Ray O’Neil

OPINION:

Before the referendum result there were calls for muted markings of a potential Yes to preclude celebrations like those following the gay marriage referendum. How typical of male traditional privilege, to oblige a bowed head and sombre refl ection as we crossed the darkened door into a repealed Ireland; to fail to value the true import of this referendum against a shame-fi lled and shaming Irish history which has repeatedly not only denied, but repressed, imprisoned and destroyed women, their sexuality, and their bodies.

Both referenda are similar in that they were about more than either gay marriage or access to pregnancy termination. Both were about bodies, sexuality, autonomy and a momentous opportunity to reclaim back decades, if not centuries, of repression and shame from the dominating hold of state, church and society over, most especially, women’s bodies. This is why both referenda were opposed so viciously with such huge outside funding.

Both referenda move an ‘agenda’ of liberating our sexual bodies away from strict enclosures and defi nitions into discourses and laws that recognise sexuality, our dicks, cunts, asses, wombs and ovaries as more than just things, but possessions belonging to no one other than the person who holds them. Both referenda upheld people’s right to decide for themselves, how to inhabit, live, love their bodies and be the fullest of what their bodies can allow them to be.

It was only following the referendum result, that I finally let myself watch the fi rst season of The Handmaid’s Tale. In our contemporary times where ‘unbelievable’ decisions/choices like Trump and Brexit and far right political legitimacy are very real and on the rise, the move to Gilead is never too far away. The steps we are making in Ireland are critical, but what’s done can easily be undone: only observe the debate and the amendments clustering around the Dáil termination legislation. Although a democratic landslide of us have been asked, have spoken, and have chosen; the die-hards in their self-righteousness will be happy to ignore and deny our democratic will. This is how Gilead rises. Only they know what’s best. We naively hope that Gilead could never happen, but never forget that Berlin in 1933 was the most extraordinarily tolerant place for LGBT folk, and within 18 months they were being sent to concentration camps and their deaths.

Sexuality and desire are true subversive tools against social conformity, orthodoxy and ‘normality’. Sexuality draws us away from the collective into either the individual pleasures of masturbation, or the pairings and groupings of shared sexual discovery – this is why sex is feared and reviled. This is why against the determination in Orwell’s 1984 to abolish the orgasm, Winston and Julia’s fucking is revolutionary. This is why behind The Handmaid’s Tale controls around fertility and who owns children, is a horrifi c unsexying of the sexual act in becoming reduced to a reproductive religious ritual, in which the handmaid is restrained by the wife while her husband attempts to impregnate her without personal contact. More rosaries shrouding ovaries.

The privilege and power of the LGBT+ community is the gift we proff er to the wider community that sex can be fun, immediate, celebrated, within marriage or not, trans-generational, trans-racial, trans-gendered; in relationships or relational. Not defi ned and limited by social convention or couplings. That sex is the revolution, the revolution against an indoctrinated shame of human bodies, nakedness, pleasure and orgasm. A shame that we can challenge with Pride and in Pride.

Pride is changing. I am wary of the commercialisation and whitewashed sanitising of Pride as sexual communities and individuals are marginalised further. Wouldn’t it be truly revolutionary for Leo to lead the way in a pair of leather chaps, or feather boa, or nipple clamps, snogging the face off his fella? But so many of us ‘normal’ gays, and here gay men are the worst off enders, want to remove or disregard the Dykes on Bikes, the bare leather Bears, the drag queens, the HIV community, because they ruin it for the rest of us normalisers in our corporate working, middle-class leaning, property-owning white, heteronormative privilege. Well darlings, these horny queers were the ones who gave birth to Pride and held it and raised it against boos and eggs, jeers and bans, while you were closeted and closed. They were proud for you when you were ashamed. They stood proud for themselves when others tried to shame them. And when the tide of the right turns again and Gilead rises, they will be the fi rst ones marshalled away while you deny, swallow and lie your way home.

“ Wouldn’t it be truly revolutionary for Leo do lead the way in a pair of leather chaps, or feather boa, or nipple clamps, snogging the face off his fella?

Maybe this year at Pride in commemoration of the sexual repositionings that both referenda have proff ered, and in celebration of another milestone in reclaiming the human, sexual body, you could publicly revel in your sexual desire as a sexual person and not just parade a consumerist labelling of sexuality. Maybe you could get your groove on and be brave, proud of your kinks, twists, queerness, cunts, cocks and everything in-between and beyond. Maybe this year instead of shaming those more courageous than you that perform and inhabit their sexual bodies, you don’t dismiss and shake your heads but shake their hands and buy them a drink. We owe them everything.

Ray is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist specialising in i ndividual and relationship counselling. He can be contacted on 086 828 0033