IF YOU NEVER MOVE

I know you have probably already made up your mind.

And I know that most people who read this will probably already have decided to vote Yes. Most people I know are compassionate and smart and engaged enough with the world around them to care about the welfare of its inhabitants. This is why I know that most people in my circles are Yes voters.

However, if you are a No voter, I am not saying you necessarily lack compassion or are not smart or that you don’t care about the world around you. There are all sorts of circumstances that can combine to make us think or feel a certain way. It’s ok. I believe that deep down that many of you want to do the right thing, but because of very different kinds of information and cultural references that you have had access to, you have a very different perception than I do as to what the right thing even is.

And I am conscious that at this late stage, there are probably very few of you No voters who will be convinced to change your mind. But still, I would like to specifically address any of you who have decided to vote No, not on the grounds that you have a problem or discomfort with LGBTQ people, but because you are concerned about the welfare of children and young people.

I want to talk to you about what is at stake for those children and young people. I want to talk to you about how they will feel on May 23rd. I want to talk to you about the decisions we are making for them about the shape and quality of their future.

Over the course of the campaign, Ireland’s LGBTQ population has achieved level of visibility that is entirely unprecedented in this country. The Irish media has hosted beautiful and brave LGBTQ voices sharing their stories on a volume we have never before encountered as a society. There have been canvassers all over the country knocking on doors, as LGBTQ people, asking to be treated equally and with respect. There have been conversations on streets and doorsteps all over Ireland about what it’s like to be an LGBTQ person in Ireland and what this referendum means to us.

This is a massive deal. In a society that only decriminalised homosexual acts just over 20 years ago, for it now to be possible for a gay person to knock on a stranger's door and have personal conversations about their lives and experiences is unimaginably significant. For me, as someone who grew up believing that there were literally no other gay people on this island, this new level of visibility has immeasurably moved and astounded me. I am full to bursting with pride and delight for all the incredible people I know who have made themselves vulnerable and exposed to try to improve the society for all of us. I am so thankful to them and so overwhelmed by their generosity and openness and hard work.  

That visibility is powerful. It has heartened me to no end. However, if it can affect a confident adult so profoundly, the effect it can have on a vulnerable LGBTQ young person or child can’t be overstated. For young LGBTQ people and children to see such positive representations in the media and in the society all around them, to have access to conversations around what it is to be a real LGBTQ person, when they may have only ever previously heard the word ‘gay’ mentioned as a playground slur, is deeply meaningful.

Imagine how those LGBT young people and children will have felt over the course of this campaign. Imagine feeling as a result of this, one step closer to loving and accepting yourself, in a society that has taught you only to reject yourself.

Imagine having listened to your friends call each other queers and faggots for years. Imagine having heard during the campaign the very first positive thing you ever heard anyone say about a gay person. Imagine how exciting that must be. Imagine all the new possibilities it would seem to open up.

Imagine as a child, having already internalised a deep rooted hate and confusion at parts of yourself, as a result living within a culture and society that is still significantly more homophobic than many people wish to accept. Imagine how seriously that self-hatred will have been aggravated by the negative messaging of the No campaign. Imagine how much deeper that damage will be felt if there is a No result.  Imagine having already embraced the belief that you are wrong, unnatural, or sinful, that you will not live a full, fulfilling life, that you cannot be a parent or have a family, that you cannot form meaningful relationships.

No child should be brought up to believe this about themselves. I hope over the course of the campaign, we have done some work to dilute these seeds of self-hatred. I hope we’ll continue to do so.

Imagine being closer to the excited peak of coming out to someone. Imagine being nearly there. Imagine having seen the inspiring, beautiful, brave LGBTQ people who have pushed this campaign forward, and realising that actually, maybe, being an LGBTQ person can be so much fuller and richer and better than you had been taught. Imagine thinking that maybe you could do this, that your life could take a different shape than you had been conditioned to anticipate. That society may accept and embrace you more than you could have possibly ever imagined. That the parts of yourself that you were already learning to hate, could in fact be beautiful and important and fully, unequivocally deserving of love.

Imagine if you, as a child, went to bed on May 23rd and realised that you were wrong.

Imagine if you went to bed on that night, trying to cope with the realisation, that you in fact, will not be accepted in the way that you had almost started to believe you might be. That the majority of the electorate does not believe that you are as equally deserving of love as your peers. Imagine sadly retreating back into the closet as your self-doubt and self-hatred is reaffirmed by an entire society. Imagine how long that damage might last for.

We are responsible for making sure that doesn’t happen. We are responsible for providing the conditions in which a child can grow up to love and feel good about themselves, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity.

I’ve spoken to adults about how they will feel if we have a No vote on May 23rd. About how they will no longer feel comfortable or safe in Ireland. How they will no longer feel welcome in their own country and communities. Personally, I will be completely heartbroken. I don’t really know how I’ll cope.

But I am a proud, confident, out adult, with support networks and structures. If this is how a confident adult feels, how is a vulnerable LGBTQ young person or child to feel without any of these structures to support them.

By voting No or by not voting at all, you are doing the wrong thing by children and young people. You are doing them a disservice and making the conditions in which they grow up more difficult, oppressive and dangerous. I know that is hard to accept. I know it is so much easier to think of yourself as a person who cares about children. It is a much harder conversation to have with yourself to admit that you would rather contribute towards actions that are harmful to children and young people, rather than come to terms with your own deeply buried prejudices. That is a difficult thing to acknowledge. But if we are to build a better society and care about the welfare of its inhabitants in a meaningful and inclusive way, then we all must have these hard conversations with ourselves. We must engage in these conversations rigorously, and head-on, and we must come out the other side of them as more empathetic people, better equipped to care for those around us.

Please have that conversation with yourself. Please, please, please vote Yes on Friday.

Twitter: OIS_MCK

I’ve heard a few times since the beginning of the campaign to secure a Yes vote in the referendum for Marriage Equality, that one of the most powerful and convincing tools we have, is to share anecdotes and stories about why marriage equality matters personally to us, to our friends, and to our families. To put a human, real-life face on an issue, is a potent means of securing Yes votes, especially when addressing those who may have never even met an LGBTQ person or understand why this is so important to us. I believe this is true.  

I have been thinking about what my anecdote should be. I don’t really want to get married. To me, marriage seems to be an idea from a completely different time that, to be honest, I don’t relate to. Obviously, however, I passionately believe that everyone who wants to access marriage should be allowed to do so - I may not be sold on marriage, but I certainly believe in marriage equality. But, as I said, marriage is not for me. I’m not sure if this is the most emotive or energising of personal anecdotes to use when making the pitch for a Yes vote.

It may be harder for me to talk about how a Yes vote will affect the course of my life, but I think I am more equipped to talk about what it would have meant in my life, had it happened when I was younger and coming out, and what it could still mean, for LGBTQ people growing up now.

When people talk about how much better it is for LGBTQ young people growing up today than it was in previous decades, I’m one of the young people that they’re talking about. I’m 23. Homosexual acts were decriminalised in Ireland shortly before my 2nd birthday and Civil Partnership legislation was passed when I was 18.

I have been out for nearly all of my life, in one way or another. When I was a kid, I very evidently related to my gender differently from other boys. I was sensitive and played with Barbies and if someone asked me what I wanted to be when I growed up, I sometimes would tell them I wanted to be a girl. I know gender expression isn’t a necessary indicator of sexual orientation, but the point is, I was always openly outside of the status quo when it came to how boys and girls were expected to behave. Plus, as it transpired, this did translate to me identifying as gay eventually anyway.

I came out as gay for the first time when I was 8. Some kids in my class were playing one of those games where everyone sits in a circle and takes turns telling secrets. People were admitting to things like stealing pencil cases, copying someone’s homework, or liking one parent more than the other. I knew I was gay, and for some reason, I thought I should just tell them. Even then, I wanted so badly to be visible, and for that to be validated. They didn’t take it that well. They didn’t tell anyone as far as I know, but they definitely didn’t want to be my friend any more. I was hurt and embarrassed. I made the decision to shelf that particular secret for a few years longer.

I came out again, properly, shortly after I turned 14. I started by telling one friend, and then more, and more. I asked people to keep it a secret, but retrospectively, that was a ludicrous and unrealistic request to make of 14 year olds with a juicy secret, who’d only ever seen a gay person on Will & Grace. News travelled. Soon, somehow, everyone in my school seemed to know. People I didn’t know were constantly approaching me to ask if I was the gay lad. Many people were supportive and kind, but many were not. People started regularly shouting faggot at me in the corridor. I was hurt and embarrassed. I started to regret the whole thing. 

As was the style of the time, I wrote a blog about it on my Bebo page. It helped me feel more powerful in theory, but I was still vulnerable in practice. A few weeks before my Junior Cert, I was beat up badly enough by some people in my year. My nose was broken and I had a black eye. My parents could see that I had been hurt and wanted to know how it happened. I didn’t want to tell them, but they eventually asked if I was gay, and if this was this why I was attacked. This is how I came out to them. They were unquestionably and utterly supportive, but still, it wasn’t ideal circumstances.

Things like this happened occasionally until I finished school. Strangers who somehow knew who I was would shout faggot at me in the corridor. People threw eggs at me. One time, I was walking down an outdoor, concrete stairs, and someone standing at the top of it threw a loose brick at me and shouted “I’ll kill you faggot”. The lads I hung around with, my friends, thought it was a fun, ironic joke to frequently refer to me as “the fag” right on front of me. I was hurt and embarrassed, but mostly, I thought it was my fault. I had asked for too much, and this was the result.

All things considered though, it wasn’t that bad. I had plenty of other LGBTQ and feminist friends with whom I could feel part of a community. I had parents who were brilliant and fully accepting, without any qualms or hesitation, from word go. I dated and had boyfriends, who I’d bring home for dinner on Stephen’s Day. Plus, I was part of one of the first generations who could really use social media as a tool to learn that there were so many other people out there, who were just like them.

And all things considered, I still have buckets of privilege. I’m white, middle class, able bodied and male. For LGBTQ women, people of colour, working class people, members of the travelling community and other marginalised groups, the hurt described above when intersected with other forms of oppression, can be made infinitely more difficult. Our trans* siblings are still alarmingly under-represented and marginalized, even within the movement for LGBTQ rights. And make no mistake - if we really care about equality, we will galvanise the momentum of fighting this campaign, and use that energy to support and amplify the voices of transgender communities and individuals, in every way that we can.

All things considered so, my case was significantly easier than it was for many people out there. But it was still hard. And if it was hard for me, it’s worse for others. Every time someone called me a faggot or threatened me or hurt me, I still, deep down, thought it was my fault. I thought I was being petulant and brash and naive for wanting to be treated equally. When people told me I was worth less than them on account of my sexual orientation, I still, deep down, thought they were right.

This is because the legislation and policies of the state said so too. They said that LGBTQ people were not as good and not as deserving of the same rights as their peers. Still, the legislation and policies of this state tells them that they are worth less. Still, this is the message that LGBTQ children grow up with. Research has demonstrated that this has real and tangible effects on the mental health of the LGBTQ population, who still, are disproportionately affected by challenges to their mental health, more so than the general population. These sustained and persistent threats to the wellbeing and self-esteem of LGBTQ children clearly can have a profound affect on their lives as they progress to adulthood, and undoubtedly, affects the lives of many LGBTQ adults today.

For years, the campaign against marriage equality has been trying to tell us that this is about the welfare of children. And actually, it is. It is about the welfare of every LGBTQ child in Ireland who, right now, are growing up in a system that expressly teaches them that they are less valuable than their heterosexual peers. It is about us grabbing our chance to tell them that they are every bit as worthwhile, wonderful and equal as anyone else. Marriage equality isn’t the full answer, but a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum is the most powerful and loudest tool we have at our disposal in getting the message to LGBTQ children that they are equal and they are valued.

I cannot express how deeply meaningful that ‘Yes’ vote would have meant to me when I was growing up, believing it was my fault when someone called me a faggot. For a majority of the electorate to say that they believed I was equal, would have been a deeply powerful means of protecting my wellbeing, self-esteem and mental health when peers treated me as if I was less than equal. I know, without any doubt, just how meaningful that support will be to countless LGBTQ children and young people all over Ireland right now.

The referendum isn’t going to win itself. We need to put our backs into it. We need to be having conversations, and we need to be brave and calm about it. For those who can, you should think about donating to the Yes Equality campaign, which really needs the funding. If you feel confident enough, you should volunteer to canvass with your local Yes Equality group - you can find details of them here. Engaging with people on a face-to-face basis and explaining why marriage equality is important to you personally, is what’s going to win this campaign.

Let’s get out there and do it.

More essays.

In 2015 I want to have less doubts.

I am full of doubts. I doubt myself, and I worry, all day long.

I worry that I don’t make enough decisions. I worry that I don’t take enough time, or make enough time. I worry that I don’t work enough, or write enough, that I haven’t achieved enough, or made enough plans. I worry that I don’t spend enough time on myself or others and I worry that I don’t have enough fun.

I worry that I don’t go to the dentist enough and that maybe I actually have scurvy.

I worry that I’m taking up too much space on trains and when I reach into my bag for my water bottle and accidentally graze against the person next to me, it makes them uncomfortable and they see me as threatening or weird.

I worry that I’m overthinking it and why should I care anyway.

I worry that I’m not saying anything, and that I never say anything at all.

I worry that I’m not doing anything, that I’m never doing anything, that I haven’t done enough and that I won’t have done enough by the time I’m 25 or 30 or 35.

I worry that I’m not more like Taylor Swift. I worry that I’m not more like Rihanna, or those 16 year old Youtube millionaires, who had achieved ludicrously large and impressive achievements by the time they were my age.

(This is the Wikipedia page for awards and nominations received by Taylor Swift. Look how far you have to scroll before you reach the end of it).

(I will never write anything as good as ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’).

Most of all, I worry that I don’t move enough.

I want to move all of the time. I want to have progressed to certain milestones by certain ages. I want to make sure my career is on track and that I’m putting in enough hours for it to get there. I want to be more time efficient. I want to make sure I’m creating enough and becoming a better artist. I want to make sure that I’m learning to communicate more fully. I want to be modest and funny and politically engaged. I want to know how to demonstrate these characteristics to strangers.  By this time next year, I want to have moved forward, and I want to have moved forward quickly. I want that movement to be measurable and significant, and I want it to be satisfying.

I want to be better.

And I feel frustrated and weird and angry all of the time about the discrepancy between what I imagine my life should look like and how it actually is.

This is tiring and it’s taxing and it’s unsatisfying. It’s also so overwhelming that any action I could take towards making any of those movements happen is preceded and inhibited by a debilitating anxiety.

That constant urge to move and progress and expand and experience is the the most paralysing thing I feel. The need to constantly move is the thing that most inhibits me from moving.

I had the idea for this essay months ago, but every time I’ve tried to expand my notes into something a little bit fuller, I’ve seized up. Every time I’ve typed a new word, it’s felt like that word has irrevocably dragged the essay in the wrong direction.

(Is that line ok? Will people think it’s pretentious?)

*

I worry that I look shit with my shirt off and that my shoulders blades are gross and pointy. I wish I didn’t have that weird posture problem. I wish I had bigger arms.

I worry that I don’t look like this and the reason that I don’t look like this is because I’m lazy and unmotivated and despite what I read, could never possibly get enough protein on a vegetarian diet.

I worry about Vitamin B deficiency.  

I want to eat more kale. I want to make sure there’s more iron in my diet and I want to post pictures of my meals on Instagram so that everyone knows there’s more iron in my diet. I want to tweet images of myself after my morning jog. I want to be #killingit #blessed and #instafit. I want to utilise 15 Easy Tips For Never Skipping Another Workout.

I want to work for at least 18 hours a day, get so much done and not even get tired. I want to make sure that my friends and strangers at parties know that I work for at least 18 hours a day, get so much done and don’t even get tired. I want to tell them how busy I am.

I want my (very busy) schedule to be laid out in colour coded spreadsheets. I want to make sure you know that my (very busy) schedule is laid out in colour coded spreadsheets. I want to tell you via Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram that I am very busy and it is very stressful.

It is very important that you know that I am very busy and it is very stressful.

This is how I measure my value. I am worth how busy I am. I am worth the stage that my career is at compared to the stage that my peers’ careers are at. I am worth how late I can work at night and how early I can work in the morning. I am worth the strangers at parties who tell me I’m doing well for my age. I am worth the amount of people who decide to Retweet a Tweet, as opposed to just favoriting it.

This isn’t working. I need to understand my worth in different terms. I need to renegotiate my value system.

I think we should discourage ourselves from tethering our self-esteem to our capacity to participate in a free-market capitalism. I think, wherever possible, we should extract ourselves from this paradigm, and reclaim tiny bits of space where our values are defined on our own terms.

I think you’re worth way more than the sum of your professional and academic achievements. I think you’re worth more than the time you put in at the gym. I think you’re worth more than the review or funding you get. I think you’re worth way more than the income you’re capable of generating, and if you work in a commercial industry, I think you’re worth infinitely more than your capacity to generate income for any corporate or commercial enterprise.

I want to wrestle an objective understanding of my worth, that isn’t measured against a metric designed by a patriarchal capitalism, but is mine to own and understand on my own terms. I want to believe in that worth and feel it’s safe and intact and good.

I want to care less about what the Forbes Lifestyle section tells me about time management.

And I want to hate myself a little bit less. I don’t hate all of myself, and not all of the time, but enough to significantly impact my behaviours and emotions and thoughts. Growing up queer, I think it’s hard not to learn to hate parts of yourself, and I think the same is probably true for a lot people who grow up with identities or in communities that are not culturally or socially valued by the dominant discourse. This is how it is.

I think it’s good to identify points where it’s possible to gradually re-imagine what you think success should mean or look like, and rigorously assess what informs your idea of success in the first place. I think it’s good, where possible, to re-consider what you think it should mean to be worthwhile, or adequate, what it would mean to have a good job, what a good body looks like, how a fulfilling relationship works.

I want to reclaim those things, and re-shape them so they’re compatible with my own terms. I want to make my own decisions on what versions of them would really work for me and make my own decisions on what versions of them are nurturing to my mental and physical health. I want to put my energies into working towards that and I want to have less doubts about it.

I’m still really worried about scurvy though.

- Oisin McKenna

Today, Twitter was inundated with urges to Please Talk. This happens every few months, often at a time when poor mental health has affected someone in the public eye, and resulted in tragedy. Spurred on by the tragedy of the event, masses of people surge towards Twitter to express their upset, and urge anyone also suffering from mental illness, to make sure this does not happen to them. #PleaseTalk. This is the advice given to them.

I am a long term sufferer of chronic depression and an anxiety disorder. To those of you urging myself and others suffering from similar diseases to just talk, I want to know; who are you suggesting I talk to? What do you think I should say to them? What action would you advise this person to take? And what do you think would be a positive outcome? Seriously. When you advise me to “Please Talk”, what do you actually mean? Talk, and then what?

I have been talking for years.

Let’s make it clear from the start, that talking only constitutes a tiny part of the solution to poor mental health. A real solution requires massive economic, social, and cultural shifts in the provision of medical care for mental health. Centring the narrative on the importance of victims simply "talking" about mental health, moves the responsibility and blame to the sufferer, and away from the society and social policies that so often inhibit their recovery. It places the impetus for recovery on the victim, not on the services, support and treatment they require and should be entitled to, that are too often, simply not available to them.

It is tempting to reassure a vulnerable person that if they only just seek out help, that there will be an abundance of help available, help that is financially accessible, broadly available, and of a high quality. However, this undermines the fact that there is a huge deficit in the quality and accessibility of support available. We need to be able to say that services and attitudes in relation to mental health are catastrophically inadequate, whilst still reassuring the vulnerable that they can get better.

Urging the mentally ill to talk is absolutely not enough. By simply encouraging people to talk and not thinking about what the consequent aftermath of this is, we are essentially ignoring the entire fraught process of recovery.

Let’s talk about that.

I talk regularly to my boyfriend, parents and close friends about my condition. I’ve spoken with them about it for quite a while. They are supportive and kind and I appreciate that very much. But what are they meant to do? My boyfriend is not a medical professional. My parents are not medical professionals. My friends and co-workers are absolutely not medical professionals. And none of them are in any position to administer medical treatment, for my medical condition.

Naturally the next port of call would of course be to speak to actual medical professionals. This is a much more difficult thing to do than just “talking” however, because medical care for mental health in this country is really, really expensive.

I am 23. Like many people my age, I work in low-paid, unsecure, administrative and service work, but I do have a full time job. My weekly earnings are €16 too much to be eligible for a GP card, but paying for treatment is a huge strain that sometimes I can’t afford. I now pay for GP visits and my monthly prescription of sertraline. I used to go to counselling too, but after applying for an overdraft to keep up with payments for the sessions, was no longer able to go. I still haven’t paid off the overdraft.

Just because someone is employed, and thus not eligible for a medical card, does not mean they can afford even basic medical treatment. A huge proportion of those living in poverty in this country have jobs.

The economic realities of austerity and poverty in which many young people find themselves, are huge contributing factors to poor mental health, but they are also the barriers that can block off any viable hope of professional medical treatment. There are free and low cost services available like Pieta House and the Samaritans, but these are emergency, temporary solutions, and do not necessarily aid in day to day recovery. Let’s imagine economic inequality was no barrier, and we could all comfortably afford to receive all the medical treatment we require. Unfortunately, this would not mean that this medical treatment would be administered in a professional manner, in line with best international practice.

Provision of care for mental health is too often left up to the GPs’ own personal biases and beliefs, without any solid grounding in actual medical experience. I have encountered GPs who have been aggressive, flippant, and completely reductive when dealing with mental health issues. My own experience, and that of so many of my peers, has been of full-on dismissal when discussing mental health with a GP. I have been to several GPs who could not understand why I was depressed. As a young person, they expected me to have no major reason to be mentally ill, despite being a 20-24 year old male, and thus within the one of the most at risk demographics for suicide in this country.

I have been to too many GPs who don’t really think mental health is a real thing. I have been to too many councillors more interested in opening chakras or passing judgement than in following best psychotherapeutic practice. There is a proud tradition in Irish medicine of not following best international practice, but instead, following the individual “ethics” of the practitioner or institution. This has been particularly evident in maternity care. My own experience has led me to believe it is true of care for mental health as well.

My worst experience with a GP was when after confiding in him that I was suicidal, he brusquely prescribed 3 months citalopram, and told me to make sure I didn’t “top” myself before I returned.

At the end of this prescription I did not have enough money to renew it, and the GP’s behaviour had badly dented my trust in medical support. Because of this, I did not try to seek any help elsewhere. I stopped taking my medication, and went into a period of breakdown, where I found it extremely difficult to get out of bed or leave the house, and seriously considered suicide. This was not because I was too afraid to talk. It was because, economically, I was not in a position to continue treatment, and the treatment I had received was poor, disrespectful, and completely contrary to best medical practice.

Who is responsible for this? What standard of care can we expect? Who regulates this? What’s the protocol?

I am aware that there are some excellent GPs out there, capable of providing outstanding care to those suffering with poor mental health, but frankly, I do not earn enough money to be fucking around with multiple GPs, until I find one in a position to provide an adequate level of care. GPs need to display a minimum level of sensitivity, empathy, and knowledge when it comes to mental health issues. There is no room for error or individual “ethics” on this.

I am not discouraging those suffering with poor mental health from reaching out and talking about it. I would absolutely encourage it. But we need to get specific and pragmatic about what we mean when we say to these sufferers, "Please talk".

What I am saying is, I am talking all the time, and have been doing so for years.

But talking does not improve the availability and accessibility of proper medical treatment. Talking does not in any way alleviate the economic and social barriers to receiving this treatment, and talking does not ease the access to pragmatic, medical information on how to cope with your illness. Talking does not guarantee the quality of this medical service, and it does not guarantee best medical practice and non-biased attitudes from the GPs and other professionals who administer it. Talking does not suddenly mean that your friends and family will have access to the information, expertise, sensitivity and strength to adequately support you in your illness, and it does not mean they will even chose to support you at all.

Talking is not always the issue. I have been talking for years, and I am still as sick as I have ever been. I am talking right now. Now what?

Again, I am not in any way suggesting that people suffering with depression and other mental illnesses should not seek help. What I am calling for is a massive and collective improvement of the services and support offered to those victims when they do seek help, and a re-evaluation of the patronising and reductive attitude of those who see “Please talk” as a solution that is in any way adequately befitting of the problem.

What I am calling for is a redistribution of focus away from simply urging people to seek help, but to ensuring that there is help for them to seek in the first place - help that is immediately accessible, of exceptionally high quality, and available irrespective of the patient’s financial position. It takes a huge amount of courage and strength to seek help for mental illness.  When anyone does so, it is imperative that the help they seek is provided. 

- Oisin McKenna