unionise, then screw your beautiful ideology. It might not be an idea you’re particularly keen on, and it might not be how you pictured women’s liberation – but it’s a collective struggle, remember?

Displaying naked bodies is not a feminist action, so the author says – and that, I agree with (assuming said body isn’t one of colour, disabled or fat – but all that goes without saying for this page, it seems). But who ever said that every feminist needs to be feminist in every action all the time? It’s like some sort of teenage idealist bingo, like calling vegetarians who wear leather shoes hypocrites, as if doing nothing is better than doing something if you’re not consistent enough.

Feminism according to Kvinnosaken, then, is only for those strong enough to go against every single rule they’ve been steeped in since the day they were born. How we are going to police that, I don’t know – maybe through Instagram. Of course, with this logic, the responsibility to end oppression lies with the oppressed; it’s we who must change.

It’s ironic, isn’t it, how a post criticising the expressions of internalised misogyny turns into nothing but exactly that: policing women’s bodies and lives, which is pretty much what misogyny does best – what a novel move in this collective struggle. With that kind of navel-gazing, I won’t hold my breath for liberation.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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’.

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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.

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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.

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