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— village December 2009 - January 2010
debate about
the dynamic between the sexes, as manifest in
unedifying Zeitgeist television programmes
like the recent RTÉ “Battle of the Sexes” is prim-
itive and ill-informed. Alienated Stereotypes
overarch the discussion: women are insincere
and hormonal vamps who want a man with
money to facilitate their own vacant materi-
alistic and lookist tendencies; men are useless,
belching, housework-avoiding, uncommuni-
cative and ageist football obsessives in search
of submissive girlfriends and mistresses. The
stereotypes are sterile. Village prefers to cel-
ebrate the diversity and to embrace the inerad-
icable differences, where they exist - which is
rarely - as positives that make intercourse
more exciting.
This generation - both men and women
- has had to construct new paradigms where
there were few equitable or progressive mod-
els in previous generations, particularly in
Ireland. Women typically now must balance
a job with child-minding: men must mind
children as well as go to work. This is surely a
grounding, balancing and confidence-enhanc-
ing phenomenon for both men and women.
Village’s perspectives as always are driven
by equality including equality between the
sexes. We need not even define equality for it
to be evident that, since neither sex is inferior
to the other, both are equal. Village promotes
positive discrimination to undo the structural
imbalances of continuing anti-egalitarian prej-
udice and historic biases. It is our belief that we
still live in a world where the opportunities for
women are very significantly restricted solely by
virtue of their sex. It is not possible to say quite
the same for men. There is a fundamental equal-
ity deficit where, according to ICTU, women’s
income is around two-thirds of men’s income;
and, adjusting for differences in hours worked,
women’s hourly earnings around per cent
of men’s. Glass ceilings move ever higher and
more difficult to pinpoint but remain very real.
Women’s choices are also restricted by the pres-
sures to make home. Women continue to be
burdened with a disproportionate amount of
unpaid work, in particular caring responsibili-
ties and household chores. Even though %
of paid work is done by women, they do %
of unpaid work. Where they do work for pay,
women are often torn apart by the stresses
of balancing it with child-rearing. Women’s
employment is concentrated in low-paid, low-
status and part-time occupations. The % of
the population who hold % of the wealth
are predominantly men. Only % of our TDs
are women. % of our Catholic priests are
men. Their God too is a man.
The lower status of women is manifest
in the sexual objectification, and persistent
stereotyping, of women as decorative, passive,
dependent and nurturing. This is reflected in
the witless Bunreacht Na hEireann, our out-
dated all-overarching Constitution, which in
Article recognises that “by her life within
the home, woman gives to the State a support
without which the common good cannot be
achieved; and that the State shall, therefore,
endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not
be obliged by economic necessity to engage
in labour to the neglect of their duties in the
home”. The Constitution is silent as to the sup-
port provided to the State by women who do
not have the presumed “life and duties within
the home” (and indeed as to the status afforded
such runaways).
And the State’s history of recognition
of women’s rights does not reflect well on
us. Legal equality in the workplace largely
depended on interventions from Europe. For
2010:
Sexuality is complex,
discrimination is controversial
and sexual discrimination is
an aggregate of the fraught
fractiousness of its components
“The stereotypes
are sterile”
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— village December 2009 - January 2010
Please address letters to: editor@villagemagazine.ie. Village reserves
the right to edit letters. Village offers a serious right of reply or
clarification to readers.
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Village, Ireland’s official attitude to abortion
seems to be one of denial and hypocrisy. While
the politics of abortion is complicated - largely
because it is impossible to get agreement on the
extent to which a foetus has the relevant charac-
teristics of a human - simply leaving it to other
countries to provide abortion services to our
typically vulnerable young women is simply a
moral disgrace.
Within relationships too, women are at a
disadvantage: although it may be the case that
neither gender has a monopoly on the initia-
tion of incidents of domestic “violence”, inci-
dents against women tend to be more forceful
and, where they reflect a disbalance in power,
more humiliating and therefore more seri-
ous. Certain types of abuse are almost invari-
ably perpetrated by men against women - rape,
trafficking and prostitution, for example.
While for these basic reasons Village
champions equality rights for women, we are
not fans of licence or of the exercise of rights
purely for the sake of it. It is not clear if the
freedom to appear on Page three, to provide
sexual services or to make pornography - even
if any of these are well paid - is an advance for
women. The early sexualisation in particular of
girls does not represent progress. The Village
office unpredictably divided on whether women
need to subscribe to models of feminism that
foreswear the wearing of “come hither” high-
heels.
Lest we be deemed to be mono-visioned
we note that men too are victims of inequal-
ity. While women lose more in opportunity
and confidence, men lose much in happiness,
fulfilment and humanity through their role and
their perception of their role as including, for
example, machismo or emotionlessness.They
are prejudiced by lifestyles and decisions they
tend to take, that are rooted in society’s expec-
tations of them. For men, life expectancy is
lower - . compared with . years, sui-
cide rates higher - % compared with %,
family relationships often less solid and egos
frequently more fragile than for women. And
men are also victims of discrimination albeit
across a narrower front, particularly if they are
good fathers in failed domestic relationships.
More generally as for the family: for gen-
erations, if not forever, women have been
deprived of opportunities to make full lives
for themselves outside the home. There has
been tremendous progress in righting this
injustice. But the progress has posited diffi-
culties for women who have significant lives
within the home, both because societal recog-
nition is not always wholehearted and because
the maternal instinct often conflicts with the
impetus of an education and career. Happily
too, it has also become normal for men to play
full - though perhaps less often equal - roles in
the home, including in child-rearing. Village
has little sympathy for men who fail to avail of
these opportunities but a great deal of sympa-
thy for men who wish to avail of the opportu-
nities but, for reasons of economy or the law,
cannot. The paternal figures less than the
maternal instinct in the discourse. Men’s rights
to engage fully with their children - and indeed
the corollary rights of children to fully engage
with their fathers, are not adequately recog-
nised in law. For example, paternal leave is
not the norm in this country. More funda-
mentally, a mother may object to an unmar-
ried father’s Guardianship application even if
the father can show he is willing to play a full
role as father; and without Guardianship such
a father’s rights, including to take decisions on
important matters regarding the child, are infe-
rior. If men have shown a sustained willing-
ness to play a full role as a father they should
be afforded equal rights, usually including to
guardianship, access and custody. This should
be as self-evidently in the best interests of the
child as the mother’s cognate rights.
Inequality is a general negative reality for
women. But equality for women should not
be an imperative that excludes indignation at
the deprival of certain rights of men. The fact
that women are still losers in equality overall
does not mean that there is no scope for vin-
dicating men’s rights that are not, or are not
adequately, recognised. Village is a fully-sub-
scribed adherent to feminism because it is still
the case that women have fewer opportunities
in society - across a range of sectors. Village
is a reluctant subscriber too to masculinism
because in family life men, for historic reasons
that for the most part have no continuing worth,
are often held unequal. Whether the discrim-
ination is against women or against men we
should all be more content when it is eliminated
and we are all treated as equal - because we are
all, men and women, equal.
On clerical participation
in bloodsports
Dear Editor
As we digest report after report laying bare the
nefarious deeds committed against young chil-
dren by elements of the Irish Catholic church,
let us not forget that another strand of abuse
exists namely the treatment of the non-human
members of our society by these dog-collared
demigods. .
The high level of Catholic clergy involved in
bloodsports is a scandal that hurts the non-hu-
man members of our society. For years, priests
have been involved in hare coursing, fox hunting
and shooting. Their involvement in these evil
activities has debased the teachings of the Church
that they subscribe too. It sends out a message
