Kathy Sheridan: Varadkar deserves our respect even if he is a man

The Irish Times' Women's Podcast is a production by and for women. But since it would be self-sabotage to exclude anyone with the power to improve our lives, we occasionally include men. So last Saturday, the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, joined four women and Maya, a breast-feeding baby, on stage at the Body & Soul Festival in Co Meath.

On a cloudless day with a big, highly engaged, diverse audience, Varadkar was happy to accept the plaudits for his role in facilitating the referendum on the Eighth Amendment and to discuss relevant upcoming legislation. We talked about the first steps on his rather wobbly “feminist journey”. He explained earnestly that before he came out as gay, for many years he had felt judged by other people – and this in turn had made him more judgmental towards others. It was an illuminating glimpse into the mind of a 39-year-old leader who came out publicly only three years ago. It implies at least that he is still growing and learning and listening. Whatever your political colours or degree of cynicism, even an aspiration to that level of self-awareness has to be a good thing.

A little heckling should also be a good thing in such a setting. An indignant man protested at length that the Taoiseach still hadn’t locked down the abortion legislation thing a whole week after the referendum . A young woman protested repeatedly, at volume, at a man on stage “taking up space” in a women’s forum, a fair point if you had missed our rather lengthy introduction.

Risky balance

Varadkar did not reply to the indignant man with a seven-letter word about people who neglect to inform themselves before sucking up the oxygen in a time-limited public forum. Instead, he respectfully explained about the court challenges, the need to have the President’s signature on the Bill, and all the other procedural stuff (instantly accessible on Google, he did not say).

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In his slightly awkward way, he pulled off that risky balance of looking both authoritative and modest, and a little tentative. He lingered for a while afterwards, chatted to the male heckler, and posed for selfies around the site without shredding his dignity or starting a riot.

In normal times, such behaviour would be entirely unremarkable. But times are not normal. This cannot be said often enough: on the edges of Europe and within Europe itself, the independence of institutional pillars is being shredded, ignorance and bigotry are being rewarded, media brutally censored, political rivals jailed or assassinated.

‘Hating frauds’

In the US, the wielder of the West’s great power – apart from encaging children – describes a respected congresswoman as “an extraordinarily low IQ person”, employees of the FBI and department of justice as “hating frauds”, a healthy, licensed restaurant business as “dirty” and “filthy”, and a protester being removed from one of his rallies as follows: “Goodbye darling...Say ‘hi’ to Mommy... Was that a man or a woman, because he needs a haircut more than I do. I couldn’t tell.” And almost all in the past 92 hours. This man will shortly be entertained by Queen Elizabeth.

Such is the Brexit fever-pitch in the UK, its diplomat-in-chief, Boris Johnson, of the axiomatically “pro-business” Tory party, reportedly used the phrase “Fuck business” in response to prodding about employers’ Brexit concerns – and that’s in the context of 850,000 jobs said to be at risk in the automotive industry alone.

This is the world we now inhabit. And despite the flush of ageism witnessed here in recent weeks, youth is not necessarily the elixir. Stephen Miller, the White House-based Trump adviser believed to be the architect of the child separation policy, is just 32. Austria’s conservative chancellor is only 31. In fact, the vast majority of European leaders – including Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, who turned away the immigrant rescue ship Aquarius – are in their early-to-mid-40s. If Leo Varadkar is not your political flavour, try blaming it on his youth.

Dysfunctionality

We know that too well about Ireland’s problems and dysfunctionality in some sectors. But occasionally, when the lights around the world are dimming, it helps to look to our upsides. For all the talk about corruption, we are cleaner and more transparent than the vast majority of countries. We value education, expertise, our political and electoral systems, the founding principles of the EU and a global outlook. Any far-right merchants remain on the outer fringes. As Brexit threatens to poison everything in range, we have also learned to value the firm, measured, articulate voices sent out to bat for us around Europe and the UK, including two sterling women, Mairéad McGuinness and Helen McEntee.

And in a time when public dignity, manners and respect are under daily discussion, it’s worth noting that all the epithets, slurs and schoolyard insults are being slung from the other side.

So pace our female protester, that person "taking up space" on stage was not just a random male or a "pipsqueak" as a Brexit tweeter described him last week. That was the Taoiseach, the democratically-elected leader of a functioning democracy. Until he does something to sully that office, he is entitled to a modicum of respect.