Emer O'Neill: 'So many women suffer and say nothing because they haven’t been believed before'
Emer O'Neill who is pregnant with her third child due in September, developed Hyperemesis Gravidaruma, a condition that causes extreme vomiting and nausea. Photograph: Moya Nolan
There is a perception that forward-thinking women — most concentratedly activists — are pained, mean, unfunny beings, dedicated to sticking pins in birthday balloons and pointing fingers at vulnerable spaces.
That being, when you’re on a pedestal, the whole world is below you, to upskirt or otherwise. Activism with a pointed message can easily turn didactic — or, worse, smug.
Luckily, teacher, author, RTÉ presenter and broadcaster Emer O’Neill’s personality feels built to withstand this pressure, even as it expands its reach, touching on subjects like reproductive rights and medical misogyny.
Her social media presence is a fascinating mixture of high-low (footage of a Dublin protest, calling for an ‘Ireland for All’ sits beside a news headline stating that a Penneys is due to open in Bray with the caption “be still my beating heart”) and more recently, pregnancy-related recommendations as well as no-frills children content (O’Neill is due to give birth to her third child in September, the younger sibling of Ky and Sunny Rae).
It’s a glimpse into her mind; one that runs at pace, giving grace to the bad moments as well as the good.
While her tone generally veers towards the positive, she commits to truth-telling within both her professional and personal spheres; this extends into her recent hyperemesis gravidarum diagnosis, a period of severe sickness and vomiting that affects roughly 1% of pregnancies.
The pain and nausea, according to those who have experienced it, is debilitating, medication is astoundingly expensive, and, to top it all off, patients who seek medical help are regularly not believed.
“For the first month-and-a-half, I was so sick,” she says. “I lost nearly two stone, and the only thing I could keep down was Coca-Cola. Eventually, I went into the emergency room on the advice of a friend and was put on fluids and prescribed medication.
“It blew my mind how I’d never heard about this, and how it was only through word-of-mouth that I could find out what to do. When it comes to female medical issues, gaslighting is the immediate phrase connected to it. So many women suffer and say nothing because they haven’t been believed before.
“I’d never had it before with my other kids so I just thought it was bad morning sickness, even though I couldn’t hold down water. From projectile vomiting, too, I came across degrees of incontinence — which is embarrassing, but also something we women need to talk about more.”
O’Neill, who is affable, cordial, strong, and undeniably striking, with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes — is not afraid of speaking up. In January, the 37-year-old walked out of a Tommy Tiernan show because of a racist joke.
“My daughter told me I shouldn’t say this,” he prefaced it, before unfurling a string of words that likened black men to gorillas. O’Neill felt tight in her seat, constricted by the same invisible boundaries she had grown to recognise as a young, biracial woman; the same kind that pulled her curled hair taut and shouted racial slurs as she shuffled to catch buses or exit classrooms.
She was too old for this, she thought. She had had enough and decided to go. She posted about it on Instagram, mentioning how a night that was “to be full of fun and laughter turned sour”, and how equating zoo animals to “Dublin taxi drivers” was undeniably offensive.
The replies racked up in their thousands, nearly all of them casting blame on O’Neill for “ruining comedy”, “doing anything for headlines”, and “messing with the man’s livelihood”.
“Worst thing you can do is apologize (sic) to the recreationally offended,” one, ironically offended, post reads. “They’re really making a meal out of this story,” another goes. “I have a solution for her, never go to another comedy gig!”
That week, O’Neill found out she was pregnant. Seven weeks of extreme hyperemesis-induced sickness followed, as did seven weeks of intense abuse, interrupted by a private phone call from Tiernan himself.
“We spoke for about an hour, it was a very positive conversation,” she says. “During that, he realised that he, as a white middle-aged man, has no right to comment on or decide whether something is racist or not because he has no lived experience — those were his exact words. I won’t ever forget, it was powerful, and I appreciated that a lot and believed him.
“It takes somebody of integrity to be able to acknowledge when they’ve done wrong, but where it kind of fell down for me was that he didn’t make a public statement. Because, as I explained to him, it wasn’t me that needed an apology. My entire community did. And his followers will never likely know that. It’s like when you see those Instagram things, where prominent white influencers give their profile to a person of colour to explain their situation to an audience that wouldn’t necessarily usually listen to something like that — the aftermath is huge and the possibility for education is bigger.”
It’s a token of O’Neill’s resilience that on top of her own jagged experiences in the public eye, a long-fought battle with depression and anxiety, and her extended journey to become pregnant (it took her and her partner over two years) she still boasts a drive few could dream of.
O’Neill is the sole Irish ambassador for a programme called Free Being Me, a programme with the Irish Girl Guides to encourage children to love their bodies and the skin they are in.
She is also an ambassador for Olympic Federation Ireland’s Don’t Scroll By campaign, seeking to stamp out online bullying and abuse, the knowledge from which she used to help write the Anti Racism CPD professional development course with the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation.
That said, O’Neill is familiar, and dare I say not uncomfortable within the boundaries of discomfort. In fact, it leads a number of the anecdotes she unfurls today, the majority of which centre around the “reason she does what she does” — her children.
“My son’s complexion is quite a bit darker than mine, and then my daughter is basically white,” she says. “So I have two kids that are two completely different colours – and are going to have two completely different lives, even though they’re brought up by the same mom and dad in the same household.”
She takes a deep breath.
“Like there’s this part of me that’s so happy for my daughter, that she can pass. Because I know that her life is gonna be that bit easier. And that’s so horrible. It makes me want to vomit when I say it out loud, but it’s the reality of things. It hurts my heart to think of the things that my son already is going through; talking about his skin and hair and how it’s different and he wants it changed. Recently he was called the N-word and a monkey by a boy online, and he told me — he voice recorded it in the bathroom because he was too ashamed to say it to my face — and my heart just broke. Eventually, we got to the bottom of it and got in touch with the parents. It’s important for my son, for him to see me stick up for him, and for him to know that his thoughts and feelings are relevant and that he has support and that he’s not wrong or bad in any way. It’s also important that that child is educated and their parents understand the connotations behind the words they’re using.
“People always ask me when is the best time to discuss racism and diversity and prejudice with their children — I always say from the moment they’re born. Because if I can’t wait until my child is old enough, others shouldn’t either.”
“I could curl up in a ball in my duvet when these things happen,” O’Neill says three times during our two-hour talk. “Which would be far easier. But it’s not going to help. So I tell myself to fight another day, and that’s what’s brought me here.”
If it is possible, as she insists, to fight another day, and change minds, assumptions, and systemic neglect, maybe we needn’t worry quite so much about the future we see for our children.
This is the bitter-sweet message hidden in every word O’Neill utters: That, in the grand prejudices of today, we should dare to not (like her 2022 TEDxWexford talk says) put anyone in a box.
Unless, perhaps, they’re trolls who post cruel, derogatory comments. “If you have your work information in your bio, you can be sure I’m sharing it,” she says. “Whether you have ‘live, laugh, love’ right beside it or not.”
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