The Sexual Weaponisation of Women in Irish Politics

A Dark Tradition of Power and Shame

Irish Politics has always had its vagrant cruelties, but the moment sex is invoked as a weapon against women in power, everything grows somewhat darker—something in an Irish context very Catholic, something ancient, something sick. It’s the lazy violence of so-called intellectual men, and the reigning superstition of institutions: why bother arguing policy, when you can mark the female political target with shame? You wouldnt vote for her, but you would sleep with her. It would go against everything you believe in politically, but you’d debase yourself at the altar of her political sexuality.

A sexualised political insult is more than a jibe; it’s the marshalling of a medieval power, a ritual humiliation that drags a woman out of the present and back into the murkiness of a time when a woman’s intellect and political prowess are not worthy of her male colleagues. Suddenly, the debate isn’t about housing, or budgets, or Europe—no, it’s about the curve of a body, the edge of a voice, th…