This Is Bliss…

Rory O’Neill, aka Panti Bliss, is Ireland’s most prominent drag queen. A self-proclaimed ‘accidental activist’, for years he has used his position to speak up for LGBT+ rights and attack inequality in his native country. Earlier this year he recorded a ten-minute clip of himself giving a speech at the Abbey Theatre in reaction to the controversy that exploded when on a previous TV debate, he accused certain journalists of being homophobic.

Those named journalists took offence to being branded homophobes and threatened legal action against broadcaster RTÉ.
Rather than defend their position as a broadcaster of opinion, the network agreed to an €85,000 pay out. The settlement created an out cry that it was an attack on freedom of speech.

Before you read this exclusive interview with a modern legend in LGBT rights activism, take ten minutes to watch the YouTube clip [search: Panti’s Noble Call at the Abbey Theatre] and listen carefully to Panti’s superb dissection of the nature of homophobia. It the most valuable ten minutes a gay person could spend on YouTube when they’re not looking at clips of cats and dogs. Enjoy.

By Cliff Joannou

You were described as Ireland’s ‘most fabulous drag queen’ and ‘famous activist’. Tell us about your previous activist work.

I say in that clip that I’m an ‘accidental activist’. On occasion on the way I have gotten into these kerfuffles, usually because some asshole in the media attacked me. I do a lot of speech making at events like Pride, it’s part of what I’ve always done, so the gays are always used to me talking serious. But I think straight people have always found that difficult, how a drag queen can say something serious. One particular incident I made a speech at Pride, and a very well known right wing journalist took me to task for what I’d said, and in that article she was being really dismissive of a bloke in a dress, and that turned into a big media thing as well. So, on a few occasions my big mouth has gotten me into a situation where I have to be an activist to get me out. And those things happen because I was a relative public persona.

Tell us about Alternative Miss Ireland.

It finished two years ago. We did it for 20 years. Homosexuality was only decriminalized in Ireland in 1997. I mean it’s not like people were being arrested before that, but it mirrored the Irish gay community. It got bigger as the Irish gays became more ‘confidant’. It became this symbol of modern Ireland. A lot of people knew me from that, or they might have been to my drag shows, or your average Joe Blogs knows me as always giving out about gay stuff. But Alternative Miss Ireland was meant to be about a different Ireland, not what the tourists always think about this “diddly-i-di” version of Ireland. It was never a mainstream event, but it was reported on as a mainstream event, so even your grannie had a vague idea what it was. I guess in a way, Alternative Miss Ireland was accidentally politically.

Was it ‘accidentally political’ from the beginning?

When it started off it was about HIV. Making a statement about an inclusive Ireland wasn’t part of the plan. From the beginning it was always about AIDS fundraising.

You touched on the question of the ‘purpose of a drag queen’ in your discussions at David Hoyle’s Still Life event at the RVT.

When I was 20 I was doing it because it was fucking fun. I do it now because I’m a performer, I guess. But drag is inherently political. If you put on a dress and you’re a bloke, that is inherently a political statement. But that doesn’t mean it needs to be boring. You can be really funny, and entertaining and stupid, whilst still making a larger point. And I think drag allows you to do that. You’re a kind of clown. If I was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, there’s a load of things I couldn’t say, or an audience wouldn’t allow me to say. But if you’re dressed as a drag queen, people allow you to say all sorts of things, because cartoons are allowed to say anything. And I think that’s a drag queen’s job; to say that stuff that people can’t say.

You said the other night that you don’t think that speech would have been received so broadly and widely had you stood there as Rory. What can you say in drag that makes people listen differently than if you were dressed like me?

It works from the smallest way to the biggest. A drag queen can stand there and tell you your clothes look terrible and everyone will laugh and think that’s fine, and the person you are saying that to doesn’t get upset because they understand that’s part of the convention. But if somebody on the bus said that to you, you’d be offended. It works from that small way right up to a big way. If I’d said that stuff [from the speech] in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, nobody would have cared and they would have taken it differently. They probably would have thought, ‘oh these bloody whingeing gays’. But if you’re dressed up as a big cartoon, they listen to it differently.

The audience at the Abbey didn’t know you were coming on, is that right?

Yes, it is. They didn’t know.

I think they thought you were going to deliver some comedic routine, because you could hear them laugh to begin, and then it’s the most awkward of laughs and you can almost hear them thinking, ‘should we be laughing at this?’

Totally. I think that’s really clear. The day before my solicitor said ‘are you sure you want to do this like this’, because he thought the drag would get in the way of me and my message. And I understood his concerns, but I had to do it as Panti because (a) I had a show directly afterwards, and (b) it would be hypocritical to do it otherwise. I knew it would be a problem at the beginning, but I also knew that once you got people past that ‘it’s a drag queen’ thing, it would work to my advantage. At the beginning they have a very set idea of what this is going to be, and for the first five minutes they can’t see past the dress, and they are screaming at themselves “it’s a bloke in a dress!” In that speech I was trying to get them past that point before I say anything of value. A gay audience would see this is immediately out of context. But you’re right, you hear those first awkward laughs, and then the tension in the room changes when I don’t respond to that laugh the way they expect.

Regarding the RTE issue. How do you feel about the pay out? Should they have fought it?

They followed the legal advice that they were given. About a year ago they made one of these current affairs programmes that basically accused a priest of being a pedophile and it turned out he wasn’t. It was a major thing, people lost their jobs. It was a huge scandal. They are very touchy about that stuff. But my view would be that they are not Coca Cola, they are a national broadcaster and therefore they shouldn’t only have to think about money, they should think about what’s right, what’s their public service duty. I think they should have fought it for those reasons.

 

And it also sets a dangerous precedent; that somebody can disagree with a view point, threaten legal action, and be rewarded with a huge pay out.

It does, it really does. I think their legal advice was poor. Of course, I don’t think they should have paid out, I think they should have fought it. I think if they had very strongly said ‘fuck you’ it would have gone away.

But perhaps had they fought it, and it went to court and it cost all this money, perhaps the homophobia wouldn’t have been highlighted as much. Ironically, because RTE seemed to give in, people were like, “Why did you give in to these homophobes?”

Yes, I agree. I think in the long run it was a good thing. There was this one group I mention, The Iona Institute [a socially conservative Christian lobby group], and they are constantly on television and on discussion programmes. Before this they were treated as a mainstream view, whereas now that’s all changed. People see them as a fringe opinion now, which is a good thing.

What does this mean to Rory? Do you separate Panti and Rory, or do you feel it’s just you on stage in costume?

Somewhere in the middle of that. There’s definitely a difference, like I said, you can say different things.

But that’s how it’s received by us, what about where it comes from?

It’s blurred. Before all this, Panti was reasonably well known, but nobody knew who the fuck Rory was. But now at home that’s changed dramatically now. Literally, old ladies stop me in the street when I’m dressed as a boy. But I also know, that’ll go back to the way it used to be, because in a year’s time people will have forgotten Rory. Before, the TV company didn’t understand that you could interview Panti and have a serious conversation.

David Hoyle talked about the concept of gender as a performance. Biologically, we have gender in as much as our genitals define us, but do you think gender is a performance?

Yeah, I do. I think a lot of it is performed. In the world that we come from, that David comes from, there are a lot of performers, some of whom are drag queens, some of whom are Trans, some of whom were Trans-drag queens originally. If you look at an old movie like Paris Is Burning, in that movie nobody ever comments or asks whether somebody is a drag queen, or trans. It’s just not important, nobody cares what genitals you’ve got, and I think that’s a world that everybody should be striving more to become. That’s the world that everybody should want. Still, everybody wants to put everybody into two boxes, male and female, and they want you decide what you are and you have to be that.

You say in your speech that we are raised in a homophobic culture. Gay people are mostly raised to hate themselves, to “check themselves” as you say, before they learn to love themselves. Will we ever overcome this state of being?

I think in some sense that’s never going to change. Being gay is never going to be the norm in that sense, so there’s always going to have to be an adjustment. But there are families that bring up their kids nowadays to not give a crap. It would be nice to think that one day all families will be really open, but that’s unlikely to happen. In a way that’s not a totally bad thing, I think it’s good to be forced to be the outsider. I’ve always liked being the outsider. Once you get over that adjustment and the difficult period of accepting that, there’s a real freedom in being the outsider. It frees you up from all these expectations that other people have to put up with, which is one of my slight worries about the whole assimilation of gays and striving to be the same as everybody else.

I agree. I think there is a misunderstanding that equality means assimilation. I think they are two conflicting issues that actually don’t belong together.

Well, equality really is the freedom to not assimilate. You are who you are. To have equality is the choice whether you want to assimilate or not. You shouldn’t have to be a particular kind of gay to be acceptable, you should be able to be any kind of freak you want to be.

What are the biggest challenges facing the gay community from within?

The whole body culture thing is not a good thing in general. There’s too much emphasis put on that stuff. The whole focus on masculinity and femininity is so insane. There’s nothing more depressing in the world than watching somebody describe themselves on Grindr. It’s so dull. It also shows such a weird point of view. I mean how many super-feminine gays are there? Very few, so the idea that the most important thing for you to stick on your profile is that you don’t want anybody who is fat, Asian or femme is such a bizarre thing to do. The concept of ‘straight acting’ is that ridiculous. Unless you shove your penis in a vagina, how do you ‘act straight’?

What insecurities do you have?

The same that everybody has. I’ll be 46 soon, and every time I look in the mirror I think, ‘Oh my god I’m so old’ and I’m convinced my hair is beginning fall out. It’s impossible not to have those insecurities. I check myself all the time. Those things are ingrained in us. I catch myself uncrossing my legs all the time. It’s impossible not to take that stuff on because it’s everywhere. You’d have to be some superhuman not to be affected by all that stuff. I’m not hating myself because sometimes I find myself doing those things, but at the same time I don’t like that I find myself doing that.

As you say I guess you are right that you ‘check yourself’, which is a self-awareness of the road that you are mentally going down and you can then reel yourself back in…

Well, because that feeling speaks so deeply to a sense of who you are and reminds you of a time in your life when you were struggling to be who you were, maybe when you were in school or whatever. I think people should check themselves all the time, that you’re not taking up all the room on the seat on a train or that you’re not being an asshole, or that you’re not being rude. But you shouldn’t have to check yourself that you are expressing yourself in a non-gay way.

• Photographed by Holly Revell at David Hoyle’s ‘Still Life’ at the RVT (372 Kennington Lane, Vauxhall, SE11 5HY) on Thursday 29th May. 

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