As the college year begins once again, many Freshers’ will be embarking on the start of their academic journey in third level colleges across the country.

Approximately 10% of these students identify under the LGBT+ rainbow and will be looking for a safe space where they can be themselves.

Many of Trinity first-year orientation packs will have included the satirical publication ‘Pirahna’ which is a freesheet published by Trinity Publications.

In this magazine, they published a What’s Hot, What’s Not list under which ‘Gays’ were listed as ‘hot’.

The piece then goes on to reminisce about homophobic bullying in secondary school, refer to the LGBT+ community using homophobic slurs and make fun of terms used by the LGBT community.

It reads:

“Remember the limp-wristed arse bandit you gave a hearty kicking to on Junior Cert night?

“Yep you guessed it, that very same Oklahomo and his mattress muncher pals are rgeBig Nancy’s On Campus.”

It then goes on to say that gay men are the ones running the campus at the moment:

“The guy with diamonds in his ears and disappointment in his Father’s eyes? He’s the goddamn chair of every interest you suppressed in order to pursue county minor and damage your knee joints irreparably.”

Piranha, which was founded in the 1970s, has a long history of controversy in Trinity College. A previous editor of the magazine left the college in the mid-1990s after the magazine was banned by
the college authorities.

It was once again banned in 2006 after an offensive article about the reaction of Western media to the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

The editors of Pirahna told GCN:

“The article is about homophobia. It’s not intended to be homophobic. It, as satire often does, shines a light on the realities of growing up gay in Ireland through brutal visceral language, while also mocking how objectively successful members of the LGBT+ community are within Trinity. The Piranha is a satire paper written and edited by members of the Queer community and we feel it would be disingenuous for us to not write honest comedy about our own experiences of bullying growing up & thriving within Trinity.”

Do you think it’s acceptable to use such language in the name of satire or is this a step too far?