I watched the first episode of Ways of Seeing, the BBC John Berger mini-series from 1972, last night. Explaining how images are given new meanings in different contexts, carrying ideological biases depending on their presentation and contextualisation, Berger ends the episode with a warning: “But remember that I am controlling, and using for my own purposes, the means of reproduction needed for...
Category - Politics
“Children of working mothers have better social and everyday skills,” read an Irish Times headline last week. A few days later, The Guardian reported on another study suggesting that mothers should spend as much time with their children as they can afford, and went with the headline “Child’s cognitive skills linked to time spent with mother”. Such is the game of pitting mothers against...
As someone who is regularly accused of hiding in an echo chamber of angry feminists patting each other on the back, I thought I’d write to those of you who accuse me of that, who think that I’m not doing feminism right. If you’ve ever thought that I’ve been too angry, that I’ve been wrong to disengage myself from a discussion, that I’ve overreacted to a seemingly innocent statement...
It’s a funny one, the word ‘choice’. I spend so much of my time promoting it, explaining it, demanding it – yet whenever I stop to really think about it, I realise that it’s a word I’d much prefer not to have to embrace. For as long as laissez-faire or economic liberalism has existed, ‘choice’ has been one of its most important buzzwords, second only to ‘freedom’. In fact, the...
I’ll remember the morning Donald Trump was elected as the morning I cried while stirring the porridge. Some people will say I am exaggerating. I can only hope they’re right. The Ku Klux Klan are celebrating, as is the anti-abortion brigade. Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, the friends of Brexit – these are the people who feel as if they’re on the right side of history in this. People say that...
Is tone policing the new master suppression technique? What is a master suppression technique? you ask. It is a way to suppress and humiliate an opponent, according to Norwegian psychologist and philosopher Ingjald Nissen, who articulated the framework of such techniques in 1945. And tone policing? A tone argument is one which isn’t strictly concerned with what is being said, but rather with...
Look, I don’t mean to be patronising. If you’ve been to school, you know this; you’ll know it like the back of your hand. But today, it feels like perhaps we need to go back to basics. The word democracy means ‘rule by the people’, derived from the Greek ‘demos’, for ‘common people’, and ‘kratos’, for ‘rule’ or ‘strength’. Democracy, in other words, is a form of...
“See how your income would change with the Renua Ireland flat-tax tax calculator,” my local Renua candidate tweeted today. That’s how Renua is planning on winning votes – literally: click a button and see how many quid you’ll save. I went to a Dublin civil society group meeting recenty where, among other things, the art of talking to canvassers was discussed. “They’re...
Calm down, dear. David Cameron was undeniably patronising towards female MP Angela Eagle, but there’s more to that phrase than just superiority and arrogance. I’ve done a lot of thinking lately about my own tone, particularly on online platforms like Twitter, wondering if I should indeed calm down. I’m furious with the Tories over the cuts; I’m sick to death of the widespread sexism in...
I don’t quite know what to say about Savita’s death. I’m lost for words, but I have to say something, because silence is acceptance, and acceptance is condonation. I wrote, fuelled by anger and frustration, about the Irish abortion laws a while ago, and I think that post explains pretty well how pathetic I think any excuse not to legislate in the wake of Savita’s death would be. I...