Tommy Tiernan

Is the Bible for women at all?

Morning, all. Lookit, I’m still at the Bible. I didn’t mention it over the last few weeks because I didn’t want to be annoying ye, or worse again, becoming predictable, but it’s what I’m at. Going through it bit by bit. I’m not that far into it, but I have a question. Is it a good book for the women? I mean, do they get a fair hearing in it? Are they fully expressed in it?

I hope it’s not just a man’s guide to a man’s god. I was reading about Abraham. He was arriving into Egypt and asked his wife to pretend to be his sister. He knew the Pharaoh would want her, and would probably kill Abraham if he knew that he was her husband.

She went along with it and, sure enough, the Pharaoh bedded her and, when he was done, sent her back. In the story, she doesn’t say a word, as if her own thoughts and feelings about the whole thing are of no consequence. Hardly a guidebook for women, now.

For instruction and inspiration, would the ladies be better off leaning into Irish mythology? Queen Meadhbh refusing to play second fiddle to a husband she had at the time, and more or less waging war on account of it. Granuaile, a woman that men, whether they wanted to or not, would die for. Macha, the Horse Goddess — wild, instinctive and fearless. Danu, the mother of all Irish gods.

Not too many of them lassies in the Good Book, no. It’s either the

straip, the vessel or the virgin mother in that holy tome, and not only does this do the women of our time a disservice, but the men as well.

Say a man was to decide to himself that, in order to find proper balance, he would to need some space in his life to worship female energy. Now could he do it to his wife? No, because her humanity would cause her to fall off the pedestal. So where is he to go? A lapdancing club? A fine idea, but the reality of it is cheap and demeaning. Knock, perhaps? Maybe, but that apparition has always been a little too porcelain for my liking. Flesh and blood have their place, too. A maternity ward, so? Could you see it? Women in labour or exhausted afterwards in the bed, and rows of men outside in the hall, on their knees, giving thanks and praise.

Ireland, according to our mythology, is the land of the Triple Goddess. Banbha, Fodhla and Eriu. The country we live in is named after one of them, Eire. Imagine that. A land named after a she-god, and you wouldn’t do that unless you intended it as praise. And what do we know about her? How do we honour her? Have we lost our way a little bit?

These are the days of money and distraction. So be it. You’d wonder, though. Wonder about Sliabh na mBan in Tipp. The Paps of Danu outside Killarney. You’d wonder about St Brigid and Our Lady and Banbha and Fodhla. About Macha. About your daughters and wives. Are they living with a constant feeling of sly oppression? Do we have the courage to ask the question and listen to the answer? You’d wonder about the bullheaded thick streak you have inside of yourself. About your heart and the glorious energy of surrender. Give it up to phuck and fall back into the arms of the land you’re living in. Mother’s Day and Nollaig na mBan...

Is it blasphemous to imagine a holy story where the daughter of God walks in the world and prays every night to her mother? And you’d wonder, too, about the magnificent male energies of Christ and Buddha. Of Manannan Mac Lir and St Patrick. You’d wonder about the Lia Fail, the phallic stone erupting out of the earth in Tara, a monument to the pulse of manhood; the male energy of the multiverse.

No answers here but questions and curiosities. And I wonder at the end of it, is there a place in our humanity that is beneath gender? Somewhere in the depths of us, an awareness or perspective that is neither masculine nor feminine, but both.

I don’t think that we have to invent anything to right ourselves. What we need is there already, covered up at the moment we just need to look a little, that’s all. And when we find it, we won’t have to force it or fake it, it’ll feel right.

“Not too many of them lassies in the Good Book. It’s either the straip, the vessel or the virgin mother”