By Caroline
The singing has been taken out of context, it’s just defiant youth culture, it’s ignorance about the past. These are just some of the excuses we have heard for the celebratory singing of a hate song by the young women of the Irish football team. Feminist commentary exploring the incongruity of young women role models using a group that is part of the armed patriarchy as a celebratory touchstone has been largely absent from this discourse. As Loyalist Feminists we also need to consider what our response should be.
The IRA, Armed Patriarchy, and Rape Culture
The proliferation of armed groups active in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, in conjunction with a patriarchal and deeply conservative society, lead to the development of an ‘armed patriarchy’ which has remained active long after the conflict. The IRA are a part of that armed patriarchy. Women who had unauthorised relationships with soldiers were punished by tarring and feathering, their hair cut off as a mark of shame. At the same time the IRA were using young women to gather information by having relationships with soldiers. Young women were also used as ‘honey pots’, to bring soldiers to locations where they would be killed. Diminishing the autonomy of young women by controlling their sexuality so it could be turned into a paramilitary asset was a tactic of the IRA.
One of the reasons for the prevalence of sexual abuse and violence against women and girls in modern Northern Ireland is that we live in a rape culture but the legacy of armed patriarchy adds additional protection to perpetrators and increases the vulnerability of victims. This is something the IRA was complicit in. In the wake of Máiría Cahill’s allegations in 2014 Micheál Martin said he knew of 28 victims of IRA abusers and it emerged that the IRA had moved abusers between jurisdictions to cover up abuse. Victims were retraumatized by the IRA in kangaroo courts and forced to relive their abuse.
The harmful influence of armed patriarchy on how abuse victims and survivors are treated is not confined to the past. The IRA are still complicit in promulgating rape culture. In the case of Máiría Cahill, she became homeless and in debt after speaking out about what had happened to her. Survivors who spoke out had to live with the reputational damage of being accused of lying for political ends. The IRA is a part of the armed patriarchy and its response to the survivors of sexual abuse by its members is a clear example of rape culture.
The Feminist Response
Considering the prevalence of violence against women and girls in our society, and the additional impacts specific to NI and the border counties of RoI because of the armed patriarchy, Máiría Cahill and other survivors of similar abuse should have been able to rely on vocal support from the feminist movement. When, in 2014, Máiría Cahill and other survivors spoke up about the abuse they suffered and the way it was handled by the IRA the response from the feminist movement was largely silence. During the #MeToo movement veteran campaigner Eamonn McCann used his profile to draw attention to this silence via Twitter. Ruth Dudley Edwards published an article at the time attacking the response of the feminist movement. A representative of the feminist sector tweeted a response to this and four days after this twitter exchange a statement was published on the public submission blog of an established feminist organisation. This statement is fulsome in its support for Máiría Cahill and survivors of similar abuse as well as being robust in its analysis of the treatment of survivors. This is of course welcome, but it came four years after Máiría Cahill first spoke up and four days after a calling-out on Twitter.
Learning from that experience about the importance of solidarity with victims and survivors should have resulted in a calling-in of the young footballers by the feminist movement, human rights groups and other relevant third sector organisations. However, once again the response from organisations has been largely silence with the exception of the National Women’s Council Ireland who sent out a tweet congratulating the squad on their win.
This silence from the feminist movement is perhaps not surprising. Activists only have so much capacity and willingly wading into a social media space rife with trolling represents no small investment of time and energy. Many of the organisations are small or medium sized and social media is often scheduled in advance to make best use of staff capacity or, in some cases, social media activity may be dependent on volunteers. Feminist organisations may be reluctant to get involved in the contested area of legacy when it may not directly relate to their mission. Additionally, feminist organisations may have been reluctant to engage on social media due to the toxic nature of the discourse around the hate chanting. Finally, some feminist organisations may not accept the link between using support for the IRA as a celebratory chant and armed patriarchy/rape culture.
A Loyalist Feminist Response
Chanting support for the IRA is deeply hurtful to all of us and retraumatising for many. An emotional response born from this pain and appealing to empathy would be understandable, but such a response would take an exhausting emotional toll. Convincing young nationalist women not to use the IRA as a celebratory touchstone cannot be our responsibility. We are responsible for building grassroots feminist power within our own community.
“Activists have learned that creating an organisation is also a way to establish alternative ‘homes’ in which women can find a shelter from external violence”
Sarai B. Aharoni
Loyalist Feminism aims to create an emancipatory knowledge and information base particular to the needs of and informed by the experiences of loyalist women. Our oppression as women and gender and sexual minorities must be addressed within our own cultural context and the cultural context of loyalist women is different from our mainstream feminist counterparts and middle-class unionist women. We need to develop our own feminist groups, create our own research, publish our own policy documents so we can advocate for ourselves and contribute to the wider feminist movement in solidarity. Critically, we need to foster a feminism that builds up other loyalist women through the creation of safe feminist spaces where collective self-care can protect us from burn-out. In short, we need to organise.
Sources
What does it mean to say ‘up the ’Ra’? And why does it keep happening?, Una Mullally, The Irish Times, 13 October 2022
Vera Pauw admits shine has been taken off Republic of Ireland qualification as video emerges of pro-IRA chant, Kurtis Reid, Belfast Telegraph, 12 October 2022
Feile an Phobail [sic]: Director defends ‘popular’ Wolfe Tones concert as DUP hits back at claims of funding ‘carve up’, Garrett Hargan, Belfast Telegraph, 16 August 2022
Feminist Organising for Peace, Sarai B. Aharoni, in Feminist Solutions for Ending War, Megan MacKenzie and Nicole Wagner, Pluto Press, 2021
Loyalist Feminism: Our Understanding of Loyalism, Feminism and Patriarchy, Her Loyal Voice, 4 August 2021
Soldier Dolls in Belfast, Susan McKay, London Review of Books, 21 April 2016
Máiría Cahill: Timeline of ‘IRA rape’ allegations, BBC, 24 November 2014
The IRA, Patriarchy & Rape Culture, Fionnghuala Nic Roibeaird, The Pensive Quill, 2 November 2014
