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

• Published in: Journal of the history of sexuality Vol. 19; no. 2; pp. 317 - 339
• Main Author: RYAN, PAUL
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States University of Texas Press 01.05.2010; University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press)
• Subjects: Advice columnists; Catholicism; Catholicism - history; Catholicism - psychology; Competition; Consultants - history; Consultants - legislation & jurisprudence; Consultants - psychology; Contraception; Discourse; Editors; Female homosexuality; Gays & lesbians; History, 20th Century; Homosexual relationships; Homosexuality; Homosexuality - ethnology; Homosexuality - history; Homosexuality - physiology; Homosexuality - psychology; Interviews; Ireland; Ireland - ethnology; Irish culture; Macnamara, Angela; Male homosexuality; Mass Media - economics; Mass Media - history; Mass Media - legislation & jurisprudence; Medicine; Men; Modernity; Officials and employees; Persona; Press; Religion; Religion and Sex; Religious beliefs; Religious orders; Sexual Behavior - ethnology; Sexual Behavior - history; Sexual Behavior - physiology; Sexual Behavior - psychology; Sexual self stimulation; Sexuality; Sexuality - ethnology; Sexuality - history; Sexuality - physiology; Sexuality - psychology; Social activism; Social change; Social Change - history; Social Conditions - economics; Social Conditions - history; Social Conditions - legislation & jurisprudence; Social history; Studies; Television broadcasting industry; Women; Ireland
• DOI: 10.1353/sex.0.0105
• ISSN: 1043-4070; 1535-3605

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 authences 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 Born into an upper-middle-class Dublin home in 1931, Angela Macnamara became the most renowned "agony aunt," or advice columnist, in Irish society. In 1963, when Macnamara was thirty-two, the biggest-selling Sunday newspaper in the land, the Sunday Press, accepted a series of her articles on teenage dating for publication.5 They generated a huge public response, and Macnamara was invited by the editor to respond to readers' questions, effectively launching her career as an agony aunt.