This innovative collection offers a new understanding of sexual and gender politics in Ireland throughout the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. Leading experts in the field contribute to a captivating and controversial debate on sexuality in Irish Society, and specifically include explorations of lesbian histories, the treatment of intersex persons in Ireland, the patriarchal system, prostitution, sex education, and the ongoing and divisive issue of abortion. Ireland’s relationship between the Church and State is investigated and questioned, along with the ‘double standards’ attitude towards women and their position within the law. New arguments made by the contributors in gender and women’s history throughout this book offer a re-examination of our understanding of the Irish State and how it has treated, and continues to treat, its people on the basis of gender.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Maria Luddy

Introduction: Politicising Sexuality in Modern Ireland ~ Jennifer Redmond, Sonja Tiernan, Sandra McAvoy, Mary McAuliffe

1. ‘Knowing Dissent: Lesbian Sub-culture in the Female Factories of Van Diemen’s Land ~ BláthnaidNolan

2. Elite Courtship: The Case of Mabel Smyly and Dermod O’Brien, 1901-1902 ~ Maeve O’Riordan

3. 'Loose and immoral lives': Prostitution and the female criminal inebriate in Ireland, 1900-17 ~ Conor Reidy

4. The Politics of Emigrant Bodies: Irish Women’s Sexual Practice in Question ~ Jennifer Redmond

5. ’Wheneverawomanwasneeded’: Garda WomenAssistantsin 1950s Dublin ~ John Johnston Kehoe

6. School Based Sex Education in Ireland 1996-2002: The Public Debate ~ Elizabeth Kiely

7. Breaking the Silence: Pro-Choice Activism in Ireland since 1983 ~ Mary Muldowney

8. Building Bodies: A Legal History of Intersex in Ireland ~ Tanya Ní Mhuirthile