For the second time in a month I’ve had a similar erotic dream, where instead of being my usual self, I found – much to my surprise – that I was a man.

Once was interesting, twice struck me as peculiar – especially as there were zombies in the second dream as well. Just to be clear, there was sex and the undead, not sex with the undead – a small but crucial distinction.
Between fighting off the hordes of flesh-eating ghouls I managed to find time to seduce a blonde, which is pretty good going if I say so myself. But still, two dreams where I was male seemed at least one too many. Was Freud right? Did I actually have a secret hankering for a penis?
I suspect that life would be easier in certain ways as a bloke, but I don’t think I’d feel particularly comfortable in a man’s body. Not that I don’t appreciate the male form, I just prefer it – in all it’s hairy glory – on someone else.
Having pondered both these dreams, something struck
me as odd. Despite the fact that the dream made me
felt emotionally and psychologically familiar to the flesh-and-blood female me, I was different in a number of important ways.
For one thing, I was very keen on boobs. In real life I appreciate breasts as much as the next woman. A good pair is a joy, but then again so is a lovely nose. Having my own perfectly adequate set, breasts hold no special allure for me. But in my dream they did.
More significantly, the male me was incredibly sexually assertive. In my dream I could simply state my sexual needs and what I wanted. I suppose the woman I was trying to seduce could have turned me down – although since this was my dream that was unlikely. Instead she told me what she wanted too – clearly and unambiguously.
Generally speaking, women are forced to go about getting their sexual needs met in something of a roundabout way. This is arguably more the case in Ireland, than in other, more egalitarian parts of the world. I realised with something of a shock that I used to be a lot more straightforward myself, but I’ve gone a little native. What’s more, Irish blokes are not much better.
I think that the dream meant I was tired of seduction through obfuscation and alcohol – thus the zombies! – and projected people as I prefer them, which is upfront and assertive. And with a healthy admiration of my breasts!
We’re not yet living in a liberal wonderland where the bad old ways no longer hold any power. After hundreds of years of being force-fed the message that sex was evil, it will take time for our attitudes to change. It is certainly happening, at least in pockets of society, but as a whole, the Irish retain an ingrained suspicion of sex and sexuality. It’s not religious so much as cultural.
Catholicism is normally held up as the reason for Irish sexual repression, but it is a lot more complex than that. Scholars, such as the sociologist Tom Inglis, have argued that Irish sexual repression is as much a result of our colonial past as our national religion.
Irish attitudes to sex were strongly influenced by Victorian beliefs – and these beliefs lasted longer and became more deeply embedded in Irish culture for a number of reasons. Catholicism and Victorian prudery mutually reinforced one another, but some additional factors may have helped to shape our attitudes too.
In the less than one hundred years between 1754 and 1841 the Irish population dramatically increased from 2.2 to 8.2 million. In those days, there seemed to be only one way of reversing the population explosion – by curtailing marriage. Since marriage, and the children it produced, exerted tremendous pressure on land and resources, it was simply beyond the financial means of most people.
Even after the Famine, Ireland’s denuded population was not encouraged to go forth and multiply. To maintain the economic order of tenant farmers and landlords, most young people had to accept that marriage was not a possibility.
If marriage wasn’t an option, illegitimate offspring remained a risk. Academics have argued that because sex became the greatest threat to a family’s financial security, it had to be denounced as sinful. Both external authority such as the church, the family and teachers, and internal self-restraint were used to keep sexual desire under control. Young men and women were kept apart and girls, in particular, were watched for possible sexual transgressions. Any hint of even innocent sexual interaction ensured that a woman or a girl became the subject of gossip, scorn and condemnation.
In this regard, the Irish weren’t so different to the British, where young women’s behaviour was also rigorously policed and middle-class girls were taught that respectability and sexual desire were incompatible. However from the mid-19th century, British women began to demand more rights, and information on contraception became widely and cheaply available.
In Britain and across Europe, women began to control their fertility and average family sizes decreased, particularly amongst the middle classes. Ireland was an exception to this trend, because Catholic ideology meant that information on birth control was denied to the greater part of the population.
Ignorance is not the same thing as innocence – lack of knowledge didn’t mean that Ireland was a land of chaste virgins. What it did mean was that those who got caught – women of course – were shunned, shamed and imprisoned right up until late in the 20th century. Given this, it’s hardly a surprise that sexual experience still holds a whiff of taboo for many Irish people, and sexually assertive women are frequently still seen as dirty slappers and hooers.
A recent survey found that three quarters of Irish students have had unprotected sex. Dr. Stephanie O’Keeffe of the HSE Crisis Pregnancy Programme noted that young people know about the importance of contraception, they just don’t use it consistently, particularly when sex hasn’t been planned.
That explanation doesn’t quite go far enough. Casual sex may not be planned, even though it may be hoped for, but that hardly prevents you from keeping a condom in your wallet or handbag. But for the most part, we don’t. I can’t help but suspect it is because many Irish people are more comfortable with the idea of casual sex if it happens ‘accidentally’ under the influence of alcohol. That way they can kid themselves that they are not really to blame for this sinful behaviour.
It seems to me that we need more than safe sex education – we need a complete rethink when it comes to teaching and talking about sex. We need to acknowledge that the damaging attitudes of the past have not remained firmly there, part of our history, but leak into the present affecting how we think, feel
and behave.
We can learn to celebrate sexuality as an integral part of the human experience. Or we can be zombies – suspicious of sex, self-medicating with alcohol and indulging in dangerous behaviour. The choice is ours.