I found myself disclosing more than I wanted to about matters personal on my blog recently in an intense disagreement with someone, and I felt tawdry, soiled by the experience. I could delete the whole thing and make it go away but I would rather let it stand and try and learn from it.
The issue that I find difficult to deal with, without losing the plot, is the matter of violence against gay people – specifically the issue of targeted, premeditated gang attacks on individuals suspected of being queer. I’ve done my best to try to come to terms with the two such attacks I have experienced in my life, and I think I’m fine about them, notwithstanding my instinct that both gangs concerned had done that sort of thing many times before, and, no doubt, many times since. But, even as I’m writing on this topic, there’s a voice in me that’s welling up in fury, disgusted with myself, saying that it’s emotionally manipulative to bring up these attacks again here, it is inappropriate, I shouldn’t mention them, it’s obscene to do so, it’s playing the victim card one too many times, it’s lowering the debate to a base emotional level which cannot be responded to rationally. It’s victimology, pure and simple. Victims have enormous emotional and psychological power, especially in Ireland, and it’s a dirty business to remind people of your victimhood. Shame. I’m steeped in shame about it, and I am surprised.
I know what triggered it, and can rationally explain why the trigger was so effective. A journalist in the Sunday Independent by the name of Donal Lynch wrote an article with the headline ‘Beating Up Gays Is No Longer A Sport In Ireland’. He was responding to a recent report, by the charity Johnny.ie, into the incidence of hate crimes in Dublin. Nearly 1,000 people were asked to fill out a questionnaire, and the results suggested that the level of violence directed against people specifically because their sexual orientation was quite high, although at levels roughly commensurate with other urban centres in Britain. According to the report, about 2 or 3 physically violent attacks happened every week in Dublin during the reporting period, on average, with only 20% of them being reported to the Gardaí. But Lynch seems to have misunderstood the report, and thought it was saying that there was a physically violent attack every night in Dublin. So he then decided to trash the report, and despite being challenged repeatedly by me and others, continues to stand by his obscene headline. Since he wrote his article, events have overtaken him, and there is now, according to the guards, a gang going around orchestrating attacks against lone men, of whatever orientation, using sex to lure them into sidestreets. The “sport” continues. What incensed me about Lynch’s reporting was the denial in the headline, telling the readers of the most popular newspaper in Ireland there was nothing to worry about, it’s over. Despite the fact that in the actual article itself, he admits there is a problem. The guards, in the person of Inspector Finbarr Murphy, admit there is a problem. Johnny, through their Hate Crime Report, loudly say there’s a problem.
I understand why Holocaust deniers are jailed, why a special place of loathing is reserved for those that twist the truth. The logical part of me believes in free speech, but I am more than logic. The denial of a wound compounds it. Human beings can deal with a lot of abuse and trauma in their lives, but the necessary components to healing are an expression of feelings, and an acknowledgment of the damage done. If feelings are bottled up, that’s a certain route to later trouble; and if the reality is denied, for example if a criminal case fails against an abuser or attacker, the damage can be extremely difficult to recover from. But it doesn’t have to be a matter of criminal justice. Lack of acknowledgment is extremely painful when it’s a matter of parents ignoring a child’s distress, or teachers turning a blind eye to bullying, or Christian Brothers accusing their students of making up stories of abuse. Or newspapers denying that a problem exists.
The good news is that things are happening in Ireland to combat the problem. Whether the result of political agitation, as some would claim, or the natural progression of good policing, moves are afoot to improve the level of co-operation between the guards and the gay community, on an organisational level with organisations like GLEN and Johnny, a business level with pub, club and sauna owners, and, on a personal level with gay liaison officers, with the victims of hate crimes. A new monthly Garda drop-in night at Outhouse is going to be tried out. Those in training at Templemore have been visited by members of gay volunteer groups to raise understanding of gay issues. As I go to press, volunteers from Johnny are going to be spending the weekend leafleting venues in Dublin with flyers from the guards with warnings and details about the latest spate of attacks. Plain-clothes officers are out in force, apparently.
There is always going to be a difference in perspective between police and community groups on the nature of a particular problem. Policing has always, traditionally and understandably, focussed on criminals and their modus operandi, rather than necessarily worrying about the victims. The police get into hot water if they start issuing reports on”hate crimes” against gay people, for a very good reason – the victims of a hate crime may protest loudly that they are not gay. And, indeed, they may not be, for of course sex and sexual identity are far broader issues than which bar you go drinking in at the weekend. A man who follows a man into an alley late at night for a blow job may have a wife and 3 kids at home. If he gets beaten up there, what good does it do anyone to have it reported that it’s another “hate crime” attack against a gay man? Whipping up hype to suit a political agenda may make things worse instead of better. And one of the agendas that must be challenged is the persuasive but fallacious idea that being gay means you are a card-carrying member of the homogenized gay community, that you all go to the same bars, saunas and night clubs, go to the same parties, and that you read the gay press and read the gay bulletin boards online. The guards, to their credit, have managed to build up a good relationship with exactly those sorts of people, and are able to issue community alerts with ease via the bulletin boards and their good contacts with the gay press. But Inspector Murphy took on board my point that issuing warnings to this group alone can result in the wider community not realising there’s a problem. With the best will in the world, the police could, if they’re not careful, be contributing to a ghettoisation of “gay” news, and lead to complacency in the general media around the problem. A quick poll of 27 people on gaire.com, the Irish gay bulletin board, showed that two-thirds believe that homophobic violence is not reported enough in the mainstream media.
I know from experience, (or I should say, truthfully now, memory), that men who cruise at night, the sexy men, the bisexual men, the ones who are most vulnerable to being attacked – they are the ones who most need to be warned. But, if notions of a so-called gay “community” are adopted wholesale, unthinkingly, they are precisely the ones who will continue to be kept in the dark about these vicious gangs intent on beating up those foolish enough to be suckered for sex.