new hibernia review / iris éireannach nua, 17:3 (fómhar / autumn, 2013), 100–118 Aidan Beatty  Irish Modernity and the Politics of Contraception, 1979–1993 In his seminal study Nationalism and Sexuality (1985) the cultural historian George Mosse argued that nationalism, “the most powerful ideology of modern times,” has had since its birth an intimate relationship with “respectability”— that is, the normative codes of public and private behavior, including sexual be- havior, which also emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, Mosse argues that both nationalism and respectability were essentially middle- class movements that sought to enforce “correct” ideals of action for men and women, and so fed off each other. Both were also inherently modern ideologies, relying on emerging modernist notions of mass politics and the public sphere. 1 Notwithstanding its obvious applicability to Irish contexts, Mosse’s innovative work, across a number of fields, has had sadly little impact on Irish Studies. A number of recent studies of Irish history have discussed the great relevance of notions of sexual respectability in modern Irish national identity. More spe- cifically, these works have looked at how the pious self image of a sexually pure postcolonial Catholic Ireland was imagined against its opposing counterpart, the decidedly heathen, sexually immoral, and oppressively colonial English na- tion. 2 What has perhaps not been grasped, however, is that this vision of Ireland represents a historically discrete modernist phenomenon. Ireland’s version of a specifically Catholic-nationalist modernity, though never singular, static or 1. See George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985), pp. 1–22. Other of Mosse’s important works are The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Towards the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York: Howard Fertig, 1997); and Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 2. See, for example: Louise Ryan, Gender, Identity and the Irish Press, 1922–1937: Embodying the Na- tion (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002); Elaine Sassoon, Pearse’s Patriots: St. Enda’s and the Cult of Boyhood (Cork: Cork University Press, 2004), pp. 22–39; James Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laun- dries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (South Bend: Notre Dame Press, 2007); Diarmaid Ferriter, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (London: Profile Books, 2009); Joseph Valente, The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, 1880–1922 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), pp. 1–23.