Unnatural Offences of English Import: The Political Association of Englishness and Same-Sex Desire in Nineteenth-Century Irish Nationalist Media
Abstract
In nineteenth-century Ireland, newspapers shaped and were shaped by politics. The most important issue for nationalist politicians like Daniel O'Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell was getting some semlance of autonomy back for the Irish from the English. But the English had the power, and by their estimation, the Irish were not fit to rule. They were unruly, savage, violent, lazy, and drunk. By mid-century, newsprint became a war ground, where editors and politicans could battle over the moral right that each nation had to rule. The Irish nationalists, represented in particular by the Freeman's Journal, the Examiner, and the United Ireland, used one trope in particular to chip away at England's self-proclaimed right to govern Ireland: sexual immorality. Same-sex desire in particular, the crime "not to be named by Christians," proved the most powerful arsenal in the nationalists' camp. Through selective sodomy trial coverage and queer scandal exposes, the Irish nationalists made their case known when it came to who was more morally fit to rule Ireland. This article discusses the quiet but effective process of associating homosexuality with Englishness in Irish nationalist media, and its legacy in Anglo-Irish relations and postcolonial Irish identity.References
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