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Asking Angela: Discourses about Sexuality in an Irish Problem Page, 1963-1980

The manner in which irish people spoke about sexuality changed dramatically between 1963 and 1980. This period coincided with a profound social and economic liberalization that challenged a dominant narrative of Irish society as Catholic, rural, and conservative.1 The establishment of Radio Telifis Eireann (RTE, the Irish Television Service) in 1961 provided a new forum for intellectuals and activists of new social movements emerging in Ireland to challenge this Catholic social thinking, offering viewers an alternative discourse with which to interpret their lives.2 The problem page or advice column of Angela Macnamara contributed in an important way to this challenge, presenting Irish readers with a modern approach to sexuality and, specifically, to homosexuality. The column reflected the rise and fall of expert voices on the subject of homosexuality and Macnamara's struggle to locate the discussion within a religious as well as a medical context. Ultimately, the letters sent to her and her responses to them demonstrate how in an era of high modernity the distinction between expert and lay audiences had been diminished, indeed, how some letter writers challenged Macnamara's authority as an expert and framed new understandings of their sexuality drawn from a range of new and conflicting voices.3