[dropcap]D[/dropcap]CU Strike for Repeal organiser Alannah Kearney has hit out at a video doing the rounds on social media, showing women appearing to struggle answering questions on abortion at this month’s Strike for Repeal march in Dublin.
The video, posted by Facebook page ‘Flipside’, has received just shy of 500,000 views since it was posted, claiming that it was quizzing protesters ‘without the media’s airbrush’.
The interviewer at times shouts while arguing with his subjects and in one instance laughs at one of their reactions with many shots cutting after the interviewees make their initial response.
Many women in the video appeared to have stumbled over their words, as well as contradicted themselves at times, however the comment section has seen debates arguing whether the work of the interviewer was objective or not.
Kearney’s reaction was the latter, saying that the people shooting the video targeted mostly young women to catch them off guard as they may not be as comfortable speaking in front of a camera as others.
“My impression of it is that it’s very much a cut, copy and paste video, it’s heavily edited in order to make the young women in the video look a certain way,” said Kearney.
“I don’t doubt the women who were in the video talking, they have their reasons for marching, and when you’re put in front of a camera at an event with 12,000 people, and you don’t have prior experience being interviewed about the pro-choice movement, then perhaps you’re not going to be great at explaining why you’re marching.”
Kearney said she appreciates that the topic of a potential referendum of the Eighth Amendment is complex and sometimes overwhelming, but said people should not be judged for their honest beliefs instead of being made to look like someone who is just protesting for the sake of it.
“I think that the video is certainly playing into the stereotype of the ‘trendy activist’, which somehow managed to make its way into society’s view of feminism. I think that this video is made in a specific way to spread a certain stereotype of a pro-choice supporter,” she said.
“It is worrying (that some may not fully grasp the repeal concept), and it is a complex situation, but that’s what activism if for. Of course everyone is not going to know every tiny bit of information about the 8th, but that’s what the activists and supporters are for – to spread that message and up those numbers for a full Repeal.”
Brein McGinn
Image Credit: Independent