Lesbian Lives Research Articles

Exiles of love?: uncovering lesbian voices in interwar Czechoslovakia

Lesbian voices and experiences have received little attention in Czech historiography: recent research has concentrated on the modern era from the 1950s. This article deepens our understanding of lesbian lives in interwar Prague. It focuses on two forgotten lesbian novels, Exiles of Love and The Third Sex, which were deliberately suppressed after 1948 by the Communist regime as examples of inferior bourgeois literature. The two authors, Lída Merlínová and Gill Sedláčková, both hailed from Prague’s cultural world (theatre and film) and were active too in the 1930s Czech movement for homosexual reform. Spanning the late twenties to the late thirties, the novels reveal tantalising glimpses of the evolving sub-culture of interwar Prague. Merlínová’s naïve novel of 1929, Exiles of Love, was the first Czech lesbian novel, and it betrayed the 1920s optimism of the ‘Czech New Woman’ who was prepared to challenge gender stereotypes. Sedláčková’s novel, The Third Sex, is a more explicit study from 1937, reflecting the more mature sub-culture but also a cynicism about the chances of homosexual reform. Yet it manages, even more than Exiles, to convey an uplifting and moral message. Indeed, both novels are about lesbian self-knowledge, exploring the scope for same-sex survival in a world where the best solution may be abroad, not in ‘provincial Prague’. In restoring these texts to lesbian literature we recover a range of voices, expressing the hopes and frustrations of some queer Czech women in an unusually liberal era.

“How do we do that?” An analysis of TikToks by lesbians over age 30 representing sexual identity, lived experience over time, and solidarity

Lesbians have long turned to digital media and technologies for information, support, and to self-represent sexual identity in ways that have the capacity for building communities and gathering publics and counterpublics. TikTok is a short video platform popular with young people, which has increasingly seen the participation of comparatively older users. This paper investigates the self-representation of lesbians over age 30 on TikTok to understand the themes in their content and how the platform shapes their communication with others. Through sampling tailored to TikTok’s algorithmic curation, ten lesbians’ accounts are examined alongside qualitative coding and analysis of 50 of these creators’ videos. Findings reveal key themes regarding the expression of identity and age, lived experience over time, and bids for connection and community. TikTokers expressed lesbian identity in continuity with longstanding stereotypes to enhance visibility but also incorporated humor and youthful trends to give rise to novel identity expressions. Videos showcasing the passage of time and sociopolitical change demonstrated the resilience of lesbian lives and conveyed hope while advice and statements of solidarity expressed support for young people’s present struggles with homophobia and transphobia. Contrasting with studies of TikTok’s generational wars, this article shows how older lesbians are building generational bridges through their uptake of youth-driven platform practices, sharing of past challenges to support youth in overcoming present hurdles, and by modeling lesbian futures.

Understanding the nature and impact of sexual violence and abuse in the lives of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender individuals and couples

This article examines the nature of sexual violence in the lives and relationships of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender individuals and couples. Despite the concerns regarding disclosure, figures suggest a higher incidence of sexual abuse for gender and sexual minorities than for the general population. This abuse encom-passes both hate crimes as well as abuse within intimate partner relationships and, for those who are transgender, there is a heightened incidence of sexual violence. Attention has also been focused on the damaging effects of sexual assault on the health and well-being of its victims, including mental health concerns, self-destruc-tive behaviours, and attempted suicide. Several case scenarios are used to high-light the existence of discrimination, rejection, and abuse (including sexual abuse) within friendship networks and intimate partner relationships for those identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans. This article concludes with an examination of clinical considerations and implications for practitioners in working with difference and attending to implicit bias.

Variables with a negative impact on the quality of life of gays and lesbians in Spain: evaluation of homophobic and lesbophobic indicators to guide youth education.

Despite the evidence about the negative impact of homophobic and lesbophobic attitudes on the quality of life of these individuals, the World Health Organisation (WHO) continues to report a lack of research and understanding regarding the health of gays and lesbians and LGTB people in general. There is a growing commitment in public health to understand and improve the health and well-being of LGTB people, and it is very important that professionals in social, educational and health care settings are adequately trained and informed to solve the problems that persist in this population. The aim of this study was to identify homophobic and lesbophobic attitudes in a Spanish youth population, analyzing the relationship of these attitudes with sociodemographic, cultural, political and personal variables. A descriptive, cross-sectional study was carried out with 325 young people aged 18-30 years. The information was collected through the Modern Homophobia Scale of Raja & Stokes, in which sociodemographic and sociocultural variables were also gathered. The data were analyzed and correlations were estimated. The males showed a more negative attitude toward homosexual people compared to the females. The participants with a higher education level presented more positive attitudes toward homosexual people. Younger people with a heterosexual orientation had more negative attitudes toward homosexual people compared to those with a homosexual orientation. The participants with a stronger right-wing political tendency presented a greater percentage of negative attitudes toward LGTB people. Variables such as education level, sexual orientation and political ideology may have a significant influence on the attitudes toward homosexual men and/or lesbian women. Different results were obtained as a function of sex, thus it is important to consider the gender perspective in future studies that tackle this topic.

Lesbian Lives in Soviet Latvia: The Narratives

This article employs narrative analysis to examine three testimonies provided by individuals who were contemporaries of lesbians in Soviet Latvia. The author’s research is based on two oral history interviews and the diary entries of a homosexual man, dating between the 1950s and 1980s. The research was carried out in four stages: (1) story analysis; (2) identification of main topics and characters; (3) identification of main terms and tone; and (4) extraction of three key narratives. The findings demonstrate, firstly, the lack of terminology to describe homosexual/non-heterosexual relationships between women when referencing the Soviet time. This indicates that contemporary terms used by the LGBTQI+ community may not be valid for analysing the experiences of non-heterosexual people in Soviet Latvia. Secondly, the testimonies described in this article view same-sex women’s relationships through heteronormative lens as deviating from the norm. Thirdly, the article highlights how rigid expectations of “manly” and “womanly” behaviour and traits are used to judge compliance with or deviation from societal norms. The understanding of non-heterosexual relationships between women, as evidenced by the sources, cannot be standardised. While the testimonies reference non-heterosexual relationships between women, they also mention same-sex relationships, which may have formed due to socioeconomic conditions and different intimate bonds.

The Social Negotiations of “Girls Like Us”: What Text-Messaging Dyadic Interactions Reveal About the Lives of Queer, Lesbian, and Bisexual Girls Living in the United States

While there is emerging literature addressing the gendered nature of digital communication between youth, research about the everyday communications, friendships, and social relations of LGBTQ+ youth remains sparse. This study explores how 14 to 18-year-old, cisgender lesbian, bisexual, and queer girls living in the United States come to understand themselves and others in dyadic text messaging conversations of girls who were previously unknown to each other. Using grounded theory, this secondary data analysis identified the pervasiveness of heteronormative frameworks in participants’ communications with each other. Findings indicate that both digitally-mediated expressions of selfhood and queer identity are dynamic processes significantly shaped by normative discourses and participants’ desire to connect. Drawing on and contributing to girlhood and youth studies, this research provides insight into how queer cisgender girls construct literacies of self, sexuality, and gender, and establish connection, and how they resist heteronormativity to validate their own and each other’s sexual identities.

Between Heteronormativity and Acceptance: Gays and Lesbians in Private and Public Space in a Comparative Perspective

ABSTRACT The article presents selected results from the two studies on the everyday life of lesbians and gays in Slovenia carried out in 2004 and 2014. It focuses on the experiences of homophobia and violence and coming out in different social settings. The findings are presented in a comparative perspective with an attempt to identify the main changes in the ten-year period. Although it was expected that the comparative analysis would show an improvement in the situation in the everyday life of gays and lesbians in Slovenia, the results show about the same level of violence against lesbians and gays in the public sphere and an increase of violence in school settings. However, there are more positive narratives from the private sphere, especially within the family, where there are fewer negative reactions and greater acceptance after coming out. Nevertheless, even here lesbians and gays often experience the “transparent closet,” a social situation where after coming out they face silence and indifference from other family members. The situation is discussed considering broader social, political and cultural changes that have happened in Slovenia in the last two decades, including continuous attempts by conservative actors to re-traditionalize Slovenian society.

Differentiating from TV Representations: Shame and the Process of Gay/Lesbian Identification Among Chilean Television Viewers

ABSTRACT The representation of gays and lesbians on Chilean television has increased steadily over the last decades. This paper offers an analysis of the role these images had in the processes of sexual identification of a sample of 25 members of the audience who identify as gays or lesbians. Through a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews, it is shown that the respondents believed that the televisual representations of homosexuality have contributed to further marginalize gay and lesbian lives. This strengthened damaging feelings that fed into a sense of shame that was originating from multiple institutions and texts, thus complicating their processes of self-recognition and self-acceptance during their childhood and adolescence. Taking examples of how participants described their relationship with these representations and the ways in which they circulated socially, it is argued that they could only articulate their identification as gays or lesbians by disassociating themselves from these images and establishing a clear difference in regard to them. This was in a process in which several other informational and experiential opportunities came into play, which allowed them to resignify the categories gay/lesbian and lead less conflictive processes of identification.

A queer problem: writing sapphic anarchism in Spanish Civil War fiction

ABSTRACT In this article, I offer an analysis of anarchist attitudes towards lesbianism in Spain in the 1930s and how these attitudes have informed my creative practice in writing a novel about the experiences of queer women in the Spanish Civil War. I propose that the anarchist lesbian is a paradox, being a figure that is simultaneously visible and invisible in the 1930s, and consider the importance of the butch stereotype in identifying lesbian women of the time, using Lucía Sánchez Saornil as a leading example of a masculine anarchist woman in the public eye and the individualist writings of Poch and Armand as examples of the generation of positive attitudes towards, and even encouraging, sapphic love. I locate my novel as a bridge between historiography and literature that seeks to rectify the lack of documentation about lesbian lives in this period. Finally, I offer a reading of Rosa Maria Arquimbau’s novel Quaranta anys perduts as an example of representation of coded lesbian anarchism in historical literature and explain how my work builds upon this genealogy of queer historical fiction about the Spanish Civil War.

Flags and fashion: expressions of solidarity through lesbian clothing

The clothes worn by lesbians are rich in meaning. Sometimes, they can help us to understand lesbian history and the social, personal, political, and erotic context of lesbian lives in the past. As LGBTQ communities have grown and the connections between groups within it have become at once stronger and more complicated, the clothes that lesbians (and others) wear can function as narrators. Lesbian fashion can be a tool for solidarity, our ideals worn quite literally on our sleeves. This paper is an analysis of how clothing has been - and is being - used by lesbians to show support for other groups within LGBTQ communities, through a fashion history lens. The focus is on printed t-shirts as well as clothing in different Pride flag colours, which I propose can be understood as a kind of “flagging.” Flagging, here, is a way to understand the intentional choices made by lesbians and other LGBTQ + people when signalling personal identities and intra-community solidarities through dress. When solidarity activism is placed directly onto the lesbian body, it is personal, and can craft specific messages. These messages, constructed from a language of identities, visual culture, and physical garments, are what this paper seeks to examine.

Beyond sexual deviance: Elevating the expansive intimacies of Chicana lesbian life in Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About

In this article, I expand popular readings of Chicana lesbianism focused on sexuality by tending more deeply to the affective terrains of love and kinship represented in the 1991 anthology Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About edited by Carla Trujillo. Countering the (il)logics of white supremacy and Chicano nationalism which reduce Chicana lesbians to symbols of sexual deviance, I argue that Chicana Lesbians embodies an expansive matrix of intimacies that reconstruct the Chicana lesbian figure from a one-dimensional symbol of sexual deviance to a multi-faceted figure who redefines what it means to love one’s people and culture beyond colonial paradigms that privilege heterosexuality. Drawing upon theories of decolonial love and queer asexuality, I examine the expansive inner lives and intimacies of Chicana lesbians to construct a more thorough portrait of how we love and relate to each other. While many studies foreground the sexual lives and politics of Chicana lesbians as subversive to the heteronormative status quo, I elevate the equally powerful forces of love and kinship in our struggle to transform the legacies of colonialism and Chicano nationalism.

Novel Approaches to Lesbian History

“People require a past in order to live in the present and imagine a future” (166). Although Linda Garber’s study ends with this assertion, the statement represents the core thesis developed in her study of lesbian historical fiction. Garber’s analysis is grounded in thorough and detailed scholarship, using a wide range of theoretical, historical, literary, and primary critical sources to ground her reading of the literary works. In addition to referencing the scholarship, Garber illustrates the text’s key topics with both literary and popular fictional texts. This inclusion of popular fiction stands out as an important aspect of Garber’s discussion; integrating popular genres, since they are read more widely, gives Garber the ability to raise and examine her key questions of how history is used to provide lesbian readers a sense of a connection to the past. Such novels, by providing stories that actively place lesbians into specific historical periods, allow such readers to feel a sense of “validation,” that their lives have always been part of the world (3). Using fiction highlights one of Garber’s main questions about the historical record of lesbian lives: how can the accuracy of historical records be judged when lesbians have often been left out of such material, either deliberately or not?

Readers respond to Alison Bechdel: fan letters and the emotional afterlives of Dykes to Watch Out For

ABSTRACT This paper examines letters written to American cartoonist Alison Bechdel by fans of her now beloved comic, Dykes to Watch Out For (DTWOF; 1983–2008). These letters, written over the course of the strip’s long run, offer fascinating insights into readers’ reactions and emotional attachments to DTWOF, the diversity of the strip’s appeal, and the potential political consequences of fans’ deep affective investments. The letters show that the comic connected with readers from a variety of backgrounds, who responded to its sympathetic and multifaceted representation of lesbian lives for myriad reasons. The letters reveal how DTWOF was able to forge a heterogenous audience through fans’ affective bonds, and potentially transform ontologies and political views. Though rarely the object of investigation—particularly when dealing with a “low” cultural form like comics—these fan letters illuminate the meaningful roles seemingly ephemeral cultural products play in people’s lives.

Proportion of ALGBT adult Brazilians, sociodemographic characteristics, and self-reported violence

Asexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (ALGBT) individuals face worse life conditions and violence rates than their heterosexual cisgender counterparts. Brazil is often highlighted for having one of the highest rates of hate-related homicides against ALGBTs in the world. However, to date, Brazil’s ALGBT population has not been investigated with a representative sample, and basic information such as population size or sociodemographic characteristics are mostly based in non-systematic data. We aimed to assess the proportion of asexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and non-binary adults in Brazil, their sociodemographic characteristics, and self-reported violence rates. In 2018, a sample (n = 6000) of the Brazilian adult population answered a face-to-face survey assessing sociodemographic characteristics, gender identity, sexual orientation, and self-reported psychological, physical, verbal, and sexual violence. Among Brazilian adults, 12.04% are ALGBT: 5.76% asexual, 0.93% lesbian, 1.37% gay, 2.12% bisexual, 0.68 trans, and 1.18% non-binary. Compared to heterosexual cisgender men, most ALGBT individuals have worse socioeconomic indicators and higher rates of self-reported psychological and verbal violence. All ALGBT groups and heterosexual cisgender women reported sexual violence more often than heterosexual cisgender men. It was reported between 4 up to 25 times more often by heterosexual cisgender women and trans individuals, respectively. The rates of the other ALGBT groups sit among the two. Our findings provide evidence of the important size of the ALGBT Brazilian population, as well as their socioeconomic vulnerability, and concerning violence levels experienced by the group. Policy makers may refer to the present article in order to mitigate this population’s vulnerability and to better understand its sociodemographic characteristics.

Family and Work Lives of Lesbians in China: Implications for the Adult Worker Model.

This article examines the ways in which lesbians explore opportunities and navigate constraints in their family and work lives in urban China. It not only reveals Chinese lesbians’ difficulties in gaining equal access to the labour market and developing their desired family lives, but also discusses possible ways of enhancing the applicability of the adult worker model for sexual minority women. Previous research has indicated a shift from the male breadwinner model to the adult worker model, suggesting that both men and women are expected to join the labour market, and that women should not carry all the care responsibilities within the family. However, the model largely overlooks the interplay of gender and sexuality factors in shaping work and family lives. This article adopts a qualitative mixed-methods approach, including interviews with 20 Chinese lesbians and social media analysis, to examine lesbians’ experiences of taking part in the family as adults and in the wider economy as workers. It shows how gender norms, heteronormativity, and policy intersect in generating obstacles for Chinese lesbians to thrive as respectable adult workers. This has important implications for attempts to improve the adult worker model to fit better with people’s diverse work/family needs.

Country Queers

Most representations of rural life depict the stories of straight, white American families, in some way or other. Rae Garringer is out to set the record straight. But, far from simply challenging the idea that rural areas are monolithic, Garringer and their editorial team are producing engaging and moving podcasts that offer much-needed opportunities to connect rural and small-town queer people with one another.Garringer's podcast Country Queers: The Podcast, which began in 2020 and began its second season in the fall of 2021, provides a vivid audio documentary of the diverse lives of queer, lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual people living in rural North America, highlighting voices across the intersections of race, class, age, ability, indigeneity, and religion. With content from the US Southwest to Canada, the podcast uplifts the diversity of queer life in the country, while talking about the joy, the challenges, and the collective experience of being queer in rural communities. However, since it is a project with Appalachian roots and origins, Appalachian audiences will certainly find substantial amounts of content about queer mountain life. Easily a third of the episodes include interviews with Appalachian voices, and many of those will be familiar to readers of this journal. From a tear-provoking interview with dearly departed community leader and former organizer at the Highlander Center, Elandria (or E) Williams, to a moving oral history with acclaimed east Kentucky writer Silas House, Garringer's podcast provides content that the region has yet to see. That is, this podcast directly engages with Appalachian queer life in its full breadth and dynamism, producing an important archive of Appalachian experience that is publicly available in an easily accessible and deeply care-filled manner.The project is also a useful example of public oral history scholarship. The podcasts are based on Garringer's growing archive of oral histories with queer people living in rural areas. Garringer began collecting interviews in 2013, now numbering over seventy oral histories in total, a project built into their studies in folklore and American studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Experiences with the groups Staying Together Appalachian Youth (STAY) and Southerners on New Ground (SONG) also provided Garringer with the inspiration to make the project a reality.Coming to us from Garringer's home of Whitesburg, Kentucky, the podcast has the professional feel of Appalshop-trained producers. Garringer is one of those unique interviewers who is able to direct a conversation but also leave ample space and tenderness needed for these kinds of vulnerable and deeply personal stories. However, with crisp, high-quality editing, the podcast barely feels like an oral history archive. That may be due in part to the editorial team, including assistant editor Tommie Anderson, and the star-studded editorial advisory board: self-described “Xicana Queer Feminist mama” community organizer, Hermelinda Cortés; acclaimed journalist Lewis Raven Wallace; and scholar of queer black feminisms Dr. Sharon P. Holland, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A useful and important bonus is that in each episode, our host takes a break to ask white listeners with means to donate to various important rural Indigenous- and black-run organizing and community projects. A clear-visioned example of why the politics of representation matter, Country Queers is a compelling format for sharing the first of its kind archive of being queer in the country. Appalachian scholars and activists alike will get much out of listening to these vibrant and tender stories.

Tiha generacija: istospolno usmerjeni starejši

Older gays and lesbians are one of the most invisible social groups as they experience “double invisibility”: in Western societies that celebrate youth, they are invisible as older and as older homosexuals. Existing research shows a different structure of social networks of older gays and lesbians compared to older heterosexuals, it points to fears of discrimination in care activities and feelings of exclusion from the LGBT community, which, like society at large, is defined by youth. This exploratory study for Slovenia identifies similar trends, with the key problem being the tension between an individual's stigmatized homosexual identity, which the elderly still mostly hide, and the LGBT community, which is not inclusive for older gays and lesbians. The purpose of the research was to identify key characteristics of everyday life of older gays and lesbians in the period before the existence of activism in Slovenia and the characteristics of the current position of older gays and lesbians in the LGBTIQ + community and society at large.

Library fever: lesbian memoir and the sexual politics of order

ABSTRACT Scholars across disciplines have recognised the symbolic and practical importance of information infrastructures in queer lives – from archives to the contemporary Internet. This essay builds on this work to argue that crucial to understanding this fact is what it says about the place of structure and order in queer history and theory. While these ideas have tended to be maligned in queer thought, and imagined primarily as manifestations of Foucauldian power, the approach taken here is to highlight their specifically queer affordances. The essay focuses on a range of high-profile lesbian memoirs from the U.S. that prominently thematise the place of libraries and information access in lesbian lives: anthologies of coming out stories, Audre Lorde’s Zami and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. Libraries in these texts are lifelines, workplaces and romantic scenes: they become imbued with lesbian meaning. But they are also complexes of standardisation, order and classification. The texts’ attachments to ordered information systems and to specifically lesbian identities are at odds with queer thought’s long-standing aversions to both classification and identity. But this essay takes this tension as the occasion to interrogate core assumptions of queer studies that place queer lives only in opposition to all structure and order.

Canonizing the mundane: narrating and transgressing the Nigerian queer self/selves in Unoma Azuah’s Embracing My Shadow and Chike Frankie Edozien’s Lives of Great Men

ABSTRACT Discussions of LGBTQIA+ rights are still taboo in parts of Africa where traditional and religious values remain significant. As public discussions of queer life can bring about marginalization and threaten personal safety, some Nigerian authors have opted to present literary queer selves. Few studies of queer African autobiographical writing have been conducted. This article examines Unoma Azuah’s Embracing My Shadow: Growing up Lesbian in Nigeria (2020) and Chike Frankie Edozien’s Lives of Great Men: Living and Loving as an African Gay Man (2017) to investigate how the queer self is represented through the mundane. The works are amongst the first to narrate gay and lesbian lives in Nigeria. By canonizing the mundane, Azuah and Edozien describe the dimensions of their lives and their negotiations of sexual, racial, and national identity. The article examines their queer experiences, their reconciliation with parents and family, and how they confront tradition.

Lesbian kinship in Asia

Cognizant that concepts and theories in the study of sexualities have been developed in the context of the West, scholars researching lesbian lives in Asia are attuned to the local cultural context and seek to understand how lesbians negotiate their sexualities and partnership especially in the web of kin relations. Some scholars have come up with different concepts to capture the disclosure of non-heteronormative identities, but almost all look into how lesbian daughters express their identities and give visibility to their partners while meeting familiar obligations and preserving, or challenging, kin relations.