ireland – Bad Reputation

[Guest Post] A Little Begging Letter About Reproductive Rights

Miranda — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:00:30 +0000

Reader Sinead M sent us the following short post last week. If you’re part of the Pro-Choice Push Back, we think it raises a point or two that we shouldn’t forget. Read and spread around if you can – we’ll owe you one.

As a right-thinking feminist, or an engaged human being, or a person who occasionally glances at the news, you may recently have heard about Nadine Dorries’ proposed amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill. It would have provided something deemed ‘independent counselling’ for women seeking an abortion. It may well have made you feel irritable for a while.

It was an amendment so controversial it succeeded in distracting rather a lot of attention from the substantive bill, which could probably have borne a little scrutiny itself. The public reaction in the UK to the Dorries amendment was loud and it was largely scathing. A woman shouldn’t have to argue or debate with independent counsellors before availing herself of her legal rights, and any move towards such a position must be opposed.

The amendment was soundly defeated, and we all continued to live in a country where women are permitted to have reproductive rights without begging for them. Hurrah.

But imagine a world where Dorries’ amendment was passed, and then, if you’re brave, imagine a world where reproductive rights were rolled back entirely. It’s like a John Lennon song, but completely different. Now imagine living in a theocracy, or the remnants of one. Imagine finding out you were pregnant and knowing you didn’t want a child and having to accept that legally, the only thing you could do is leave your country and find one that could provide a safe and legal abortion, carried out by people who have had medical training. What sort of dystopia is this, you ask?

This is Ireland, of course, a one hour flight away. It’s where I grew up.

Abortion is illegal in Ireland. If you want one, you will need to obtain one in Britain. Simple as that.

It is a law, like so many, that discriminates on the basis of personal wealth and privilege. If you have options, education, confidence, access to a computer and a credit card, you can book an appointment for a private abortion in the UK and then you can book a flight. But if you don’t have these things you will struggle. Let’s be clear about this – you will require money. A return flight is the better part of one hundred pounds. An early abortion will cost about four hundred pounds. A later term abortion, all the more likely if you have struggled to access services or figure out how to book or fund an appointment without assistance or support of any kind, will cost significantly more.

My pet charity is the Abortion Support Network, which I discovered eighteen months ago during the inconvenient eruption of Eyjafjallajökull and the subsequent Great Ash Cloud of 2010. The resulting disruption of flights was a nuisance to many, but to those who had booked a private abortion in the UK, it was potentially disastrous. Forced to rebook their appointment and their flights, and in some cases forced to now book a later term – and therefore more expensive – abortion, many found themselves in desperate need of financial assistance. The Abortion Support Network supplies a non-judgemental ear, but more importantly, practical help: a place to stay in a foreign country, assistance with booking flights and appointments, and, crucially, money. It is hard, in a country with legal abortion and a national health service, free at point of delivery, to comprehend how important this can be.

I have always thought that maybe someday I will get to raise a quiet glass to Irish independence, should they choose to stop relying on Britain to supply basic medical services to Irish women. In the meantime I’ll toast the ASN. If you believe in reproductive choice and that a woman shouldn’t be
forced to pick between carrying an unwanted pregnancy and a backstreet abortion, please consider supporting them.

http://www.abortionsupport.org.uk/
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Sinead M ran away from Ireland shortly before it was eaten by a tiger, and lives in London where she continues to rant about her old country to anyone who will pretend to listen. She sporadically rants in writing at http://findesomething.wordpress.com.

Róisín Dubh, Demons, and Bicycles: an interview with author Maura McHugh (Part Two)

Jenni — Thu, 26 May 2011 08:00:27 +0000

Here’s the second part of our interview with author Maura McHugh, whose comic Róisín Dubh – featuring a young Irish suffragette battling dark supernatural forces! – has just hit stores. Read part one here!

For any of our Irish-folklore-unfamiliar readers, “róisín dubh” is gaelic for “dark rose” and the title of a traditional Irish folk song. You’ve studied Anglo-Irish supernatural fiction at university, Abhartach appears in Róisín Dubh and the ghost of Oscar Wilde turns up in your other comics project, Jennifer Wilde. Which other myths or historical figures can we expect to turn up in Róisín Dubh, and do you have any favourite people, legends or mythological monsters from Irish history and folklore?

“Robert Curley at Atomic Diner comics pitched the core idea of Róisín Dubh to me and told me about the existing myth around Abhartach. I did what I always do: research. I thought a great deal about the time period, the story of Abhartach, Róisín herself and her situation.

For me, I need to find what I think of a ‘mythic resonance’ in a story that I’m trying to create. Making a character swing a sword and lop off a head is easy: making a story with horror and fantasy elements feel like it could possibly be real requires that it resemble mythology itself.

So, I went back to my books on Irish mythology – of which I have many – and kept reading until elements connected with what I already had in my head about the story. I added a few Irish gods into the mix, a companion character and a couple of magical items. I widened the canvas. And I gave Róisín a very painful thing to do, which happens in issue 2 and is something that will haunt her forever.

Equally, I thought a lot about Abhartach. I don’t like simplistic villains. I added to his backstory and made him into a person who does unpleasant things, but who has motivations and reasons for his view of the world. Thankfully, Rob was very receptive to me bringing all this to the characters and the story!

I’ve been reading mythological stories from all cultures since childhood. One story that holds a lot of fascination for me is ‘the descent into the underworld’. There is a variation on that in issue 1 of Róisín Dubh – though I’m not always aware of every element like this that I’m tapping into when I write the story. Sometimes it doesn’t become obvious until later.

Ultimately, when writing I try to feed my subconscious to stuffing point with lots of influences and then allow it to serve me up suggestions as I’m going on. I trust it to give me the right element at the right time. Then, some time afterwards, I marvel at how it all came together. That’s when it’s really doing its job.

But I have days when it gives me nothing and I soldier on anyway.”

Creating a comic book in this way, with a separate writer and artist, is a collaborative process, and one that tends to be favoured by most American and European publishers. How did this process work for you, how much input did the artists have, and what was it like seeing your character come to life in their hands?

“The collaborative element is what I enjoy the most. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to see the words I’ve written translated into images. Mostly, it’s better than I hoped. Sometimes we’ll discuss how a certain panel is working and ask for changes.

No one is going to draw the Róisín in my head unless I do – so I have to allow the artists to bring their version of her to the page. A successful comic book collaboration – in my experience – is about respecting the strengths each person brings to the project. The writer understands story dynamics and the artist knows visual storytelling. You have to learn to depend on the other person’s knowledge and experience to guide changes in the comic book.

Also, you have to be open to seeing things from a different perspective, and accepting change. I’m always happy when the artist makes suggestions that are innovative and work better than my original concept. We’re all pulling together for the same goal: to create a comic book people will enjoy.”

I’ve heard good things about your upcoming comic Jennifer Wilde, and when fantasy author Juliet McKenna recently told me about a charity anthology of flash fiction she was part of, Voices From The Past, I was pleased to see your name on the cover. You’re a busy woman! Why don’t you tell us a bit more about the projects you’re working on at the moment besides Róisín Dubh?

“Jennifer Wilde is a fun project. Again, Robert Curley came to me with the core idea, and I went off and did my research – and that was just brilliant. The 1920s was an amazing era of change: social, economic, and cultural. The story is lighter, and more in the detective genre – albeit with a supernatural element. Jennifer is a French artist who – through personal tragedy – becomes embroiled in a mystery that takes her from France, to England and finally to Ireland – all helped by the ghost of Oscar Wilde.

Writing Wilde is the most intimidating aspect of the project. I’ve done a lot of research on him, and he was a brilliant, complex man, but not always wonderful. I try to be respectful of who he was and to bring as much of that to the project as possible.

Most of the art is complete on issue 1, and it should be out in about six weeks. Our artist Stephen Downey has done a fantastic job. I’m currently working on the scripts for issue 2 and 3. Issue 2 of Róisín Dubh is in the editing stage at the moment, so that should be good to go soon enough.

I usually have other projects in the sidelines, in various stages of completion: non-fiction, screenplays short stories, poetry, a novel. I even have an idea for a comic book strip, which I would draw as well as write. These projects go up and down in priority depending on deadlines.

All things going well, I’ll probably write another volume of Róisín Dubh and Jennifer Wilde for Atomic Diner. I’d also like to create and write my own comic book series. I have several stories in development.

As well as this I have my job with the Irish Playwrights’ and Screenwriters’ Guild as their blogger and website-wrangler.

It’s good to be busy!”

Maura McHugh is an Irish writer with films, comics and short stories to her name. She blogs at Splinister and you can read her recent guest post for BadRep, in which she recommended us some horror writers, here. Róisín Dubh is published by Atomic Diner and the first issue can be bought online here, or go pester your local comic shop to order copies! Warm thanks to Maura for talking to BadRep.

Róisín Dubh, Demons, and Bicycles: an interview with author Maura McHugh (Part One)

Jenni — Wed, 25 May 2011 08:00:07 +0000

When we heard that author Maura McHugh‘s latest graphic novel Róisín Dubh – starring a young bicycle-riding suffragette who fights dark supernatural forces! – would soon be hitting stores at last, we were bubbling over with excitement. Once we’d regained the ability to type coherent sentences, our Jenni was dispatched to Interview Country faster than a speeding velocipede…

Hi Maura, nice to have you here at BadRep Towers! To get us started, why don’t you tell us a bit about Róisín Dubh , which has just gone on release.

“Róisín Dubh is a three-issue comic book series that will also be collected and bound as a graphic novel. It’s set in Ireland in 1899 and follows the adventures of Róisín Sheridan, an eighteen-year-old woman who harbours ambitions to be an actress. Her life is altered forever when she and her parents are attacked on the road by a bloodthirsty man called Abhartach who has just risen from the earth. Róisín’s parents are killed and she is left for dead… until she is given a mission by ancient powers. She has to go against the conventions of the day, and her previous notions of what is possible, to try and put Abhartach back in the ground… but the person who raised Abhartach from his 1,400-year stasis has other plans.”

What might feminist readers enjoy about the comic? As if an Irish suffragette killing demons isn’t enough to get anyone interested…

“Well, I hope there’s plenty there for everyone, but the women’s suffrage movement was on my mind from the start. Róisín has had a liberal, educated upbringing, she was allowed a lot of leeway as a child, but as a woman she’s starting to discover that there are more limits on her than she imagined.

For instance, that simple thing her father says to her: of course women should have the right to vote… but a career on the stage? It’s disreputable. The struggle for equal rights is a slow erosion of the buts. People are always full of reasons why you can have some rights, but not all.

That’s why Róisín has a bike. People forget that the bicycle was a huge boon to women in the nineteenth century – it gave them a freedom of movement that they didn’t enjoy previously, and it also helped bring about a change in clothing.

Susan B. Anthony said in 1896 that she thought the bicycle ‘has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world, It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.'”

What sort of heroine is Róisín – who is she as a character? Which other comic book heroines have inspired you in the past and what do you like about them?

“Róisín is a young, idealist woman with great ambition who is prone to impulsive decisions. The events in the comic book means she’s forced to deal with tragedy while learning she has far less control over her life. These are the kinds of lessons we often learn in life, although in Róisín’s case they involve an undead creature, magicians and ancient Irish divinities!

I haven’t drawn upon any other comic book heroines consciously in relation to Róisín, but there were a number that had an impact upon me over the years. First was Judge Anderson in 2000 AD. I didn’t read many American comics when I was growing up in Ireland as there weren’t many available at the time. 2000 AD was the premiere title for young teens then, so I read it too. Her first appearance in the Judge Death storyline (written by John Wagner and drawn by Brian Bolland) ticked all the boxes for me: horror and a great female lead.

What I loved about Anderson was her humour. She was the only one who poked fun at Dredd, and I loved that the Psi-Division were given loads of leeway because of the job they did and the high risk of their brains being fried in the process. Plus, she saves the world through an extreme act of self-sacrifice (thankfully, she didn’t remain in stasis forever!).

A while ago I read a comment on a website by one of the early artists of Anderson, in which he said he thought that she wasn’t very complex and was created for a bit of titillation for the lads. That comment disappointed me greatly. I guess he didn’t realise that Anderson was one of the very few women in 2000 AD at the time, and for that reason alone she had a big impact on the girls/women who read the series. Having a representation of women in comics book series is really important, and Dredd himself is not exactly the most complex character! I don’t usually hanker after writing particular characters, but writing Anderson would be a dream project.

Another character that had a big impact was Tank Girl (Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin). She had a punk sensibility and a sense of humour, and liked sex, drugs and driving a tank – what was not to love?

Other characters I like are David Mack’s Scarab, Storm from the X-Men (woefully underused, I think), Alan Moore’s Halo Jones (another character I’d kill to write) and Promethea, Warren Ellis’s Jenny Sparks, and finally, the goddess herself, Wonder Woman.

I’ve only fallen in love with the Wonder Woman character in the past year, which is completely the result of Gail Simone‘s amazing writing. I’m also now a big fan of Simone’s Secret Six and Birds of Prey – so you can include all the (many) female characters in those series on my list now. Simone is one of the best comic book writers in the industry in my opinion, and she’s particularly adept at dialogue, especially for the female characters. Her comic books consistently pass the Bechdel Test, which so many titles still don’t do.”

Like Gail Simone and NK Jemisin, you’re a writer who sticks by her conscience, and you’re not afraid to call out industry figures when something’s Just Not Right. What have you learned from this so far, and has it ever worked against you?

“No change occurs if you remain silent. It’s that simple – but it’s not necessarily easy to speak up.

As a woman you know a likely response to raising an issue – such as the lack of women at an event – is that you will be dismissed or attacked (especially on the Internet).

So, I always strive to be fair and logical in how I present my case. Sometimes that’s difficult because I feel so passionately about women getting a fair shake – well, everyone getting a fair shake, no matter their gender, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.

A number of people have asked me if I think I’m damaging my career with some of the issues I’ve raised. So far I’ve never experienced it, but would it stop me? No.

Let’s be realistic. I’m speaking out on issues from a pretty safe environment. If I was a female union representative in Mexico – for example – I would have a genuine risk in speaking up. Or a mother trying to access education for her girls in Afghanistan. Those people inspire me – they are taking real risks with their lives and yet find the courage to stand up for what is right.

When I think of that it puts what I do in perspective! (And it makes me donate to aid organisations that help people in those risky situations.)”

Come back tomorrow for Part 2 of our interview. Warm thanks to Maura for talking to us.

Maura McHugh is an Irish writer with films, comics and short stories to her name. She blogs at Splinister and you can read her recent guest post for BadRep, in which she recommended us some horror writers, here. Róisín Dubh is published by Atomic Diner and the first issue can be bought online here. Or pester your local comic store to order some copies!