Know Your Queer History
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ShoutOut is proud to present a new video series to mark this year’s IDAHOBIT and Dublin Pride. Know Your Queer History, launching today, May 17th at 12pm, features interviews with 12 individuals who were all involved in different ways with the progression of LGBTQ+ equality in Ireland.
Domhnaill Harkin, a member of the ShoutOut steering committee, pitched the idea of the interview series to ShoutOut in late 2020. Domhnaill has been a school workshop volunteer with the charity since 2018. Domhnaill comments;
“I grew up in rural Donegal and due to the homophobic attitudes I experienced, I didnt come out until I was 23 in 2017. I became involved with ShoutOut not long after this as I wanted to ensure young people like me didn't suffer the way I did. I became interested in the history of the Irish gay rights movement and I noticed a lot of young LGBTQ+ people didnt know the history of how our rights were achieved and this is where the idea for the series came from.”
The series is directed, edited, and produced by Mary-Claire Fitzpatrick, a videographer and RTÉ TV presenter who worked closely with Domhnaill to build a series of interviews with a number of leading activists and allies in the Irish queer movement.
These interviews are an attempt to pay tribute to some of the remarkable activists who helped make Ireland a safer place for LGBTQ+ people. As young LGBTQ+ people living more freely today, we owe a debt to their hard work striving for social and legal equality. We hope that this series will help viewers understand a part of Irish history usually forgotten from the curriculum.
The 12 episodes explore the events that shaped and created the early LGBTQ+ rights movement from the 1970s onwards. By speaking first-hand to people who were the instigators and leaders of the movement we get an in-depth, personal account of major milestones from the Fairview Park protest march in 1983 to the Marriage Equality Referendum in 2015.
Interviewed over the course of the series are former Uachtarán na hÉireann Mary McAleese, Senator David Norris, Katherine Zappone, gender recognition campaigner Dr Lydia Foy, GLEN member and former political director of Yes Equality Tiernan Brady, TENI Chair Sara Phillips, director and historian Edmund Lynch, archivist and activist Tonie Walsh, activist and academic Ailbhe Smyth, Kieran Rose, former GLEN chair, Cathal Kerrigan, former member of the Cork Gay Collective and Gay Health Action, and Suzy Byrne, former GLEN member and GCN journalist.
The 12 interviews will be released two per week, running throughout the month of June to mark the month of Dublin Pride. In the first episode, Domhnaill will interview former President of Ireland Mary McAleese.
