imisaninja

Hairy Fucking Feminist... And Proud

2012-01-31T11:45:00.000-08:00

Yes... that's me. A great loutish dyke in a flannel shirt, hairy legs and armpits and don't get me started on the lady garden... it's like fooking Narnia down there. Enough clichés then? Good.

Now that's over with, I'd like to say that I do actually like Rugby, I don't shave my legs as often as I should and my husband and I happen to like it 70's playboy style. None of this has anything to do with feminism. Also... I like bras.

I wasn't always a feminist. I didn't really know what one was, growing up. I have four brothers and they treated me basically the same as one of the lads. Well OK, they pulled their punches, but that was mostly because I was, and still am, really very small. My point is they treated me, more or less, as an equal. And I didn't know any different until I was in my mid-twenties.... No really.

I was convinced I was solely into girls in my teens and only really hung around gay people in gay bars and all we did was get drunk and high and have a laugh, amongst the rows and drama everyone goes through when they're young. It wasn't until I'd left college, and started working that I started to twig something wasn't quite adding up. I noticed that women were treated a bit differently, that we were expected to do odd jobs around the office that blokes didn't have to do. We made more teas, we cleaned up a bit more, we weren't invited to as many outings or if we were on a night out we were expected to behave 'appropriately' while the blokes went out and smashed things. And if a woman behaved out of the norm, then she was made out to be odd, or lesbian or some other such weirdo. We had to dress a certain way, and then be flattered when a bloke acted like a sleaze ball. Then there was the office banter. The casual jokes about race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation and then... rape.

When you're brought up in a home full of trauma, and learn to swear like a sailor by the tender age of four and you're still shocked by the locker room talk in the office, then you know something is quite wrong. You see the rule in my home, amongst my brothers, was 'Don't be a Dick' (and never touch Owen's tapes). You can say what you want, do what you want and take something pretty far before you cross the line, but the line was clear as day and we knew not to cross it. My mum is probably a bit of an accidental racist, she says things she shouldn't about Nigerians and Muslims, but I know for a fact that if she saw someone in trouble, she would throw herself in there and help them, even if it was just calling the Gardaí, regardless of their ethnic or religious background. And if any of us had said the 'N' word or called someone queer she would have slapped the white off our asses quicker than we could say Michael Collins. And when it came to joking about the violent abuse or rape of women, well, let’s just say that there are few things my mother would do time for murder for.

When my mother was growing up, women could still be raped by their husbands, legally. Fathers and husbands beat women up and down the country, girls were thrown into institutions if they became 'wayward' or pregnant. They were refused jobs and treated as lesser citizens and serfs by men. She would tell you that she's glad that times have changed. But joking about things that happened to women on a fairly regular basis would be like joking with a black person about the days when they could be owned by their white masters and given as gifts to one another to be molested raped, beaten or killed on a white man's whim. There are just some things, that are so horrible, so deeply and importantly wrong, that to joke about them, crosses the line. In short... you're being a dick.

There was a bit of a interweb storm today about an online 'lad's mag' who posted a story that appeared to condone rape, as the odds were in favour of a rape going unreported.

One tweeter quoted the website's founder Alex Partridge's Facebook status from earlier in the year

"Some may call it rape, we call it grabbing"

The site 'apologised' for the article on twitter and Facebook , but has yet to post an apology on the main site. The apology is somewhat of a non-event when you examine the content of the rest of the website. A quick twitter search will dig up quite a few dodgy articles, an unusual amount focused on rape, sexual assault and rough and violent sexual encounters with women. Then there are the comments from Facebook fans under the apology. Calls for feminists, complainants and anyone who doesn't like the article to be beaten, raped or in some cases strangled. Now I don't believe that the majority of these comments are serious but there's the odd one like...

"I'd say rape only happens because wenches can't handle the banter...but I got in trouble for that before haha"

That make me worry. A recent article in Jezebel highlighted the worrying correlation between the comments in well known lads mags and those of convicted rapists.

The thing is, when you joke about rape... how can you be sure the person you’re talking to hasn’t been raped? You have a one in four chance that the person you’re speaking to is reliving the worst memory of their life. All because you are so far removed from the experience that you think it's funny. It's abstract to you because you can't imagine how awful it would be. People who are raped don't make jokes about it. Children who are abused don't laugh about it afterward. They never, ever get over it and if you're thinking your right to freedom of speech, trumps their right not to have to relive the horror of someone forcing sexual violence upon them, then you're wrong. End of story

You're just wrong.

Some people think that there isn't a need for feminists, just decent human beings. And there's certainly an argument for that, but so many people call themselves decent human beings while at the same time discriminating against other people based on their gender without even a twinge of conscience. Many of the commenter's under that Facebook post consider themselves right-minded individuals just having a bit of a laugh or 'banter'. They would probably even baulk at racism, some at homophobia, ironically. But when it comes to women, it's taken that because women in the west 'have it so good', it's a tongue and cheek, harmless laugh.

I wasn't born a feminist. Shit like this made me one. When I realised it was OK to treat me differently because I have a vagina, when I realised that half the planet was treated less human than the other because of their gender, when I realised that people my age and younger, not just some old school grandpas who were set in their ways, talked about women like they were fuckable living dolls... I realised I was a feminist and so will always be.

Update: The UniLad site is down for 'maintenance'. Rumour has it William Hill bookies have withdrawn sponsorship. Result! Can I get a chest bump??

Another Update: The story just got Huffpo'd! Hollah!

Untitled…

2011-12-11T12:00:00.001-08:00

Kate Fitzgerald. Image sourced from The Irish Times Website

But for the grace of god, go I…

I’m not a believer but I’ve always had a fondness for that saying. It reminds me that I am lucky, that I have... until now... survived. What happens tomorrow is an unknowable, uncontrollable, unquantifiable thing but for now, at his moment, I am safe. When I read the story of Kate Fitzgerald I felt for a brief time that I was reading about someone I knew and I was struck still and silent. Our paths had walked so closely that I could have tipped my cap at her as she passed. As I read of her suicide, I said goodbye and felt regret for this woman, who had walked so close and yet never met.

Kate Fitzgerald was an accomplished young woman, and at the age of 25, her achievements far outshone my own. She and I were different ages, we looked nothing alike and, from what I have read, our upbringings were very different. The only way in which I could say we were similar was that we were both women, in a similar phase of life, keeping our heads above water with one foot weighted by depression.When you meet, or even just read about someone whose experience mirrors your own, there is a kind of respect, a marker set down that says ‘I see you’.

Often, and this is especially true of the workplace, that can be a frightening discovery, that someone knows your dirty little secret. Instead of an instinct to bond with this person, we sometimes distance ourselves, for fear of being uncovered and singled out as The One with Mental Illness. Other times, we make a song and dance about our problems, in an attempt to shine a light on it and thereby lessen its hold over us. We play the fool and shake our bells in the hope that our family, friends and colleagues will be distracted from the dark and vicious sides of our personality. Some lash out, they blame the world and everyone in it for their woes. They push against and fight anyone they feel might come close to pushing their buttons. They can be destructive and dangerous, vulnerable and frightened all at once.

Then there are others who take all of that violence, all their loathing, all of their hurt and anger and turn it inward. When they fail, they feel it like nobody else. When they misstep, they turn on themselves a terrible kind of retribution. It is like living with domestic abuse, except your abuser lives with you always, inside your head, you are your own torment.

I was 13 when I tried to cut myself for the first time. I was reminded of this when I watched a video by Jonah Mowry. In case you haven’t watched it, it features a boy turned inside out by emotion at having to return to a school where he felt isolated. He doesn’t speak in the video, he holds up flash cards with his story written on them, while great wet tears roll down his face. The card toward the end of the video is the part that gets me.

I’m not going anywhere…

In that moment, you witness a battle. The overwhelming desire to take yourself out of the game, versus your human instinct for survival, the part that is still holding on to the people you love in this life. It’s a moment of terrible beauty, and bravery. He makes the decision to stay for a while longer. It’s interesting to note that he posted a second video where he tried to reassure some of the millions of viewers who had sent him messages of support, by explaining that the original video was a filmed at a particularly dark period, but that he was ‘now’ emotionally in a better place. After this latter video was posted, a backlash began where he was called a liar, among other things. Reading through some of the many abusive comments on YouTube is fascinating. He is called a faggot and a liar because he made, what they believed, was a fake video about the effects of bullying. I don’t think I need to explain the irony.

There is a parallel here, to the way in which the story of Kate Fitzgerald was treated. The initial story published by The Irish Times, heart breaking and real, struck a chord with people who had experienced depression. It haunted those who read it and it instigated some discussion on the treatment of people with mental health issues in the workplace. Unfortunately, the story and resulting articles were either removed or redacted because her former employer or their legal team saw something libellous in the article. We don’t know what happened between The Communications Clinic and The Irish Times, we only know that a letter was issued by the Times apologising to TCC for any perceived allegations or untruths in Kate’s letter.

This, to me, sounded exactly like the Jonah Mowry story in that Kate was being called out as a liar for highlighting bullying in the workplace, while a national newspaper appeared to be bullied into silence and retraction. Surely, the reaction by TCC only highlighted the issue further. Had Kate survived, how would they have treated the story? Would she have been sued? Would she have been fired? Her letter was posted anonymously, so if she had lived to see it published, would her identity have eventually become known? We know this much, talking about your experiences of mental health and bullying at work can get you into some very hot water indeed. Perhaps a better strategy would have been for TCC to take a softer approach, and perhaps issued a statement of support to Kate’s family, as well as some financial aid to suicide and depression advocacy groups.

I recently read a guide to etiquette when discussing suicide online, I never realised there was such a thing as etiquette when you are dealing with suicide. These guidelines suggest I shouldn’t tell you that I thought about taking my own life many, many times and in particular I’m not supposed to talk about how I contemplated doing it. Although, when I think about it, I’m always careful to consider the least traumatic death for my loved ones to have to deal with. I have worked through hundreds of scenarios but these are some of the most common...

Crashing my car into a tree or ditch.
Crashing my car into oncoming traffic (not an option, thought I… I would only take some unfortunate with me).
Cutting my wrists (too painful and messy).
A drug overdose (that was how my father did it and my brother had to find him on his birthday, so that's a no).
Jumping from cliff in the Wicklow Gap as it has a really nice view (again, leaves other people with a mess to take care of).

Like Jonah, I can say now that I am a better place. I try not to think about the ways in which I want to die, but the reasons I have to stay alive.

I think of how I love my husband so dearly, and I could not bear the thought of leaving him alone and financially burdened with a house in negative equity. (Insurance companies don’t pay out if you commit suicide).
I think of my brothers and mother having to relive the trauma of my father’s death.
I think about my nieces and nephew having to explain what happened to their aunt, to strangers.
I think about my friends, how they would always wonder what they could have done differently (though, if I know them, they would have one hell of a funeral).
Mostly its stubbornness, I think that if I give in to this illness I will have conceded a victory to the same bitch that made me miserable for so many years.

Depression is a long war, you don’t battle every day, but when battles come they are merciless, and often take more than can be restored but no matter how bravely and fiercely they are fought, sometimes, as in Kate’s case, the illness wins out. 600 people in Ireland lose that war every year. Think about that…

600 people die from suicide every year in Ireland.

That is more than road deaths, which claims around 212 lives annually, and just less than deaths from drug abuse, which are about 640. There are 20,000 known sufferers of depression in Ireland. These statistics are not from some foreign think tank with no relevance to our little island. This is Ireland, right now.

That's me

I don’t have solutions, I don’t have answers, I’m just one of the 20,000 and I am not going anywhere. I hope Kate’s family are doing OK and hope that if anything good can come from the passing of their little girl, it’s that she spoke to people who are going through the same thing and made the country stop and look at how we treat people affected by depression.

Update: If you're affected by any of the things I've written here please talk to someone about it. Here are some organisations that can help.

Pieta House The Centre for the Prevention of Self-Harm or Suicide
Pieta Ballyfermot, Dublin 10,
Pieta House, Canon Troy House,
Chapelizod Hill Road, Ballyfermot, Dublin 10
+353 1 6200020
+353 87 6903236
mary@pieta.ie

Samaritans
112 Marlborough Street, Dublin 1, Republic of Ireland
+353 1 872 7700

3Ts (Turn the Tide of Suicide) 1Life Suicide Helpline (Tel: 1-800-24-7-100)

Aware
72 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin 2.
+353 1 661 7211
info@aware.ie

Update 12.12.11: The Wikipedia page for Kate Fitzgerald was deleted some time between my publishing this post and today. I've left the link active on this page just to point that out.

Update 16.12.11: Broadsheet publises a response from Kate's parents Tom and Sally Ann Fitzgerald describing their meetings and subsequent communication with Peter Murtagh, opinion editor of the Irish Times, and their feelings on their handling of Kate's case.

"We have lost Kate forever, please help us ensure that her final message lives on"

Update 18.12.11 A source on twitter posts the unedited article written by Kate. I have reposted the image here in the event that it's taken down.

Street_Heart

2011-11-24T04:28:00.001-08:00

As some of you are aware I'm studying web technologies at NCI. The time has crept up on me so fast my head is spinning and I'm at the stage where it's time to start my end of year project. A classmate of mine, Danny, shares my enthusiasm for the urban arts and we decided to try and make a positive difference with our project. There aren't many times in your life wen you have the time and resources to do something like this, so here goes.

Our plan is to launch a web campaign called Street_Heart, aimed at raising funds for Focus Ireland. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that its a crazy time of year for everyone both financially and work-wise, and with the proposed increases in VAT and cuts to social protection, everyone has a lot on their minds. In the midst of all of this there are more and more families losing their homes and many people, 1 in 7 of them children, are facing down the prospect of spending Christmas sleeping rough or in sheltered accommodation.

With this in mind, we would like to work with street artists and graphic designers to design a series of grafs that will be applied to gifts and apparel and sold on our website. We're all working pro bono which means all proceeds will go to Focus Ireland. Focus Ireland is a registered charity making a real difference to the lives of people struggling to find accommodation. They provide shelter and food as well as helping put preventative measures in place for people who are at risk of losing their home. You can see exactly where their funding goes here.

How can you help? We're looking for street artists and urban creatives to submit a design, doodle or even a block of text that we can apply to clothing and gifts which we'll sell on our website. We're also looking for a clothing and /or gifts manufacturer or supplier to provide us with material we can print on, as well as anyone involved in printing who'll apply the designs to the merchandise.

What are we doing? We'll be designing and developing the website, graphics, and back end of the website, as well as coordinating the artwork, contributors and fundraising. In the interest of transparency, we plan to publish our finances online as well as post stories of how how this funding is directly effecting the lives of the most vulnerable in our society.

Times are seriously tight, so whatever help you can give us will be hugely appreciated. It's worth mentioning that we plan to promote all contributors to this campaign on our website, our social media pages and in any press releases and media coverage we get.

Huge thanks for taking some time to read this, if you'd like to be involved, you can contact us through this blog, through my twitter account @imisaninja, through the Street_Heart twitter account @StreetHeart2011 on facebook or email me at design@siobhanschnittger.com.

Toys-4-Big-Gender Bias

2011-11-12T06:52:00.001-08:00

Last weekend saw the arrival of Toys-4-Big-Boys here in Citywest. A 3 day event centred around motors, tanks, games and a lot of various phallocentric highlights which would appeal to your average reader of Nuts magazine. As I set the tone for what follows I can already feel the contempt of a thousand eyerolls...

"Another feminist rant... yawn"

But here's the rub... I kind of wanted to go. I watch, and enjoy, Top Gear, I love James May's Man Lab and have been know to plonk down in front of the telly with a cup of tea to watch a marathon of How Things Work. I love Burlesque, I fancy girls, and dream of one day of having my own workshop where I can make things / blow things up. I suspect that there are a great many girls like me, but according advertising and marketing campaigns, or mass media... I don't exist.

My issue isn't that there are things like 'Man Lab' or Toys 4 Big Boys, it's that there is an absence of such programs marketed toward, or organised with, women. Toys 4 Big Boys ran alongside an event for the girls called Girls in the City. This show, directed solely at women, was described on their web site thus...

"Girls in the City is all about beauty, fashion, fun, life improvement and inspiration for women of all ages, shapes and sizes".

Brilliant. Because all women want is a big fluffy pink event centred around clothes and shoes and... just in case I didn't have to think about it enough... body issues. I wish people who came up with this stuff would just fuck off and die. The funny things is, I have no doubt in my mind that the 'girl's' event was planned, at least in part by some wimmins. But it has become all to clear to me that when it comes to gender bias, women can be just as stupid and lazy as the menfolk.

Take for example the Flora Women's Mini-Marathon which I took part in earlier this year. Everything was pink or purple... and not in a way that was supposed to represent bisexual awareness. At registration I was presented with a 'goody-bag' filled with shower gel, deodorant and samples of cleaning products. Having deposited my belongings in the cloak area, I trotted along to the start line where for 40 minutes we had to put up with some woman shouting

"Come ON Ladies! Let's show these men what we can DO!"

and other such motivational slogans, through a megaphone to the play list from hell. It was like being stuck in some kind of mass hen night karaoke from which there was no escape. I don't know about you but if I'm gearing myself up to run 10K, I want to hear some Motörhead or possibly RATM... not an out of tune rendition of Sisters are Doing it For Themselves.

This kind of sex socialisation has, obviously, been around for a very long time. Still. it's always a bit of a disappointment when, as a child, you find yourself staring down the aisles in your local toy store at giant colour-coded-according-to-gender pigeonholes. I'm not one to hate on girly girls or butch boys, far from it I just don't get why all the FUN stuff is in the boys aisle? Science kits, telescopes, action figures, race cars, electronics.... while the girl's aisle is predominantly concerned with domestic service and fucking babies (not actually fucking babies... different shop entirely). Seriously, even as a child I was baffled by the needs of other girls to have a baby doll that actually soils itself (Now with super realistic poo!). Just No.

I got presents of some Barbie dolls around Christmastime when I was wee. Within minutes they were stripped and shaved so they looked like they were about to go to war. I made my first Butch Barbie. But it wasn't enough. I needed my dolls to DO something. My favourite doll was a She-Ra action figure... you could twist her waist and she would throw a punch. My kind of girl. And she looked pissed off which seemed appropriate for someone who was supposed to have waged war on the forces of evil. Every chance I got, I was over in Adam Daly's back garden finding new ways for She-Ra to beat He-Man and Skeletor into submission. (I know He-Man was supposed to be on my side, but the state of that hair... and don't get me started on the harness).

Fast forward 20+ years and my favourite shows all appear to be directed at blokes. And even if I decide 'Hey - I know it's for blokes, but I'll watch it anyway', I'm confronted by images of girls who are nothing like me or anyone I know, who have nothing to say for themselves, unless pouting and looking surprised for no reason is some kind of distress signal I'm not aware of.

So consider this a plea... to marketing executives, events managers and television producery writery type people.

Get some girls on the telly box doing science and blowing things up... kthxbai.

We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us...

2011-10-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

Martin McGuinness with Handgun, 1972.

When a man approached Martin McGuinness on Monday to seek acknowledgement for the execution of his father, Patrick Kelly in 1983, the response he received was "It's in the past". When it comes to murder though, can we ever really forgive and forget? Maybe it’s in us to forgive if there's some kind of atonement, if we feel that there has been acknowledgement of wrongdoing, if there are signs of remorse from the accused. What if there is no 'accused', just a shroud of conjecture surrounding a violent death? How can we be expected to move on from an incident when, there's no closure for the victim's families and as far as the authorities are concerned the book is far from closed?

When I voiced my concerns about the suitability of Martin McGuinness for the role of Uachtarán na hÉireann, I received some responses from supporters who defended him on the grounds that he, like Senator Norris, is a civil rights activist who was standing up for an oppressed minority during his involvement with the IRA. When I look over the civil rights marches in the north, particularly the Bloody Sunday Massacre, I see the kind of brutality that led to some citizens taking up arms to defend their communities. But there's a lot more to the story of Martin McGuinness than a few skirmishes with British troops during the 70s and 80s.

I'm from Dublin but I've spent some time living in Belfast, in a loyalist part of the city as it happens. In 2005 I rented a beautiful house along with some college buddies, all southerners, in East Belfast. It was a few minutes’ walk from the Newtonards Road and from about March every year, we would watch the Orange Order parade up and down the road in preparation for the 12th of July. The area would be strewn with Union Jack bunting, some areas painted the kerbstones with a fresh coat of red white and blue and there was a festival atmosphere in the area. It was as if a slightly uncomfortable carnival had come to town. In the loyalist areas, people were looking forward to the festivities but with thick southern accents, we always felt a little tense and we didn't really know how to fit in. However weird we felt about this situation we never felt unsafe. I remember walking home from the city centre one night when an old man asked me what I was doing out at that hour alone, and did I want him to call a cab for me. Whatever unionists thought of us privately, they were always respectful and polite. The reason I bring this up is that I believe that most well-meaning folks in the north have, for the most part, 'moved on'. The majority of people I know and have spoken with in the south have never experienced sectarianism and are largely indifferent to the tensions in the six counties. Moving on however, does not mean excusing murder.

Killing is often excused by western society, in the case of war a certain amount of 'collateral damage' is to be expected, we're told. Civilian deaths are the unfortunate bi-product of clashes between governments, or between civilians and their governments. Many supporters of McGuinness will argue that if he was involved in killings then they were casualties of the long war between the IRA and the British Government. How then, can we explain the clandestine murder of fellow Irishmen, the execution of informants and the torture and intimidation of Irish civilians?

Peter Murtagh's Irish Times article earlier this year explored McGuinness's role in the events surrounding the death of Frank Hegarty, a suspected IRA informant whose body was found on an isolated Border road near Castlederg in west Tyrone, about 37km south of Derry. The article suggested that Martin McGuinness befriended Hegarty's family and convinced them to lure him home on the promise that he would be safe. Not long after his return his eyes were taped shut and he was killed by multiple gunshots to his head. The Hegarty family spoke with Murtagh, looking for answers about Frank's death, but soon after the interview began, the journalist was interrupted by the abrupt arrival of Martin McGuinness and his heavies who ushered him away without being allowed to conclude his interview.

I have no evidence to suggest Martin McGuinness was involved with any IRA killings, but his reluctance to condemn, or even acknowledge these acts means that we cannot move beyond them. For the Hegartys its still 1983 for the Kellys it is still '86 and they'll be stuck there until they get closure, until someone is made to answer for the loss of their loved ones. The role of Uachtarán is not a particularly powerful one, but it is significant. It should be someone who represents the best in us, not the darkest chapters of our history.

On Losing my Líofacht...

2011-10-08T14:46:00.000-07:00

I hope I got this right.....

This morning could have gone better. My alarm didn't go off, I missed Ireland get beaten by Wales, kicking us out of the Rugby World Cup and I was late for college. As I sat on the Luas chowing down a rushed breakfast of coffee and a pastry, a pretty young girl hopped on at Belgard and began a phone conversation in rapid and lyrical Irish. It had been years since I had heard someone speak the language with such fluency. After her phone conversation finished I politely asked her "Cad as tú...?" And we struck up a conversation as Gaeilge for most of the remaining journey. She is a native speaker from Connemara, teaching in Donegal, and mostly converses in Irish when she's at home and when speaking to her friends.

I was born into a family of Gaeilgóirs and spoke in Irish most of my young life, I attended a Gaelscoil until my leaving cert years and I can honestly say I achieved much better academically there than I did in an English speaking school. I landed myself in some of the biggest trouble of my life when I graduated secondary school with just a high B in Irish, in spite of being a native speaker.

There has been some robust debate recently, around the compulsory teaching of Irish, particularly at Leaving Cert level. From what I understand, the pressure mostly comes from parents who had grim experiences of the in school and who don't want to put their children through something similar. There is also the question, especially in today's economy, of how relevant Irish is for school leavers about to enter the jobs market and / or third level education. I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, I agree with people who believe the education system needs to be restructured around core enterprise subjects such as science, business, modern languages, math and liberal arts such as English and art. The fact that we live in a 21st century society that teaches religion as a subject over computing science, is something that needs to be seriously looked at if we are marketing ourselves as a smart economy.

But then there's the other side of me that feels that Irish still has a place in our culture, it has deep roots and emotional attachments that many Irish feel connected to, me included. In case you wondered, I did not have an easy go of it in the Gaelscoil. I have serious reservations about the way we were treated. In primary school I had a ruler taken to the back of my legs and was made to stand in various uncomfortable poses when I was 'bold'. If a teacher overheard us speaking English on school grounds or under the care of a teacher, we were punished by having to write essays on various topics in primary school and in secondary school the punishment was a suspension for the first two offenses and expulsion on the third. You could actually be expelled from school, your academic record permanently tarnished, for speaking English. In my humble estimation... that's nuts.

So as you can see, I'm not looking at this subject through green tinted glasses. The way I was taught in school made me kick back, rebel and generally dislike the language. I disliked it even more when I got to my English leaving cert math class and discovered I didn't know any of the terminology as Bearla. For the longest time I felt that Irish had nothing to offer but diddly eye, twee, archaic stenotypes and trad music... And I hate trad. Years passed and I pretty much lost the fluency I once had. Occasionally I would be asked by people who know I was raised in an Irish speaking home to translate something in Irish, or speak a phrase or two, or help my younger relatives with their homework and I felt ashamed that I had to struggle and eventually wiggle out of it. It was then I slowly came to terms with what I'd lost.

The Irish language is ours. It doesn’t belong to anyone else. It doesn't describe anyone else, but the Irish. Nobody else's history and legends are told in Irish... they are uniquely and entirely ours. When we decide to deny it, when we push back against it because of some idiot teacher or daft system that thinks the stick is a better way of teaching than the carrot, we do ourselves a disservice. When we decide our children aren't going to learn Irish we are denying them their birth right, and by the same token when we scold, chide and beat the love of that language out of our children we are effectively doing the same thing.

I risk annoying a lot of Irish folks out there when I say I agree ( I think I agree) that Irish should not be compulsory for school children, at least at Leaving Cert level. But to those who seek to remove it from the curriculum, I urge you to think again on deciding not to expose them to it all together. We take for granted something the Basques, Catalonians and countless others have fought for, the right to remember and treasure our own language. Own your language, it's a part of your national and cultural identity, something you can and should pass on to the next generation, something special you can share with them and whisper secrets to each other as Gaeilge as my mother and aunts used to do with me. Níl me ábalta an bronntanas seo a roinnt, le mo leannaí fhéinn, ach tá me chun obair ar mo líofacht on am seo amach.

…

I have been researching a little today, looking for an Irish language group in Dublin but haven’t found any yet. If you know of any please leave me a comment below and tell me about it. If I can get enough people interested in NCI I might have a go at setting up a society. I’ll update this post and let you know how I get on.

ce n'est pas une pomme...

2011-10-06T15:50:00.000-07:00

'This is Not a Photoshop...' My Apologies to Apple Inc & Rene Magritte

October 5th 2011. Roughly, 146,000 people died yesterday. One of them was an entrepreneur and inventor from California. Few people on this earth were as influential to the course of human history as Steve Paul Jobs. The image of technological messiah propagated by his followers, and himself on occasion comes as no surprise when you examine the spiritual vision and white-hot ambition with which he pursued his goals. Steve Jobs didn't just want to make computers, he wanted to make art and change the world. It would hard to argue that he achieved any less. But what did Steve Jobs really do? Was he a genius? An Inventor? A Designer? Or was he just the best salesman the world has ever known.

It could be argued that Jobs took other peoples inventions and designs, passed them off as his own and built upon them the most prolific technology company in the world. It's no secret that Steve Jobs was a bastard to work with. He expected nothing but brilliance from his disciples, and anything less was met with utter contempt. He was a child of the sixties and bought into everything that went with the 60s brand. Sandals, jeans, Bob Dylan and The Beatles. He smoked weed got high, took trips... to India among other places, but behind the peace and love attitude he was filled with frustration and anger. His introspection could be called narcissism, and though he believed that a person's environment was critical in influencing 'who' they were, he seemed to neither know nor care how his behaviour affected the people close to him. He refused to accept paternity for his first-born, Lisa, and was forced by the courts to pay child support, despite being worth around 214 million dollars at the time. Lisa and her mother were forced to live on welfare payments for the first two years of her life. He alienated those close to him, even Steve Wozniak who had been his stalwart companion and business partner since they met working a summer job in HP during high school.
Who was this guy...? How does someone with so much anger and negativity foster such a positive, creative atmosphere? One that nurtures design ethic and extracts fanatic loyalty? My first guess is that he was a Jedi. But let’s examine the other possibilities.

Steve Jobs had something that Steve "Woz" Wozniak recognized from the very beginning. He had a way with people. And no matter how clever a person is, no matter how much they know, they'll only go so far, that is to say they can go pretty damn far... but to get as far as Steve Jobs you need to be able anticipate people's expectations. The other thing Jobs had was the left field approach. He knew that all the academia in the world would make you a very smart and very dull person without art, culture and taste. So the smoking and tripping he did during the 70s, his travel to India, his exposure to literature and the arts, wasn't just your average, privileged, gap-year, self-discovery (I say it wasn't *just* that). Those years were like the R&D phase for what would make him a genius in the fields of design, marketing and sales. He became the guru of aspiration.

Apple I. Image courtesy of Wikipedia

When you think about it, it Apple were the first technological company to launch campaigns based on desire. It doesn't look like it, but the Apple I was the first computer that was targeted at the home user. You could use any keyboard and plug it in to a television and that was that. Woz may have been the brains behind the hardware, but if Woz was the Internet, Steve was the World Wide Web. Jobs' talent wasn't building machines it was building dreams. He could take an idea and distil potential from it in the form of pure gold. When he was bad he was horrid, but Steve Jobs knew how to work a crowd, and more importantly, an investor. He knew the language of design, of getting what he wanted. It was the winning combination of Wozniak's tech and Steve's silver tongue that got funding to create the Apple II and from there... Apple skyrocketed from the Jobs family garage to the most successful company on earth.

There are tonnes of articles talking about the life and death of Steve Jobs, I'll list some good ones at the end of this post, so I don't want to get into writing an obituary for the guy. I just keep seeing articles that paint him as a million things other than what he really was. In his life I, think he invented one thing on his own, the neXT computer and OS which flopped but became the basis for Mac's OSX which we use today. It was one of the first PCs to have Ethernet and Tim Berners-Lee wrote some of the first HTML on it. That alone would have made him a historical figure, but it was his ability to harness the creative power of others to produce game changing machines and devices that make him one of the cornerstones of recent history.

The Life of Steve Jobs - Gizmodo
Steve Jobs and the Business of Design
Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011 by Steven Levy - Wired

Irish Street Art

2011-10-03T05:49:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesty of Finglian on Boards.ie

I became interested in Irish street art around 2004 while I was studying design. There are so many different kinds but I'm speaking more of the guerrilla visual arts movement which has taken art and political statement to Ireland's streets. While many grafs are purely whimsical, what resonates with me are the stencil artists who take what we're all thinking and give it meaning and structure. The story of our time is being written across the city for anyone who cares enough to read it.

Maser / Ballymun Flats from Albert Hooi on Vimeo courtesy of Irish Street Art.

Nobody is better at these declarations of the Irish soul than Maser, who's typographical works can be seen plastered across hoardings at the docklands, across buildings in Temple Bar and even turning the last of the Ballymun towers into a beacon marking a turning point in Irish urban history. Maser collaborated with Damien Dempsey to produce a body of work entitled They Are Us. The exhibition was a tribute to Dublin, the dirty bits and the lovely bits, in an effort to raise money for the homeless. Prints can still be purchased on Damien Dempsey's website. These pieces normally consist of a line, or some lines of text, and in a way there is nothing really remarkable about how they are presented, but the location of the pieces adds context and gravitas to a sidewalk or building in a run down part of town which would otherwise be lifeless. One of the best examples I can think of is the piece at the docklands entitled Greed is the Knife but the Scars Run Deep. Situated amidst the empty shells which were once earmarked as multi storey car parks or apartment blocks, it serves as a stark reminder of how Ireland's economy was brought to it's knees.

Madonna of The Ghetto pic courtesy of Will St.Leger

Another favourite of mine is Will St. Leger. I had the privilege of watching him work on a stencil piece at the Forbidden Fruit Festival earlier this year, and I was amazed at the pace at which he took a stencil and some spray paint and created a masterpiece within 30 minutes. St.Ledger makes comment on Ireland's consumer culture, cultural identity, civil rights and current affairs. A political activist, he has been known to chain himself to, climb up on or stage performance art outside the gates of Dáil Eireann to advance the cause of equal civil rights for LGBTQ's.


Will St. Leger's Brilliant take on the eyeroll inducing Hunky Dorys ad campaign.

I admire his money-where-your-mouth-is attitude and the razor sharp wit that comes across in his work. Visually I love Madonna in the Ghetto, but you cant beat Duty free State for giving two fingers to Ireland's consumer elite. My personal favourite is God Dates Fags, a dig at the colourful Phelps family and their bile fuelled church.

photo courtesy of Eugene's Blog

Karma is a relative newcomer to the Irish street art scene, though he's been knocking about in 2006. A self taught stencil artist his work varies from stripped back, small scale and understated to large and complex, normally accompanied by some poignant caption and like Maser it's the location of the piece that underline it's meaning. He's been compared to British artist Banksy and though the stencils have a similar favour, I think it's fair to say his grafs are unique and from the heart. Check out a great interview with Karma in London Street Art Design Magazine (Issue 6).

Photo courtesy of Caroline Murphy on Flickr

ADW is one of the best loved and well known street artists working in Ireland today. His work commands a lot of respect from the street art community, if you can call it that. Again, he's a stencil artist, a creative who like so many others became disillusioned and eventually disenfranchised by the creative industry. When the Irish economy went under he decided to take the opportunity to become a full time artist "Since then I haven’t looked back". The trend certainly doesn't go unnoticed to me, especially, some of you will know, the way my own career pather has gone. I find it really encouraging that so many of these guys decided to take the tough times in their lives and turn them into something positive that gives so much to the urban landscape.

Photo couresty of Loki's Flickr account

Loki is the only girl in my group. There are definitely not enough chicks involved in street art, but that's an argument for another day. Part of the Nom Nom Collective and working in print and traditional art mediums she's actually one of my favourite artists on the Irish scene at the moment. There's an Aubrey Beardsley vibe to her work, particularly her sticker art and sketches, and yet she's completely out on her own in that nobody is doing similar work. It's really refreshing to see such a left field approach to street art. I'm looking forward to seeing more of Lady Lokibee in the near future.

I could quite seriously spend all day on here listing out more great artists but this post would go on forever. If you're interested in Street art and similar goings on then check out Irish Street Art, It's a great blog and resource. Also check out Candy, they release a free magazine that includes all kinds of visual art but have a few nice features on street art now and then and London Street Art Design Magazine, which is a bible when it comes to this stuff. Brilliant interviews and tonnes of great images. Kings of Concrete is an annual event which showcases the best of Irish street art as well as a tonne of other urban pursuits. It's becoming a sort of urban festival, check out the website for updates.

***Update***

ADW art exhibition 'Pricks and Mortar' October 21-23 South Street Studios, Dublin. Check out www.ADWart.com

The Grown Up Debs 2011

2011-10-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

So... Eh... What are you doing on Saturday? D'you wanna go to the debs?

My debs was shit. It was in the Killiney Court Hotel, and everyone got absolutely hammered. The music was awful, the food was just about edible and my date was awkward. I was strictly into girls at the time, but it being 90's Dublin, I had to bring a male friend. A friend who decided to try and get into my knickers, was brushed off but told everyone he had succeeded nonetheless. A girl who had made her own dress got blind drunk, sat in the middle of the dance floor, legs akimbo to reveal her reluctance to wear underwear. It was uncomfortable. Then the 'unsavoury' element in my class ran through the corridors tearing down paintings etc. from the walls. The only light-hearted moment of the evening for me, was the Dart home where Big Wayne shouted "Whoop! The night train" every time we came to a stop. I think he's in Mountjoy now.

It looks as though I have a shot at a 'do-over' this Saturday, 8th of October. The Gresham Hotel will open its doors to anyone who would like to get all dolled up and silly and dance like a tit to their all-time favourite debs tunes. You can relive fond memories, or like me try and forge some fun debs memories all while raising money for Action Breast Cancer. Tickets are 50 quid, that'll buy you a four course meal champagne reception, late bar and a chance to win some stuff, with raffles and spot prizes on the night. It's open to ALL vintages, some wearing their original gúnas (if they fit into them - ahem), some sporting lovely new frocks.

So get tickets and bring a girl, bring a bloke, bring a transgendered person, maybe indulge in a little cross dressing yourself, just make sure to bring the style. Tickets and information available from the website. Share your debs stories on their facebook page... but keep it (reasonably) clean!

Rua Red

2011-09-28T17:43:00.000-07:00

Rua Red Arts Centre Tallaght

Tallaght gets a lot of crap for being a bad area, and fair enough there are some pretty dodgy parts to it. But I can't believe the amount of positive changes happening there right now not least of which, is the Rua Red Arts Centre where I took part in a print workshop by talented photographer Sinead McDonald. Though I have lived in Citywest for three years (a five minute drive away) and have visited Tallaght a million times, I'm ashamed to say it was my first time to even really notice the arts centre.

The first thing I noticed as I approached was the gleaming exterior and the sharp design. The interior is bright and welcoming, as are the staff. There's a little cafe with a seating deck outside, which was where I met with the rest of the workshop. We were working in the Mac Lab that day, a minimalist white room kitted out with bench desking and red and white swivel chairs, and of course the latest Mac equipment. The Macs were ready to go with the most recent versions of Adobe Creative Suite, various video and graphics programs too numerous to mention, as well as lab quality printers and scanners.

The workshop was really worthwhile and we all learned a great deal. I highly recommend following @sineadw on the twitter to find out when she's planning the next one. After the workshop, Sinead told us about membership to Rua Red. You give them €5, a recent bill and some photo ID, and in return you can book any of the facilities which include the multimedia labs for production, gallery spaces, workshops and printing facilities. They charge a nominal fee for utilities when you use them, which is fair and a lot more reasonable than a printers might be, for example.

The centre have 6 artist's studios in all with natural light, fitted sinks, storage and central heating. They have offices, available on application to start up businesses within the creative industry who wish to have a base to work from. There are performance and rehearsal spaces with changing facilities, ballet bars, mirrored walls and a piano. There's even a great little cafe called 21. During the workshop we grabbed a bite there and the food was great, lots of choice at a reasonable price.

Rua Red is designed to be the creative hub of the community and caters to existing tenants which include designers, visual artists, writers, arts providers and the local radio station Radio Tallaght 99.1.

It's really easy to talk an area down, especially when you don't know it so well, and that's what makes places like this so special, it's run by locals for locals and the positive feeling seems to affect everyone who passes through it's doors. If you're in the neighbourhood drop by, it's a fantastic achievement for Tallaght and should be experienced.

The Perfect Politician

2011-09-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Cracked.com

Today saw both Rosemary "Dana" Scallon and Senator David Norris added to the ballot for the presidential election 2011. I have been pretty vocal in my support for Senator Norris amidst scandal and red top sensation over the past few months, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy when Dublin City Council awarded him the final nod to secure his place among, what has to be said, is a colourful bunch. The more I discuss and read about the race to the Áras, the more I find myself rolling my eyes in despair at the clown car our political system has become.

It seems appropriate for Dana to be on the ticket when the candidacy so far has been more like the bastard child of The X-Factor and Eurovision than the democratic process of a republic. I know I'm not alone in feeling that in this election, and every one I can remember, we're voting who we think is least unsuitable. I end up selecting who I dislike the least on the ballot because I can't really relate to any of them.

People in political life seem so far removed from my experiences that nothing they say or do really resonates. For a brief moment in the last general election, Dylan Haskins caught my attention. He was young, dynamic and genuinely interested in representing the youth vote. Now I don't consider myself a spring chicken but the allegiances of old family politics mean nothing to me. I want to see a candidate who represents me, my life and people like me. But it hasn't happened yet.

So what is it we want from a politician now? We say we want to do away with parish pump politics, but I can understand the popularity of rural TDs who go out of their way to sort out the bins, and organise a late license for the local. The Healy Rae's may be a joke to many cosmopolitan Dubs but at least the people of Kerry know their faces.

There is a vast population of apartment dwellers and suburbanites who have become disconnected from society and by default their local representatives. We have all heard about the neighbourless (in some cases literally) estates where young couples are living as separate units, stuck in their situations because of negative equity. Are they to become as isolated from the political process as they are from the local community?

During the last election, twitter was swamped with tweets complaining that they hadn't seen sight nor sound of canvassers on their doorstep. Joan Burton said she understood their frustrations but it was too difficult to gain access to apartment blocks. But is that what we want? If we see people calling door to door, will it increase our chances of voting? Will it give us time to air our grievances with some canvasser who can sound off a hundred stock responses to every question?

Would local workshops be more effective? Setting up stalls or mobile units where constituents can come and discuss their problems, with a view to solving them. Would it help to get some face time with your representative? Would it make a difference to us at all? Only if the promises made, are kept. And which promises? How should we decide, in an economy such as ours, who is more deserving? And who first.

We want more women in politics, but when it comes to these types of choices, it's a job I don't envy. The women who run will be scrutinised far more so than their male counterparts. People disagree with quotas, it should be the qualifications and experience that ensure the job, not a mandatory percentile. And on the face of it I agree with that argument, but only if it's a level playing field. How many male politicians do you think are suitable for the positions they hold? How many male politicians have proved capable? Women should be allowed to at least get their foot in the door and succeed or fail in the same way as men do. When a women shines and rises in politics, then so much further she has to fall. Her manner of dress, her decisions, her capability, her hair, her weight, her intelligence will all be up for comment. because politics has become like show business.

Do we want out politicians to be like stars? We watched as the charismatic Barack Obama seduced the sun from the sky, and even as we ridiculed Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann here on the left, it was clear that in the image stakes we in Ireland had nothing that could compare.

So... what makes the perfect politician?

Smooth, intelligent, witty speeches delivered with passion and sincerity, we want our politicians to look and sound effortless.

Stylish, they should be well dressed in a manner that suits them. Although not necessarily formal

They should be energetic and youthful, if not in years, in attitude

We want them to listen and hear the their constituents and deliver on the promises they make.

They should be capable of engaging on social networking platforms, or at least have staff that are capable of managing their online affairs professionally and without #fail. So important now too is their ability to be web savvy.

Honesty. To be prepared for almost any question, but not to bullshit when their not.

We ask that they not have a history of wrongdoing or scandal... yet we value one who stands up to the establishment for the right cause.

They should stand up and be counted when it comes to controversial issues, not cower behind party lines and special interest groups.

They should speak for the marginalised in society, give them a voice, rights and services.

How much of this is just fantasy? Are we asking too much? Or is it only right that the first citizens of our republic should represent the best in us?

I think that if I even saw some of these traits in local politicians, it would make me feel included in the discussion. What's your wish list when it comes to politics? Do you think Ireland 2.0 might bring real change or will it be different suit same player?

Welcome

2011-09-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

Ohai!

I love the first blog post. It's like the first day of school when you open the first page of a new notebook... I always did get a little overexcited about stationary. Anywhoo... some of you know me, some of you followed my old blog and from time to time, if you like, I'll repost some older material here. This is my first blog in quite a while. I decided to pack it in earlier in the year when my work situation was tricky and I was cautious about posting about things that could land me in hot water. Some of you from twitter will know that it didn't stop me having the odd rant there, but happily that's all behind me and I feel like I'm ready to get back to my online pondering on life, the state of the country, lady things and other such ramblings.

I look forward to hearing from you in the comments section, and please do get in touch if there's anything you'd like me to talk about.

Ciao for now... Siobhán.