Is hysteria a feminist response or is feminism an expression of hysteria?

To begin with, I wish to highlight some of the issues relevant to womens' lives in Ireland today, and I speak from a feminist perspective, or perhaps I should say, a hysterical position! In the last few decades Ireland has changed beyond recognition. We have moved from a largely rural and traditional society to a largely modern and urban one. The shift has been so great within such a short period of time, a single generation, from the 1950s to the 1980s, that Ireland has been considered unique within the history of family studies, a point noted in a recent ESRI research paper.[1] The patterns of the traditional extended family have dissolved and have been replaced by the norm of the nuclear society.…