Talk is cheap. What will we do about it?
We can fight it everytime we meet it in Ireland, it is the great unspoken truth of what Irish people really believe, that is to say a certain section of society that has a hatred of women, I have fought this all my life, this viewpoint, it's really difficult to do especially if you do it consistently as I do.
I know it's not all men, there are good men, but there sure are an awful lot of men who seem to hate women, particular Churchmen of the Roman Catholic type. There are also women who support the men in this viewpoint which I can never understand.
By taking about it on here, by recognising it, by seeing Irish society for what it is and bringing up our children to know this, and to know what is right and what is wrong. To hope for a better future, for a more mature Irish society, to hope that the young people who've during the boom had good jobs and were better educated and hope that they will bring us a new Ireland.
Irish society is really really sick still, sometimes I can't believe it, that we are 2009 and still it goes on. How can a person send hate mail to a victim, how can they write it, post it, live with doing that. How can a publican refuse to serve a sexual assalt victim, how can an ordinary person ask a victim why she would bring a court case, really how could one human being say to a woman 'why are you bringing this case against a fine fellow like Danny Foley', how do you actually do that? How do you pick up a phone and call a women alone in her house 5 or 6 times to scare her because she had the temerity to seek justice?
More concrete action is to not shop in Listowel, to say out loud I will not go to Listowel where men think all women are whores, to say that there is something wrong with the people of Kerry and X and Y place. To say I won't go to Z pub in Listowel because they refused to serve the victim, to name that pub, that shop that person. Fight it in the little things, that's a start.