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NB LA=local authority, not the place in Southern California!!

I was reading today in the NYT a short piece on the problems that NYC landlords face with regard to rent controls.  Its relevant to Ireland because although we booted rent controls more than 30 years ago, under a piece of legislation that still impacts a very tiny number of tenants, effectively the SWA rent subsidy scheme is acting as a form of rent control, albeit for a socially marginalised and financially deprived (in some cases wilfully) tenant body.  There is a secondary effect on a class of tenant that probably includes myself, an above average earning tenant who for whatever reason cannot access purchasing, can afford what is obscenely described as "market rents" despite being well above the realistic disposable incomes of most tenants without bundling up, but chooses a lower standard of residential property due to cheaper rents.

This is the group that the NTC landlords associations are particularly moaning about - people who are living in rent controlled properties but can afford not to.  Yet what it doesn't add is how many of these folks may have started out as more needy tenants.  What is astonishing about the NY system is that effectively, most tenants would need to have been living in the building since 1993 at least if they are to qualify for rent controls already in place on the building and under a certain income threshold, while non-income related thresholds must be living there since 1971.

What this effectively means that for a "wealthy" person to still be under unconditional rent control, they need to have a tenancy dating back to 1971.  In all honestly, this would mean they would have to be at 59 years of age.

This would indicate to me that most rent controls are going to start dying off with the tenants over the next 20 years, living only the income related group, who themselves will start dying out 20 years later.

So it appears to be that the landlords are whinging about something which is really only a temporary situation and likely to change dramatically in the future.  Most genuingely rent controlled tenancies involve elderly tenants who are likely to die off and so the tenancy with them.  The reality of this artificially engineered situation does the raise the question of how rent control can possibly be blamed for housing shortages in NYC over the last 10 years when clearly it is not impacting new developments or tenancies.

Lets shift over the Atlantic to Ireland where there is a similar situation that has developed via the highly destructive influence of rent subsidies to tenants who normally would have gone into social housing up to the early to mid 1990s when local authorities effectively ceased building new social housing developments.  At some point along the way it was established legally that the responsibility to put a roof over the head of the homeless was not local authorities, but the then Health Boards (now the HSE).  So effectively this permitted the LAs to bow out of building new properties, ironically making it far less attractive financially since restrictions on the level of LA tenancies would force down the quality of new tenants to only the move impoverished and desperate in society, thus eroding the value of rents paid and hiking up the cost of new tenancies as existing tenants exercised their right to purchase their homes at discounted values.

Homelessness thus escalated in Ireland in response to a requirement for "desperation only" in order to qualify at any reasonable length of time in the cities for social housing places.  I certainly have seen lots of people who have engineered themselves into situations of total desperation in order to access social housing - indeed its an accusation constantly inflected against the lone parent community, who have little other choice than to remain on welfare until they are housed as market rents simply remain impossible for them to pay.  Some of those who do this follow it up by qualifying for higher education, where curiously enough they then qualify for better jobs than the vast majority of private rented sector tenants generally have.  But because there is now a ceiling on their rents, they are able to earn as much as they can while paying as little as 40% of the market rent.  This is particularly prevalent in newer housing association developments, which tend to house more single tenants without dependants.  Such organisations will no doubt claim that they've enabled such people to climb out of poverty, but there is a question as to how many such tenants have deliberately depressed their living standards in order to qualify for housing in order to qualify for long term cheap rents, in a similar situation to NY rent controls?

This is becoming a much bigger political hot potato as previous records for net unemployment are being smashed monthly - when I left university for the first time in 1994, unemployment stood at what was then considered a shameful all time high of 300,000 claimants.  Now the figure is 400,000 (albeit with population growth).  However the overall figure is expected to climb to 500,000 due to catastrophic job losses, I would suggest, often engineered by generous subsidies for statutory redundancy payments and a system that enables the positions to be reinstated 3 months later at whatever deflated salary the employer so wishes.  I think in the short to medium term this will result in dramatic falls in average wages in the private sector exacerbated by genuine job losses due to loss of spending power of those newly laid off.

The other sadder side of the housing crisis - which is and remains a crisis, is not only appallingly poor standards in the rented sector, and abysmal standards in LA housing, but deflation of much of the existing housing stock due to hyperinflation of land values due to a lack of proper controls on a range of malpractices such as "rezoning" of lands designated as agricultural in order to inflate values, poorly controlled lending practices at all levels, poor implementation of planning guidelines and an appalling failure to cater for infrastructure needs.  Worst of all was massive tax breaks for a range of developments including holiday homes, redevelopment of areas considered low demand, and absence of any kind of real property tax.  Add to this non implementation of what are very, very basic rental standards and here is your disaster.

I was reading with interest this study on IT skills shortages from an employer perspective in Cork.  While it is clearly out of date one thing I couldn't help noticing was a blithe assumption that everybody working in IT would have a 2-4 year IT-specific certificate, diploma or degree.  I find this curious as I spot an enormous mismatch between perceived/self-reported skills amongst IT workers in Cork, particularly bad amongst people holding industry certifications, many of whom seem to have either crammed their way through certifications in order to fulfil job requirements.  The reality, I often find, is workers who are only certified on paper, and don't really have much skill levels.

Yet there are some fantastic workers, definitively a minority, but most definitely some very high quality workers with strong technical knowledge and sound business skills, whom it is hard to extract on qualifications alone.  Yet an awful lot of these are frequently passed over repeatedly in favour of game-players who exploit the political structures and regional isolation of offshoots of larger multinationals taking advantage of what was perceived as Ireland's advantages a few years ago.  The trouble is, without a 3rd level qualification, right now a lot of these workers are being completely disregarded by a jobs market that despite popular mythology, places no value whatsoever on transferable skills, and regards them with as much suspicion as their low-skilled peers without specific qualifications.

The problem is, I think, the low-skill brigade ruined it for everybody.  Let me give you two examples.

I worked in a helpdesk of a French multinational for 3 years.  They employed initially mainly self-appointed "experts" who'd blatantly lied on their CVs, the kinda human-ape who suddenly realised from their little jobs in security companies and shops that there was money to be had in IT, and despite a complete and utter lack of qualifications, skills and quite often even basic social skills, managed to get a foot on the IT ladder due to chronic skills shortages in the entry level ranks of IBM, HP, Dell and Gateway in the mid to late 1990s.  I recall that of my own group in Dell in 2000, I was probably the only person who had no formal qualifications in IT, most entered with at least a basic certificate (and in fairness, I had a non-IT degree and 3 diplomas to my name, plus a level of practical IT skills that many people at the time were astounded by - for example I managed to get 100% in Gateway's entry level skills assessment).  After I got a job there I noticed that manybe about 10% of the workforce there were uncertified - about half of those had alternate skills in various other disciplines, but the remainder were, effectively, professional bullshitters of the type above, who played the system in order to compensate for their own lack of skills.

As I gradually climbed the IT ladder over the following 7 years I rapidly discovered that this tiny group became disproportionately represented in the higher ranks.  They took many forms - the non-IT but otherwise qualified seemed to do particularly well - a lot of them used high discipline levels and transferable business skills to get into good roles often in project management or leadership roles.  But there was a tiny few of obstinate idiots who somehow, via the classification of an A+ or lucky cram on a MCP, managed to hoodwink future employers into a 3rd level support role which they in no way deserved.  This company became rapidly infested with as many of 10 of these IT parasites, useless idiots who sat around and did at max 1 hour of work per days, scratching their arses and playing hard political games for the remainder of the time.

They were also well paid and so after about 1.5 years of revenue bleeding (these guys were costing the company about 1/4 million a year plus in salaries alone) the company engaged on a round of redundancies and particularly targetted this group.  It was so bad that most of them were outskilled by level 1 analysts on as little as 2/3 of their wages.

Irish law permits you to rehire for exactly the same job within 3 months of a lay off, so sure enough the company started to refill the roles from well established, good skilled level 1 analysts - but with a catch - they were now paid only 80% of the bullshitters salaries - the lesson?  How the bullshitters ruined things for the generally skilled.  Many of those who replaced these guys were now IT graduates - after the earlier mistakes, the company set from then on to only employing 2-4 year graduates, mainly IT, or graduates in other disciplines with IT experience.  But the horse had bolted, and the skilled and good workers were forced to pay the price of the bullshitters in salary cuts and poorer working conditions caused by heavy monitoring as to what they were doing.  The trust was blown.

I was interested to notice that many of the bullshitters I've known have gone through at least 1 year of unemployment after taking generous redundancy packages, flying them into an environment that now recognises their deceit.  And most of those were forced to take lower grade opportunities, back to desktop support for the bullshitters, where many remained for years before managing to deceive their way into a senior role once more.

A second example is another one.  Left school early 90s, in the days when unless you were utterly clueless, you hit college for at least a year or two.  Obviously this guy was too thick as he managed to get into security, basically the last resort job for the skill-less in Ireland - even those without any sort of school certificate could make their way into this career before security vetting came in to filter out those with criminal pasts!!

The pattern is usually the same.  They fancy themselves as "clever" and "intellectual" but have all the intellectual capacity of a baboon.  They generally are cute enough not to undertake any formal educational courses because they know full well that this will only expose their inability to pass even fairly basic courses, preferring instead an informal route which is still possible.  Soon they have years of "experience" much of which consists of playing games on a subterfuged network at work built up of leftover equipment and looking up Wikipedia and Google for other peoples technical solutions.  They often grab a bit of scripting experience, mastering the art by cutting and pasting other peoples scripts and copying out of books.  A common thing I see these guys do (and its almost ALWAYS guys for some reason) is to surreptitiously change project requirements to suit their (very limited) technical ability.  Which means all too often, you might (eventually) get a solution, but not the one you asked for.  And all too often, something that is either a fault which another group won't take responsibility for or can be rectified more simply.  But by the same they hmm and emmmm their way through meetings, you don't care, you just want them to shut up and move onto the next issue.

They generally survive short term cost cutting redundancies, but ultimately add to the lack of productivity that usually results in total closure.  And its happening - all over Ireland.  Once "state of the art" facilities opened with fanfares on RTE with massive tax breaks and IDA funding, are often very quietly closing down with barely a whisper.  And these guys are culprits.  All too often they hang on just long enough to bleed the company dry.  People who are worth 20k but paid 40k.  Its only a matter of time guys, only a matter of time.

So what do I think is the solution?  Easy.

A formal framework and set of testing criteria for skills assessments for above entry level appointments.
Let this be substituted ONLY by formal 2-4 year full time or equivalent part time certifications.
Industry standard certs need to be backed up by formal skills assessments set by bodies such as the ICA or industry bodies.
I think this needs to be applied to current employees as well a potential ones to stress test and pick out bullshitters.  Offer them upskilling or otherwise, but fact remains these guys lied on their cvs and need appropriate restitution.  This way we can rid the industry of those who've ruined it for everyone.

This morning I was reading a very interesting book by Mary Virginia Lee Badgett called Money, Myths, and Change which effectively questions the assumptions that society have of the affluent queer.  The affluent queer is basically a product of marketing surveys from commonly read periodicals which indicate that gay consumers are wealthy and educated.  For anybody with extensive experience of both the activist communities, services for gays and the commercial scene will know is that this clashes hard with a lot of the community which often (but again, not always) appears to be quite marginalised.  At the same time, I would personally question the counter-assumption that gays are fundamentally deprived (though I definitely think there is a very strong argument in her case that the closet can be just as discriminated against despite taking action to conceal their sexuality since they may have great difficulty in fitting into any society).

An interesting anomaly that Badgett finds is that when matching like-for-like in terms of educational attainment, location, etc, gay men earn significantly less than heterosexuals, while on the whole gay women earn considerably more.  She makes a lot of effort to figure out which this discrepancy exists, though I suspect that, correctly, she identifies that lesbians are less like to have a male partner which would lead to pressure to have children and not work.  Or more to the point, only 20-30% of self-identified gay women have children as compared to 70-50% of hetero women, which means that they will have a more continuous work record uninterrupted by child-bearing periods in their lives.  I suspect that most lesbians who consciously co-parent are in most cases considerably more affluent than hetero women who consciously have children with a married or unmarried male partner.  While there are a minority of dependent lesbians, this is probably less so than gay males who have a long standing tradition of looking for older male breadwinners, especially if the younger partner dropped out of education or worked in the sex trade.  That is not to say that lesbians don't work in the sex trade - I am sure a few do, but represent a minority there.

That said, there would be a significant element of economically inactive lone parents amongst gay women who have children from previous heterosexual relationships - however - most of these are far more likely to be in the closet and so not represented in surveys on income.  What I find curiously interesting though, is an extensive discussion on the effects of indirect discrimination on gay folk who are still in the closet.  As the book points out, many will be unable to fully mix with colleagues because it would require disclosure, and this could disadvantage them at work.  We find particularly amusing on the scene here, the particularly ghettoized phenomenon we call the "ManDyke" - hyper butch gay women who often turns out to be in the closet (or more correctly, believes themselves to be in the closet!!)  These turn up all over the place, for example an ex of mine spotted one in the factory where she works, where groups of mostly male workers groups together and spit fire over "dykes."  Some will be spotted by colleagues and potentially discriminated against, others may even be discriminated against for "looking dykey" even though they may not in fact be at all.  Others may not be spotted, or will be able to "work the system" to their advantage (the ex appears to have managed this, but perhaps not).

For gay men this may depend on the sector in which they work.  For example, a considerable number in Ireland either work in retail/services, but a very large proportion work in US multinationals, often in fairly skilled roles in non-production workplaces, rather than Ireland's overinflated construction sector, which is known to be not only enormously homophobic, but frequently unskilled.  Either way there is an interesting debate there about who we are and where we are in life.

After the online spat over the Cork Wimmins weekend, you'd think people would learn.  But no.  It seems not.  A huge split has emerged in Galway over "Bród", the west's answer to Pride.  It was a popular little pride, in a tightly knit scene that did attract a slightly more hippyish following than its slicker east and north-east coast cousins.  It would appear that this initiated over disputes over payments owed to 2 of the main entertainment venues or promoters, and the non appearance of audited accounts for last year.  It ended up with 2 entirely separate committees being elected, one of which seemingly is resolutely refusing to resign in order to reelect a single committee for August's event.

Instead, its a form of Pride doomsday - a miniature Dinah Shore style-split which is erupting into two entirely separately different sets of events.  Some efforts appear to have been made by interested individuals who are concerned at the ability of the events to sustain themselves, not to mention the long term damage done by having two competing sets of events on a single weekend.  In the case of the Dinah, what really happened in 2006 was a reversion to the older model where several different events occured, based on the demographic of the attendees (for example there was a bunch of activites for golfers, the "Lina Shore" and another event for women over 35, the ProSuzy Dinah.   Each of these events is targetted at a particular age, level of interest in the golf itself, and the income level - ranging from a modest 500 dollars for the cheapest and well over 2000 dollars for the priciest.  While people argue that this was only sustainable because the figures attending the Dinah by 06 had escalated to over 20,000 women, in fact most of these events started out at just hundreds and built up over many years.

The question so isn't just about whether or not it is socially desireable that Galway Bród remain a single unified event, but to what extent the bringing together of the growing number of disparate groups within the community is sustainable in the long term if forced.  Many pride events in other cities - most notably London and Sydney - have almost fallen apart, but usually because of a problem with funding.  London almost went bankrupt in the early 1990s due to a lack of financial support from both participants and commercial interests, and in fact if I recall on one year got huge criticism after an organised pride party charged a hefty entrance fee in order to attend.  Sydney L&G Mardi Gras (considerably larger than the cities pride, which is a separate event) was bailed out by an unnamed benefactor after the event almost collapsed.  While the parade remains a free event, the lavish after parties and annual Harbour party the weekend prior are funded by substantial ticket charges as well as a popular sleaze ball the previous autumn.  Debates take place everwhere, with this years Maspalomas Gay pride publishing both a list of commercial operators who did and did not contribute to the pride events (under a general desire to "keep pride free").  Maspalomas has the unique position of taking place in a development that includes Europe's largest concentration of gay businesses.

However the situation is similar all over the world.  There is a perception amongst some community activists that businesses make a fortune from pride events without making a contribution back to the community.  Nobody seems to take into account that not all gay businesses make a fortune from concentrating on a gay clientele - obviously some of these people are too young to remember the unpleasantries over the transformation of the Parliment on Parliment St into the Turks Head Chop House, complete with what was at the time a perfectly legal new homophobic door policy that excluded the people who'd kept the business going for the previous ten years.  There is frequently an accusation levelled at certain elements of the dyke community that don't spend much, how they expect to be catered for if they are unwilling to lavishly blow the cash in gay bars.  And to be really honest, I really have to back that feeling - lesbians who moan and groan about the lack of venues catering for them really do need to consider the fact these places won't survive unless money is spent there.

The one thing I've really noticed, however, is a huge similarity between the stonewalling of debate on the CWFW and one lady on Facebook's diatribe on the facilitation group setup to try to "end the face" - this lady has even changed her name on FB to "Get Behind Galway Pride", I can only assume, in order to signify they "picked on" status of the problematic pride committee in a similar way that a few women semi-defended the CWFW policy on GC.  The difference in Galway I think is that the impact on the wider community is much more obvious.  In the case of CWFW, men are excluded anyway, a considerable number of gay/bi women marginalised, and most het women, and those like myself who just don't like it, don't go, withhold donations to organisations funding them as far as it is feasible to do so and realise quite well that hardcore groups like this eventually fizzle out due to lack of resources caused by their exclusion of others.  But Galway is different.  Pride involves thousands of people - from people who just come for the weekend to people who live out their social lives around the scene and need it.  There are people there who care enough about Bród to want it to be genuinely representative.

The one thing I recognised from the Cork situation was the numbers involved in turning up to so-called "community meetings" and how public meetings are manipulated and used as representative factions to control communities.  It would appear that different dates and times were circulated by different factions in the Galway feud in order to vote in representatives committees.  You have got to wonder why the determination to refuse to step down and meet with other groups is there for any reason other than pure raw power-mongering.  I notice a deep similarity with a particular other organisation who uses the vehicle of "community meetings" in order to hear the voice and take votes on decisions.  The reality of this, as I've previously pointed out, is that 30 people turn up as "representation" of a community of somewhere between 4000-9000 and then lay claim to "represent" them.  This is the kind of democracy that people riot about in the Middle East.

What is also similar is the vitriolic attacks on individuals and groups by those refusing to step down, and heat of anger at the fact that the dispute is made public.  But you know, thats what angered the old order in CWFW also - the fact their dirty linen was hung out.  Not because they don't want anybody to know, but because they don't want public debate - that will challenge the vice-like grip on power these groups depend on due to enforced silence ("we don't want to embarass the community do we?")  I expect one thing we are going to see a lot more of in the future with so-called community groups in the LGBT community in Ireland is who they are, who they really represent and who gains what from them.  For a long time, I've publicly highlighted the example of an "organisation" which calls itself "GISI".  This "organisation" is in fact just one person, who's endless attention-seeking campaigns display all the sophistication of a mental patient on the rampage.  Its unfortunate indeed that so many people are taken in by this rather sad and pathetic individual's outward charm and seeming simplicity and don't actually notice how all over the place the argument put forward is, or how damaging it may be to people on a rather confusing obstacle course in terms of personal gender identity.  Should you encounter anybody, I would remind you, claiming to be a "consultant" or "expert" on GID, I would recommend you quiz them thoroughly on their professional credentials as this indivudal has none whatsoever.

Again we are back to the confusing road as to how unrepresentative community organisations in the LGBT community have become and I seriously wonder if the current government actually unknowingly did us a favour in hacking financial backing for the Equality Authority.  Indeed what authority can any organisation have if it funds groups that are merely self-appointed advancers of a particular position in society?

I saw a small spot in one of the US papers the other day (I LOVE US newspapers since you can skim them in about 20 minutes and they are only about 50c!, unlike the monstrosities that even the smallest Irish tabloids have crept into) regarding Thomas Beattie, the professional F2M who retained a few little female organs so he could become the "first" trans "dad."  Well actually, incredibly so, since the age of the internet makes such things easy to find, he's been outdone by others and was by no means the first.  It seems Beattie has become a parent one more time and given birth again.  I sighed a breath of relief that there is a bit less of a hoo haa this time over what is really a fairly normal thing now.

A lot of people given the lifetime opportunity to transition at a much younger age are faced with an increasingly debate - what about children?  10-20 years ago this was less of an issue as many gender disphoric folks daren't risk their chances of transitioning by asking to hang onto a few bits for a while longer so they could produce children, the medical gatekeepers just were not quite ready for this.

But a lot of the community, especially in the F2M community, found themselves with far bigger challenges.  One of the outputs of the closed and exclusive nature of the lesbian world, which I have already ranted at length about the deliberate exclusion tactics used to remove or dissuade males, bi women, political undesireables, sex radicals, and varies others considered in some way threatening to the usually very locallyized dyke establishment (be it radical feminist, butch and working class, or late bloomers, parents and lady golfers - there are always a handful of common bonds that determine who is "welcome" and who is social undesireable) is that the women who find themselves accepted into such communities find them very "safe" and comfortable, and generally are very unwilling to challenge the social status quo, even when they discover something about themselves that is "taboo" within their local society.

A common one I notice a lot is simply bisexuality.  This is hugely taboo in such social circles and generally best handled by total secrey, as it is likely to received as a complete act of treachery.  Therefore, most of such groups usually consist to the naked eye of exclusive lesbians.  If bisexual women do arrive, they tend to be extremely marginalized, and often for reasons not exclusive to their sexual diferences.  What can be amusing sometimes is that occasionally, groups that also function as resource centres make space for bisexual groups, but remain deeply uncomfortable on a social level about bisexual women.  This is gradually changing as most groups mature and realise that cannot simply cater for a minority within a rapidly changing demographic.

Anyway, Thomas Beattie was in no way the first transman to have a child.  Even the L-Word caught onto this years ago.  Many years ago I used to enjoy the sex advice of S&M queen Pat Califa who had been living in SF for quite some time.  In the late 90s, like my photographic idol Della Grace, Pat started to not only transition and become Patrick Califia-Rice, but also started to challenge his own sexual preferences and now regards himself as bisexual.  His partner Matt also was in transition, and here's the clincher, over 10 years ago, Matt and Pat had a child together.  Patrick wrote about this here.  Yet the entire media for 2 years has conveniently ignored the fact that its not uncommon for transitioning people to have children while they still can.  After all we all still live in a world where gay adoption is difficult and legalities surrounding reproduction complex.  Basically Thomas Beattie was no big deal and the product of a bored media.

The reality is this - queer folk, trans folk, people who are different - we eat, we play, we read books, we have sex, yes.  And we have children and raise them responsib;y just like any other parents do.  We think about it more deeply because things like that are very much more rooted in carefully selected choices than two kids drunkenly fucking in a tent at a music festival (if you believe the slightly amusing ads currently on Irish TV for the not bad Think Contraception campaign).  These things don't just happen for us, we move mountains to bring them about.  There is somehow a mystique about gender disphoric people because no group of people has been more objectivised than the M2F, written off as sex objects for the gratification really, of deeply troubled men who cannot deal with the depths and caverns of their own sexuality and attitude to other men/women.  This is why this form of pornography is in one sense distasteful - its somehow done in the same disempowering way that a lot of maintstream het porn is done - the woman's desires only exist for the pleasure of the voyeur.   (In fact when I think about these, the one thing thats really disturbing is the deliberate lack of emphasis on the male pleasure-giver in mainstream porn - the viewer is clearly invited to take his place, to imagine, this is me.  The transference is far less direct in porn involving transpeople, and utterly removed in the case of fake-lesbian-porn - this is the ultimate in voyeur purity.  But I digress).

Ultimately, the sudden interest in the case of the "pregnant man" is about a decade out of date and totally out of kilter with any real understanding of the complexities of a gender disphoric persons life.  The debate thats ensued has tended to see the issue as thats of sheer vanity and personal selfishness.  Yet this is all happening in countries with huge levels of unwanted pregnancies and unhappy parenting among heteros.  So why pick on a very small cohort of people who are making the most of what they have while they can?

The other day I was back home in north Dub and was in HMV buying a present for a sister when I spotted a real bargain - a substantial box set of seasons 1-3 of the L-Word for a mere 31 euros.  As I recall still paying not only about 80 euros to get the preorder NTSC version straight over from the US for my then girlfriend, but also the rip-off Irish duty, tax and extortionate fees for collecting it (which I might add, they don't just tax you on the value of the items, they tax you in rip-off republic for the DELIVERY charges also!!)  Fortunately the relationship didn't last beyond the 3rd season so I only managed to blow a couple of hundred on the series before I went off into the sunset of living alone and pleasuring just moi.

So I was pretty happy to pick up the lot for 30 bucks.

Anyway since I lost touch with the L-Word around season 4 I felt I needed to get back in touch before I play catch up with about 3 years of it.

I have to say, I really enjoyed it, just as much as I did when it first came out.  It was glamorous, it was sexy, and whatever would happen next!?  The whole Jenny/Marina thing REALLY broke ice I think - I think a lot of women probably do relate to accidental introductions to lesbian life the "practical" way rather than the hard old fashioned way I did it, i.e. coming out years before there was ever any joy to be had from it.  So most significiantly, I think it put the "sex" back into homosexuality.  People didn't just sit around talking politics, they interacted, they flitered, they socialised, and they got lucky!  None of the old fashioned and still common "bad wedding" model that so many dyke clubs seem to cling onto, these were exciting looking places full of attractive people.

So I thought it might be interesting to revisit the key criticisms that L-Word got at the time.  Bear in mind that this is hugely reterospective and I think a lot of the women who might have agreed a few years ago may now be huge fans.  Things have changed a lot in our world, thankfully mostly for the better.  So anyway here are the key complaints and where we stand 5 years later.

• The women are all "skinny" and look like "models"
• It is aimed at "men"
• There is too much heterosexual sex
• There seems to be some kind of problem with the idea of lesbians having hidden sex in public restrooms as the domain of "gay men"
• Its not about "us" and it will "scare" heterosexuals who are already uncomfortable about "us"

What I find particularly offensive about these criticisms is that they come from an established political mafia of lesbians who seem, for whatever reason, to aspire to conform to the "butch stereotype" that L-Word at least initially tried to evade (the introduction of Moira/Max later on in the initially seemed to contradict this).  I prefer to refer, both for simplicities sake, and in order to show the depth of my physical revulsion for such women, as "bulldykes", generally mannish, working class, all too often "victims of society".  The real issue here, is why a) feminine women were so rare in many communities (and still in some of the more forsaken places today) and b) is there some kind of negativity or lack of belief regarding feminine or "straight acting" women that has driven them out of the old fashioned lesbians comunity?  I think this can in many cases, all too sadly, be answered by a resounding "yes".  Yes, femininity is taboo within some lesbian communities as it is seen as cow-towing to patriarchal values.  The result of this is at best marginalisation of women who don't conform to the bulldyke stereotype WITHIN communities, and at worst such women may be excluded or driven out of communities by socially hostile bulldykes.  And the worst scenario of all is the lack of credibility that such women face.  Their integrity is questioned by those who are accustomed to the butch dyke patriarchy.  Its a kind of reverse homophobia.  I think Julie Serano writes extensively on the issue of marginalisation of femininity in the lesbian feminist circles well.

Is it really aimed at men?  SHO is a channel which is relatively broad reaching, but all of those involved in the early days of the L-Word had a long and established set of credentials writing for the relatively narrow lesbian community.  Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner were both involved with films previously.  There was even a mock-up of the Doral hotel in Palm Springs done in confuction with the likes of Olivia, Club Skirts, etc for a Dinah Shore based episode.  Numerous actresses with a history of parts in ground breaking lesbian films played parts from the beginning right through until the last series, even iconic series without a specifically lesbian maintext got included (for example Lucy Lawless has a small role in the last series).  To suggest this is simply "for male gazes" is simplistic and insulting for women who deeply enjoy these shows and films of the past.  I think though, the sexualisation of the entire series left a lot of viewers in shock.  Lesbian lives have traditionally been extremely coy about sexuality.  If anything many of the traditional community events are very desexualised and those that were not ran a gauntlet of extreme hostility from women who held a second wave feminist viewpoint on women as sexual beings.  I think this is the real fear of the lesbian anti sex league - they are genuinely afraid of the consequences of being "gazed upon" by male viewers and thus objectified.  I think this has roots in deeper sexuality issues with some women who may block out heterosexual pasts or feelings in order to meet a level of conformity demanded by a rather conformist community.

Too much hetero sex?  Ah come on.  This rapidly vanished after the first series.

The public restroom criticism goes back to the same sexuality arguement - lesbians don't want to be "seen" as "behaving badly" or even as "sexual" by men, for what is often deep and complex reasons, possibly relating to prior experiences of male sexuality, or perhaps a sense of need to conform to a rigid but confortable lesbian feminist ideology.  I suspect it is for this reason lesbians have been so slow in general to embrace sex-friendly happenings, though this boundary is crumbling rapidly.

The last argument really does sum up a huge part of the problem.  The traditional separtist lesbian feminist community were deeply alarmed by L-Word because they couldn't recognise their own "image."  And their position was sometimes "this is not us" - the implication being made is that this is basically straight writers and actresses playing out for the camera.  Actually the odd thing was, that from the late 90s onward, the womens scene was rapidly diversifying in most countries, helped in large by more relaxed door policies that I suspect led more to criticisms of gay venues not catering for women, a response to women who didn't have a lot of lesbian friends and who needed to socialise in mixed venues, and lastly, a real sense of embarassment at the hurt, offence and prejudice raised around "born-women-only" policies in larger events.  These led to a gradual proliferation of "mixed" venues primarily for women but permiting men entry, many of whom to this day are the subject of massive vitriol, usually completely unjustified.  This wasn't so strong in 2004 but was already well on its way in California and some of the larger worldwide communities.  By now its only in very small communities that there is still discrimination against lesbians who "look straight".

The most fascinating thing about this entire debate is that no group LOVED the L-Word more with a passion than the good old fashioned butch dyke.  These girls lapped it up more than anybody else, no doubt displaying a real hunger for a richer tapestry within the community and a desire for a bit of glamour.  Lets hope it gets picked up by other producers.

Many years ago when I should have been working on a musicology MLitt thesis, I happened to pick up a copy of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's book Epistemology of the Closet and read it through, enjoying it very much.  Basically, Sedgwick argued a systemic view of homosocial desire that recognises it as universal rather than simply something for a minority.  This theme is regularly picked up in popular media, from jokes about rugby players to films (a good example is threads of sexuality in that wonderful film American Beauty).  Sedgwick saw this as a result of separatism (not especially political either).

I have always found this an interesting view, moving away from sexuality as a binary choice to a series of different sensations, emotions, desires, experiences and visualisations. The ghettoisation of sexuality is something which clearly conflicts with a large proportion of fluid sexual beings such as bisexuals, swingers, polyamorous etc, which you inevitably encounter in large numbers in any "space" which is known or believed to be "gay friendly."  Yet this group are hugely marginalised, especially in the hugely regressive and oppressive womens communities, where organisational structures and even language are designed to marginalise politically unfavourable positions and people.  There is a particular fear within the womens community of categorising niche desire categories like there exists in the mens community - for example in bears, BDSM, uniform, practice communities  - I suspect which is a deliberate effort to retain the reins of power in community groups which inevitably have a strong degree of power over even commercial events where women go.  The main consequence of this has been the sanitization and desexualizing of womens events - the "bad wedding" model we've been all so familiar with - poor music, poor locations, often hardly any punters.

I notice that as commercial interests drven by wealthy girls with megalomania intent on branding the scenes for themselves continue to spread worldwide - like the Club Skirts and Girlbar "Dinahs", the L-Word, the Candy Bar brand, and burgeoning circuit events, this rapidly falls apart.  The almost immediate impact is that the sex comes back into sexuality, in the form of cage dancers, strippers, go-go girls, sauna nights and play parties - interestingly, mostly aimed at an "executive" audience, often deliberately priced so as to exclude lower income women.  In fact one London based promoter of one of these events recently quite openly described their high pricing as a deliberate means to exclude "chavs."  Inevitably the knives came out rapidly as the harpies descended upon this affront on the essential "diversity" of the womens community, but in reality it reaffirmed the "superiority" of the working class, butch, separtist feminist dyke over the "exclusive" pro model.  The reason I suspect, is the real fear of the massive disempowerment this is likely to have for the more traditionally social disadvanted of the womens communities.

A very good example of where this has already happened is in two of the larger gay friendly cities in the world - LA and Sydney.  The really very best events are priced well beyond the reach of low income attendees, and are often criticised as a deterrent to "keep out" the lower social rungs.  But the effects, particularly in Sydney, are astounding - a whole different kind of attendee emerges - one that doesn't bother normally with the scene, one that is often an "identity tourist" and increasingly, hungry for more of the same.  As a long time scene goer my first (and admittedly prejudiced) reaction was "but these are not gay people."  What I had managed to continuously forget over the previous 10 years was the deep marginalisation of considerable numbers of women and men from the gay "community" by the action of well-intended community groups who went out of their way to cater for very "niche" groups - the "hard" cases, rather than by trying to reach a wider demographic.  This has led to massive levels of marginalisation in the previously ghettoised communities that is now widely recognised by those who now realise there is a hugely lucrative "market" previously ignored doe to ghettoization.  This brings into play a conflict between traditional community based events and newer commercial events and businesses which cater to a wealthy, though argueably not powerful demographic who are less differentiated from the hetero community.  Sedgwick would have been proud.

To a large extent, this really is the ultimate break through of the narrowing effect referred to by Sedgwick, and a move back towards a more broad demographic.  This has reached massive knee-jerks within many traditional communities, most of whom have had their complaints muted by the fact that the "new money" in the gay family is now subsidising their institutions.  Indeed faced with massive cutbacks in funding due to the global slump many organisations are either dying or being forced to cater to more commercial tastes.  This ultimately means being forced to appeal to a broader environment than the group was previously comfortable with.  This may lose the support of polarised stakeholders who are unhappy with the changes.  However in the long term it offers the broadest involvement with the community, the greatest support, and catering for a broad church rather than a narrow and unrepresentative of minority who fall within the consensus group.

An interesting piece appeared in the Examiner today, on an issue now largely ignored by the rest of the papers, who prefer more recessionary topics - the continued increase in recreational to obsessional drug use in Ireland.  Seemingly there has been a large increase in "drug debts" especially for coke use, and this is spilling over into intimidation of families as they are "held responsible" for family members debts.

What is particularly interesting is the hugely ineffective and naive "drug education" which even young people themselves are critical of, and of course, the fact that effectively all drug "education" ends once people leave second level education - nonsensical when you consider that a large proportion of drugs are "new drugs" that have only come into the scene in recent years and thus large numbers of people will be about 20 years out of date.  Good examples are both ecstasy and crystal meths.  These were unknown when I left school, and cocaine was very much a rich mans drug.  So there was no information at all available about them, and very poor information later on.

Another issue not mentioned by the report on the National Drugs Strategy 2009-2016 is the negative impact of heavy handed legal policies on individual users, who are often hung out to dry in courts for relatively minor infractions and possession of often very tiny amounts.  Individual Gardai get endless spiteful delight from discovering even a fingernail of cannabis in a drunks pocket at night, that can lead to a conviction that often will shadow over the person for the rest of their lives, and often discourage users from making any real effort to change their ways.  Serious consideration needs to be given into the handling of users with small amounts, especially if it is secondary to what they've actually been arrested for.

The irony of course, is that Ireland became the main manufacturing centre for MDMA/E substitutes based on benzylpiperazine once it was outlawed in NZ in 2007, a pretty nasty drug which has the most horrendous side effects of any drug I've seen.  It apparently became a controlled substance at the end of March, but I've still seen it around headshops, etc.  No doubt some new synthesis will appear soon enough to replace it.

I definitely think there is a now a strong case for a reassessment and reassignment of illegal drugs based on knowledge that has changed since 1977.  For example it is clear now that normal cannabis is far less harmful than most other substances, but stunk variations can be more harmful.  This needs to be assessed and separate assessment considered.  In fact with many EU countries gradually moving towards legal tolerance for cannabis, Ireland could be a good place to start a legal growing industry, something that would nullify much of the illegal trade and also stimulate what right now appears to be a dying economy.

I was quite amazed to read the reports on VHI's deficit this year, but in particular, the unashamedly political and blaming tone of the company.

For a start, the company starts out by insinuating that its losing money because its paying out "more" in claims.

But in fact, the companies income from premiums has dropped from 1.15 billion in 2007 to 1.03 billion in 2008.  This is despite enormous hikes in premiums.  So this effectively means there has been a massive withdrawal from VHI, whether defections to Quinn or Hibernian, who offer the same thing for about 15-20% less, despite an incorrect public perception that they also offer less, which isn't the case, or withdrawals entirely from insurance, which is likely in the wake of massive job losses in Ireland.

The company also managed to lose 43 million on investments, which unfortunately is inevitable in the current climate.

However the PR also suggested the "increase" in claims is due to "lifestyle diseases."  This is hard to define, but usually indicates, narcotic abuse, diseases resulting from self abuse such as overeating.

But this surely cannot be the case since the main result of obesity is Type 2 diabestes - a disease which is on the long term health list and thus covered in full by the state at no cost to VHI.  Asthma is another example, but coverage for asthmatics in VHI is zero since the main treatments are drug related and most patients don't see specialists, which means they get nothing from the standard VHI plans.  Likewise, VHI are highly restrictive in treating most narcotic related illnesses, so what VHI means by lifestyle diseases is unclear.

Or is this yet another attempt to cover up the fact that VHI's long held policy of massive premium hikes is finally starting to backfire in the wake of increased competition and increased awareness of entitlement to the same treatment by other providers?  For too long VHI have managed to get away with the argument that they hold most older (and subsequently higher claiming) subscribers, yet they've also been happy to not correct the perception that these subscribers are unable to transfer - which is patently untrue.  Why?  Because in fact they may not be the real causes of VHI's loss of business.

I was quite shocked by the tone of the representative from NCW, who glibly dismissed the fact that the vast majority of people in Ireland are suffering as a result of the downturn.  Apparently funding originally allocated for funding for womens groups to provide training in communities is being diverted to Department of Defense for Garda overtime.  While NWC says these are provided to the most deprived groups, I know at least one group who are getting funding via this source and quite frankly, I would question its benefit.  I think the money would be far better spent on the Garda overtime to which its apparently now being reallocated.  Quite frankly, women ultimately will suffer from the potential increases in crime as a result of economic downturn more disproportionately, and I think the money is better spent.

While its really important to target women in deprived circumstances for training, I think its more useful to do this through specialist training agencies working in conjunction with groups to indentify areas of need.  I have seen at least one groups plans to use this money and frankly I feel the money is only going to get to a very small number of women who in many cases are already benefitting from funding and care from other sources and in many cases are professional beneficiaries of such services.

In short, I am not happy at the self-appointed leadership roles being taken by a lot of these organisations, especially those representing minority groups, which use such funding to become power blocs in their respective communities.  This is not in the interest of those communities as such groups are no longer beholden to those communities but are being effectively empowered to control people.  Quite frankly I don't think this is a healthy situation.  I think those groups are better able to support their communities when they are directly funded by the community they serve and therefore remain accountable to them rather than some government agency who may not really understand the agenda.

Lately I've been reading Vicky Wagner's rather good online dating ebook.  And I think its really reallly good.

Online hitch of course is, clearly she hasn't experienced the completely dysfunctional dating scene here in Ireland.  I'd love to bring her over and see the horrendous reality for what it is.

One of the really good pieces of advice by Vicky is to use the best dating services.  I  cannot agree more.  Only hitch unfortunately is that really, in the Irish context this can be terribly limiting.  Gaydar is obvious and cheap, but quite frankly, even though it probably has more active Irish users than any other (and a really, really great radio station), it also seems to have a huge proportion of the loony element online - just drop into the simplest of chatrooms, and well, experience the joys of the dyke scene in virtual form - there ain't no passive-agressive here, its just plain agressive, provocations, really really questionable people online (many of whom clearly don't seem to be women or who more likely just escaped from Portrane) who seem to get endless entertainment from either a) wanking over an internet site or b) deliberately stirring up fights between people they clearly seem to see as vastly inferior to their sad little selves.

There is pinksofa - again with a dedicated women's site.  Lovely.  Wonderful.  Nice women.  Not particularly expensive.  And unfortunately, decidedly southern hemisphere-centric.  It will be nice if I ever do manage to get that work visa for Australia, but right now, there isn't huge point in transmitting messages with anybody in Perth.

There are the straight focused sites.  Irish Times dating turned out to be anotherfriend.com which has one huge flaw - it doesn't distinguish if you are gay or straight so unless you specify on your profile that you are looking for the same sex only you'll be sent lots of messages from heteros who cannot really be blamed for not knowing any better.

Match.com looks promising, I might check this out a little more.  It at least doesn't try to match you up into a hetero relationship and doesn't steer straight guys your way in order to waste your time.

Parship.ie is REALLY impressive looking, but very expensive, even though not as much as the anotherfriend.com ripoff, (quite frankly if a site doesn't clearly distinguish gay and straight members, it is NOT worth paying for, that should be very, very basic).  It seems to make a good effort to filter out those who might really match you.  There is only huge catch I find with this site.  Shortly after I joined I was highlighted to a top ranking match, which was more than a little disturbing as it turned out to be (I'm fairly perceptive) my previous partner.  Which was a tiny bit disturbing.  Matching you with a failed relationship isn't exactly a good sign.

Gaylog ought to be a good site, but quite frankly, its incredibly overrun with extraordinarily stupid hetero males from 3rd world countries who perpetually bombard me with messages, friend requests and demands for my msn address.  They don't even appear to notice the word "gay" in the site description and I've had to block about 10 so far.

So still looking for that elusive dating site with a decent number from Ireland that is actually even half likely to work.  I popped an ad in the Times anyway just to see if I get some kind of response.  Who knows.
 

A nice little piece appeared in the Irish Times this week regarding the subject of the fabled biological clock.  I quite enjoyed it, and I have to admit that although I never feel any sort of broodiness when picking up some (very occasional) friend's small baby, I think she has hit the nail on the head.  The problem isn't so much the prospect of maybe not having children as the inability to turn back the clock and not get older.  I think she is right there.

An interesting article, which I felt got both positions (and others across).

I had a quick glance through "Jezebel" and read the original article in Double X and I have to say that what strikes me as being the problem is the open expression of unbridled sexuality on the pages of Jezebel.

I think that both 1st and 2nd wave feminism not only have a great deal of difficulty in dealing with issues of sexuality, there was a tacit assumption that empowering women would make those women personally accountable.  Instead we have found that these women become bigger victims than ever (the classic example is of course, the horrible stereotypes of female lone parenthood, the woman both as an object of scorn and yet perceived to be more sexually available), numbed to such an extent that they no longer report rapes or other forms of male violence.

And I might also add, that the assumption of godly lesbian separatists ignores the viciousness of some and violence of some gay women against others - domestic abuse rates involving same sex realtionships are particularly notorious, throwing away any sweet image of this as a feminist ideal.

This weekend I had a slightly disturbing experience which was similar to one that occured 6 months ago, both involved going back to 2 different hotels in Limerick after nights out.  On the first occasion,  I was heading back to a city hotel after a party, having walked a female friend to her hotel.  About 40 yards before I got to my hotel, some guy decided to try to engage me in conversation, which I entirely ignored, and then tried to follow me into my hotel, which the security staff prevented.  It struck me that if I'd been some unfortunate local heading to a private residence it might have been a much more difficult experience.  The other night I was heading into my (different) hotel, and when I arrived there was a guy hanging about outside the (locked) main door.  The security guy made a huge fuss of asking me my room number so I was quite disturbed when the guy slipped straight in the door after me, that they didn't physically stop him.  I made the point of adding "and he's nothing to do with me" and left them to handle the mess.  Still a little disturbing as the guy in question may have followed a woman to the hotel, for reasons unknown.

I'm fortunate enough to live in rather quiet areas and often do get taxis home, but not always.  The curious thing is that right, I am not some cute little 21 year old bimbo tottering around in heels, I'm 36 and on Saturday night I was hardly glammed up.  There seem to be plenty of these guys for who any woman is fair game, and I wouldn't like to be some kid falling home who might not be as quick to tell them where to go as I would be.

And yet when I hear bigoted bulldykes bemoaning the number of fag hags in "our" bars, not one of them ever considers that so many of those girls come to gay bars to escape persistent and uninvited sexual harassment, and are only trying to have a good night out in a place they would consider to be "safe."  It infuriates me as almost every single fag hag I've ever met lists this as a big reason for coming to gay bars - they can actually enjoy themselves without being pestered.

Now the feminist answer to these women, sadly, isn't really very helpful.  Arguable as it may be, most women have not been blatantly raped, although a good many will have been on the end of coercive sex they may not have been 100% comfortable about.  But what a huge number of women will have experienced is unwanted and persistent male attention, in seemingly benign forms such as the eccentric gent who tried to join my mother for lunch in a Dublin pub some years ago (thankfully she wasn't alone) to more menacing forms such as guys following you around dimly lit city streets, or constantly trying to engage you in conversation in a pub or night club.  The reality is, is that feminism hasn't really given women effective tools to deflect the more niggling persistent male pest, the kind who is just trying to get your attention.

Let me give you a brilliant example.  Myself and a female friend were recently having dinner in a restaurant in Cork, when a lone middle aged man at the nearby table decided to butt in "I can hear you from here," he said, "I feel sorry for XXXXX who ever he is, you are fine" (nodding to my companion) "its you who is so loud I can hear you from here."  I think the guy was looking for attention, trying to find a way to get himself into the conversation, and having no other tools to do so, just interrupted and started to criticise the more "strong" woman as a way of disempowering us both.  So guess what - we more or less ignored him.  He made one of two more minor efforts to attract attention later in the evening.  It was rather sad that the guy seriously had so few social skills that his only way to talk to women was to disrupt them.  No wonder he was on his own.

Again this is another example of where feminism simply isn't empowering at all.  This really is just plain rudeness, but its tolerated because of the frequently wilyness of the men who use such methods - my being "too loud" to be honest was more about me being clearly "empowered" (we were complaining about an obnoxious misogynist workmate who has severe personal hygenie issues).  Feminism remains deafeningly silent on social niceties and male rudeness.

In fact part of my issue with feminist separatism is too often what it really does is retreat into "safe" territories, cowering in terror from the big bad world of men, rather than genuinely teaching women tools and techniques to handle the obvious transgressions of men.  Instead we create "safe spaces" and pretend to close them out (letting them in of course to do the building and fix the plumbing) whilst really ignoring the need to train women how to handle sexism in the real world and genuinely empower women.

Another big problem is that earlier forms of feminism were clearly quite unsure of how to deal with the problem of sexuality.  I think there was a real conflict for some women who promoted a more liberated sexual life, with the problems on how to enable women to live this without suffering as a result of it, be it via sexual coercion, family planning issues and managing relationships.  No wonder it was easy to hide in the seemingly cozy world of lesbian separatism, dumping a whole generation of pompous, desexualized political lesbians on the gay community to ruin the fun for the real queer girls, who now were being dumped with the polar opposite of men who only wanted them for their bodies - women who only wanted them for their minds!!

In the womens community in Ireland we've been slow to prise the iron grip of power from the small few community groups who hold a lot of power.  Fortunately, most in the Dublin region have long since disappeared, replaced with friendlier little groups such as ALAF and the various web-based networks who do wonderful work for women, without attempts to engage in thought control.  The interesting thing about the history of these groups is that via attempts to start off a national resource, the original plan failed to come to fruition, but did produce one splinter which still exists today.  That splinter remains firmly mired in the original intentions to what was needed for women at the time of the original work NOT what we need today, and almost entirely misses the needs of huges swathes of the womens community locally.

To some extent, this battle provides a parallel to the publication battle between DoubleX and Jezebel - both use the language of feminism, but neither really represent women fully.  Perhaps instead of criticising Jezebel it might have been more useful to try to post to it and engage with it in an attempt to influence and teach its users and posters rather than simply throwing rotten eggs at them.  Naturally, the ladies of Jezebel will just feel alientated from the mainstream feminists, while really, we got to educate them and enable them to empower themselves in a more accountable and genuine way.  We can only do that by getting out there and engaging with them.

Recently, I've become a fan of the blog Card-Carrying Lesbian.  It has to be one of the funniest, frankest and most down to earth blogs I've yet read from a gay woman.  The writer, delicately teeters along the brink of really revealing huge insights into the life and loves of a gay girl living in Long Beach, CA.

I guess this kinda struck a chord because recently I spent the last 2 days of a California road trip that included 4 nights in SF and the Girlbar Dinah Shore in Palm Springs.  To treat myself, I stayed a night on the Queen Mary, moored at Long Beach since her retirement and now a hotel cum historic monument.  I really enjoyed the hotel, especially considering I've never been on a cruise ship, so its whetted my appetite for an Olivia cruise, if funds allow of course.  Anyway, on my last night, having nothing better to do and not being really interested in negotiating the joys of parking in Long Beach never mind FINDING the many gay bars (I'd earlier driven to WeHo and found myself in a traffic jam reminiscent of my days of living in Ranelagh in the late 1990s - although indeed its hard to say that LA traffic is anything less than appalling), popped up a deck to the Observation bar, where I enjoyed a cocktail over a magazine.

I couldn't help my Gaydar spinning onto full alert at a bunch of girls sitting at the opposite table.  A subtle dyke melodrama was in full swing.  It was somebodies birthday, and clearly the birthday girl had been put out, by another girl who was out on the deckside having a fag with another smoker girl.  Anyway it was clear that something was up, somebody was upset, and something told me all of these girls were "family."  Anyway, they eventually pottered off for a night on the town.  I'm sure glad I didn't see the outcome, there was all the familiar signs of dyke-drama, not least the passive-aggressive starting point where you will be utterly convinced that this slight bit of pissed-offness is NEVER going to turn into the explosive mayhem which in many cases eventually does occur (unless somebody just turns on their heels or turns off their phone, which happens about 20% of the time).  Its all so seemingly friendly and polite, its amazing what catfights actually do emerge from the seeming innocent beginnings of annoyance.

So you see, I'm under no illusion that us ladies in da family are anything unique or special.  We catfight.  We get jealous.  And we are every bit as capable of discrimination, exclusion and a level of bitchiness so subtle its barely perceptible.  And nowhere, nowhere, is this more prevalent than in event management, community circles and basically, on the so-called "scene" in general.

Now I'm often bemused by girls who claim to not be on the scene.  I once heard this from a woman who actually worked part time in a community resource for gay women - bit rich to suggest this is not the scene, for a lot of women in that place this IS the scene as they know it.  And I also feel, such resources have a SPECIAL responsibility to go out of their way to ensure no dsicrimination happens at any level.  I don't care if you hide it under a guise of being democratic, inclusive etc, so do the BNP.  Majority rules has been so easily used by the far right to justify hate crimes by the state I don't even need to start on how henious it is for such groups to use "democracy" to justify wholesale exclusion.  The reality is that any group that organises on a community basis needs to make a special effort to organize in such a way as to prevent the organization being used to advance personal prejudice of any sort.  Fears need to be assuaged, efforts need to be made, and the loudest voices cannot be allowed to bully entire communities into submission.

Anyway, I've been partially horrified and partially unsurprised at the spat which emerged on the GayCork forum this week over the "man-ban" at the "Cork Womens Fun Weekend."  Basically, WFW is a voluntary group, mainly really built out of women involved in the L.Inc community resource (but not dictated by it), who basically organize a nice little weekend of discos, pub quizes, golf tournaments, and usually an afternoon of talks, debates etc for women.  Now I always understood it to be firmly targetted at a lesbian market, but a post on GayCork actually suggests its for "all women" (despite the fact that lesbians are particularly bothered, understandably so, by the huge level of fag hags on the Cork scene).  This I find incredible, considering that I've been to the weekend a few times but never once met a straight woman, and aside from the blatantly obvious focus on lesbian-focused events, men are completely excluded from everything from the discos to the small events!

The only thing is of course, is that the pubs that the events take place in don't become "women only" for the occasion.  They just "host" the event, without excluding the guys.  They can't really and thats a fortunate thing.

Anyway this doesn't ever really seem to have bothered most guys.  But then apparently last year, a bunch of younger gay women thought it would be fun to bring along a man-friend, a gay guy.  So he came, paid his fee at the door of the Silver Springs and the group went about their way.  Until somebody kicked up at the presence of a person with Y chromosone and threw what from all accounts appears to have been a hissy fit.  It seems that the man in question was then ejected from the event.  Now even some of the accounts from staunch defenders suggest this was not well handled.  Yet the wishes of the rather bitter sounding woman in question were enforced without so much as whisper?  Why is that?

Many of the events use L.Inc as a host resource.  About 3 years ago I took a post op M2F friend to the entire weekend, expecting no trouble.  There was no trouble.  Well not to her or my face.  Then about 8 months ago I was at a meeting in L.Inc itself where their own man-ban (maybe a little more justified than the WFW one) was being debated.  You can only imagine my horror as some woman started on about arriving there to find what she described as "this person" (spoken in a fairly contemptuous manner as if it was a THING or an IT) had invaded her "space."  Now I'm constantly bemused by talk over "womens space."  It seems to me that once upon a time, when almost everything on the scene in Ireland was 98% if not 100% male (by accident more than design I think) there was a dire need to combat the almost total dilution of women by creating separate events that would be automatically exclusively female.  Most of these struggled to exist and many died because quite frankly, back in the tiger years, what pub or club wanted to keep out 50% of its customers on a prime weekend night?  It was not until the first "men-as-guests" parties started occuring around 1998 or so, that things started to change.

The big change brought by the "men-as-guests" policies was not that men came in.  Actually they didn't.  At least not in big numbers.  Really, it was just a handful, friends of the oganisers, some of whom were helping out, gay guys whose best friends were lesbians, straight guys whose best friends were lesbians, and particularly, kindly chaperones to bi and gay women who didn't have friends amongst the other women out there, women who effectively were disenfranchised by the whole ban-the-man movement because they found themselves unable to access such events because in Ireland, there is still a taboo about women going to pubs and clubs alone.  And if they do cross that taboo, there is no guarantee anybody will talk to them, and if anybody thinks this is jack shit, please please, go into Loafers on Douglas Street in Cork any Thursday night and look at the 2 or 3 lone women who'll arrive, sit at the bar looking anxious, while the beer-garden crowd simultaneously stare them out of it and ignore them.  They are hardly made welcome, except by the bar staff, who with maybe just one exception are good hosts.  Usually they've vanished by 9pm.

After the men-as-guests clubs started arriving, I recall somebody saying that they were bringing a "whole different crowd" out on the scene.  Indeed they were, they were not just young screaming divas either, but the "invisible" gay women - gay women who really didn't "fit" the ghettoised stereotypes.  We got asked questions from bouncers indicating they assumed we were straight.  We got asked repeatedly in pubs were we or weren't we?  We also frequently got subjected to taunts that we weren't the real deal because we wore heels, frocks, make-up, associated with guys and generally, just didn't fit the expectations.

That was 1999.  By the time I arrived back in Ireland after 8 months away in 2002, the whole scene in Dublin was a different place, and still changing.  By 2008 Pride, it was no longer acceptable to hire a male stripper for the boys, we got treated to a female one too (ok she REALLY had no idea about how to interact with her audience, but hey, it was a nice thought).  One of the nicest thing about the Dublin scene now is that its no longer a taboo to sexualize an event - strippers wouldn't cause the stir they did when one brave promoter had a go 7 years ago.  A few Go-Go dancers would be great.  Maybe even a cage dancer to start things rolling.  I don't know if we are there yet but a lot has changed for the better.  Young gay women are no longer cowering in terror of discovery.  I meet women whose sexuality is oozing all over the place and they can easily handle the social world of being a gay woman.  They are great and I'm so happy for them.

In Cork, we might as well have stopped the clock somewhere around 1998, if not 20 years earlier.

I think the root of the problem is that for some unknown reason, lesbians decided to organize separately from gay men, at some point in the late 90s.  I don't believe it was ever so much a case of breaking away from the boys, but to create something specific for girls.  Unfortunately this has grown into a divide, not just between lesbians and gay men, but an almost unspeakable rift between a very particular group of gay women and basically, a significant proportion of the rest of the scene.

Anything directly organized by such groups have been and remain explicitly women-only.  The demographic of attendees is strangely alien to what I've come across anywhere else - its 40-60, mostly parents, separatists, often quite obviously "butch" and a lot seem to have come a route in life that involved coming out late and long term relationships with men.  In her book Money, Myths and Change, Mary Virginia Lee Badgett makes excellent points about the distortion caused by lifestyle surveys about gay people being based on magazine readership stats, which frequently tend to overrepresent young, affluent and childless gay people, living a conspicuously consumerist and hedonistic lifestyle of privelige.  A more realistic picture comes from Stonewall's Health survey from 2008 (available from www.stonewall.org.uk), which indicates, amongst other things, that a hefty 40% of women interviewed reported having slept with a man in the previous 5 years.

Other interesting results from the same survey indicate levels of domestic abuse from female partners quite comparable to hetero women's experience (which I think really throws into question Simon de Beauvoir's claims about women "turning sisterhood and fraternity into realities").  Another article, published in the American Journal of Public Health, and somewhat conroversial, published that lesbians were twice as likely to be obese.  An interesting thing about researching this document on the OU website (as a part time student I've a lot of access to academic publications), was that it also revealed lots of similar USA based research.  I discovered a few surveys, mostly health based, that indicated that on the whole, most most respondees in community centres geared at gay women tended to be 20-49 (63%), about 16% were parents, and maybe a slight overrepresentation of white/Causcasian racial groups (86%).  You can find the full summary here.  In fact the mean age of the respondents from the 7 surveys used to pool results was 36.  Yet the average age of the typical groups here in Cork would appear to be significantly higher, which to me suggests that someting is distorting the demographic.

Now one of the responses ludicruously suggested that the WFW includes in its target group women "trapped" in unhappy marriages in rural areas which they've been "pressurized" into.  Oh and that the WFW events are perhaps their only chance of a shag.  And that these women would "never enter a gay bar" - which really makes me wonder would they not baulk even more at the idea of entering a lesbian community center or even a lesbian event (in my own experience of marginalised closeted lesbians, they are far more terrified of what they perceive as mannish-lesbian separatists than they are of gay bars or to be honest, gay men)?  To be honest, I don't think hetero women are particularly welcome at these events and I doubt they are sincerely a target for the events.

So the question remains, why maintain a blanket exclusion on men for events like the WFW?

To me, I think the whole thing is based on maintaining a power structure.
This perception is based on my experience of going to previous WFW events, knowing some of the folk involved, having had a degree of involvement with groups using L.Inc and just listening to the views of those involved.

I think the man-ban maintains a dominant, older ex-hetero, largely closeted demographic in the womens "community" groups.  This is because younger women, non radicals, feminine women, openly gay women, seem to feel quite uncomfortable in the presence of these groups.  I personally found the "welcome" somewhat mixed.  Sometimes it was superficial, sometimes it was chilly - only the L.Inc "choir" gave me a warm, warm and loving welcome, and spent about 6 months trying to drag me back!  But they seem to be a relatively independent group within the family, one which is more self-identified than others.  And as such they seem to have maintained a better level of social diversity.

As for the deliberate targeting of a demographic that appears to be quite unpresentative of the majority of gay women, it seems that by doing so, a strangehold is kept on the reins of power by the clique.  Their power has been unthreatened because there is no possible opposite since the wider female demographic is subtly (if even) discouraged from getting involved.

Claims over exclusive "space", "sites" or "territory" is sometimes represented in lesbian feminist writings as lesbian geography.  Its a curious concept that emerged from feminist separatism of the 1970s and 80s as an attempt to build bonds and social networks around women.  Lesbians in particular continued this as mainstream hetero feminists often failed to respect or address the special needs of gay women.  The most curious thing about this period was that from the end of the 2nd world war to the early 1990s there was a profileration of women only "spaces", in particular bars, in various US and Canadian cities, hailing what Julie Podmore has described as a "golden age" of lesbian territories.  While Podmore isn't critical of the actual "loss" of exclusive territories she does question some myths, such as the suggestion that businesses run by (and sometimes for) gay women didn't survive due to financial reasons (in fact she suggests they appeared quite healthy in their heyday).

What Podmore suggests is that in the wake of a move away from identity based politics in the "queer" political movements of the early 1990s, women who slept with other women started to migrate away from exclusively female spaces and into less gender identified "gay" spaces, which eventually resulted in the older style of bar dying out.  Most commentators recognise that the evolution of such "spaces" in 1990s was marked not only with a shift to non-gendered spaces, it also marked a diversification of the lesbian aesthetic and class - Podmore's article does point out that much of the bar movement was dominated by the working class butch/femme typification and that many middle class women were alienated from many of the Montreal spaces at points when they were located in red light districts.

This runs a parallel with some of the sentiments expressed in the only woman to put forth any kind of defence of the Cork situation:

• the women’s weekend does not exist purely for the urban, lesbian community but for all women (which is why it is not the Lesbian Fun Weekend). Some of whom are straight and married, some of whom are deeply closeted, some of whom just want to go wild without feeling they are under male scrutiny.
• Many lesbians believe that the current proposal on civil partnerships as advocated by Glen has sold the lesbian community (and our children) down the river – how deep does that feeling go? It there genuine resentment at what is perceived by many as an organisation dominated by gay men and firmly anchored in D4 ignoring what lesbians want? This debate is a step in enabling lesbians to identify and express what it is we actually want.
• It is a sad truism that were an open policy adopted, then the Women’s Weekend would cease to exist.
• Each time the end discussion came down to ‘what is the women’s weekend actually for?’ – No-one here seems to have addressed that question at any length. In essence, it always came back to the same thing – The Fun Weekend exists to provide a small bit of space where women can completely relax and go as wild as they want in the safety and security of a women only space.

I would challenge all 4 assertions below:

• A weekend that automatically has a blanket ban on men and includes discos for women only can only be a weekend for women who sleep with other women.  The suggestion that they are far too terrified to enter a gay bar mya be correct but ignores the fact that they are almost certainly even more terrified of entering "lesbian territory".
• The misrepresantation of GLEN is deeply unfair, particularly the assertion that GLEN are "D4", having known some of them for nearly 18 years, I can assure readers that they are anything but.  Secondly, the proposals were put forward by the current government, not GLEN, who have consistently advocated a preference for an inclusive model which includes parenting rights.  It is deeply divisive to suggest that GLEN proposed excluding childrens rights, however with parents as a minority group within the gay community, should the entire proposal be thrown out simply to cater for that minority?  I agree that their concerns are highly valid, but I am concerned that a far bigger number of gay people will be left with nothing.
• For the "this will cease to exist" - is this fear mongering? Or more a fear that the weekend would change irrevocably?  Does anybody really know what would emerge?  I think resistance to change is the key.  As Girlbar promoter Sandy Sachs said when she started the Las Vegas party: "We don't have a huge idea on what the [lesbian] market in Las Vegas can bear.  Right now, you can't find them. They have nowhere to go. Where is the market? No one knows where they are because no one has done anything for them. I'm going to sit there and hold my breath and count people. Hopefully we'll start seeing what size it is."  If one of the biggest promoters in the USA cannot assess the potential size of dyke parties in Vegas then how can anybody in Cork assess how much bigger or smaller the WFW would become?  Judging by the transformation of the womens community from the late 1990s to now (where we basically moved from being less than 5% to closing in on 50% in many cities) of de-gendering of gay territories, I suspect a transformed and less gendered version of CWFW could be anything from 5 to 10 times its current size.  Unrealistic?  In think not.  Look at what happened when P!nk performed in Cork in 2008 - every gay bar in town packed to capacity with lesbians.  There is a huge untapped market that is waiting in the shadows for an event for them.
  
• Words like "safety" and "security" imply a threat, they imply danger.   There is serious need for the womens community to start addressing as to why some women seek a "refuge".  The implications of "going wild" are crap - this has to be fairly tame compared to a lot of womens events I've been at in the last 18 months, which included women running around wearing nothing but a fig leaf, topless dancers on bars, cage dancers, Go-Go girls and reckless abandon.  I think there is a huge need for development of individual self-assertion and confidence in the womens community rather than simply pandering to the "fear", which I suspect is the fear of the male voyeur.

The sad reality is that the image of the WFW and that segment of the womens community right now are rather tarnished.  Let me end with some quotes from the petition:

•  
• anything they ever touched they destroyed just look what they did to Loafers
• Our small minded dykes
• and they want people to treat them as normal and they behave abnormal!!!!!!!!!!, thats to put it mildly.
• just who do they think they are like self appointed troublemakers
• As a Cork lesbian all I can say the event is being run by Nazis
• its about time the lesbian community set up a real representative group and leave these old time warriors to fight the shadows
• I can't believe that even after stonewall and how we all fought together for our rights that there are still some in our community who are bigots and bacwards [sic]

Its a sad indicment that in this day and age an old separtist strategy is being allowed to create a power bloc with such a level of hypocrisy, and at such an awful cost to the ordinary gay woman in this region, who remains the real victim.

I couldn't help feeling a slight unease when I read today about the swine flu alerts for people travelling from "affected areas."  Not least because I was travelling in one of them just under 12 days ago.  Well this is the thing - I was in Southern California between 31/3 and 6/4 and again from 12/4 to 14/4.  Now it appears to me that realistically, an "affected area" is an area where there have been deaths, such as Mexico city.  Then again, you have to wonder.  My first 6 days were at a location (Palm Springs) in the middle of the traditional "spring break" where lots of locals go travelling, and the majority of the thousands of people I was at the same circuit party as were from the LA and San Diego regions.

And yet, for whatever reason, it appears that the strain of H1N1 that is around southern California appears to be just "mild."  You can't help wondering if there is actually something to worry about though, although I have to say I'm very asthmatic and very suspectible to respiratory diseases so if there was something on the go, I can be fairly sure that I would have caught it, no surer thing for me!!

So I suspect that the scene at Hong Kong and KL are way over the top, particularly considering that such places were such a hub for previous infestations of diseases such as SARs and bird flu.  (Ok maybe not KL, which is by far probably the only city in Asia I've been to that I can even remotely describe as hygenic, compared to Bangkok, which is pretty filthy, and some of Hong Kong is pretty grubby, despite the rigorous cleaning it seemed to get).  I am guessing that something isn't being measure or publicised in Mexico, probably for political and economic reasons.  Huge amounts of USA dollars have been heaved into the Mexican economy as part of outsourcing initiatives designed to exploit low labour costs (usually at US workers expense) and lax labour laws.

It certainly does raise a further question about how stable and reliable these countries really are.  Mexico, seemingly, has repaced Colombia as the key lynchpin of the cocaine supply route.  It is increasingly becoming a very dangerous place to travel to, which can only slow down potential US investment in the region as comapnies will increasingly become concerned about political stability.  And with the Taliban closing in on Islamabad, and increasing levels of millitant Islamicism in previous mild places like Malaysia and Indonesia, one has to wonder how long it is going to take before the level of political instability in such countries start to threaten both their local tourist industries and international investment.  Thailand is a particular case in point - it has a long history of political problems and bloodless coups, you've got to wonder how long it will take before they become a threat to tourism, and not simply because of problems travelling.

The interesting thing about Thailand is that the southern, Muslim part of Thailand is considered to be relatively dangerous, yet northern Malaysia, where the supposed Islamic threat presumably feeds, is probably the safest Muslim country you can visit.  In fact I've a particular soft spot for Malaysia, which I would consider to be just as good as Thailand minus the whoring, aggressive hawkers and barely legalized begging masquerading as tourist related business.  I would really be saddened if the mild-mannered old fashioned and polite Islam domainant here was ever to be ousted by the agressive and warlike Islam spreading rapidly throughout the Muslim world.

Laura will be blogging live from this years Girlbar Dinah Shore weekend!!
You can catch the daily updates here every day as they happen.

is very pleased to discover ping.fm as it can now update everthing simultaneously

Was rather interested today to read about Twittering for profit rather than pleasure.  As an avid if not obsessed tweeter, I generally tweet idle chat about a great burger, a great sporting moment, or most often, how I actually feel without mentioning exactly what it is I feel that way about.  This is largely because I work on a company on an outsourced contract, there are often situations and problems I may be working on that really it wouldn't be correct to publicly let loose on.  We've internal issues as well and objectionable as some people might be, ultimately they do have a right to not have details of their behavioural problems aired live across the internet.  (Although you got to wonder if this might actually be the only answer to some pressing problems!!)

Anyway, the company owner of a company which pays people to answer internet questions has offered SF (which is where I hopefully will be twittering from in about 15 days time) based Twitter to put him on their list of people to follow.  Nice idea.  His company looks like of interesting too.

Its very interesting to note that Gay Shame posters from SF appear on the Irish pages of Indymedia, talking about the commercialization of gay pride events worldwide.  Actually I kind of half agree with them but for different reasons.  I agree with them when they talk about the increasing hyprocrisy of the left, and I agree that the main direction the that the LGBT world is travelling towards is assimilationism (although I would argue that this is actually a good thing).  What do feel though, is that the more community based Pride events of the past were shamelessly exploited by commercial organizations who made a killing while community activists broke their backs trying to raise funds.  So I think its only fair and right that those groups now at very least be expected to sponsor and properly help fund such events, look at the huge queues outside the big bars every year by 9pm in the evening.

What I do feel though also, is that a lot of people in the LGBT community have also shamelessly exploited these events as freebies and a great many give nothing back to the communities.  Nothing at all.  In fact the commercial organizations probably give relatively a lot more.  The reality hit home some years ago when friends told me of two stingy dykes who arrived into Loafers in Cork on the night on a BBQ, bought a single cup of tea and moaned about why the BBQ hadn't started yet.  Why the hell should the community continually keep breaking its back providing free rides for all these scumbags who don't give anything back?  We are so quick to judge the commerical beneficaries but nobody ever talks about the cheapos who come along for the free day out.  This is why I am perfectly in agreement with the high ticket prices charged by so many of the big events.  We can't keep expecting them to self-fund, unless you are happy for shabby shite.

Now on the other hand, GS advocates an entirely commercial free and truly radical zone.  Its so interesting I think that there has been so much push for social legitimization in recent years - legal recognition of gay relationships for tax purposes (which of course really only benefits wealthy queers, not ones on welfare who actually benefit from the current situation!), workplace protections (which protect people already in jobs rather than those out of work), even adoption rights.  To a large extent I guess its true that a lot of these rights really are of most benefit to successful, wealthy and working queers who've already found love.  Not the tranny prostitute on the Gulch who gets nothing whatsoever out of these.

Its a good debate though.  The only thing I disagree with is the insistence on consensus.  I find that all too often its either false or ends up with a lowest common denominator that is actually resented or lacks credible real support.  I would tend to look for accomodation between different opinions rather than censensus.  GMP in Cork actually have an interesting system - if you disagree you must suggest something else - they find that this shoots down people who just want to shoot down a proposal for the sake of it.  Great idea.