Maman Poulet

This Friday sees two events taking place in Dublin which show the rise of lesbian and gay sports organising in Ireland.

The first is the launch this Friday (Dec. 1) of a fundraising calender by the Phoenix Tigers – the only lesbian/gay woman’s football team in Dublin. Half of the proceeds of this calender go to Action Breast Cancer. It is available on the night of the launch in the Dragon and will also be on sale in many gay friendly outlets in Dublin. Well done to the women and according to advance peeks the photos are rather beautiful and much better that the Leinster Womens Rugby Calendar last year. Speaking about Rugby – best wishes to the Emerald Warriors, Dublin’s Gay Men’s Rugby Team in their bid to host the Bingham Cup. The bid video made by the Irish team is very swish and the gents and their friends will be in the George on Friday evening awaiting news at 8 p.m. from the International Gay Rugby Association and Board where other bids from Paris and Sydney are under consideration.

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So that means the Cabinet are due today to talk about cohabitee’s rights and same sex marriage. Cue lots of crap about equality but no commitments and FF and PD’s speaking out of both sides of their mouths. They won’t be alone in party political terms either. More on Maman Poulet as it happens.

Update – The Ancient Order of Hibernians who assaulted Michael McDowell at the conference on the rights of Cohabitees (as live blogged by Maman Poulet!) were in the audience and making ‘trouble’ on last nights Questions and Answers. (Real Player required) Adopting other peoples children is what’s on their minds – ah lads a little biology lesson for ye – most same sex couples who are parenting are busy making their own babies. Oh and one of them said Bertie and Michael McDowell are having a relationship which is why they are so interested in the issue!

Ursula Kilkelly was very clear on her opinion on the constitution and any ban on same sex marriage – there isn’t one. Childrens’ rights were also clarified by Kilkelly, who is one of Ireland’s leading experts on the matter.

Mary Hanifin looked extremely uncomfortable listening to a lesbian woman in the audience married in Canada talking about children’s rights. Hanifin says that the Attorney General does not favour same sex marriage and the constitution does not favour it. The people don’t want gay marriage and would not vote in favour of it.

Lots of talking about domestically dependable relationships – so much emphasis from the Minister for Education (and niece daugher of Des Hanifin, Pro Life Activist and former Senator) on the two brothers/two sisters scenario to make the government look all touchy feeley and not talk about what those queers might be doing that is different which makes her grimace when she hears about lesbians having children of their own and wanting rights for their partners.

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I really hope that the students taking the Multimedia Degree in Tipperary Institute are getting some guidance on diversity and incitement to hatred.

Output from these students taking the PR module part of this degree can be heard in podcasts from podcasting.ie

I listen to most of these podcasts, (Entitled Educasts) they are a trial at times to listen to but improve as students ‘get with the programme’ and production and content improves. There is still a long way to go!

However today I was listening to a podcast entitled Freedom and Safety – Educast 88. Niall O’Brien and Laura Keeley discuss some ‘funny’ things they found on Bebo (9 minutes and 30 Seconds into the ‘cast).  The usage of the terms Itinerant and Knacker caught my ears and my breath –  in particular they were flagged as Bebo pages worth checking out whilst the presenters were laughing. Padraig Nally killed a man, a Traveller – not an itinerant – that language left us many many years ago. 

Possibly it might have been worth looking at the net/new media/social networks and racism? Or mentioning that Travellers have long rejected the usage of those terms and organisations like the NUJ, the NCCRI, and probably the PRII would also advise against using the terms in a journalistic/media exercise.  And indeed a discussion on freedom of speech would also be useful and defining hatred and incitement and whether legislation is the right way to go about limiting speech and promoting diversity.

These students are supposed to be learning about PR – and indeed do analysis of PR in reference to the FG Councillor Michael Fitzgerald and his views on Drink Driving. However they need to know about other rules of PR – and the power of language and laughter and inferences that can be taken from how things are said.

*The title  of this post comes from the podsafe music used at the beginning of the piece.

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Dear O2

Your website is absolute rubbish. It has been absolute rubbish for years. 250 free texts a month my arse. It has always been designed to deter people from using it.

The site is frequently down, being upgraded or telling me I am using an old browser. Well I am using Firefox 2.0 and IE7 so go figure.  (Don’t worry techie blogging lads I’m not infringing on your expert territory – god forbid my mammaries would get the better of me!)

Anyway O2 – the site is rubbish, I spend an awful lot of money on calls and a contract each month, I expect a lot better.

You know it only costs a few Euro to register 02dotiesucks.com. Go on tell me to cease and desist – I dare ya!

Maman Poulet

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• Fair Play to Twenty

A man in modern Ireland striving to make a difference, struggling against the machinations of a divided society. Divided into those who have the vision and those, like Stevie Wonder and Bertie Ahern, who don’t.

From the acceptance speech that Tom Raftery sadly never got to make on behalf of Twenty Major who added the title Net Visionary to his groaning mantlepiece somewhere.  Felicitaciones, bula bas etc etc.

• Mary Gilmartin has put together a list of Irish women blogging here. Thanks for that Mary – it’s very useful. And it’s only a year or so since the women in blogging spat discussion. Good to have this list for reference and further reading!! 

• I’m going to wait and see before I add my comments to this story in the Sunday Biz Post. Simon waxes here. Am not surprised and I do appreciate the amount of time and effort that Labour Equality people have put into this work/campaign – I’m not a party member anymore and feel grand about it at the moment.

• For the Corrie fans in your life.

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Tim O’Malley seems to be following the line well trodden by junior health ministers in being insensitive regarding Mental health. Jim McDaid did it when he called those who commit suicide selfish. O’Malley seems to have done the same by telling the Irish Medical News

There’s a very strong view with a lot of people that depression and mental illness is not a medical condition, that it’s part of life’s events that people get depressed or get unhappy”. 

He then said that often people were diagnosed as mentally ill when in days gone by ” people had much more time to liaise with each other and discuss things. . . if there were difficulties people discussed those difficulties and sorted them out”.

It’s not often that you’ll get me agreeing with Breda O’Brien but her article in the Irish Time on November 11th is worth a read. 

To imply that years ago there was no such thing as depression, only unhappiness, is to risk restigmatising those who have serious mental illnesses. It is not true that years ago there were no depressed people. What is true is that years ago, people with serious depression and psychotic illnesses were incarcerated, often for a lifetime, because there was no real alternative. Mental hospitals were shocking and frightening places because of the severity of symptoms suffered by patients.

O’Brien continues by saying it is time for a debate but there has already been an extensive debate in mental  health service survivor circles on the (over) medicalisation of mental illness. Advocacy groups have grown and new social movements have developed. There is debate and dialogue between service users, advocates, and medical professionals. I don’t think the Minister’s comments add to this debate at all. Reactive and clinical depression are different things, the Minister fails to acknowledge this in his comments. Over prescription of certain medications is accepted by all to have happened – however this does not mean that there is not a crisis in the mental health service in Ireland and a continuing stigma around mental health illness and disability.

And of course mental health services are the Cinderella of the health service in this country. Resources in terms of multil disciplinary teams and talk therapies and support for people diagnosed with depression are severely lacking. The Minister’s prescription is to tell people that they aren’t really depressed and of course there isn’t a problem – typical Irish solution to a problem.

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I’m in ‘Maman Poulet needs a job’ mode at the moment – various job interviews, sweaty palms, new suits, big smiles, crap answers to questions, finding out there will be second interviews, sweating over the weekend waiting to hear, drafting yet another CV and letter of application.

And then there is the ‘if I mention I blog in the interview’ will the panel come googling? Well if you are a interviewer I have met recently, hello there and welcome to MP. Eeek what if they are related to Ryan Tubridy, a member of Opus Dei,  someone who loves Rachel Allen? or David Quinn? A George Bush Supporter?

On the other hand if you are someone who wants to interview me or offer me a job? Email me!!! And with that I depart for the North West for the weekend to watch a punk dyke band tear it up or whatever punk dyke bands do!!!

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Women’s Aid have taken to blogging to highlight the forthcoming 16 Days of Action opposing violence against women campaign  which runs from 25th November to 10th December 2006.

The site is designed to be an ongoing way of gathering information on what is happening running up to and during the 16 days this year. Anyone interested in the campaign should visit www.ireland16days.blogspot.com for regular updates and information.

Another interesting use of blogs by an NGO to spread the word on issues and campaigns.

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Save Britney’s Marriage

Why do Black people never win Reality TV Shows?

A Woman Politician Blogs – Welcome to the Blogosphere, Councillor Phil Prendergast. And I think a new Irish political term has been launched – Doing a ‘Dominic’!!!!

Air guitarists may no longer be playing just air. Damm technology…

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I wasn’t going to write this post so soon but as I mentioned yesterday there seems to be a ‘problem’ with lots of closeted gay people at the upper echelons of the Republican Party.

I say ‘problem’ because several groupings see it as a problem. Firstly we have the evangelicals who are reeling at the outing of Ministers who have a predilection for crystal meth and Prostitutes, and who are dismayed at the losses in the Republican Party and the failure of their agenda to advance.

Secondly there is the gay rights movement who have generally decided that outing is a good thing in this regard  – the level of hypocrisy involved in senior staffers for US senators and the Republican Party leadership means that it’s fair game on peoples private lives. The staffers may say that they themselves do not support discrimination against lesbians and gays but working for some of the most homophobic elected officials in the USA does not sit well with their personal lives.

The third group are out gay republicans themselves – who must be reeling from the exposés, the general hopelessness involved in getting gay rights put on Republican agendas and then having to try and mop up the messes left by the actions of Mark Foley etc.

Fourthly mainstream media commentators. They like having this issue to get their teeth into, hypocrisies involved aside, the exposure of scandal and corruption make good copy and fill air time for weeks. There are of course opportunities for some to link gays to pedophiles etc. What the outing and exposure actually does for lesbian and gay visibility and acceptance is hard to tell. Anyone out there got their own ideas and opinions?

Last night comedian and late night show presenter Bill Maher outed the chairperson of the Republican Party, Ken Mehlman. It was not the first time Mehlman had been outed. The ‘outing’ took place on Larry King Live on CNN. The Huffington Post has the transcript and video and also the censored programme which went out on the west coast of the USA three hours later.

Other than Mary Cheney, daughter of shooting Dick, I don’t know of any republican lesbians who have been found to be hypocritical in their choice of workplace/boss. I’m sure they exist!! Mary Cheney worked for Coors Beer Company as their outreach marketer to the lesbian and gay sector before daddy got a job in the White House. She has since stood by and said nothing as the Republicans have touted constitutional amendments banning marriage and equality for same sex couples.  

However maybe it is possible to be gay or lesbian and not believe in queer emancipation? If you are not comfortable in your sexuality is it not a perfect cover to be working for an organisation who espouses hatred and discrimination? See Roman Catholic Church for exhibit number 1 in any future discussion.

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