‘Even the animals in the fields’: Animals, Queers, and Violence

Abstract

In the late 1980s in a house in rural Monaghan — in Keith Ridgway’s 1998 novel The Long Falling3 — a young man named Martin tells his father that he is gay. At first his father says, ‘Jesus Christ. I don’t believe it.’ And then, ‘The animals in the fields don’t even do that.’ When Martin argues with his father, who wants to blame his mother for ‘mollycoddling him’, the father turns to him again: ‘Did you talk to me? Did you open your mouth? Don’t talk to me again. Do you hear? Don’t let me see your mouth move. There’s shite on your breath. The animals in the fields don’t …’. The conversation quickly turns violent: ‘His father took a clump of his hair and pulled it tight. At first Martin thought that he was going to pull him backwards off the chair. But he did not. He changed direction, slamming Martin’s face into the table top.’ His father says, ‘I told you not to talk to me.’4