Culture wars have swung to liberal side but for how long?
ONE thing is for sure: nobody is going to put our Eurovision performer Bambie Thug into any kind of box that’s not of their choosing. And more power to them. We’ve had way too much of that here in the past. Fact is, none of us deserves to be strictly defined in a black or white kind of way in relation to any aspect of who we are, seeing as how we’re a jumble of contradictions on most things.
Bambie Thug’s national Eurovision success is, however, the latest highlight in the ‘culture war’ now raging here in Ireland and throughout the free world. (You’re unlikely to see Bambie Thug-style performers on stage in downtown Tehran any time soon.)
Like any conflict, this culture war ebbs and flows depending on time and location. Here in Ireland the ‘new order’ is clearly in the ascendent, as demonstrated by the marriage equality referendum in 2015 which allowed same-sex couples to share the same misery as the rest of us, and the 2018 referendum which liberalised abortion. But in the United States, liberals are on the back foot, best illustrated by the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022 and the dismantling of abortion rights throughout much of America.
Bambie Thug’s performance on the Late Late was entertaining on its own merits and compelling as well for its clear signposting of difference. In the clip broadcast just before going on stage, Bambie Thug drove home that message in a way that most people simply couldn’t ignore, even if they might have wished to.
They said: ‘As a non-binary person I do represent a massive proportion of our country that is under-represented.’
And so Bambie Thug’s Doomsday Blue became political, not in a way that’ll have conservatives marching on the streets, but in a manner that encourages more of the ‘live and let live’ majority to consider whether all this ‘change’ is getting to be a bit too much. Too much of a challenge.
Now, it’s arguable – and a matter of opinion – whether a massive proportion of the population is non-binary, which I presume is what Bambie Thug meant. But their contention that non-binary people are under-represented has to be confronted because it raises all kinds of questions.
Is Bambie Thug suggesting that only non-binary people can represent non-binary others? If so, what does that say about the value and the rights attaching to straight people, for instance? Further, such a statement may also, by implication, mean that non-binary people cannot represent straights.
And there’s the rub, because that’s precisely the feeling of many ordinary people now – that their view of themselves is not sufficiently reflected or respected, that they don’t recognise themselves any more in what’s going on.
In America that alienation of the greater or sufficient number led to Donald Trump being elected president, to his blatant stacking of the Supreme Court into a conservative majority, and to the overturning of Roe v Wade. We all know that what happens in the States will happen here as well; it’s only a matter of time.
The decision by Junior Minister Jack Chambers in early January to share with us all that he’s gay was another head-scratcher for most people who think such ‘coming out’ declarations are now so past tense. Who cares any more? Anyway, it has absolutely nothing to do with his job.
SIMILARLY every mention by RTÉ of Bambie Thug informs us again that the artist is nonbinary, even though every single person who cares a fig ‘gets’ that already. This against the background of RTÉ’s failure to mention the gender preferences of previous Eurovision entries, including refusing to disclose that Dustin was a turkey with a roving eye for the ladies. Totally straight apparently. Just saying.
Like Bambie Thug’s arrival, the Jack Chambers announcement rallies conservative concerns in a way that builds opposition to this new version of ourselves.
Inevitably, conservative alienation will grow to embrace more of the middle ground, fed by an illdefined sense of being disregarded in a country, run by city-slicker liberal elites, where being straight almost demands an apology, by manufactured concerns about immigration stoked up by the far right, and by fears that wokeism will eventually unpick everything previously held dear.
The pendulum has now swung to the liberal side but, true to Newton’s third law of motion, it is likely to swing back, equal and opposite, in its own good time.
As Bambie Thug does their thing in Malmo on May 7, Enoch Burke will most likely be still behind bars for contempt of court over his refusal to stay away from the school where he formerly worked as a teacher. This incarceration arises from Burke’s objection, for religious reasons, to addressing a student at the school by their preferred pronoun.
Burke’s continuing protest is all part of the ‘equal and opposite’ swing of the pendulum, which one day threatens to wipe away liberal gains.