Construction Of Lesbian Identity Research Articles

Developing Lesbian Identity: A Sociohistorical Approach

The process of construction of lesbian identity in a group of eight Spanish women is analyzed from a historical–cultural perspective. For that purpose, we provide a characterization of discourses about homosexuality in Spain and the way in which these discourses are intertwined with autobiographical narratives of the participants. The participants' life stories were analyzed using a qualitative methodology. We focused on the relationship between self and lesbianism and emphasized the themes related to identity issues (development of lesbian identity and reflections about identity). As a conclusion, we stress the need to deconstruct stigmatizing discourses about homosexuality for the development of a positive personal identity.

The L-word. Queer identifikation och mediereception

The L-word is said to be the first commercial television drama that is narratively centered on lesbian characters. How is a queer audience, in this case eighteen lesbian, bisexual or queer identified Swedish women, interpreting a homonormative mainstream media text? This article aims to read the representation and reception of The L-word against freudian psychoanalysis and spectatorship theory’s splitting of identification and desire and a queer critique of these. It also discusses the lesbian sex scenes in the series through some viewers interpretations of them. In focus group interviews, viewers are identifying, counteridentifying, but mainly disidentifying with the text’s construction of lesbian identity. The theoretical concept disidentification is borrowed from José Esteban Muñoz, which is something in between identification and counteridentification. Subjects can enjoy but still not completely ”buy” the media text and its offered identities at large, in an ironic negotiated reading. The main aspects that viewers are not identifying with are class positions (upper middle class) and the glamourous surroundings and characters (not seen as typical for lesbians), something they saw as linked to ”american-ness” and US commercial TV. But before the viewing of the televised text, an earlier identification with lesbianism is made, even among the two heterosexually (but also somewhat queer) identified interviewees. Interviewees choose to identify with different characters, or more commonly, situations, and these identifications were changing. A heterosexually identified interviewee, Ida, both identified, admired and desired the character Shane, something that puts the splitting of desire and identification into question. My analysis further shows that there are multiple wiewing positions among the eighteen interviewees. This is particularly true for the sex scenes, where different viewers see the same scene as great, ”hot”, uninteresting, based on a male gaze and heterosexual norms, or even as violent.

From ‘Woman‐Loving Woman’ to ‘Queer’: Historiographical Perspectives on Twentieth‐Century British Lesbian History

AbstractHistoriographical approaches to 20th‐century British lesbian history have been shaped by a range of political perspectives. Lesbian feminist historians writing in the 1980s and 1990s emphasised the role of female friendships and lesbian relationships in supporting the lives and work of key figures such as Radclyffe Hall, as well as the negative impact of patriarchal oppression. In the 1990s, definitions of ‘the lesbian’ and the notion of the interwar period as a defining moment in modern lesbian history were challenged by queer and post‐structural approaches, which encouraged an interpretation of categories of sexual identity as unstable. The recent historical concern with geographies of sexuality has prompted lesbian historians to explore the impact of space and the material world on the construction of lesbian identity and experience.

Virtually Belonging: Risk, Connectivity, and Coming Out On-Line

This essay examines a self-defined, lesbian on-line community focusing on the construction and performance of identity in relation to coming out on-line. Coming out is a central narrative form in the construction of lesbian identity. In considering the implications of coming out in an on-line community, issues of privacy and public space are central. Coming out on-line can be seen as both an alternative to, and augmentation of, coming out off-line. Questioning whether this on-line community sustains performative utterances, the authors explore the relationships between on-line and off-line locales. The construction of boundaries is considered in an analysis of how sexualized bodies emerge in virtual spaces. KEYWORDS: lesbian; coming out; identity; community; on-line.