‘I woke up the next day in a guy’s house covered in bruises’
Ireland’s culture of putting men first is particularly odious in the context of sexual violence
A classic of the genre – At first glance, this appears to be a troubling story of a woman, Paula Gahan, now a comedian living in London, who was, or thinks she was sexually assaulted after going on a major alcohol bender. However, what it chiefly noticeable about the article is the Irish anti-Irish prejudice of which the author is unaware of. First, she attacks her own mother for putting men first at the dinner table and extrapolates from this woman’s behaviour to that all Irish women who are in the habit of putting men first. The article is a typical sneer at all things Irish and the Irish themselves and by an emigrant who now lives in London among ‘superior’ beings. She ends her article by saying she never wants to go back to Ireland and never even wants to think of it. This quite a common practice among the Irish both at home and abroad. The Irish abroad can think that they belong to a new nation and that the sneers do not apply to them but the Irish at home are always sneering at the Irish and think that their sneers do not apply to them, but they do. That is why begrudgery and Cluirchaun Syndrome are self-hate prejudices. the Irish Times has been running a series of articles about the Irish diaspora abroad and in quite a few of these articles, it is common to find them sneering at or denigrating their homeland and their own people.
Back to Gahan’s night in question, she tells us she got so comatose from the drink that she woke up in a guy’s house covered in bruises. Obviously, she was legless and fell quite a few times but had no memory of how it happened. She does not clearly state what happened, because she has no memory of that night but assumes that she had sex with the guy. She also intimated that it was without her consent but we have no way of knowing what the circumstances were. Sometime afterward she confided in a friend and found no sympathy, dismissed with the phrase “you knew what you were doing”. The friend is saying directly that she knew she was going back to the guy’s place.
There are a number of threads in this story that have been wound into one, and the second is the #metoo movement which started post the Harvey Weinstein scandal and has inspired some women to see themselves as victims and court publicity. The sexual activity may have not been consensual or the other party could have believed that it was consensual but we will never know nor will a court of law be able to decide. Moreover, the whole case has been ruined by the friend who said: “you knew what you were doing”, yet she expects us all to take the blame for her behaviour.
The reality is very different from Gahan’s perceptions, Ireland was always and remains largely a philogynous society. it has only been in recent times, through the malevolence of certain feminists, that genuine history has been turned on its head. btw if you have to look up the meaning of philogynous, it proves my point.
EJ
