Pilot Testing Heaven

While I came here for the history, the politics, and of course, the "Craic" (pronounced 'crack,' and meaning 'fun' - so if an Irishman asks you if you're looking for 'crack,' know that he's not offering you drugs!), I also came here to conduct a research project with the twin aims of collecting and preserving oral histories of gay men during the Troubles, and to see if there is any indication that exposure to sectarian conflict causes problematic sexual identity formation. So, it's only fitting that some of this blogging be used to familiarize you with my research methodology. Transparency and control is the name of the game here and critical to minimizing potential bias in research methodology.

I have begun the pilot testing of the interview questions to be used for the study, which will comprise 4 members of the staff of The Rainbow Project. Two of these staff members (PP.1 & PP.2) will serve as developers for the actual questions. They will undergo a mock interview at the end of which they will describe their reactions to the questions and how they felt. I will then analyze the responses each gave to determine if I'm getting the types of responses desired (not creating leading/biased questions mind you, but to ensure that I'm getting data that is useable). These questions will then be revamped for the other two pilot interviews (PP.3 & PP.4) whose participation will be to develop my own skills and confidence as an interviewer, and be familiar with the paperwork and recording device.

Methodology and Protocols of the interviews:
5 initial test questions were determined prior to review by peers. Three additional questions were added. Q.3 was added upon the suggestion and consultation of Dean Lee (One of The Rainbow Project's counseling staff and member of the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy, and leading expert in LGB&T counseling in Northern Ireland). Q.7 by myself after feeling there needed to be a context for the participant's current life. Q.8 was recommended by Dr. Kathryn MacKay, Mentor, member and Chair of my Capstone Project committee.

The goal of the interviews is to determine 4 variables, addressed by questions 2,4,5,6, and 7. Question 1 is to make the participant feel relaxed and begin building a foundation of trust to facilitate the rest of the interview.

QUESTIONS
Question 1: Introduction, Background info
1.Tell me about yourself? Would you tell me a bit about your childhood?
(AIMS – Introductory, getting comfortable with the participant, building a relationship of trust with the participant)

Question 2: Independent Variable - Sectarian Conflict
2. Would you tell me a bit about “The Troubles” and your personal experiences of it? What was the extent of your involvement? What was the extent of involvement of your family and friends?
(Aims – Involvement & Attitude toward Troubles)

Question 3: Setting up Question 4 - Sexual Identity development
3. What does the concept of "coming out about your sexuality" mean to you? Have you "come out?"

Question 4: Dependent Variable - Sexual Identity development -
4. Can you tell me when you first noticed your attraction to the same gender? What were your experiences of coming out?
(Aims – Development of Sexual Identity – Healthy vs. Problematic) Healthy vs. Problematic

Question 5: 3rd Variable - External Support Factors
5. Would you tell me about how your family and friends regarded being gay before you “came out?” What were their reactions when you were “coming out?” Did you find that their thoughts on being gay changed after you “came out?”
(Aims - External Environment – Support Factors)

Question 6: 4th Variable - Internal Resiliency Factors
6. What do you believe are your personal strengths? What do you believe are your personal weaknesses? How have these influenced your life as a gay man?
(Aims – Internal Resilience – Resiliency Factors)

Question 7: Current context for Dependent Variable - Sexual Identity Formation
7. Tell me a bit about your life today and the important people with which you share it?

Question 8: Wrapping up interview and maintaining the participant's ownership of their story.
8. What have I not asked you that you think important to tell me?

These will hopefully provide enough information for an informative oral history, as well as provide enough insight to actually be able to see if Sectarian conflict does effect Sexual Identity formation.

CONTROL GROUP
A small control group will be included of 8 gay mormons from Utah, 2 corresponding to each of the age brackets used in the actual research. My reasoning for using this demographic as a control group is that like Northern Ireland, Gay Mormons in Utah come from a very conservative and religious society. The only thing that should be different between the groups is that one endured sectarian conflict, and the other did not. This should be enough of a sampling to enable the groups to be compared and see if the coming out stories dramatically differ. I anticipate that resiliency factors might also be different, especially in the NI group, and show up different results according to age brackets (late troubles vs pre-troubles).

ANTICIPATED TIMELINE
- Pilot Interviews - Pilot interviews will commence through Friday Feb 7.
- Validating Interviews - Validating interviews, the 48 to be included in the final data will begin Monday Feb 10 and end on Monday March 31. This may seem like a brief period, however Rainbow Project has been quite proactive in suggesting individuals they feel would be of interest. At latest count there is a pool of 70 individuals to draw from. While some of these are Rainbow Project staff and volunteers, others are community activists who have been on the scene for many years. I will be looking outside of this pool for about 25% of the total to give us a sense of those who are not advocates and don't come from the club/bar/LGBT inner city scene. Some of these have already been located by attending sexual health clinic testing (gay men often come out for their health screenings from the more quieter demographics to these settings where there is less scrutiny and more privacy), and snowball sampling will be used for the remainder of these.

Growing at the Internship

The internship is serving as an eye opening experience, one which seems to be testing my sense of 'tolerance.' Admittedly, this is what tends to happen in community health work. My time at Utah AIDS Foundation was proof of this phenomenom, where I became comfortable discussing the most intimate details of the sex lives of complete strangers (though to contrast this, I still maintain a difficulty discussing these same types of matters of sexual boundaries with my own partners). So it's not like I havent had prior experience or was going in this with my eyes closed or a sense of naivete.

I do have a bit of a judgemental inner core and expectation of sexuality, surrounding expectations. Much of this has come from a narrow view of sexuality formed by Mormon and Puritanical New England ethos. I knew of this growing up, and managed to progress quite far at UAF, embracing the harm reduction model. At UAF we often discussed "kink" sex, but I only got to confront the boundaries of my paradigm in theory only. I never had a client that expressed such preferences. Our questions tended to be generic, focusing on protected vs unprotected (ie types of intercourse) rather than fethish/kink practices. In hindsight, by not inquiring specificly into this, we may have been doing our clients a disservice, many who would respond to direct questions rather than branching out into matters not specifically brought up. This is a demographic we may have missed out on, and an important lesson to learn which will hopefully serve me well in the future, should I continue to work in community health.

Back to the topic at hand. Kink. It seems that Rainbow Project is going to continue my growth in ways I had not imagined. On Wednesday my supervisor put me in charge of revising TRP's Gay Men's Guide to Rough Sex. While I was aware that it would include such kink practices as S&M, fisting, and an assortment of others (both known and unknown to me), I was not prepared for the graphic descriptions I came upon while perusing the last printed edition. In my mind some of the practices are nothing less than sadistic torture. Others are just revolting to me, such as "scat play," while reading I found myself in a battle with my gag reflex, trying hard not to be sick.

While certainly this has been an unexpected test and awareness of where I am on my journey, I see this as something I can grow from and become an even better health worker. Many of the clients that come to our doors are involved in these practices and there is an expectation that they will be respected with no judgement on our parts. Understanding exactly what the health risks (if any) exist in the practices and then offering suggestions to minimizing the risk is what our job is. These are adults capable of coming to their own conclusions and who will at the end of the day make their own decisions. Whether we approve personally or not is irrelevant. What we need to do is ensure these individuals are treated with respect and made comfortable enough to be able to open up to be able to have candid conversations. Morality and social norms are not part of the discussion. Purely health considerations are. And I have much to learn to allow me to be able to reach these individuals who bring up counter transference in me.

Stormont Negotiations: Failure or Indicator of Progress?

For the first week and a half I was here, much of the interest in the local press (seems like the American newspapers didn't publish much, if anything) was on the five party negotiations between the five major parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly (Democratic Unionist Party, Sinn Fein, Ulster Unionist Party, Social Democratic and Labour Party, and Alliance Party). These negotiations were the biggest talks since the 2006 St. Andrews Accords (that brought together the parties to form a lasting Executive and Parliament over consensus on recognizing the authority of the Police Service Northern Ireland and full commitment to non-violent means) and were organized to find solutions to the social issue parts of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (which agreed to a power sharing executive and parliament between Unionist and Nationalist parties) which were still outstanding. An American diplomatic team consisting of former Ambassador to Northern Ireland Dr. Richard Haas and Senior Fellow at Council on Foreign Relations Dr. Meaghan O'Sullivan, had been invited by First Minister Peter Robinson (DUP) and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness (SF) to Belfast this summer has been on the ground for the last 3 months trying to find consensus on three main topics: Flags & Symbols, Parades, and the legacy of the Troubles (ie definition of "victim" vs "terrorist," unsolved murders, cultural narrative, etc).

I had been following the talks for the two and a half months prior to my arrival, and was well aware of the difficulty with which the negotiations had been mired, coming on the heels of a difficult year regarding all of the outstanding issues (see earlier post regarding the controversies over cultural celebration/community commemoration). Yet, I was excited to have been here as the discussions were coming to an end to be seeing how things would be received on the ground, first person observing. With the Unionists in such a siege mentality, dug in to their positions, progress had stalled on the particulars and wording. In a long, drawnout process, the Haas team had held discussions with most of the stakeholders across the provinces and gone back and forth with the political parties in determining their positions and what they would be willing to give and take. 7 drafts of a proposed agreement ended up being on the table, in the end rejected by both of the major parties who claimed the drafts "had major problems that made the agreement unworkable." By contrast, the nationalist parties seemed content with most of what was proposed, leaving it up to what the Unionists were willing to concede on.

Major concerns seemed to revolve around the power limitations invested in the new Parades Commission; wording of proposed "immunity" for a truth and reconciliation program (modeled on South Africa's successful example); and complete disagreement on the flags controversy. Unionists demanded the Union Jack be returned to its place in Belfast City Hall, ruling out both proposals for co-recognition and flying of the Irish Tri-Colour, and a new "Ulster" flag to be a rallying symbol for both Unionists and Nationalists (despite the precedent of Wales and Scotland each having their own flags).

The originally proposed deadline was Christmas, but was forced to be pushed back to New Years. The American team went home for Christmas expressing doubt whether they would return, putting further pressure on the posturing and deadlock which had characterized the talks up to that point, and leaving the decision squarely on the attitudes and answers to questions which had been posed to each of the parties on their departure. They returned a few days after Christmas, jumping back into the fray and looking to New Years as the new deadline. Because the type of last minute expectation
of reaching a deal is not unusual (the 1998 Belfast Agreement for example was given a deadline of the friday before Easter. Most of the work done on hashing acceptable terms was in the last week with the last few days a stressful and exhausting ordeal, word of a deal by the last party reached close to the wire through strong leadership exhibited by UUP's David Trimble), there was an expectation all around that an agreement would be reached. In the end, there was disappointment as it was announced on the 1st that an agreement had not been reached and the American teams were heading home.

The biggest holdout in these talks was the First Minister's own party, the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party), which historically has engaged in obstructionist politics (the Sunningdale strike in 1974, the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1996, the walkout of the peace talks in 1997, and the push for "No" on the 1998 referendum, are several examples prior to their taking power in the country). While the DUP is certainly not the same party as once it was, there is nontheless the appearence that the DUP believes that concessions made to secure an agreement would not be able to be sold to their electorate, especially the Loyalist members who believe their culture is being sold-out to Nationalist interests. An editorial in the Belfast Telegraph just after the talks lambasted First Minister Robinson as less of a leader and more of an administrator. Certainly Robinson faced extreme dissension within party ranks, concerned about another fracture. While Nationalists comprise only two parties, the Unionists are already divided among 4 parties with none presenting a roadmap to a shared future that would benefit both of the divided communities in NI. Robinson does not possess the charisma and ability to gather followers as his predecessor Ian Paisley did. Sadly all around leadership with a unique vision and the ability to convince their party membership and electorate is a feature lacking in all of the major parties. So the status quo remains, as evidenced by the many problems which has plagued power sharing characterized by
distrust is combined with a jockeying for a lions share of the scarce resources.

As disappointing and potentially indicative of a failure as the negotiations are in some circles being portrayed,I prefer to see the talks as progress of a small scale. From just looking at the talks themselves it is perfectly reasonable to see them as gloom and doom. Looking at them from the perspective of the entire past 5 decades of history however shows the talks to have been a mere setback, and amazing progress from where Northern Ireland once was. Sure the machinery is riddled with inefficiency and sectarian polarization, the fact is that the bureacratic machinery still exists and is providing the day to day running of the infrastructure of Northern Ireland. Socially there is still a very divided society; yet that is to be expected in a place where divisions were long embedded and distrust of the other side ran rampant. It is slowly getting better. That these politicians are sitting together in the same room and discussing their differences is a testament to change. More discussions like these are needed and an evolution over more time to tackle these remaining thorny issues.

Official Week One

This is my "official Week one." Though I've been here for a fortnight (2 weeks for those back home), much of the time has been spent in learning my way around, locating a flatshare situation, getting a pay-as-you-go phone, and starting my internship. All the typical "I just moved to a new country" sort of things. This was the week I actually started work on the internship, so that is why I'm calling it my first official week one and what I'm starting the clock from. This is my blog, my Julian calendar, I can choose whatever frame of reference I want! In the words of Mel Brooks, "It's good to be the King!"

Things are well here in Belfast. I'm busily engaged in the observation part of my research and am finding things to be more nuanced than ever I had thought. It's strange...the Northern Irish are known for being guarded, but being an American seems to give an immunity making them want to open up and (as one lass I was talking with said) "convert me to their way of thinking." Maybe the American accent is as entrancing for them as the Irish/British are for us. Or maybe being an outsider from a perceived neutral country in their conflict, they feel safer. I can't yet say. What I can say though is that being here on the ground is being of infinitely more use than any amount of literature review and reading of Northern Irish History/culture...there are nuances and significant elements which would be virtually lost by an individual who was not immersed in the day to day.

One nuance is the entrenched suspicion with which the Protestant and Catholics see one another. Much of this has been a divided society in which there was little interaction beyond some financial/business transactions. Religion, social, education, all has been separated. Conflict experts have consistently pointed out the segragated aspects as having continued the tensions for so long. While employment and to an extent social interaction isnt as segregated as once it was, integration in relation to education has been heavily resisted. State sponsored schools continue to remain highly Protestant and Parochial schools continue to remain mostly Catholic, with some fundamentalist sects having parochial schools of their own (such as the Free Presbyterians), though some innovative experimental schools have been promoted over the last 20 years with some success. So many perceptions around identity, it's shocking at times to even contemplate the level of alienation and internalized fear that exists in this society. One gentleman I have gotten friendly with who was raised Catholic shared with me that he has a distrust of the Protestants he works with.

Another nuance which historians like Tim Pat Coogan have broached (Coogan being a former reporter from the Republic [or "down south" as they call it] would have a deeper understanding of it) is the ambivalent nature of North-South relations within the Nationalist communities. Despite the nationalists in the north wanting to be unified with the south, there are tensions where the south really doesnt even look on the north as brothers, but with an element of 'other.' 80 years have passed since partition, but those scant years have been enough to really damage relations between the two nationalist sects. What they say isn't always what they mean...Northern Nationalists often look on their southern counterparts as not being true nationalists, and failing to come to their aid on many occasions. The economics of reunification alone would be disastrous to unionist and nationalist alike, just merely talking about healthcare alone (the North uses the British single payer system, while the Republic of ireland has a state subsidized insurance system) where Northern Irish would lose pretty much free access to GPs, surgeons, and pharmaceuticals. Right now the Republic is struggling, and there are some southern Irish who have started emigrating north looking for jobs. What a reversal this was from 20 yearsago when "the celtic tiger" was in full swing! Most Northern Irish I have talked to (from both communities) discount the actual cultural differences between the North and South, but being from outside I see them even more pronounced.

To me it's hardly a surprise...Ulster has always been unique and individualized, with a history quite different than that of the south. From 700 BC on Armagh was the seat of ecclesiastical power on the island of Ireland, as well as politically under the O'Neill clan kings. While the North did face extensive invasions by Norse and Danish invaders, the North resisted fiercely leaving them less subjugated than in the south. This unique identity expanded even further first by the injection of the Presbyterian planters and then by rapid industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries. Even the regional accents are quite thicker than in the rest of the island (with the exception of the West Cork, and noone seems to know where the hell THAT came from). For an example of the regional nature of accents in this small area, see the video below.

So much to learn and so little time in which to do it! Every thing I see is still novel and exciting. I'm not sure if the chocolate actually IS better here or whether it just is the psychological suggestion of it being Irish chocolate, but everything has been having that effect. I really like it here, and absolutely love Northern Ireland!