Lesbian Identity Research Articles

Possibilities Foreclosed: The Civil Union Act and Lesbian and Gay Identity in Southern Africa

In 2006 the Civil Union Act was enacted in South Africa, allowing same-sex couples to enter into marriages or civil partnerships. These relationships mirror the entry requirements and consequences of civil marriages, but contain no features of African customary marriages. This, in turn, reflects a belief that customary marriage and the African communities within which it occurs, are more traditional and conservative than civil law and that they lack the ability to accommodate same-sex relationships. This article shows that the opposite is true. Social science evidence shows that African communities in Southern Africa have long allowed same-sex marriages in a range of contexts and forms, none of which are acknowledged by the Civil Union Act. Moreover, the particular form of globalized gay and lesbian identity upon which the Act is premised, fails to reflect the more complex practices and beliefs of those who have same-sex relationships in African societies. In its insistence on merely mirroring civil marriage, the Civil Union Act therefore failed to grasp the opportunity to imagine richer concepts and more sophisticated forms of legislation which could have been inspired by the customary law.

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.

Gay Teachers' Negotiated Interactions with Their Students and (Straight) Colleagues

In this article, the author examines two sets of complex relationships at school: one between gay teachers and their students and another between the same gay teachers and their colleagues at school. Some researchers have maintained that gay teachers fail to advocate for gay and questioning youth because they fear showing support for these students places their jobs in jeopardy. The author found, however, that the gay teachers in this study responded to gay students' needs and demonstrated support in a variety of ways, despite working in school environments that were often hostile toward the GLBT community. The author also discusses an array of relationships found between gay teachers and their heterosexual colleagues at school. These relationships uncovered no particular pattern, but reinforced the idea that gay teachers must negotiate each faculty interaction and make decisions about revealing their sexual orientation accordingly. The author closes with recommendations for school administrators and teacher educators, and strongly suggests that all faculty members take responsibility for the well being of gay and questioning students.

‘Coming Out, Again’: boundaries, identities and spaces of belonging

The practice of ‘coming out again’—relinquishing a non-heterosexual identity and having to subsequently come out again as something else—can have an enormous impact on feelings of belonging in particular social spaces, such as in the gay and lesbian community. These feelings are manifested through the perceived boundaries around sexual identity categories and the specific rules and expectations about how sexual identities should be performed in particular communities. Drawing on interviews with seven Australian women who once identified as lesbian but who had subsequently relinquished this sexual identity, this article examines the boundaries around lesbian identity and the role of the authentic lesbian discourse on women relinquishing their lesbian identities. I describe the consequences that these discourses had for participants on their sense of belonging within both lesbian identities and lesbian communities, and argue that these boundaries are responsible for some women seeing identity change as their only option when they cannot fit into the authentic lesbian discourse. Furthermore, the particular boundaries around lesbian identity contain the space available for the performance of sexual identity, rather than allowing for a genuine fluidity of sexuality and the inclusion of diverse ways of performing sexual identities within non-heterosexual communities.

A Lesbian Identity Disclosure Assessment: ALIDA Instrument

ABSTRACT Background and Purpose: Disclosure of lesbian sexual identity has been associated with greater self-esteem, less anxiety, and greater relationship satisfaction. Nondisclosure interferes with supportive, congenial, and intimate relationships with important people in their lives. Lesbian mothers choose nondisclosure to protect their children from social, psychological, and physical harm. Since disclosure is a health concern, ALIDA was designed to measure disclosure for lesbian mothers. Methods: ALIDA is a written, self-administered instrument with 15 questions that fall under 6 categories. It was tested on 360 lesbian mothers from 38 U.S. states. Results: ALIDA was one-dimensional, reliable (.79), and had face and concurrent validity. Regression indicated that 58% of the scores were predicted by eight variables. Conclusions: ALIDA measures disclosure and should be used in more studies.

The positive aspects of being a lesbian or gay man.

The need to provide culturally competent training for counseling gay men and lesbians (as well as other sexual minorities) is limited by the relative scarcity of research. Extant research has focused on psychopathologies and negative life experiences with little attention to the positive aspects of the lives of gay men and lesbians. An online survey collected data on perceptions of the positive aspects of being a gay man or lesbian (N 553). Qualitative analyses revealed 3 domains with 11 themes. The positive aspects of gay or lesbian identity were belonging to a community, creating families of choice, forging strong connections with others, serving as positive role models, developing empathy and compassion, living authentically and honestly, gaining personal insight and sense of self, involvement in social justice and activism, freedom from gender-specific roles, exploring sexuality and relationships, and enjoying egalitarian relationships (lesbian participants only). These findings are discussed in light of recent literature on positive psychology and strength-based therapeutic approaches.

Discourses that silence: teachers and anti-lesbian harassment

This paper examines the way lesbian identities are silenced in schools particularly through anti-lesbian harassment. Based on research with 30 self-identified lesbian teachers working across high schools in New South Wales, Australia, the discussion illustrates how various responses to anti-lesbian harassment silence the recognition of such harassment, contributing to the invisibility of lesbian identities in schools generally. The argument highlights the shifting nature of both the subject and power. It illustrates how discursively (re)positioning harassers re-establishes and reinforces the harassed teacher's personal and professional power; however, this simultaneously serves to rationalise the harassment. This silences the awareness of the prevalence of anti-lesbian abuse by individualising the behaviour and pathologising the harasser, while ignoring broader socio-political discourses that maintain the frequently subordinated location of lesbian subjectivities.

The German Lesbian Family Study

SUMMARY This is the first study to explore the issues and decisions that lesbians residing in Germany face when striving to create a family by donor insemination. Using a self-constructed questionnaire, information pertaining to the first phases of lesbian family formation (coming-out, lesbian relationship, and decision-making) was collected from 105 lesbian mothers. The participants in this sample demonstrated a strong sense of lesbian identity, were in committed relationships, had taken part in lengthy deliberations about general and lesbian-specific aspects of parenting, and had aspirations of equal parenting which were reflected in their choice of terms for identifying themselves as mothers. Potential advantages for children included wantedness and diversity in up-bringing. Coping strategies for possible discrimination of children included valuing diversity, maintaining open communication, instilling pride, normalizing, and buffering. Maternal role allocation was based on desire to experience pregnancy. Plans for male involvement in children's lives had been made. Women generally experienced support for plans to parent. Co-mothers looked forward to becoming mothers but were sensitized to the consequences of legal and biological asymmetrical parenting. The choice of anonymous, identity-release, or known donor was related to attitudes towards biological fathers/donor issues and availability. The impact of German legislation regarding same sex marriage and lesbian access to reproductive services on family formation is discussed.

Out of the Closet: Representation of Homosexuals and Lesbians in Modern Arabic Literature

AbstractAlthough a great deal of research and criticism has been done on homoerotic desire in Arabomedieval adab literature, very little has been written on its representation in modern Arabic literature. In order to address this scholarly gap, my study poses the following questions: why is there an increase of homosexual and lesbian characters, at this contemporary juncture, in Arabic fiction? And what are the effects of such an exposure on the status of Arab gay rights? I argue that depictions of male homosexuality in contemporary texts draw on power dialectics of master/slave, active/passive and local/colonial, and as such reflect a sense of overall powerlessness, inferiority and alienation from the political process, while underscoring the Arab male's loss of manhood and of self. In contrast, female homosexuality remains locked into traditional, heterocentric discourse which claims that lesbianism exists only as a prelude to, or as a temporary replacement of “normative” heterosexuality, thus undermining the validity of lesbian body politics. Contrary to the medieval tradition which allowed more fluidity in the depiction of same-sex definitions and practices, and acknowledged the variants of homoerotic desire and action, contemporary Arab cultural and literary engagements of the topic overlook the biological aspect of this desire. Furthermore, they project gay encounters as a symptom of the social deterioration caused by political and economic oppression of the Arab citizen. I conclude that more attention must be given to the biological essence of sexual differentiation, to the body politics rather than gender politics, if the emergence of a recognized, outspoken Arab homosexual or lesbian identity is ever to be realized.

Transgender Identities and Public Policy in the United States

This article examines an emerging issue within the field of governance, the intersection of public policy with transgender identity. It is important that administrators better understand this issue given the lack of consistency in the current policy framework. This article addresses transgender identity's intersection with employment law, marriage, hate crimes, and the current legal framework for sex reassignment in the United States. The article also addresses how transgender identity contrasts with gay and lesbian identities with regard to public policy. Given widespread bias against this population, administrators are called to ensure that these individuals receive equal and equitable policy treatment.

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.

Time Period and Lesbian Identity Events: A Comparison of Norwegian Lesbians Across 1986 and 2005

The purpose of the present work was to investigate the assumption that the lives of lesbians are easier today. When exploring the hypothesis that identity events (e.g., coming out to parents) among lesbian women have changed over time and happen earlier in life today, we expected to find several time period effects. Two national samples obtained through mailed questionnaires were compared, 1986 (n = 123) and 2005 (n = 236), age range 20–49. Time period effects were found, including informants reporting identifying as lesbian earlier in life. Time period effects, however, were not found regarding relational identity events such as informing others about one's identity status. The findings did not reveal any conclusive evidence that it is easier to establish a lesbian lifestyle today.

Qualitative Data from a Postal Questionnaire: Questioning the Presumption of the Value of Presence

There is a common assumption that a postal questionnaire is an inappropriate research instrument for collecting rich qualitative data. In this article we challenge this and argue that in some circumstances such instruments can be used to yield rich thick descriptions of the kind normally associated with interviewing. We give the example of research into lesbian identities. Our experience led us to question what we call the epistemology of presence and the assumption that presence guarantees authenticity. We also suggest that the ethics of the face‐to‐face encounter may be different from those occurring at a distance. We conclude by arguing that researchers should be more open to the possibilities that postal questionnaires may be capable of generating authentic qualitative data, and that interviewing should be an explicit choice not the default position in qualitative research.

Lesbian Body Image Perceptions: The Context of Body Silence

As are all women, lesbians are influenced by Western society's expectations of what a woman should look like. However, they are also influenced by the lesbian subculture. One of the author's aims was to explore how the sociocultural contexts in which lesbians belong influence their perceptions of body image. She purposively selected 20 lesbians and used constant comparative analysis to guide data collection and analyze the resulting transcribed interviews. The internalization of the dominant culture's beauty expectations coupled with the adoption of a lesbian identity caused the participants to contend with a multitude of oppressive mandates from both sociocultural contexts. The author interpreted the outcomes of these oppressions through the lens of stigma theory. The results of the stigma assisted in the development of the context of Body Silence. The study results might serve to provide a better understanding of lesbian body image as an important component of lesbians' mental health.

From an Oppressed Citizenship to Affirmative Identities

In this paper we intend to articulate a multidimensional perspective on citizenship with a psychological understanding of lesbian and gay identities' development in the context of a Southern European country: Portugal. We begin by reviewing some legal statements and institutional regulations around gay and lesbian issues and the lack of opportunities for the affirmation of a non-hegemonic (sexual) identity in Portugal. Next, we describe participation efforts developed by the Portuguese LGBT nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the actual results that such efforts already produced in the political and cultural attitudes toward gay men and lesbians: particularly, the legal approval of domestic same-sex partnership is emphasized as a symbolic achievement of such political struggle. Finally, we explore the implications of communitarian participation for gay and lesbian identities' development, not just in terms of collective empowerment but also in what concerns individual development and well-being.

The Lesbian Community and FTMs

In 1998, Dr. Jacob Hale wrote about a “borderland” between butch lesbian identity and FTM masculinity, suggesting a “demilitarized zone.” While the intervening years have brought no “demilitarized zone,” the border may not have a long future. Converging trends in identity among the younger generation in their teens and twenties suggest this, such as changing meanings of ‘lesbian’ and ‘FTM,’ the blending of sexuality and gender, and understanding these as personal, rather than identity, differences. The socio-historical circumstances that gave power to anti-trans feminist attitudes and trans rejection of lesbian identity are disappearing. This is not to say that we are ‘post-lesbian’ or ‘post-transsexual,’ but the tension between identities, the need to distinguish clearly between them, and the arguments about who is ‘really’ lesbian or ‘really’ FTM may be of supreme unimportance to the next generation. Time will tell.

Carved in Flesh

This paper opens up questions regarding the ways in which reading the body leads to limited and limiting notions of identity. These questions are based around a critique of an ethnography of lesbian body-modification which I problematize in a number of ways. I suggest that reading the body of another is both methodologically and politically problematic. I reflect on how this approach confuses the complexity of body and identity and the ways in which this relates to establishing problematic boundaries of lesbian identity. I suggest an embodied identity cannot be fully understood or incorporated within any notion of the body as fixed or finite, and that neglecting the variability and mutability of the body is antithetical to political strategies of inclusion and equality.

Domesticating the Lesbian?

Domesticating the Lesbian?

The Relationship Between Early Drinking Contexts of Women “Coming Out” as Lesbian and Current Alcohol Use

Several decades of research show that lesbians are at risk for hazardous drinking. Compared with heterosexual women, lesbians are less likely to abstain from drinking, less likely to decrease their alcohol consumption as they age, and more likely to report alcohol-related problems. Stress associated with lesbian identity and reliance on lesbian or gay bars for socialization and support are frequently posited--but largely untested--explanations for lesbians' heightened risk. Results from general population studies indicate that patterns of alcohol use established early in the life-course or during life transitions influence later alcohol use and alcohol-related problems. Further, heavy-drinking peers, availability of alcohol, and drinking in particular social contexts--such as at bars and parties--are believed to contribute to heavier drinking and to alcohol-related problems. To better understand lesbians' risks for hazardous drinking, we examined relationships between retrospective accounts of drinking patterns and drinking contexts in the early stages of lesbian identity development and current drinking outcomes in a large sample of adult lesbians. Findings suggest that early drinking patterns and drinking contexts influence later alcohol use and have important implications for risk reduction and prevention among lesbians.

Older Lesbians and Gays Accessing Health and Aged-Care Services

The present paper examines older lesbian and gay people's experiences of and expectations for the delivery of health and aged-care services. In-depth narrative interviews were conducted with older gays and lesbians in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney (NSW, Australia). Data were analysed by identifying evaluative statements within specific narratives and grouping these statements into themes. Participants reflected on the meaning of their sexual identity and how they would like it to be acknowledged when in contact with health and aged-care service providers. In addition to direct discrimination, participants reported a more indirect form of discrimination in providers’ assumption of heterosexuality among clients and their failure to provide lesbian- or gay friendly services. The findings highlight the need for health and aged-care services to better understand and acknowledge older gay and lesbian people's sexual identities to enable improved access to services in the future.