Think Outside My Box: Staging Respectability and Responsibility in Ireland’s Repeal the 8th Referendum

Ciara L Murphy,Miriam Haughton,Sarah Hoover

doi:10.20897/femenc/11755

Abstract

This article argues that the targeting of certain narratives of womanhood, those deemed ‘respectable’ and ‘responsible’, operated as a key performative and affective strategy during the Irish 2018 Referendum on the 8th Amendment of the Irish Constitution. When the Referendum to ‘repeal the 8th’ amendment was announced, both pro-choice and pro-life campaigns affiliated themselves with idealised imagery, narratives and performative strategies that focused on outdated patriarchal heterosexual constructions of ‘good’ women, i.e., respectable and responsible women, with the intention of convincing middle-ground voters. Pro-life and pro-choice campaigns in Ireland are deeply oppositional; that both sides identify the performativity of respectability and responsibility as the most influential narrative to convince the electorate signals that the conception of embodied womanhood and the traditional heterosexual family remains inextricably linked with idealised nationhood, entrenched with ideological, affective, political, cultural, and personal power. ‘Think Outside My Box’ is a call to cut ties that intersect with the foundational myth of modern Irish nationhood, and, female embodiment and representation in the twenty-first century.

Highlights

THE RIGHT TO LIFE, THE RIGHT TO LIVEThe Ireland that Ruane (2010) depicts is a grim place to live
This article argues that the targeting of certain narratives of womanhood, those deemed ‘respectable’ and ‘responsible’, operated as a key performative and affective strategy during the Irish 2018 Referendum on the 8th Amendment of the Irish Constitution relating to the legalisation of abortion services
As noted in the opening to this special issue, the 8th Amendment was inserted into Article 40.3.3 by referendum in 1983, placing the right to life of the unborn foetus as equal to that of the mother

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The Ireland that Ruane (2010) depicts is a grim place to live. there has been a heavy price paid for upholding a deeply conservative and stylised performance of respectability and responsibility in Ireland, inextricably linked to church and state control of female bodily autonomy. The campaigning by both pro- and anti-abortion activists performed another function alongside their overt political aims They reasserted which narratives can be welcomed, supported, tolerated, and which narratives should know their place; out of the collective community public space, ethically suspect and non-starters as representative of respectable female experience and respectable nationhood. Cullen and Korolczuk’s (2019) cross-cultural study of the referendum demonstrates this deliberate rhetorical strategy operating to invoke tragedy and de-emphasise radical or intersectional frameworks in order to destigmatise abortion, and Carnegie and Roth’s (2019) analysis notes the campaign’s focus on ‘hard cases’ This evident anxiety concerning which women feel welcome and supported by established political organisations to speak out regarding their embodied experiences in public space is telling of the deep pressure that remains inscribed on those public spaces. The price for overturning a culture of silence and shame seems to

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CONCLUSION