27 Apr 2010
The Prison Governor and Lesbianism
Yesterday, on the resignation of Kathleen
McMahon, Governor of the Dóchas Centre women’s prison in Mountjoy, the Irish
Times carried a front-page story featuring quotes from a statement by McMahon.
In her resignation letter to the prison
service authorites she said her role had been completely impossible in recent
months, and that the Dóchas Cetnre was chronically overcrowded.
It might have slipped under many straight
Irish Times readers’ noses, but lesbian and gay readers might have been shocked
and hurt when McMahon stated that she thought the prison would “probably go
back to the way it was years ago: self-mutiliation, bullying, depression,
lesbianism”.
Although homosexual relationships often
spring up in prisons between people who would not ordinarily identify as gay or
lesbian, the suggestion that these relationships are as destructive as
self-harm, bullying and depression, belies a deep-seated antipathy towards lesbians
and lesbian relationships.
I am sure Kathleen McMahon did her job
well, but her lumping in of lesbian relationships with the worst results of
prison overcrowding smacks of discrimination.
The statement on the front page of the
Irish Times is yet another example of insensitivity towards people who were
born gay or lesbian, and the insidious homophobia that leaks into the
mainstream discourse without thought for how it feeds into the underlying
negation of lesbian and gay people.