Bog-land tricks and lady-dicks.

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There’s been a lot of debris rattling around in the old skull the last week. Even more so than usual and I’ve been slower to write it down than normal. It feels like a variety of worrisome topics are bubbling to the boil all at the same time. Eventhough, some have been predicted, the reality of watching them come to fruition is unsettling. Into this swirl of differing thoughts - a vision of my uncle keeps popping up. I’ve come to realise ignoring signs like this stymies progress onto other preferred writing paths. What follows may not make much sense but I need to get it out of my system nonetheless. To let it go.

Once upon a forgotten time, this was a part of the summer that involved spending long periods in the bog. Often, with my aforementioned bachelor uncle. Uncle John, god rest him now, lived with us and was more of a brother than an uncle despite the thirty year age gap. In the hierarchy of my childhood prayers he used to come close to the top. He was in a category all of his own.

God Bless Mom and Dad, Pat and Col, Uncle John, other uncles and aunts, cousins and relations, friends and anyone else I know…..Keep them all safe through the night, Amen.

2.5 seconds and prayer job done. I suppose in today’s language of science he’d be described as a paranoid schizophrenic. At least, that was the last official label ascribed to him before he died. I am tempted to say he hadn’t much of a life but it would probably be impossible to categorically say that in all certainty. In truth, it is difficult to really know what his inner world felt like as he didn’t really have the capacity to tell us and he rarely ever complained.

As the years and science progressed it was an increasingly medicated life. My suspicion of prescription medication stems from watching his life unfold and the light behind his eyes start to dull and dim. Different medical opinions brought different drugs. I seem to recall lithium as a particular rogue with side-effects none too nice. I know I have written about John once briefly before but for the life of me can’t remember whether it was on this platform or another one. Curiously enough, in the end, you could argue that he died of the flu. He caught a bug in his early seventies that developed into pneumonia, and that, as they say, was that for my uncle.

However, back in my childhood, before all of this, John was just someone people described as a bit odd. As descriptions of him go its probably my favorite. There was no set scientific diagnosis. He was not at all a danger to society at large although quite frequently could be a danger to himself. Accidently as opposed to any tendencies to self harm.

At one time he lived and managed on his own but an episode with a cigerette butt and a flaming bed put an end to his bachelor living. Cattle and sheep were at ease in his presence. On more than one occasion I found one or other in his run-down bungalow alongside him while he was brewing tea. He’d spend hours sitting on his small front porch smoking, drinking tea and pacing. Occasionally, slapping himself on the forehead and having mighty conversations with himself out-loud.

Perhaps my mind is playing tricks but odd characters were falling out of the hawthorn bushes in most Irish villages of the 1980s. Or so it seemed. Our little townland had about fifteen houses and at least five of those households were taken up with a category of person you don’t hear of anymore. Confirmed bachelors. They were, one and all, various flavors of odd. Men that had sworn off women, or more correctly, the type of man women left well enough alone.

If mental health had a business model back then it came in the form of a threat to dissuade potential users of it. Families would endure all forms of mental anguish to avoid entrusting a loved one to the confines of the Irish mental health system. For in the West Ireland, the system meant spending time in a mental hospital. And having a family member located, for any period of time, in a mental hospital was a label that stuck to a whole family.

“ Be careful or you’ll end up in Ballinasloe like your Uncle ……”

It was a brutal system and our family felt the full force of its limitations with regard to our uncle. Yet poverty or necessity is indeed the mother of invention. The lack of resources forced communities to find a little elbow room for the differing colors in a rainbow of the odd. The village understood my uncle and weren’t afraid of him. For he presented no physical threat. But if he ran out of cigerettes it was not uncommon for us to find out, the following morning, that he’d traipsed down into the village in his long johns at 2 am banging down the door of one of the local shops in search of his next smoke.

People somehow found a way to tolerate this occasional inconvenience, by and large, because they knew we were doing our best. And by we, I mean, my mother. And of course we weren’t the only ones. Towns and villages were forced through necessity to be robust enough to cope. In the great strides made in this arena in the decades since that era, the only thing I would observe is that the modern age has a reduced level of comfort with oddness in everyday life. Maybe its related and maybe its not. There seems to be a need to label people at a very young age now though. A discomfort or anxiety about allowing oddness to percolate for too long without a name. Genuinely, as I sit here, I’m not entirely sure whether that is a benefit or a drawback. I think it bears mentioning though.

It’s the fortunate family that isn’t hit with mental health issues of one type or another. In my own exposure to it in my family, life-long mental illness is almost banal such is the almost imperceptible trace of its progression. The most noticeable changes are often visible, most obviously, in the people that are in closest proximity to the sufferer. Rather than in the sufferer themselves. My uncle had a certain obliviousness to his own state. People dealing with these type of people often convince themselves they are above and beyond the reaches of its outstretched arms. My experience is that they most certainly are not.

We’d often call our uncle an angel such was his innocence, general quietness and meekness. There wasn’t even the hint of violence or rowdiness in his make-up. Yet, you needed to be a martyr with the patience of a saint to live with him. And most of us were neither.

At what point were we a family that started hiding bread and tea-bags in the washing machine at night?

And then at what point after, were we a family unaware of hanging freshly washed, tea-stained jeans on the clothes-line?

I don’t know the answers even sitting here now but I know it didn’t happen over-night or even over a specific series of them. The progression was much slower. I can’t quite place a time and date as to when these episodes and others, turned from the almost silly, funny anecdote of the momentarily forgetful, to the roars of tortured anguish of the perpetually cursed. But they did. All I can say for certain is that it was the woman of the house that bore the deepest and most long lasting scars. The person that bent the most to accommodate, at some point, struggled to stand fully upright ever again.

The decision, to remove someone from your home, for the overall well-being of household is one of the hardest ones a family in these circumstances has to make. And I suppose the beauty and tragedy of Ireland is that many homes couldn’t or can’t bring themselves to make it. Call it empathy, sympathy, guilt or some other emotion affiliated with caring too much. We couldn’t and the hidden price of it was enormous.

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I’m not sure why I find my uncle relevant to the latest eruption regarding transgender discourse in Ireland. He wasn’t transgender. If anything he was asexual, although, that said, he was even more shy around women than men. So, I think he probably appreciated the female sex without ever displaying any outward desire. This is most certainly not an attempt to make some kind of crude connection between mental illness and transgenderism either. But more an investigation into an aspect of Irish humanity of “caring too much “ and where travelling down that road too far might lead. What I have mostly though is unanswered questions.

I have written one article to date on this subject and within hours I was sorry that I hadn’t waited to gather more information. Not that I believe that the overall core of what I wrote is terribly erroneous or offensive but because it didn’t offer enough nuanced thought and empathy towards gender dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria is a term that describes a sense of unease that a person may have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.

I see a clear difference between gender dysphoria and the movement or agenda that is tasked with safe-guarding those same people. Specifically the young. I want to make that clear. All of my criticisms are to do with the latter and if I am wrong about the latter I can take the heat. And I am happy to be engaged in debate and proven wrong on my thoughts. I believe that gender dysphoria is as real as real can be. I also think this aspect of transgender discussion relates to a very small percentage of the population. I think we can easily make elbow room in our world for the people that identify this way. I have been forced to consider my own biases on this subject, in detail, over the last week. I hope that I am the type of person that will try to adjust, learn and absorb new information and entertain criticism on the subject.

Now, I still believe, that on the balance of probabilities, hormone therapy or surgical procedures should not take place on a child before puberty has fully completed. In other words not before adulthood. Advocates for pre-puberty intervention have a biological point or argument here and it lies in the fact that successful transition may well be easier if carried out before that adolescent hormone explosion occurs. So, we are left with a kind of Catch 22 situation. Kids aren’t old enough to make lucid decisions at the point it might be optimally best-suited to start making the transition. To my mind, the risk of long-term damage is too great given the science available at this time. I have spoken and listened to quite a number of people who identify specifically with gender dysphoria, at this point, and I would note the following:

Most, if not all, would eagerly entertain the notion of hormone therapy and the surgical route and were as certain at five or six years of age about themselves as they are today. Some are on various parts of that transition road. Although I spoke to no-one that had fully made the transition. The considerable worry is that later in life they will regret the decision. And there is no turning back really. The fact remains that very many adults regret the decision later in life and attempt to turn back the clock. However, as functioning adults it’s their choice to make at the end of the day. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make the leap that a child, even a clearly gender dysphoric one, should countenance starting this route in a medically induced way before adult-hood.

Unfortunately, this is where transgender doctrine is exacerbating the issues facing many young people as I see it and making it more difficult to identify gender dysphoria. Many internationally renowned, state and NGO funded transgender movements, in my opinion, are either purposely or accidently expounding a broader society-wide identity model than pure gender/sex disputes. For example, they seem increasingly advocates for encouraging, same-sex and sexual preference certain, people, into a new or expanded identity model. Whether it be non-binary or one of the trans-woman / trans-man categories. Or even further, with the adoption of other types of identity add-ons. And this model, funnily enough, makes the most onerous asks of biological women. Funny that.

Why women you might ask ? and where is my proof?

I’ll try to answer both in my way. Again, I come back to the curious picture of my mother and my uncle. And yes, I understand neither were or is an L, B, G, T, or Q. What resonates about this mental image though was my mother’s willingness to hurt herself to accommodate someone marginalized by society. Someone vulnerable. To pick up the slack left by the failings in the prevailing system of the time - a system supposedly there to help but in no way did. I think probably this characteristic is more prevalent in women as a whole than in men. And in the particular-ness of this subject matter, I’m talking about a characteristic of women allowing themselves to be exploited for a perceived greater societal good.

I realise that is a rather large, generic and stereo-type laced observation but I have seen this spark of divinity or femininity in women far too often for it to be classified as a complete myth. A pulse of the maternal maybe that beats in most women. A pulse that is probably being exploited. As I see it the LBGTQ family has been radically transformed over the last few years. It’s not a case of that movement accommodating transgender but rather that transgender ideology is driving the bus. This situation doesn’t optimally serve the gender dysmorphic or indeed the wider LBGTQ community. Or very specifically women.

Does it?

At the current moment, there is a serious uptick in the number of teenagers starting to identify as transgender or questioning aspects of their identity. Most are not experiencing genuine gender dysphoria. To that end, I spent two hours talking to a 24 year old woman who described her experience of being part of a particular LBGTQ group in Ireland. At one point during this process she was a self- described TRA ( Trans-Rights-Activist ). In other words - she was all-in. Initially, she joined this group mainly because her love-interest had begun identifying as a trans boy. She was 16 pushing 17 at the time and wanted to support her then girlfriend and subsequent trans-boyfriend if that is the correct terminology. A few years later, when she emerged from the group she was hurt, confused and most worryingly afraid. What follows are a couple of reasons of why this happened.

She spoke on condition of anonymity. A bright woman in a professional career now, she is still terrified to speak about her experiences. No matter, that these experiences happened a number of years ago. Firstly, she spoke of indoctrination. Her words not mine. Of listening to adults in the room advise the group that family and everyone outside that room were the enemy. Trust could only be found within the group. She’s still afraid of losing her job and ostracization from the overall community if she speaks about this experience too much. She relayed how women, biological women, seemed to make most of the sacrifices. She noted teenage girls were shown how to tape up their breasts so as to hide the outward display of them. Boys were never, in her experience, advised on methods to mask their genitals. Conversations with girls or young women, who purely identified as lesbians, were gently coerced in the direction of opening their minds to a ladydick. Yes, you read that right. Many young people identifying as trans-women-lesbians call their penis a lady-dick. They quite like the idea of keeping it too. And of course inserting it into a lady vagina.

Many discussions revolved around how, in point of fact, a lady-dick might well be superior to all forms of sexual pleasure from a lesbian non-dick. This is crude terminology but rest assured if you have a 15 or 16 year old attending one of these types of groups they will certainly know what a ladydick is and many other things besides. The term lesbian, lest we forget, indicates a sexual preference for another woman. Again, the beauty and tragedy of this situation is that some of these young women are trying to accommodate what they are listening to from the exponents of this bogus doctrine. At the risk of their own long-term wellbeing, I might add.

Furthermore, you might be surprised to learn of the increasing number of teenagers identifying as furries. Oh you haven’t heard of furries? - Well that would be a young person or adult person that identifies as a furry animal. This young woman encountered one or two identifying as rats in her group. I don’t want to make light of a situation where adolescent children might be starting to think of themselves in this way. But we, society-at-large, needs to be front and centre of these discussions with our children as if we are not the enemy. Because we are not the enemy. Emerging behavioral trends like the furries example above needs to be compassionately dealt with for a child’s safety and well-being’s sake but surely not in any way promoted or amplified. Your guess is as good as mine as to what any of this has to do with sex and gender.

After the young lady in question left the movement she kept track of her peer-group from a-far. She has noted that over 80% of the people who at one time or another identified as transgender no longer do so. Again, its anecdotal evidence but worth noting nonetheless.

What is the line between accommodating a possibly transitory behaviour and actively encouraging and promoting it?

And then morphing that behaviour into the wider school of transgender related topics?

And finally, How much more difficult does all of this then make it to actually identify gender dysphoria?

Now, as salacious as all the above news may be I don’t want to lose sight of the person that is gender dysphoric. It is very easy to lose track when you start looking into all this stuff. Another worrying aspect of these groups, tasked with ensuring safety and safe environments is they operate weird age ranges that span from early adolescence well into adulthood. How much influence can a 22 year old exert over an impressionable 15 year old? - Quite a lot I would say. Now some groups are split into over 18 / under 18 age categories but equally the young woman I spoke to regularly attended meetings with cross-over adults.

Would anyone champion a straight night-club that mixed under-16s with over 21s?

Never mind an environment where the main subjects for discussion centre around gender and sex?

Of course, none of what I relate above really relates strictly to the specific issue. Boys identifying as girls and vice-versa. The woman I spoke with about this whole new world made a very relevant point, I think, that bears mentioning, the one person who treated her with compassion and non-judgement when she first joined the gatherings was a young adult on the surgical path, a woman transitioning to be a man, and undergoing the related hormone treatments at that time. It may come as a shock for you to know that in the early days of attending these meetings, as a girl-not-yet-woman, and mastering the use of the various people’s correct pronouns she was regularly shouted down as transphobic when she got them wrong. And the person with the most compassion was indeed this trans-man who might well be considered to have the most reason to take offence. But didn’t.

I am not saying that all these organisations don’t offer vital help but exposing young teenagers to concepts like lady-dicks and furries isn’t exactly ideal.

Is it?

I can’t profess to know the answers but I think these are things we should definitely question. And question as matter of some urgency.

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I have noticed one noticeable thing about the legion of women and men around the country that have suddenly started to find their voice on this issue in the last two weeks. For many, it is the first time they have found themselves on the wrong side of a mainstream narrative. They are beginning to wake up to the fact that the media, political class and education system are not exactly jumping up and down in support of them publicly. This is coming as something of a shock to more than a few. Many worry about being labelled as far-right and a couple of the other nasty labels flung at people that were against mandates and passports on strictly freedom of choice grounds.

Of course, as an old unvaxxed crank shouting and roaring about the destruction of all the freedoms over the last couple of years it is sadly not much of a surprise to me. The thing about freedom of thought, expression, movement and bodily integrity is that you don’t really appreciate the importance of these vital aspects of our democracy until a specific issue comes knocking on your door. And how at that moment you’d like to look around and feel some solid support for your stand. The similarities between the voices on the frenzied twitter and zoom calls I hear today are remarkably similiar to the voices of the women I heard fretting about domestic vaccine passports and vaccine mandates nine months ago. Two entirely different sets of women yet worried mostly about exactly the same thing.

Their children and grandchildren. And their futures. There are strong bridges to be built here I feel and the opportunity for the healing of raw wounds. If someone would make the first move and offer an outstretched palm.

Now, RTE have not apologized for the airing of the comments on the Joe Duffy show which is a good sign. However, they have not scheduled a series of two-hour primetime debates on the subject that I know of either. Politicians continue to mostly virtue signal and run away from the topic. They know exactly what is going on in some of the areas I have outlined above and have been silent. Teasing out these tough conversations with ordinary people doesn’t seem like a priority. Indeed, we have almost sleep-walked into a situation where it feels like, as society, we once again have no choice but to accept. This is a very dangerous situation to be in for the very simple reason that a back-lash will inevitably come and it will disproportionately effect the very people that are in the most vulnerable positions. It will affect that compassionate trans-man disproptionately more than the opportunistic lady-dicks. Who’ll simply downgrade and de-label their tackle and get on with their lives or move on to the next moveable feast. Leaving the stigma and damage for that transitioning boy or man to clean up and suffer through. As if he doesn’t have enough to deal with already.

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One particular June, once the school holidays kicked in and the first available stretch of good weather emerged, my father tasked Uncle John and myself with saving the turf. For some reason on this specific summer I only remember the two of us. The ritual involved an early morning dumping off on the bog-road on his way to work and collection in the evening on his journey home - armed with his apology of cheese- burgers and chips.

Most of the time, I’d spend as much time exploring the bog and the depth of the bog-holes as doing any of the actual work. After the obligatory hour of throwing shapes at the mountain of turf in front of us, the two of us would stretch out on some bank of beaten down heather smoking filter-less Sweet Afton. Me, drinking gulps from a big bottle of TK red lemonade and him slurping tea from a flask-cup. I’d often have a paperback book or some comics stashed away somewhere on my person and I’d lay back to read.

Sometimes, if Uncle John wasn’t too agitated with his nerves he’d get relaxed enough from smoking and drinking tea to forget I was there and start talking to himself. He was funny, articulate, animated and quite verbose in these unconscious, fully-blown conversations with himself. It was like a different man altogether. He had the most beautiful, shy smile to go along with it too. Then, of course, he’d catch you looking at him and his self consciousness would return in an instant. The words and conversation frightened and vanished away.

A voice trapped in the wrong mind you might say. So delicate and yet so dangerous too. We never found the right key to unlock his true voice. And sometimes you just don’t find it I guess. It doesn’t mean you don’t keep trying or destroy the whole environment around him in the effort. I don’t know what the correct answer was or the exact moment the approach need to be radically changed. All I know, is no-one tried harder than my mother and at some point someone needed to step-in to protect her.

The beauty is she wouldn’t have let us. And the tragedy is we should have done it all same.

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