Dublin Zoo FFS

[DumDeDumDeDumDeDum]

I shouldn't be shocked but I am. Someone in Dublin Zoo decided to use a bearded man dressed as a woman to advertise an offer for Mothers Day.
Before anyone tells me its a Hallmark Marketing day I'll say it and yes I agree thats what its become. Its just the principle of this is what annoys me. Its one of 2 days in the year dedicated to being a woman. And no its not even a funny depiction.

LOL she does 100% look v sad but its a credit to her level of maturity and wisdom to not play into the agenda 😂

I find the use of mainstreaming of drag performers very strange, and in most cases rather distasteful. For a zoo campaign, it is a weird choice, there's no clear connection, and I think drag is an adult form of entertainment.

However, it's not that they were saying a man is in fact a mother which is much more of a WTF. And happening in some instances as crazy as that is.

The question of why the entire gay community has come to be represented by a very small slice is an interesting one, and tbh I think a fair bit of the explanation for that is internal to the gay community. Rather than just outside people picking it up - there is some of that, and I've seen it at work for example with drag queen story-times, which often come out of direction from management that library programming, including for kids, needs to represent "diverse" people across all areas of diversity. How do you represent sexual diversity to kids, why not have a drag queen, they are like clowns a bit which kids love, right? And no need to mention actual sex which would be inappropriate.

Now its also just a fad, so follows the rules of fads where organisations jump onboard just because it is popular and they are trying to have wide appeal.

I read this article a few days ago but I didn't post it, there weren't any current threads that seemed appropriate. I didn't want to start a new one (what was there to say?) or resurrect a zombie

https://archive.ph/J8t5K

https://spectator.com/article/why-the-bbc-is-so-obsessed-with-drag-queens/

Even though it's about the BBC not Dublin Zoo I think it is still relevant.

Eta. It pretty much draws the same conclusion as the pp. Except they probably didn't get paid for writing it.

I would love to live in an Ireland that actually genuinely respects women. Decades of my life have passed and Ireland is still crap at treating women like fully autonomous human beings who deserve due regard for their rights, feelings and wishes.

Irish governments are very good with the mouthing of the platitudes for international consumption (about Ireland having cleaned up its act with regards how it treats women) but really it’s just found new woke ways to trample all over us.

This guy’s drag persona is “Malahide Mammy” (for non Irish posters Malahide is a middle class suburb of Dublin).
It is infuriating that Dublin Zoo have chosen a man doing a piss-take of an Irish mammy to promote Mother’s Day.
I mean, FFS did no one on the marketing team have a contact number for Vogue or Amy.
I see one TD has written to the board of Dublin Zoo seeking clarification of the decision making process that led to this ad, so hopefully they’ll respond to him.

In Unherd there's a long, excellent article about drag with...this as its initial framing

https://archive.ph/DKjTm

https://unherd.com/2026/03/how-normies-ruined-drag/?edition=us

but goes into more detail.

That's a great article, thanks - as is the Spectator one, but this one is excellent.

I didn't know that the man in drag on the Zoo's website was an actual character.

'Malahide Mammy' indeed - you can be sure that in Malahide - one of the most moneyed parts of Dublin - they call their mothers 'Mum' not 'Mammy' which is so ...common.😒

There's a whole industry of Things Irish Mammies Say which is sometimes funny [I like the apron which says 'You'll eat it, and you'll like it!' - Irish mammies don't 'do' fussy eating😄] but it started to get on my nerves when it got clichéd and belittling.

Put the clichéd and belittling Things Irish Mammies Say in the badly-lipsticked mouth of a man in drag, and it becomes sexist and offensive.

Because to some people in society, as hard as it is to believe, dressing as the opposite sex is funny and daring, STILL.

Then there's the misogynists who think degrading motherhood is hilarious.

I hate all zoos and as a Dubliner myself have often in years gone by been to Dublin zoo but never saw a rat as per a PP.

Also not a fan of drag queens, just not my thing and I cannot bloody stand panti bliss. Most obnoxious person ever and I have met him in person. Not sure why the zoo went with this particular dude but at least it wasnt Brendan O Carroll as I absolutely HATE mrs browns boys.

Will watch with interest to see if dublin zoo has a female dressed as a man for fathers day, a white person with "black face" for black history month....June is pride month so there's surely a heterosexual available.

I mean its all a bit of fun dontcha know. Let's all lean into it 🤔

Are you Irish yourself OP?

Yes indeed but am available and willing to morph into whatever Dublin zoo needs for their next campaign.

Its become another example of how polarised people are and its sad how many just think its a joke.

Exactly - we've gone from men in dresses telling us what to do to...well, men in dresses telling us what to do. With added Handmaidens who are holier than thou.

There was an article on the journal.ie about a TG4 documentary on Archbishop John Charles McQuaid [a very overbearing, misogynistic and conservative archbishop who had way too much influence on Irish society in the 1950s and 60s].

Very critical of his social conservatism, and so on, as you would expect.
Then at the end
As I write this, a protest is being planned outside Dublin Zoo by people upset by the use of a drag queen in an advertisement. In Canada and the US, school and library boards are removing fine books based on the persistent complaints of an engagingly small number of complainants.
And the panic about boys and girls using adjacent changing rooms when playing sports has probably gotten worse. And McQuaid, unlike so many of today’s guardians of traditional values, petitioned the government to take in more refugees.
John Charles McQuaid: The Archbishop who ran Ireland returns to our screens
So having been force-teamed with the American Right, we are now force-teamed with a misogynistic archbishop!😒

Note the American 'gotten' - and they complain about us being over-Americanised! and the idea that the problem is boys and girls having 'adjacent' changing rooms. Duh! adjacent separate facilities would be grand

You should have blurred-out the words Panti Bliss - I'm hoping they'll soon fade from my mind!

One good thing about clerical celibacy is that when JC McQuaid died in the 1970s, he didn't have a son to carry on his dictatorial theocratic misogyny..
Unlike Iran in 2026, where Mojtaba Khamenei has taken over the dictatorial theocratic misogyny from his late father...

/me Spends 10 seconds imagining Bishop Casey trying to found a theocratic dynasty 🤔😬

Going off on a tangent here but I think the Catholic Church has been a fantastic diversion for misogyny in ireland. I think there's been an undercurrent of misogyny in Ireland forever and the ills of the 50s, 60s, 70s, would have happened anyway. Its just the church was the visible entity seen to be doing it. Proof is that the same attitudes still prevail and bubbles up through the referendum, cervical cancer scandal, treatment if carers etc etc and crap like Dublin zoo. Women are still "less than" in Ireland!

I agree - 'misogyny will out', it was catholicism [not that the other churches were much better] and when the edge was taken off that, there was a brief period when it looked like women had made some advances, but then misogyny found a new conduit in the trans movement.

Different men in different frocks, but same misogyny.

In a similar vein, a hotel in Belfast is having ‘drag bingo’ with Titti Von Tramp (😳) to accompany your Mother’s Day brunch. Nothing screams ‘celebrate motherhood’ quite like a man in a dress with misogynistic moniker.

Thank you @MarieDeGournay....i thought I'd come back to a virtual whipping!