Marriage Equality: Having a Laugh While Getting the Job Done.

The outcome of The Constitutional Convention today has given hope for those in Ireland who want to see it become a truly equal society for all. Today’s outcome from the event is still a long way off from actual marriage equality; it is a step in the right direction.

What should marriage equality activists do while this political iron is still hot? My suggestion is to use humour to laugh their way to equality.

In Ireland there is a healthy attitude to using humour to get a message across. In the last year, one of the most memorable slogans to come out of the various pro-choice protests was, “Keep Your Rosaries Off Our Ovaries”.  A humorous but effective slogan, it gets the protestors message across but with an injection amusement and fun while tackling a serious issue. The opposition were void of humour in their position on the issue. The only comedy the Youth Defence could conjure up was the farce in which the organisation is. They graffiti the city with horrific posters and accompanied with skewered facts and misleading rhetoric. The image of a sonogram photograph ripped in half with the slogan, “Abortion Tears Her Life Apart”, can attest to this. The Youth Defence lead their campaign with fear as a motivator while the pro-choice did it with a healthy dose of indignation spurred on by the claims of the Youth Defence.

This sets a dichotomy of two opposing tactics in an effort to sway the public on to your groups’ political belief. The fear employed by the Youth Defence is not a sustainable tactic as once the fear is subverted your argument loses meaning. The subversion comes in the form of humour. The humour became a public spectacle as a campaign to defile the Youth Defence posters took place. 

This form of response is known as ‘laughtivism’, it is a blend of humour and activism. The good news for the pro-choice movement is that it is a very effective form of activism as well. Co-founder of Otpor!, Srdja Popovic is a revolution consultant and argues that humour in the form of protest is more effective than a campaign that is void humour and ran on fear. He cites a study where 323 campaigns were examined from the beginning of the 20^th century up to the year 2006. The study concluded that serious campaigns had a success rate of only 26% while campaigns that allowed the use of humour in making arguments had a success rate of 52%.

Why is humour so effective, Popovic argues three reasons for it:

   1.) Humour melts fear – Dictators run on fear, nothing defuses fear faster than a joke

   2.) Humour is cool – A humorous movement has the appearance of being cool and thus people are more  likely  to get involved or join.

3 3.) Humour/Mocking – It creates a dilemma for those on the receiving end in how to respond to humour or mocking. If they react they will look stupid but if they don’t react others will join in on mocking them. 

The pro-choice movement embodied these three aspects when reacting to the Youth Defence. The result, the Youth Defence’s position was deligtimised and had lost credibility when arguing their case.

Laughtivism has been prevalent in the news lately. The Egyptian political satirist Bassem Youssef was taken to court for mocking President Morsi. The importance of political satire is shown with Youssef when he tested the new president’s claim of an Egypt where the citizens are allowed to criticise their government. In President Morsi’s campaign he said in an interview that people like, “Bassem Youssef would be free to criticise his actions if he were elected into office”. The arrest warrant for Youssef showed that this was not to be the case. The treatment of Youssef has shown that laughtivism can uncover the cracks in the political foundation of a country.

Laughtivism might be an effective form of protest but can it work for all issues? Historically one of the first political satires of Hollywood to reach mass audiences was Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’ (1940). Chaplin believed in the subversive power of comedy and when he saw the rise of Hitler in mainland Europe and America’s indifference to the horrors he was commanding, Chaplain said he needed to make the film, “I was determined to go ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at”. This was before the horrors of the concentration camps became public knowledge, in his autobiography he stated had he known about these horrors he would not have made the film. However, the film boosted morale for the people in mainland Europe and helped ease the fear of the Nazis while the war was being fought. Are Chaplin’s retrospective views right? Are some things too horrific that humour just cannot be employed as a tactic to fight it?

Today a debate is brewing about the legalisation of euthanasia for terminally ill patients. Would it be distasteful for those in favour of legalising euthanasia to employ humour to make their arguments? It is an effective form of activism but in certain cases does morality have to be taken into account?

These are questions I can’t answer and will probably be addressed when the time is right. For now though, the equality movements should use their most powerful form of activism when combating the fear fueled opposition.

The Comfort Nurse

It’s better to have nothing to say than to have a lot of nothing to say. This has been the code I have lived by for the majority my life. After what has happened I need to speak, I need them all to know my side before their condemnation becomes final. To do this I’ll write briefly and will stay on topic because the nuances of my life are not of your concern or the publics. The justice system might deem my actions unlawful but the only jury I’m concerned about winning is that of public opinion. Your article in the Sunday paper will be the only time they will hear my voice on the topic and I’m entrusting you to present them my story with an objective point-of-view, it will be the only thing I will request from you. To understand what happened that night, I will need to start from the beginning. Please don’t judge me until you have read to the end.

He was only 14 when the leukaemia finally got the better of him. That was five years ago. I’m 39 years old now; I was a young mother when I had him. I never wanted him, I cried everyday for the nine months he was inside of me, the crying stopped when the day I gave birth. What was a curse became a blessing the moment I looked into his eyes. He was mine, I thrived on the fact he needed me to cloth, feed and comfort him. It gave me purpose in life and when he died my life reverted back to the meaningless existence it had been before I was a mother. Dying at the age of 14 meant he would never know the joys of adulthood, I watched him every day on that hospital bed fighting the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that life had seen fit to throw at him. He never complained. I think he had lived so long with the illness he was unable to recall what life was like before it all; he came to accept that this was his existence. I also came to accept it in acquiesce.

When the doctors began numbering his days by giving me estimates of how long he would be with us, I asked him were there any wishes he wanted to be fulfilled. He had just the one. It took me by surprise, he was my baby boy and I always associated him with innocence. He wanted to have sex before he died. I didn’t know how to respond to him when he made the request. I suppose it’s natural for a boy of that age to have these desires. Unknown to me at the time, his uncle had snuck him in a Playboy which he hid under the mattress. The images must have created the idea in his head. He died a virgin. I didn’t know how to facilitate his wish, too much time had elapsed and he was gone. I feel I failed him by letting him die not experiencing one of humans’ primal activities.  

I needed to find a purpose for my life again; the house felt desolate after his death. Not a sound or soul roamed the hallways like they once had. In my grief stricken state and in the one of many ways I avoided being in the house, I took up volunteer work in the local hospice. I felt the need to give back to the community that had given me so much in my time of need. I spent time with the patients, reading to them and listening to what they had to say. In a terminal state, you can take solace in the ears of a stranger. Family and friends are too emotionally invested in you to offer silence and breathing space for you to speak openly about your fears and regrets.

John was the first. 50 years old, cancer with only weeks to live. I had started a healthy friendship by visiting him on a daily basis. I would bring him items that he would request. John never asked for anything big or expensive. The most requested item was a Crunchie chocolate bar. He would eat up to five of these a day before throwing up, he would forget that he could not stomach food in his condition. I would sit and watch him eat them. He had a warm friendly smile. Some people posses a certain type of smile, it’s not something you can explain, it has to be experienced. When you saw him smile you were assured he was a good person, a person that didn’t deserve that hand he had been dealt in life. He was alone, I never saw any family or friends visit him and he would never mention anybody in his life in the numerous conversations we had.  I was convinced I was his only friend, in some sort of sadistic way this made me happy. His reliance on me for companionship gave my life purpose and meaning again.

Things were getting worse for John and I knew time was no longer a luxury in his world. I asked him did he want any wishes, if it were in my power, to be fulfilled. He smiled and said no, all he wanted was the flow of Crunchie bars to continue. I held his hand. His head turned up and our eyes met. He had blue eyes, the life were fading in them though. I thought of my son and the first time I looked into his eyes. I got up and locked the door. John was silent; in fact he never said a word during the whole ordeal. I closed the curtains, it was evening time, the remaining light in the sky managed to find its way into the room through the sides of the curtains. It was enough for him to still see me. I slowly removed my clothes one item at a time. John fixed his eyes onto mine. I climbed up onto the bed. His hands were shaking. I held them and placed them on my breasts. He was breathing heavily, he was nervous and I tried to be calm and comfort him. I never thought about it before but I suspect he might have been a virgin. He never talked about his life but I suspect he lived in a fortress of solitude for the best part of it. I always think about him and I always wonder was I the only woman he had been with.

John was the first of five that I would come to comfort in my 18 months in the hospice. It was with him I set myself ground rules. The first rule was that I would never sleep with the same person more than once. The second was not to fall in love, to do this I trained myself to disconnect my mind when engaging with the patients. The third and final rule was not to make eye contact during it. I can’t explain it but I feel there is nothing more intimate than eye contact during sex, it shows you are truly connected to a person on an emotional level, I didn’t want the patients to feel this; it would be misleading. I would engage in kissing but never made eye contact; I stuck closely to this rule until my time with James. The other four patients I will not talk about because unlike John they have families that could be hurt if their story got out. Some of the men had wives. I never judged them for partaking in extramarital affairs on their death beds. It was not my place to judge. I will tell you about James though as the public already knows, or at least they think they know, what happened with him.

James was 14 years old. Leukaemia and weeks left to live, life can be horrifically repetitive. He reminded me of John, a reserved boy, introverted at the best of times. I would read him Roal Dahl books at night when he was unable to get to sleep. His parents were absent most of the time. I don’t judge them, the most difficult thing in life is to sit back and watch your child die. The pain hits people in different ways so it’s only natural that their reaction to it will be different. When it was my son I never left his bedside. I had never done it with a teenager before, all the other patients were middle-aged. I did not see him as a child; when your days become numbered you lose all that is left of your childhood innocence. In my eyes James was a man. I asked him on the day if he thought about girls. He said he did all the time. He had never been kissed. I asked him if he thought I was pretty. He told me I was beautiful, this made me cry. I don’t know why I cried, it had been a long time since anyone had told me that. I prepared the routine of locking the door and closing the curtains. He was shaking like John had when I was with him.

It had never crossed my mind that it could be a possibility the patients could die during my time of comfort. I was looking away as I always did. It was rule three and it could not be broken. The shaking stopped, his breathing stopped and I stopped. I looked up and his vacant eyes were fixed on mine. He was dead and all I could see were my son’s eyes. I couldn’t explain to the nurses about what I was doing in the room during his time of death. In fact I have not spoken about it to anyone.

You reached out to me, I’m not naïve though, I know you have a job to do, it is what a reporter does. You didn’t reach out to me from the goodness of your heart; you did it because you need to fill space with ink. The story will lie on top of coffee tables come Sunday morning and the public will try to decipher whether or not my actions were good or evil. Some will call me a whore; other might praise me for providing peace of mind to the men knocking on deaths door. No matter what way you decide to frame the narrative in the article please keep in mind one thing; my heart was in the right place at all times, and this I know.