Lesbian Feminist Research Articles

Transnational Alliances

An examination of U.S. feminists’ attempts at solidarity and interactions with Latin American movements and activists between 1970 and 1989 focuses on two radical feminist organizations—the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance (ALFA) and the Women’s International Resource Exchange (WIRE)—in order to illuminate the complicated nature of solidarity between First World and Third World feminism. Although solidarity with Latin America was central to many leftwing organizations during the 1970s and 1980s, the experience of radical feminist groups demonstrates how alliances of gender and sexuality altered these relationships of solidarity. Indeed, when socialist Cuba marginalized homosexuals, some radical feminists questioned which political identity to privilege—that of socialist or that of lesbian feminist.

Feminizing Lesbians, Degendering Transgender Men: A Model for Building Lesbian Feminist Thinkers and Leaders in Africa?

This essay looks at the recent lesbian feminist leadership institute held in February 2008 in Mozambique, aimed at developing African lesbian feminist thinkers and leaders. More than sixty participants from many African countries attended the weeklong institute. Many of the attendees identified as lesbian, others as not lesbian in same-sex relationships; there were a few transgender men as well as heterosexual women. The diversity of the participants allowed for a platform to interrogate African feminism and at the same time highlight issues around sexuality, particularly same-sex sexuality as well as the contentious issues on gender. A reading of such an institute allows for an analysis of feminist models applicable to the diversity of African and Black activists, scholars, and researchers. Reflecting on this institute foregrounds many of the contentions around a model of African feminism used to negotiate sexual orientation, race, class, and gender. Furthermore, this reflection aims to generate increasing sensitivity to the diversities of lesbian, feminist, and transgender experiences.

Queering the Cosmic Race

Despite their differences in place and time, the woman-centered Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral and the Chicana lesbian feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa both looked to a transnational intellectual American history that frequently connected discourses of esotericism, indigenismo, and mestizaje. My comparative approach shows how both women used these discourses as a way to reconceptualize the subjectivity of the queer, indigenousidentified mestiza in a modern world. Notions of a new cosmic consciousness achieved via racial synthesis echo through twentieth-century Latin American and Chicana/o texts; theosophical ideas about race and spirit were deeply influential in Mistral’s writing and beliefs, and theosophy in turn informed the New Age feminist spirituality that helped shape Anzaldúa’s work. Outlining a history of the connections between these esoteric beliefs and those of mestizaje, and indigenismo, I show how Mistral and, later, Anzaldúa inherited and rewrote these notions by incorporating them into a queer sensibility.

Naked and dirty: rethinking (not) attending festivals

This article draws together critical tourism studies and events tourism literature offering insights into the diverse motivations for, and barriers to, attending the predominantly lesbian and separatist feminist festival, Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. Augmenting the literature on lesbian tourism, the article deploys a conceptualisation of festivals, such as gay pride, that seeks to contest dominant codes and norms as parties with politics. Using the data gathered from 222 qualitative questions, 10 interviews and 1 focus group, it explores the intertwining of music, feminist politics and temporality in understanding womyn's motivations in attending a separatist festival. Distinctively, it demonstrates how barriers to, and motivations for, attending festivals can be paradoxically mutually formative. In this way, it becomes possible both to question tick-box motivational frameworks and to explore festival times and spaces as (re)making tourist encounters. Thus, the article opens up considerations and theorisations of festival attendee' motivations looking to the complexities of experiences, motivations and time–space interactions.

Efforts of Bifurcation and Liberation: Deconstructing the Story of a Turn‐of‐the‐Century Lesbian, Part One

This manuscript takes as its centerpiece fragments of the author's personal story of growing up as a closeted lesbian in school, in the Fortune 500, in the community, and a number of years attempting to integrate her lesbian identity into her professional persona – outside of the closet. This manuscript makes an attempt at a “duality search” ( Boje, 2001 , p. 23), deconstructing the story as it examines the bifurcation between personal and public, and in this case more exactly, professional and sexual orientation identities. The tension between closeted outsider and the prevailing expectations for promising “insiders” in organizational settings is also viewed in this paper through two related frames, both of which draw from lesbian feminist theory. The first is the concept of the Borderlands, as articulated by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) . The second is Adrienne Rich's ( 1979 , 1994 ) work and perspective on lying.

Critique of compulsory heterosexuality

The concept of compulsory heterosexuality was initially developed by lesbian feminists and gay liberationists in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Compulsory heterosexuality proved to be a major conceptual innovation because it made possible a structural sociology of sexuality. The center of analysis shifted from the individual homosexual and from individual acts of discrimination to the institutional enforcement of normative heterosexuality and its consequences for nonheterosexuals. This essay provides a critical analysis of this concept as it has been elaborated from the late 1960s to the present. The author outlines the analytical and historical limits of the critique of compulsory heterosexuality without abandoning a notion of the institutionalization of normative heterosexuality.

Destabilizing homonormativity and the public/private dichotomy in North American lesbian domestic violence discourses

Developing and circulating community-based educational materials and offering workshops are common feminist approaches to addressing violence in lesbian relationships. This article explores the racialized exclusions in the public/private dichotomy in community-based educational discourses about ‘lesbian domestic violence’. An examination of community-based educational materials and interviews with lesbian and queer feminist educators illustrates how the public/private dichotomy produces exclusions and makes certain forms of violence enacted on certain bodies unthinkable and unintelligible. While these discourses challenge heteronormative constructions of violence, they have relied on a simple conceptual framework that has had the effect of promoting a dominant narrative or regime of truth privileging white, middle-class lesbian experiences. This article seeks to destabilize homonormative constructions by arguing for an anti-colonial feminist spatial analysis of violence in same-sex/gender relationships.

Size Acceptance as a Grief Process: Observations from Psychotherapy with Lesbian Feminists

SUMMARY Based on observations from my psychotherapy practice, I apply Kubler−Ross’ five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) to the process a woman goes through when she learns about size acceptance and lets go of the unrealistic wish to make her body size conform to fat-phobic societal ideals of female beauty. Clients’ presentations, therapeutic interventions, and countertransference are discussed for each stage. Lesbian feminists are likely to embrace size acceptance politics but may retain negative feelings about their own body size. In the bargaining stage, they may confound health concerns with body image issues, and it is important in their therapy to provide a holding environment that can tolerate ambivalence. My own depression stage was marked by countertransference that caused me to avoid the topic of body image with my clients. Therapists can help women in the size acceptance grief process by exploring their own evolving feelings about body image, bringing up the topic, and providing a non-judgmental holding environment.

“Lesbians Are Not Women”: Feminine and Lesbian Sensibilities in Harmony Hammond's Late-1970s Sculpture

SUMMARY Harmony Hammond's wrapped fabric sculptures are placed in context of the theories of gender and sexuality that circulated among lesbian and straight feminists at the time they were made, the late 1970s. Hammond has cited in particular Monique Wittig's novels, such as The Lesbian Body, and her essays including “The Straight Mind,” where Wittig concludes that the lesbian is not a woman. The critique to which Wittig's lesbian separatism has been subjected by Judith Butler in her consideration of the appeal and limitations of essentialism also applies to Hammond's art. Hammond's use of vaginal imagery was instrumental to visualizing a lesbian sensibility, but the proposition of such a sensibility established a new problematic: a new essential category. The article concludes that because Hammond's work was produced in the context of a complex set of discourses, lesbian, feminist, and aesthetic, it resisted reduction to a singular meaning. Her sculptures avoided the pitfall of substituting one essence for another, lesbian for feminine sensibility, but activated both. The sculptures effectively queered vaginal imagery: When Hammond used vaginal imagery to represent lesbian sensibility, she subverted the equation of sex and gender and the essentialist notion of feminine sensibility.

A lesbian feminist analysis of the demise of hormone replacement therapy

For many years, radical feminists have been warning about the dangers inherent in the use of Hormone Replacement Therapy. Until the release of the Women's Health Initiative results in 2002, these warnings were dismissed and discredited. In this article I summarise these recent debates. In addition, I also draw upon findings from my doctoral research, the first study in Australia to examine lesbians' experiences of menopause, to highlight how lesbian voices and radical feminist analyses of the medicalisation of midlife are overlooked and dismissed. For the purpose of this article, I restrict my critique to the issue of Hormone Replacement Therapy. Throughout this article I challenge negative, stereotypical views of lesbians at menopause and suggest that listening to lesbians adds a new dimension to the presently narrow, heterosexist and medicalised view of women at midlife.

Mobilizing collective identity to reduce HIV risk among sex workers in Sonagachi, India: The boundaries, consciousness, negotiation framework

The significantly low rate of HIV infection and high rate of condom use among sex workers in Kolkata, India is partially attributable to a community-led structural intervention called the Sonagachi Project which mobilizes sex workers to engage in HIV education, formation of community-based organizations and advocacy around sex work issues. This research examines how Sonagachi Project participants mobilize collective identity and the manner in which collective identity influences condom use. Using purposive sampling methods, 46 Sonagachi Project participants were selected in 2005 for in-depth qualitative interviews. Taylor and Whittier's (Taylor, V & Whittier, N (1992). Collective identities in social movement communities: lesbian feminist mobilization. In A. Morris & C. Mueller (Eds.) Frontiers in social movement theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press) model of identity-formation through boundaries, consciousness and negotiation was used to interpret results. Subjects mobilized collective identity by (1) building boundaries demarcating in-group sex workers from out-group members, (2) raising consciousness about sex work as legitimate labor and the transformative change that results from program participation, and (3) negotiating identity with out-group members. This research establishes a conceptual link between the boundaries, consciousness and negotiation framework of collective identity mobilization and condom use. Condom use among sex workers is motivated by each element of the boundaries, consciousness and negotiation model: condoms mark boundaries, enunciate the consciousness that sex with clients is legitimate labor, and help negotiate the identity of sex workers in interactions with clients.

Social Justice and Lesbian Feminism: Two Theories Applied to Homophobia

Trends in contemporary social work include the use of an eclectic theory base. In an effort to incorporate multiple theories, this article will examine the social problem of homophobia using two different theoretical perspectives: John Rawls’ theory of social justice and lesbian feminist theory.Homophobia, a current social problem, can be defined as “dislike or hatred toward homosexuals, including both cultural and personal biases against homosexuals” (Sullivan, 2003, p. 2). Rawls’ theory of justice and lesbian feminist theory are especially relevant to the issue of homophobia and provide a useful lens to understanding this social problem. In this article, these two theories will be summarized, applied to the issue of homophobia, and compared and contrasted based on their utility.

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.

Hot bi babes and feminist families: Polyamorous women speak out

‘Polyamory’ refers to the open acceptance of multiple romantic/sexual relationships. Whilst it is often seen, from the outside, as fulfilling men‘s fantasies (representing the possibility of infidelity without guilt and having sex with more than one woman), many within the polyamorous community regard it as a more ‘feminine’ way of managing relationships, with much emphasis placed on the importance of open communication, the expression of emotions, and support networks. Most published writers on the topic have been women (Anapol, 1997; Easton & Liszt, 1997). Jackson and Scott (2004) and Robinson (1997) argue that it is important for heterosexual women to explore non-monogamy in order to radically re-work gendered power relationships, whilst Munsen and Stelboum (1999) propose that non-monogamy should be part of a lesbian feminist agenda. This paper presents an analysis of a focus group discussion with polyamorous women about these issues.

Contesting ‘Straights’ ‘Lesbians,’ ‘Queer Heterosexuals’ and the Critique of Heteronormativity

The essay explores interrelations between Lesbian Theory and Queer Straight Theory. It provides a brief genealogy and an interrogation of the “discourse of queer heterosexuality.” I argue that Queer Straight Theory is certainly indebted to lesbian (and) feminist critiques of institutional heterosexuality and their denaturalizations of straight and lesbian sexualities. Lesbian and Queer Straight Theories remain in disagreement, however, about notions of power and identity that shape their theoretical and political stances.

A Lesbian-Feminist Journey Through Queer Nation

This article is an auto-ethnographical review of the political experiences and literary career of one of the early lesbian feminist critics and theorists. It poses the question: what does it mean to be shaped by one theoretical and political discourse (Lesbian Feminism) and then thrust by historical change into another (Queer Theory)? With the author's life and work as a frame and exemplar, it illustrates the development of lesbian feminist thought. Ultimately, it argues that the insights and values of Lesbian Feminism should not be suppressed by those of Queer Theory, and calls upon lesbian feminists to re-insert themselves into current scholarly and theoretical debates.

Through the Looking Glass

Lesbian feminists who began their work in the 1970s probably share my mixed feelings about and attitudes towards Queer Theory: curiosity, envy, indignation and occasional agreement. The solar center of mostly male Queer Theory has young lesbian scholars orbiting around it. Gender used to share the stage with sexuality but now seems relegated to the wings. Like Marxists in the 1950s who remembered the heady days of the 1930s, we veteran lesbian feminists cannot help recalling the excitement and sense of possibility in Lesbian Studies twenty-five years ago.

‘WE WILL INVENT OURSELVES, THE AGE OF THE NEW IMAGE IS AT HAND’

We became very evangelistic trying to tell as many women as possible about this thing that we had discovered, and in those circumstances we began making a film to use for propaganda purposes. (Anon...

Beyond the Gay/Straight Split: Socialist Feminists in Baltimore

In recent histories of U.S. feminism, collaborations between lesbians and heterosexuals are overshadowed by the infamous "gay/straight split" of the early 1970s. In lesbian history, seventies androgyny is often characterized as a lesbian-feminist indictment of butch-femme lesbians' gender, which obscures androgyny's polyvalence. Oral history and a locally published journal illustrate how feminists in a Baltimore neighborhood shared politics and an idealized "socialist gender" in the 1970s. The article reveals that women "dressed down" in ways that de-emphasized their femininity and emphasized their critique of consumer capitalism. It argues that the continuing historical construction of the split between feminist lesbians and their heterosexual counterparts limits both the history of women's liberation and of sexuality.

The F Word: Is Feminism Incompatible with Beauty and Romance?

Three studies examined the predictive utility of heterosexual relationship concerns vis-à-vis support for feminism. Study 1 showed that beauty is perceived to be at odds with feminism, for both genders. The stereotype that feminists are unattractive was robust, but fully accounted for by romance-related attributions. Moreover, more attractive female participants (using self-ratings) showed decreased feminist orientations, compared with less attractive counterparts. Study 2 compared romantic conflict with the lesbian feminist stereotype and found more support for romantic conflict as a negative predictor of support for feminism and women's civil rights. Study 3 showed that beliefs about an incompatibility between feminism and sexual harmony negatively predicted support for feminism and women's civil rights. In concert, the findings indicate that a marriage between research on romantic relationships and the factors underlying sexism is overdue for understanding gender inequities.