“You could all be in a pub right now,” Amanda Palmer marveled at the assembled crowd. We were notably a largely female, largely queer-presenting group in one of the smaller rooms at the RDS. It was lined with shelves of old books, providing such an ideal backdrop for an International Literature Festival Dublin event that it almost looked staged. “But you’re here!”

She wasn’t just talking about the fact that it was a sultry-warm Saturday night in Dublin: May 26th was a very significant day in Ireland and both she and her co-host, English feminist firebrand Laurie Penny, were very aware of it. We’d just voted, as a country, by an enormous margin, to repeal the Eighth Amendment. Penny, a lifelong goth, was wearing a gifted Repeal jumper to the event, even though it was pale pink and “the most colour I’ve ever worn on stage!”

Sure, we could have been in a pub, but the atmosphere at the event was as celebratory as any boozy gathering would’ve been. Advertised as a ‘discussion’ between two notoriously outspoken women, ILFD had given us a gift with this event and the women on stage, and the audience knew it. Early on, Palmer urged anyone who had worked on the Repeal campaign to stand up in the crowd and receive the applause and gratitude they had more than earned, and that jubilant tone continued throughout.

Amanda Palmer is an American singer, pianist and composer, notorious for her early adoption of crowdfunding music on Kickstarter and justly famous for her tender TED Talk (and the book based on it) “The Art of Asking.” She is Mrs. Neil Gaiman, one half of the Dresden Dolls and a force of nature — if you ever get the chance to see her live, treat yourself. She has been on the receiving end of internet venom more than once and has lived to tell the tale, and if that’s not twenty-first-century street cred, I don’t know what is. After a cheerful hello, out came Palmer’s notorious ukulele, and she played us in with a lovely rendition of “In My Mind.” Her classical training, often downplayed for raw emotionality in her performances, was obvious, as she clearly loved the acoustics of the hall and felt good. It’s one of my favourite pieces of hers, and it set the tone for some of the reflective discussion to come.

Palmer’s co-host Laurie Penny is, according to the Daily Telegraph, “without doubt the loudest and most controversial female voice on the radical left.” In her own words, Penny is “an award-winning journalist, essayist, public speaker, writer, activist*, internet nanocelebrity and author of six books.” She writes about “politics, social justice, pop culture, feminism, technology and mental health” and is basically #careergoals.

Penny had first covered the issue of the abortion ban in Ireland nine years ago, and she was practically bouncing in her seat at times while she discussed the outcome of the referendum with a journalist’s eye, offering the larger, global context to what had happened. “There’s been so much shit,” she pointed out frankly, discussing issues of Brexit, Trump and all that the world in general and feminists in particular have been through lately, “I’d forgotten what it’s like to win.” She echoed these thoughts the following day in a Patreon piece that was not as well-received as the talk: I suspect the emotionality of the moment and the intimacy of hearing someone speak and watching her delight shine through was something you had to be there to fully appreciate. Ironically, Penny noted at the time that, as a writer, it was hard to be clever about moments of profound goodness. “Weird platitudes start coming out,” she drawled, describing feeling like a hack.

“Lots of people have moved through stuff lately, particularly women and people of colour,” Penny noted, pointing out that it was leading to “more visceral feelings of not taking shit, not taking it on ourselves. The waiting-for-an-appropriate-moment, placating shit is done. Fuck that. We’re done.”

Throughout a passionate, if meandering, discussion that encompassed Harvey Weinstein handcuffed, personal anecdotes, how much of #MeToo and #TimesUp was due to Trump and the ‘alt-right’ pushback against women’s autonomy (“We’re the backlash against the backlash,” Penny noted), the overall theme that emerged was a full-throated rejection of shame. Shame is the tool used to keep people quiet regarding issues that need to be talked about. Shame is used to keep women in need of reproductive healthcare silent and lonely and cut off from their families. Shame, too, gives power to men, like Weinstein and Trump, who can use its silencing power to get away with, well… anything. Repeal was Ireland rejecting the shame that’s held us so tightly for so long.

“Not making people uncomfortable is a deeply internalised thing,” Palmer said, after identifying herself as a woman who makes people uncomfortable just by her live-out-loud presence. Penny agreed. As relatively well-known feminists who have worked through a lot of their internalised baggage regarding being women in the world, they can’t even “moderate [their] tone and be accepted.” But even though women are deeply socialised to not make men uncomfortable, it is only through that discomfort and moving through the shame of it all that any progress can be made.

Find the stream of the event below, courtesy of Amanda’s people:

watch my stream w @pennyred from dublin last night. such an amazing night & talk, so full of joy, truth & power!!! https://t.co/58N2FOngGa

— Amanda Palmer (@amandapalmer) May 27, 2018

All photography via Amanda Palmer’s Twitter.