ABSTRACT
Women’s sexuality is used as a pawn in men’s power games, and classically so in struggles over ‘ownership’ of national territory. Monica McWilliams records that when Derry Women’s Aid raised the issue of ‘domestic’ violence in the 1970s, the paramilitaries became angry because the women were refusing to distinguish between the violence involved in ‘political punishments’ (i.e., as carried out by the paramilitaries), the violence inflicted by state forces and the violence inflicted on women by their husbands. Silencing is most stiflingly experienced by lesbians: there is no published material on the situation or experiences of lesbians in Northern Ireland. Geraldine Bradley, in a study of feminism in locally-based Belfast women’s groups, found that while self-identification as feminist was problematic and highly volatile for almost all the groups she talked with, ‘one of the most prevalent concerns seemed to be a worry about being mistaken for lesbians’.
