Outhouse is Dublin s latest resource centre for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered population. It opened in June of 1997, in spacious premises on South William Street.
A constant stream of people pass through the front door, availing of the chilled-out coffee zone upstairs, and the multiplicity of information and services which the centre provides. Much of the traffic travels to the very top of the building, where the offices of Gay Community News (GCN) are now situated.
Located for many years in the famous Hirschfield Centre, GCN upped and left Dublin s Temple Bar just as the area s alternative image lost its edge and became mainstream. Maybe it s a funny coincidence, but now rumour has it that South William Street GCN s new home is set to become the heart of Dublin s most vibrant subculture.
An editorial in Gay Community News by Brian Finnegan, who is also gay editor of In Dublin magazine, last year began the debate, arguing that South William Street smack bang in the commercial heart of the city, with traditional links to the rag trade would be the ideal place for the commercial development of Dublin s gay scene, which is blossoming to such an extent that it is has actually become a small industry, particularly in the entertainments area.
Gay streets bring a cultural vibrancy to cities, benefiting the straight community too, and most commentators have welcomed the notion of a recognisably gay area in Dublin. Although some grumble that a designated gay quarter would ghettoise rather than galvanise the gay community. Deborah Ballard, editor of GCN, strongly disagrees.
I don t think gay people ever ghettoise themselves I don t think minorities do. Ghettos are created by the dominant culture, she observes.
Gay people tend to cluster in certain areas partly because businesses which cater for the gay market often share a locality, but also, says Deborah, because gay people who are so regularly assaulted on the streets need to come to a safe place. And if you re in a street full of gay-friendly businesses, people are looked out for, and they re much less likely to be picked on.
I think one of the things that s very interesting about minorities making their voices heard is that they tend to become very vocal, quite political, and they tend to group together in certain places which the dominant culture often has the cheek to call a ghetto but that can also be a forcing ground for quite a distinctive subculture.
DISPENSING CONDOMS
Increasingly, gay culture in Dublin is becoming confident enough to eschew any rigid policy of exclusiveness or isolationism. It s another sign of growing maturity in Irish people s attitude to sexual issues.
Gay-friendly straight people will always be welcomed into Outhouse, Deborah reflects, and there are straight people employed in Gay Community News as well, and we like it that way. To say that somewhere is gay-oriented is like saying that a club is aimed at twenty-somethings but are thirty-somethings necessarily going to be turned away at the door? Or eighteen-year-olds? I don t think so.
In any of the gay quarters of the world like the Castro in San Francisco, Manchester s gay village, London s Old Compton Street, Christopher Street in New York in all those places there s the straight shoe-mender, and the straight key-cutter, cheerfully making a bit of dosh out of the pink pound and not having any problem with it at all, because money is money in the end.
Brian Finnegan believes that gay people s fear that a gay quarter might lead to ghettoisation is itself a symptom of internalised homophobia. It s like saying that we don t deserve things, and that we want to fall into the straight tabloid perception that we re looking for a better-than-everybody-else kind of situation.
Building community self-esteem and mutual co-operation, and providing an alternative to the pub-oriented gay scene, has been the founding vision of Outhouse, which provides the umbrella space for a growing and amazingly comprehensive range of groups, services and activities. There are meditation, spirituality, dyke s march, bisexual, Irish language and SM groups; mixed and women-only AA groups; two gay theatre companies Muted Cupid and the lesbian Other Stage and a literary circle called Outwrite.
The Pride office is also situated here and Access, a gay men s social group, meet frequently under the Outhouse roof. There s a huge amount of information available, from advice on social welfare and rented accommodation to information on gay-friendly hostels for visitors to Dublin.
The centre is also committed to providing education on and helping to prevent the spread of AIDS and HIV, liaising closely with outreach health workers in the wider community, and liberally dispensing condoms.
We re like a clearing house, explains Outhouse co-ordinator Terry Canavan. We don t counsel people ourselves, we refer them on. If a woman wants to find a women s only space, we refer her to that. Or the gay switchboard, or lesbian line, or transvestite line, or on the transgendered issue, we refer people. We ve had to deal with issues like homelessness, and people looking for gay-friendly solicitors and gay-friendly doctors. But we re still in the embryonic stages, and Outhouse will continue to evolve from the needs of the people in the community as well.
FETISH SHOP
Apart from the plethora of activities and people which swirl around the flourishing Outhouse and GCN, other gay-friendly initiatives are springing up in the vicinity. The DA Club, situated at the top of South William Street, now hosts Mildred, a gay/gay-friendly night every Tuesday. The music is house to handbag. People enjoy it because it s relaxed, says Eoin Donnelly, who works on Mildred s door. It s not the usual, huge big place that is kind of impersonal it s more cosy instead.
Mention the mermaids, mention the mermaids! pipes up a woman who happens to be passing. Turns out that she s one of two lesbian erotic go-go dancers who do a regular slot at the DA Club every Tuesday night. Do you dress up, I ask? We dress up . . . and we dress down, she laughs, a naughty gleam in her eye.
There s also three sex-shops on South William Street: Mystique (more lingerie than sex), Basic Instincts, and the above-ground Ms Fantasia, and all market themselves strongly towards the gay as well as straight community. In Ms. Fantasia, there s a useful selection of gay literature that s both political and erotic but it s in the specialist sex aids that they do most business.
We do an awful lot of silicon butt-plugs, says Justin Parr, who runs Ms Fantasia, Ireland s largest fetish shop, with business partner Jacinta Feely, and an awful lot of sex toys for men. I find that gay people don t want any of the novelty, trashy stuff; if a gay man is coming in looking for a butt-plug, he s looking for a pure silicon one or a good latex one, he s not looking for one with ears on it or a face that buzzes. You know? We also do very well in the leather cock rings, which we make here, along with leather harnesses.
Ms Fantasia caters for transvestites as well. We deal with TVs, so we do the make-up for men as well as women though we re actually finding that women buy it more than the guys. And we do the boobs, we do the wigs, we do shoes up to size 12.
If this does continue to become a gay quarter, comments Hayley Fox-Roberts, lesbian pages editor at GCN, in response, then I d like to see some lesbian-specific stuff happening in it. There are mixed things, but there s very little for women specifically. The sex shops on this street are grand, but they re male-based, and to have one like Good Vibrations in San Francisco that s woman-based would be great, and would do good business. It s a terribly good idea for whoever goes for it!
At the moment Dublin s gay street exists partly in people s imagination. However, it does seem that South William Street, already a place of work, information exchange and relaxation for many of the gay community, may be witnessing the dawn of its own gay birth.
Roll on the good times! n