Are Irish streets safe for LGBTQIA+ people?
It has been a gruellng week for Ireland’s queer community* Or at least, it has been a grueling week for me. I have tried to write a longer, more eloquent thing but I’m not ready to yet. It is, as they say, still processing. I did submit a few thoughts in response to the above question to The Irish Times which published it, in part, here.
Here’s my submission in full:
Is Ireland a safe place for the LGBTQ+ community?
The short answer to your question is ‘no’.
This morning, I took a walk around the green outside my home. It’s a wide-open space where dogs run after balls and children play. I live in Dublin, in a diverse enclave of families from all over the world. I’ve lived here for 3 years and almost every day, I hear the word ‘faggot’. I hear it as I walk home from the supermarket. I hear it on the Luas coming home from work. I hear a young mother chastise her toddler son by referring to him as a ‘faggot’. When I was a child, ‘gay’ was a slur. It meant stupid, hideous, disgusting. Hatred like that sticks to your psychic skin like tar. It hardens into fact, dragging you down with its oppressive weight. You peel it off, slowly and meticulously. You find a community that brightens your soul. You protect your fragile joy. But still, as a queer person in 21st century Ireland, homophobia remains part of daily life.
For me, those wounds have not yet healed. I am part of a generation of queer people traumatised by hatred that was (and in some places remains) nomalised in Irish culture. There are pockets of Ireland where casual homophobia continues to run in the groundwater. In 2015, over a million people voted in favour of same-sex marriage. It’s easy to believe that we are a modern, progressive society. It’s easy to believe but it’s not true.
After work, my girlfriend and I sometimes take a walk, hand in hand, around the green outside my home. Every nerve ending stands to attention as I reach for her hand. There’s a split second of worry: who will see? What will happen if they do? If this went bad, could I get away? Am I able to cope with someone else’s hate today? I hold her hand because I love her and I am proud to be with her. I just wish I didn’t have to worry that loving her publicly would make me less safe.
I worry about sharing these words. I don’t want to paint a target on my back. I’m nervous to share a traumatic story that I am still processing. I share it only so that you won’t assume that stories like mine belong in the history books. I share it so that you won’t congratulate yourself on Ireland’s progressiveness and instead take stock of how far we have to go.
*For those who don’t know, there have been a spate of murders and violent assaults that were motivated by homophobia.
Recommendations
I devoured Melissa Febos’s ‘Body Work’ last weekend in pretty much a single sitting. For anyone who writes or reads autobiographical material, it is essential. Start with some excerpts here, here and here.
“I suspect I could write something relevant and dynamic and political and beautiful and intellectual about my own navel. And I don’t think it’s a stretch to wonder if the navel as the locus of all this disdain has some faint thing to do with its connection to birth, and body, and the female.”
"You don’t have problems, you have situations you work through. And that work is what we do in this marriage " I didn't expect to learn life lessons from a podcast about erectile dysfunction but here we are ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
The meaning of time in running and life.
Got a little teary watching this.
“Addiction exists in all of us. In other words, unless you are completely free from suffering, you have some addiction in you.”
“It’s the best-reviewed show Netflix ever made.” - on the cancellation of The Baby-Sitters Club on Netflix.
“Here’s what I know about illness: it’ll splinter a world. Unhinge your sense of identity, crack open the architecture of the life you spent years building. You will lose jobs, homes, relationships, your sense of self.”
“For millennials and younger generations, the last couple of years have carried a reordering of life on every level, from the personal to the global”
The most important thing I read about the Will Smith/Chris Rock debacle.
Learned a lot from this podcast.
Fascinating conversation about André Leon Talley's legacy especially as it relates to white women.
Soaking up Ocean Vuong's wisdom on grief and creativity.
