Sasha Piton
Irish-French-American Sasha Piton has travelled widely outside the US but has recently settled in Dublin. In her new series for The Journal, she shares the insights of a new arrival on a country she’s trying to call home.
PRIDE FLAGS FLYING in the wind feel like little friends waving at me. I’ve never been in a city that so proudly brandishes itself a safe place for the queer community.
If anything, showing support for humans finding safety in self-expression was more of an act of resistance than anything where I last lived. It feels nice seeing the wrapped rainbow poles, the rainbow fists in shop windows, and the flags flying amongst the seagulls across the tops of buildings.
Sadly, I am straight. It’s unfortunate that the indoctrination (read: drag shows) didn’t work. I’ve tried and failed a few times in the last twenty years to be gay and that information alone has always told me that sexuality isn’t a choice. If it was, honey, I’d be as gay as the Irish summer day is long. Of course, there is a spectrum and people find themselves on various points on that spectrum in feeling and expression, but all people deserve to feel safe.
This city has a similar energy as New York living in their mayor Mamdani era. There’s a freedom to walk down the street without bracing for impact.
Picture it: Manhattan Courthouse, 2026. Mamdani’s administration’s first Pride where the mayor uplifts the first trans woman to win a Tony and she holds it up for the crowd to cheer. It feels like early 2000s Sex and the City where queerness wasn’t a debate, but just the city’s pulse. I’m gutted that I’m not gay, and dating as a straight woman is horrible. Think of me as the pole holding up that flag. I may not be part of the flag but I’m straight and I will support you!
You know The Golden Girls raised me, and there is an episode where one of Dorothy’s students faces deportation. He will lose out on education, opportunity, and safety; everything at risk for this 15 year old who feels the weight of the world. I wish all people felt safe. There is racism continuously permeating the most wonderful lands, minds, and hearts. Like lava, it washes over things slowly enough that people can just watch it, but fast enough that some aren’t able to escape its heat. It burns even the most beautiful places.
The issues surrounding immigrants are politically complicated, but human to human, it’s about safety and freedom. As a woman, the daughter of an immigrant, and as a French American, sure, I have faced prejudice. But I’ve never faced racism.
In 2003, when France refused to join the US in the war in Iraq, I became a representative of France and its government overnight. People would hear me say my last name (because obviously I say it correctly) and they’d tell me why I should be ashamed to be French. Someone even spit at me in my high school. I remember thinking, girl, this is insane. I have no control over the French government but also… it’s so easy for Americans to say “get involved” when it won’t affect them.
I was IN France when the headlines broke. We were a group of Americans reading a very pro-French front page about how furious America was. I remember we talked about our fears to be who we were, where we were. We braced ourselves. But no one was unkind to us. Our whole group was treated with respect. And as we French say, “But of course.”
I gained a very important understanding that day: Europeans are better at separating government from its people.
Ultimately, I didn’t change any hateful minds. But I learned what it was to be comfortable pushing against the grain and pushing against opinions. Therefore, I’m ok doing it now: The racism lava is permeating the emerald isle. Women will DM me on Instagram and ask me how I feel as an immigrant in Ireland right now.
Disgusted and safe.
They’re asking because they saw what happened in Belfast, homes of immigrants burned, people under attack. They reached out to see if I was safe, and I am.
But that’s the whole problem. I am safe in a way that immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes are not. I am white, I’m not the focused recipient of such hateful remarks and acts of violence. I may never change the minds of those who leave hateful comments on my Instagram, my Facebook, or even this column, but I refuse to move through this city quietly as if everything is fine for everyone, when it isn’t. I know words aren’t enough, but silence is a choice I’m not willing to make. Everyone deserves to feel safe.
Dublin resistance
But if women stopping me in the street has taught me anything, Dublin isn’t standing quietly either. This city is full of women who will stop and talk about vision and politics, to talk about what happened in Belfast and how this is not who we are. About what a community can do to make sure those targeted know they’re not alone here. These women have decided that silence isn’t acceptable, and it’s more than Dublin warmth. It’s Dublin resistance. And I know exactly where I stand and who I’m standing with.
I still walk through the streets attached to Google Maps. And with everything I can find wrong with the world, I feel such gratitude for what saying yes to being an immigrant is bringing me. Yes, it’s hard. But I feel the strength of everyone who did it before me in my bones. Being scared and choosing to change everything is part of my DNA.
And just this past weekend, I said yes to the Gate Theatre, and the night kept saying yes back. We laughed through An Ideal Husband, then headed to Temple Bar, then drank baby Guinnesses, we danced and then ran into New Yorkers who’d spent two weeks tracing family who once crossed the same Atlantic I did.
This city feels full of possibilities for the future while still connecting us to the hearts of the past. I am proud to live where seagulls fly amongst the pride flags. May everyone represented in each stripe know they are loved, seen, and heard.
Sasha will be back with more insights into her adopted home (yes, Ireland) and city (yes, Dublin) next week.