Journal articles on the topic 'Homosexuality – Ireland'

Homosexual acts were illegal in Ireland until 1993. Between 1962 and 1972 there were 455 convictions of men for crimes such as ‘indecency with males’ and ‘gross indecency’. Homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association until 1973 and by the World Health Organisation until 1990. ‘Treatment’ provided in various countries, including England and Northern Ireland, included psychotherapies (such as psychoanalysis) and ‘aversion therapies’ involving delivering emetic medication or electric shocks to homosexual men as they viewed images of undressed males; administration of testosterone followed by showing films of nude or semi-nude women; and playing tape recordings outlining the alleged adverse effects of homosexuality and alleged benefits of heterosexuality. In Ireland, homosexuality was regarded as a sexual deviation throughout the 1960s and some psychiatrists were involved in court proceedings and ‘treating’ homosexual persons with psychotherapy. Although there are some suggestions that ‘aversive therapies’ were used for homosexuality in Ireland, there is currently insufficient primary evidence to clarify this further. The history of psychiatry’s attitude to homosexuality is revealing for what it shows of the changeability of psychiatric diagnostic practices over time, and the extent to which certain psychiatric diagnoses are subject to social, political and various other influences. There is a strong need to enhance mental health services for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons who experience mental health problems.

This essay shall examine the relationship that exists between Irish studies and queer theory via a consideration of three recently published works, both academic and literary. The texts that shall be reviewed are: Eibhear Walshe's Oscar's Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Modern Ireland, Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka's Kate O'Brien and the Fiction of Identity: Sex, Art and Politics in Mary Lavelle and Other Writings, and the new collection of plays, edited by Fintan Walshe, entitled Queer Notions. The association between Irishness and otherness (a connection explicitly stated by Oscar Wilde) means that the shadow of queerness haunts Ireland and Irish studies. The works being examined in this essay illuminate some of the forms (among many) ‘queer Irish studies’ can take.

Using primary archival material, this article explores the role of students and universities in the campaign for gay rights in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s. At a time when few organisations in Ireland involved themselves in the campaign for gay rights, student bodies facilitated the promotion of gay rights, interaction between gay rights organisations and students and challenged the legal and societal attitudes towards homosexuality in Ireland. In doing so, universities, both north and south of the border, became important spaces of gay rights activism, both in terms of the activities taking place there, but also symbolically, as gay and lesbian students challenged their right to claim a space within their respective universities, something denied to them in the past. Moreover, through the use of the student press, conferences and campaigns to gain official recognition for gay societies, students helped to promote a broader discussion on gay rights in Ireland. This case study analysis of gay rights activism on Irish universities offers an insight into the importance of exploring the efforts of students beyond the long 1960s, arguing that students continued to be important agents in challenging the status quo in Ireland and transforming Irish social norms.

While the benefits brought to the LGBTQ+ community through the legal reforms enacted in the last two decades are undeniable, paradoxically the contribution of this community to Ireland is still largely absent from official narratives of the past. This article discusses Jamie O’Neill’s novel At Swim, Two Boys (2001) as a response to this absence through its reconstruction of Easter 1916. The narrative that the novel presents on the Easter Rising differs from national and nationalist accounts of the event in that it is not a mere recollection or remembering of what happened, but rather a re-membering of it. Drawing on the approach of the Easter Rising as a moment of possibility, the novel reassembles the narrative of the rebellion on the basis of gay experience, an experience that has been absent not only from the historiography on the Easter Rising, but also from the national imaginary as well. Through this reassemble and resignification of the rebellion, O’Neill’s novel provides a retroactive as well as future-oriented counter-memory of Irishness that materializes the need to reorient of Irish historiography and the political body based on a non-heteronormative affiliative understanding of the sovereign country. Keywords: LGBTQ+ Voices; 1916 Easter Rising; Memory; Jamie O’Neill; Irish Historiography.

This essay interrogates how the theatre of Queer monologist Neil Watkins challenges HIV-stigma, while simultaneously reconciling his Queerness and HIV-positivity with a sense of Irishness. The development of life-saving drugs for the treatment of HIV means that, in certain parts of the world, including Ireland, people are no longer dying from AIDS, but living with HIV. This has given rise to what cultural commentators call a ‘Post-AIDS’ discourse, whereby a discourse of crisis and death has evolved into one of health and typical life expectancy. In terms of being ‘post-AIDS’, Ireland bifurcates into two paradoxical socio-cultural discourses: that of HIV as a medical event, and that of AIDS as a cultural narrative. And while the discourse surrounding HIV the medical event is progressive and democratic, the cultural narrative of AIDS in Ireland is steeped in stigma, ignorance, and contagion paranoia. This damaging narrative is mirrored and embodied in Irish theatre. Interrogating Irish theatre's contentious relationship with the HIV-positive body reveals persistent themes of absence, hiddenness, illness, and death. Neil Watkins disrupts this dramaturgy of shame by mobilizing HIV-stigma to political effect, disrupting received knowledge and cultural assumptions about the HIV-positive body and its current theatrical placement within an anachronistic discourse of crisis. In earlier monologues such as A Cure for Homosexuality (2005) Watkins blurs the lines between the fictional HIV-positive character and the living performer, engendering a troubling tension for the spectator. With his latest work, The Year of Magical Wanking (2010) Watkins further evolves this space whereby the boundaries between character and performer are completely negated. By journeying through Watkins's ‘magical’ year of quotidian HIV-stigma and sexual shame, the spectator discovers the roots of such shame and stigma are not only embedded in Irish socio-political structures, but also in a limiting and narrow heteronormative sexual imaginary.

11 May 2003. As I was preparing to write the Editorial for this, my last issue as Senior Editor, three seemingly unrelated incidents of transnational significance impinged on my consciousness. First, a Nigerian woman asylum-seker in Ireland was granted a stay of deportation, a direct challenge to a ministerial change in the Irish constitution which now decrees that foreign-national mothers of Irish-born children no longer have any residency rights. Her choice is stark, like that of Grusha in Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle: she can either take her child back to Nigeria with her, or (since the child is an Irish citizen) leave him behind in an orphanage. No sooner had I read of this woman's plight than I discovered the case of four Kosovan Albanian asylum-seekers in the UK who had fled as much for reason of persecution of their homosexuality as an escape from ethnic fighting, but who ended up, because of their statelessness and immigrational illegitimacy, being forced to prostitute that same sexuality in order to pay off their unscrupulous traffickers. And then at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport's railway station I watched in despair as a Romanian woman risked her life to retrieve a €1 coin from the tracks, dropped inadvertently by an American tourist moments earlier.

The majority of those infected and affected by HIV are younger adults. The ability of highly active antiretroviral therapies (HAART) to extend survival means that those infected when younger may reach older age, and future increases in numbers of older individuals living with HIV in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (E,W&NI) are expected. Evidence that older individuals engage in risky sexual behaviours suggests potential for HIV transmission. Data from national HIV/AIDS surveillance systems were reviewed (1997–2001). An older individual is defined as aged 45 years or over. Between 1997 and 2001, 2290 older individuals were diagnosed with HIV; 361 in 1997, rising to 648 in 2001. Heterosexual acquisition accounted for 1073 (47%) infections; 662 were male. Where reported, 666 (65%) older heterosexuals were probably infected in Africa, 144 (14%) in the United Kingdom and 113 (11%) in Asia. There were 1020 (45%) new diagnoses acquired homosexually; white (92%), infected in the United Kingdom (78%). Numbers of older individuals accessing HIV-related services more than doubled between 1997 (2488) and 2001 (5175). In 2001, 2270 (53%) were London residents. Between 1997 and 2001, among HIV-infected older individuals attending genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinics, the proportions previously undiagnosed were 60% and 82% in heterosexual males and females respectively, and for men who have sex with men (MSM), 42%. Numbers of older individuals newly diagnosed with HIV have increased in recent years. The increase in numbers of older individuals accessing HIV-related services were in excess of younger adults. A significant proportion of older HIV-infected female heterosexuals and MSM were undiagnosed. Awareness must be raised among clinicians, and an ‘aged response’ to HIV is required.

En 1748, la Sala de Vizcaya inició un proceso contra Francisco Guerrero, un joven marinero malagueño que portaba un arma blanca. Su proceso judicial revela que el acusado había sido preso por un corso inglés, hecho prisionero en Irlanda, y que tenía pendiente un juicio por reiterado abuso del “pecado nefando” con otros prisioneros. La causa contra Guerrero invita a reconocer la problemática competencia jurisdiccional de los presos, comparar diferencias y similitudes entre el sistema penitencial español y británico, al tiempo que se pretende comprender las dinámicas de comportamiento jerárquico-sexual del universo carcelario. Palabras Claves: Pecado nefando, Prisión, Jerarquías sexuales, Justicia ordinariaTopónimos: Portugalete y KinsalePeriodo: Siglo XVIII ABSTRACT:In 1749, the Court of Vizcaya initiated a process against Francisco Guerrero, a young sailor from Malaga who carried a knife. His judicial process reveals that the accused had been captured by an English Corsair and imprisoned in Ireland. He was also awaiting trial for repeated abuse of "nefarious sin" with other prisoners. The case against Guerrero invites us to acknowledge the problem of jurisdictional competence in relation to prisoners and compare differences and similarities between the Spanish and British penitential systems, while trying to understand the dynamics of hierarchical-sexual behaviour in the prison environment. Key Words: Nefarious Sin, Prison, Sexual Hierarchies, Ordinary JusticePlace names: Portugalete and KinsalePeriod: 18th Century REFERENCIASArmada Naval (1793), Ordenanzas Generales de la Armada Naval. Madrid, Joaquín Ibarra. Tomo II.Berco, C. (2007), Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status. Men, Sodomy, and Society in Spain’s Golden Age, Toronto, University of Toronto Press.Berní y Català, J. 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This paper investigates representations of male homosexuality in contemporary Irish narratives, exploring the progression of homosexuality in Ireland as it has moved from a suppressed crime to a confidently asserted identity. Does inclusion of homosexuality in narrative need to subscribe to explicit, "in-your-face" foregrounding in order to be important to that narrative? Does a gay voice in contemporary Irish narrative have to be the loudest in order to signify assetion of the homosexual identity? Must gay artists bear the burden of the oppressive past in addressing homosexuality in their work, or is it unfair to place such categorizations and restrictions on art? These questions are addressed through the cultural and historical context of homosexuality in Ireland, looking at three different contemporary Irish narratives that feature homosexuality: Colm Toibin's <em>The Blackwater Lightship</em>, Keith Ridgway's <em>The Long Falling</em>, and Neil Jordan's film <em>The Crying Game. </em>

This article explores the role and impact of Gay Health Action (GHA), a voluntary AIDS organisation that operated in the Republic of Ireland between 1985 and 1989. Drawing on their publications and media engagement, it argues that GHA played a significant role in educating the general public about AIDS, while this group also challenged ideas about sexual health and dispelled negative stereotypes associated with homosexuality. In doing so, the activities of GHA begin to outline the initial public response to HIV/AIDS during the 1980s, while also contributing towards an emergent body of research on the changing nature of Irish society during the late-twentieth century. It suggests ways in which attitudes to the gay community were evolving and highlights the need for further research on AIDS, examinations of which can contribute towards the emergent histories of social change and health policy in this period.