colonized people. It would also be true to say that many Northern
women who are sympathetic to nationalism are nonetheless concerned
as to what would happen to their rights as women in a United Ireland.
De Br ̇n explains how there are ëgains and lossesí for women in both
Northern and Southern systems. She concludes that overall the
advances made by women are ëno greater in one part of the country
than the otherí.^7
In spite of the difficulties for feminism in both the North and
South of Ireland which it might be assumed would bring Irish women
together, the national question still divides womenís groups. Bearing
in mind the political differences between women, the notion of border
transgression may seem at best utopian. Understanding gendered
national identity is also a matter of considering the Partition, the
separate Irish contexts and different women living in Ireland.
Although at the level of iconography the feminine is connected with
the national, there is difficulty establishing a coherent identity from
which Irish feminism stands. For instance, the politics, economics and
legislative environments of Southern Irish feminists are not always
comparable with those of Northern feminists. For women in the North
of Ireland there are difficulties with finding a neutral space in which to
discuss womenís issues in a community divided by sectarianism. Yet
to disavow possible points of mediation between feminists is to fall
into the trap of disallowing women the agency of saying ëweí. To
argue that the delimited positioning of some Irish women who are
victims of both patriarchy and imperialism cannot be transgressed or
undermined, and that no alternative can be imagined, is to deny the
possibility of resistance. However, as with the nationalist problematic
of decolonization, feminist moves to speak for ëusí risk submerging
difference.
In her essay ëFrom Cathleen to Anorexiaí (1994), the Northern
unionist writer, Edna Longley, explores the debilitating nature of the
sexualization of political identity. Longley compares women from
different ethnicities, religions and political backgrounds, to argue that
whatever their differences, Irish women are similar in terms of their
positioning at the raw end of patriarchy as the ëUlster Protestant
7 Bairbre De Br ̇n, ëWomen and Imperialism in Irelandí, Womenís Studies
International Forum, ed., Smyth, p.324.