The Exquisiteness of Pronouns

I don’t know if you heard, but there was a referendum in Ireland last month.

To recap, the citizens of Ireland were asked if they wanted to repeal or retain the eighth amendment to the constitution, which, in practice, criminalised abortions here in Ireland, but allowed women and girls to travel to the UK for terminations instead.  Over 66% of people agreed that this amendment was hypercritical and unjust and it was repealed on 25 May 2018.

I was always pro-choice.

I was born in the middle of the Welsh vallies at the start of the 70s in Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and Nye Bevan’s constituencies.  I remember the miners’ strikes and living in working class Thatcher’s 80’s Britain vividly, so it’s hardly a surprise that my political views are a little left of centre.  Most left-wingers are pro-choice, so I held that belief too.

So far, so easy.

I have always believed in “equality” and I have spent my working life involved in education, or in development-based organisations that try to fight inequality.  And my first “action” to support the repeal the 8^th movement was on International Women’s Day, 2017, when I posted something fairly vague and vacuous on Facebook.  I said that it was unjust that some women and girls could travel to the UK for terminations but those without financial security had to take the unsupervised abortion pills in Ireland.  Those with money could be medically cared for, and those without money were essentially breaking the law and risking 14 years in prison.  The issue was so clearly about equality for me that I didn’t even do a spell check before I posted the paragraph.  And posting this on Facebook came with absolutely no risk to myself.

A year later on International Women’s Day 2018, I posted more!

I talked about equality of access again, and I started mentioning women and girls who had refugee status and asylum seeker status who could not travel to Britain.  So the legislation was discriminatory and affected the most vulnerable women in our society the most.  But I was talking about “those women over there” and not me.

Not me.  Those. Over. There.

The Together For Yes campaign kicked-off and I started doing the odd bit.  I donated money.  I bought a badge.  I signed up to a fun-run, and yet I was still taking no personal risk to support this campaign at all.  I had a sympathetic opinion, which was almost academically removed and charitable rather than felt with a passion, because I still did not relate the issue or the fight to me.

Then something happened.

It became very clear, after an almost Kafkaesque conversation with someone from the department of Justice, that my application for citizenship would not be ready in time to register to vote.  Then I realised that I had to do more than tweet.  I actually had to get out into the streets and start talking to strangers.  My logic here was that if I could “convince” someone to change their mind and vote YES, then this was my YES vote by proxy.

So I did a bit of canvassing and leafleting.

I was terrified at first, because I genuinely thought that I would be asked on all matters fertility related and possibly quizzed on other areas of the Constitution.  I soon discovered that most people actually just wanted to say what was on their minds, and discuss any sticky points that they had.  It was generally quite interesting and quite engaging and I like to think I helped one or two people come to their own decision to vote YES.

But here’s the thing.

In less than 15 hours’ worth of volunteering on the campaign, I experienced quite a high number of uncomfortable moments.  Up until this point, I was still talking about “those women over there”, but when you are told, by strangers in the street, that you ought to be ashamed of yourself, that you are Satan, that you’re a slut who needs cleansing and that you are a lost cause who is going to hell, you start getting angry.  Not sad or blue, or sympathetic to the cause.

But really fucking angry.

It dawned on me then, that I was asking permission for the rights to my womb. How incredible it was that some people believed that they had the right to say NO to me.  How dare they think they could?  Then the pronouns changed, in the most exquisite of ways.  I stopped talking about women and girls and started saying “us”.  I stopped talking about women with refugee and asylum seeker status and started to say “we”.  I started to say “me”; I started to say “I”.

Two weeks on and I am still in shock and recovery.  Leafleting made me think that the amendment would be retained, and I’m still struggling to be kind to those who voted NO.  Their right to have a clear conscience and sleep well at night, because they think abortion is morally wrong, would have affected my right to choose what is best for my womb, in the most profound of ways.  I am trying to remember Nietzsche’s warning that when fighting monsters we must be careful that we ourselves do not turn into monsters and the Dalai Lama’s advice that life without love and compassion is not really a life.  With this in mind, I will try and make more of an effort to be kinder to those who voted NO next week.

Maybe next week I will be kinder to them.

My final social media post related to the criticism that the YES supporters were celebrating the result of the referendum, and I wrote this:

“I’ve heard these awful and malicious lies that some people were out drinking champagne on Saturday afternoon, and into the early evening. I assure you I was drinking Pinot and Prosecco. When will these lies ever stop? Fake News!”

Finally, I was using personal pronouns.  I was putting my hat, my passion and my womb into the discourse and I was taking a bit of a risk.  Finally, I realised that to stand by the women and girls of Ireland, I had to be counted as one of them.

And I am so very proud that I did.  I am just sorry I was so late.