Suzanne Harrington: Here's why the March 8 referendum matters - and why voting in it matters

That women are still formally in thrall to ideas from 1937 like “duties in the home” is laughable – yes, for those of us lucky enough to have a home, duties are most definitely involved, unless you have a butler.

Suzanne Harrington. Picture: Andrew Hasson

Here in Britain where I live, my lovely Irish EU passport locked in a bank vault ringed with razor wire and guarded by Cerberus, even hearing the word ‘referendum’ being whispered softly in another room is likely to trigger seizures of PTSD in much of the population.

People falling to the floor, thrashing and foaming, crying out in despair, as they bang their heads against the nearest wall.

Colder, poorer, hungrier, less able to go places, less able to stay places, stuck in border queues, and most recently, unable to get hold of tea.

That’s right. The British, having firmly inserted the ‘dumb’ in referendum, have most recently ‘referendummed’ themselves out of access to the very thing upon which they most depend —tea.

In Ireland, conversely, referenda tend to take us forward.

Propel us away from the past, instead of cannon-balling us backwards to a place that never existed in the first place, outside of conservative imagination.

Our last two were particularly useful, enshrining the equality of same-sex couples and the autonomy of women over our own bodies. Better late than never.

While the upcoming referendum doesn’t have the immediate urgency of, say, repealing the 8th, nevertheless it represents another solid step forward in formalising Ireland’s transition from rural theocracy to secular democracy.

To inaccurately paraphrase the equalities minister, a woman’s place is wherever the fuck she wants it to be — bashing heads in a boardroom, head in a book in academia, driving trucks, flying planes, baking cupcakes while breastfeeding. Whatever, wherever.

That women are still formally in thrall to ideas from 1937 such as “duties in the home” is laughable — yes, for those of us lucky enough to have a home, duties are most definitely involved, unless you have a butler.

Feeding the cat, putting the bins out, unblocking the drain, finding the other sock.

You don’t need a specific set of genitalia to do or not do any of those tasks.

It seems slightly mental to even write that sentence in 2024, which is why we are having the referendum.

Words matter.

Voting matters.

As does the focus on “durable relationships” — which makes them sound like sensible shoes — rather than just marriage.

In 2022, 43% of Irish babies were born to parents neither married nor in civil partnerships, and about a million of us live in non-married family units.

Mum, Dad, kids. Mum, Mum, kids. Dad, Dad, kids. Mum, kids, dog. Dad, kids, hamster. Again, whatever.

It’s what Armistead Maupin calls your “logical family”, the people you choose with whom to create committed units.

(Although polyamory and throuples are not covered, at least not in this referendum. We’re still decolonising our minds from 1937).

Equally, some of the most durable relationships endure because the couple lives apart.

There is no one-size-fits-all — finally, we are formally acknowledging that family can be built in any shape, so long as the foundations are made of solid love.