Lesbian Voices 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.

Needing more: chicana lesbian desire as intervention and offering

Introducing the 1991 publication of Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, editor and visionary Carla Trujillo identifies the seed planted by Juanita Ramos’ 1987 anthology Compañeras: Latina Lesbians. Detailing her experiential arc from exuberant to unsettled, Trujillo explains: “Compañeras had only teased me. Not only did I want more, I needed more” (ix). Trujillo’s editorial recognition of a lack—of presence, voice, power, visibility—as well as the need to foster spaces for the nurturing of more Chicana lesbian voices and work engage two key components of what I identify as “needing more,” a critical engagement of Chicana lesbian desire as intervention and offering. Using analysis of queer, decolonial, and performance studies, I suggest that Chicana Lesbian desire as articulated in Trujillo’s anthology can be seen as a critical unsettling that posits both a critique of existing norms and structures as well as an active envisioning of new modes of self and queer familia. Shifting from theory to literature, I offer an application of “needing more” to two original contributions from Chicana Lesbians by Monica Palacios and Diane Alcalá. My analysis illuminates the three key elements of “needing more”—a recognition of lack, a conscious and ongoing envisioning of “more,” and an active renegotiation of familia within the context of queer desire and community. I close the essay with my letter testimonio in the spirit of Trujillo’s “needing more” and the collection’s enduring engagement with and impact on queer familia.

Queer Whispers: Gay and Lesbian Voices of Irish Fiction, by José Carregal (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2021)

Queer Whispers: Gay and Lesbian Voices of Irish Fiction, by José Carregal (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2021)

Queer Whispers: Gay and Lesbian Voices of Irish Fiction by José Carregal

Carregal, José. Queer Whispers: Gay and Lesbian Voices of Irish Fiction. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2021. pp. 218.

The institutionalization of queer theory: Where has lesbian criticism gone?

This contribution brings to the fore the lesbian silences veiled by dominant theorizations of queer studies in academia, nowadays more concerned with analyzing social affections such as queer diasporas, terrorism, human rights and necropolitics and positing intersectionality as the key configuration of queer epistemology. Yet, I am interested in eliciting how such existing approaches can help chart queer horizons in more inclusive ways without ignoring lesbian voices. Concomitantly, I will posit such lesbian positions as critical epistemologies we cannot do without, since only by unfolding past accretive knowledge on gender and sexuality will queer discourses become inclusive and relational. Hence, this article traces the evolution and theoretical shifts that queer theory has undergone in the last decades and further explores why “the lesbian” continues being dismissed as a marginal site of knowledge and material production, enacting a closeted identity, muted by other legitimate discourses in academia. Such a move toward new queer and affective frameworks, while convincingly essential, should not overshadow lesbian criticism. By drawing on relational and affective modes of being, I suggest recasting “the lesbian” as both a textual and ontological possibility capable of embracing the variety of lesbian-identified persons traditionally silenced by queer theory’s canonical institutionalization.

Lesbian Voices and Radical Feminism within the Brazilian « Homosexual Movement » of the 1970s and Early 1980s

This essay is part of a project entitled « Generation 77: Politicized Youth in São Paulo and the Demise of the Brazilian Dictatorship ». It studies the roles that Paulistano students, youth, and new social movement activists, played in mobilizations against the military dictatorship. In this essay, I focus on the early years of the small lesbian movement in São Paulo that developed in the midst of the process of democratization and offered a radical critique of sectors of an emergent women’s movement and traditional Marxist ideas that still had purchase among many radicalized youth.

Afro-Descendant Lesbians Strengthen Their Identity

This piece examines the key necessity of having the Black Lesbian voice within notions of feminism and the ongoing women’s movement. For two long this voice has been marginalized, and along with transsexuals, key insights are lost when this happens. In Cuba today, there is a growing movement of Black Women understanding intersectionality and pushing for the centrality of these voices.

Sexual orientation and the European Convention on Human Rights: What of the “L” in LGBT?

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has long been celebrated for its role in advancing LGBT rights. This article adopts an intersectional feminist approach in order to critically examine the trajectory of the Court’s LGBT case-law from a gendered perspective. In doing so, it foregrounds the portrayal, experience and, indeed, invisibility of lesbian applicants. Adopting an intersectional approach that considers the gender dimension of sexual orientation claims provides a somewhat different perspective on the struggle for LGBT rights before the ECtHR and suggests that lesbian voices and experiences have been marginalized and excluded in the struggle for LGBT rights.

Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers

Book Review| December 01 2015 Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers. Balay, Anne. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014xi + 172 pp., $34.95 (cloth); $29.99 (e-book) Miriam Frank Miriam Frank Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2015) 12 (4): 116–118. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3155188 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Miriam Frank; Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers. Labor 1 December 2015; 12 (4): 116–118. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3155188 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsLabor Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 by Labor and Working-Class History Association2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review: Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers, by Anne Balay

Book Review: <i>Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers</i>, by Anne Balay

Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims

Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims

“Homosexuality Is Bad for Me”: An Analysis of Homosexual Christian Testimonies in Christianity Today Magazine

This article reviews first-person testimonials written by gay and lesbian Christians in the evangelical newsmagazine Christianity Today between 2000 and 2010 to identify the common and dominant themes on how homosexual Christians negotiate their faith with their sexualities. It addresses how Christianity Today affirms the call by some queer theorists to provide a space for gays and lesbians to speak in their own voices, while framing their experiences so as to uphold, rather than disrupt, evangelical beliefs of homosexuality. The article discusses the strategies used by evangelical media to negotiate between acknowledging the lived experiences of gay and lesbian Christians without challenging traditional beliefs about homosexuality. It also considers how evangelical media appropriate gay and lesbian voices to limit what it means to be a gay Christian rather than explore new perspectives on religiosity and homosexuality.

“Loved with an L…”: The Lesbian Continuum in Three Works by Sylvia Townsend Warner

This article takes as its critical point of departure Adrienne Rich’s concept of a lesbian continuum of female sisterhood, support and dissent against the norms of patriarchal society. In particular, Rich’s term is used to explore three key works from the 1930s by the English writer, Sylvia Townsend Warner – Opus 7 , Whether a Dove or Seagull and Summer Will Show . Not only does Warner herself emerge both politically and personally as a radical lesbian writer during this turbulent period of the 1930s. The article seeks to argue in this context that these three works also represent in themselves a progressively connected delineation of a lesbian continuum of women’s lives through the individual female and lesbian voices that are articulated in Warner’s writing at this crucial stage in her career.

Book Review: Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers by Anne Balay

Book Review: <i>Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers</i> by Anne Balay

Book Review: Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims, written by Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle

Book Review: Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims, written by Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle

The Bedside Table Archives

The Bedside Table Archives is a curatorial project that borrows from arts-based research practice, oral history, and archival theory to produce a collection of records relating to women's queer homemaking practices in the intimate realm of the bedroom. This article introduces the project and examines the theoretical implications of actively and artificially creating an archival collection as an intervention into the absence of lesbian voices in public archives and the exceptionalism of established lesbian and gay archives.

Gay Sweatshop, Alternative Theatre, and Strategies for New Writing

Gay Sweatshop spent twenty-two years producing plays as Britain's first openly gay professional theatre company. Their alternative and political work primarily took the form of author-driven new writing, though experiments with performer-driven work intrigued the company from its earliest cabarets to its late phase of queer solo work under Lois Weaver. In this article, Sara Freeman pinpoints Sweatshop's tenth anniversary new play festival in 1985 as the moment when the company committed to new writing as a strategy for gaining greater legitimacy as a theatre group and as a central mode to encourage gay and lesbian voices and representation. She argues that while this had been the default mode of much 1970s political theatre including Sweatshop's, as it played out in the 1980s, a new writing strategy represented a move toward institutional stability as the locus of theatrical radicalism shifted aesthetics. In this analysis, the celebration of company anniversaries and the creation of festival events provided occasions for the company to experience the success or failure of its policies. Freeman is Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Puget Sound. She is the co-editor of Public Theatres and Theatre Publics (2012) and International Dramaturgy: Translation and Transformations in the Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker (2008). Her recent publications appear in Modern British Playwriting: the 1980s. Readings in Performance and Ecology, and the forthcoming volume The British Theatre Company from Fringe to Mainstream: Volume II 1980–1994.

The Representation of Gays and Lesbians in South African Cinema 1985–2013

THE REPRESENTATION OF GAYS AND LESBIANS IN SOUTH AFRICAN CINEMA 1895-2013 Despite South Africa's progressive constitution which prohibits discrimination against gays and lesbians, as well as a strong gay movement, South African cinematic images of gay men and women are limited and still at the margin of the South African film industry. One ends up with less than 20 short films, a few documentaries and less than 10 features with openly gay and lesbian characters in the past 114 years of South African cinema. Under apartheid, gay and lesbian voices in film and television were silenced. In a 20-year study of the representation of gays and lesbians in African, Asian and Latin American cinema (Botha 2003; 2012; Botha &amp; Swinnen 2010), the author has noted that homosexual experience is unique in South Africa, precisely because of South Africa's history of racial division and subsequent resistance. South African gay identities...

Las voces del secreto: pasiones lesbianas en Silvina Ocampo, Julio Cortázar y Sylvia Molloy

By practicing a queer reading on a selection of texts by Silvina Ocampo, Julio Cortázar and Sylvia Molloy, this article seeks to think the term lesbian voice, as a concept but also as a reading tool. Based on the idea that the construction of the lesbian voice raises literary and political problems, the analysis will focus on the specific manners it adopts, especially on the relation it holds with the past and the secret and on the definitions that it builds in relation to the lesbian body. Whereas in the stories of Ocampo and Cortázar the analysis will centre, mainly, on the relation that the texts propose between lesbian voice, impossibility, passion and grief, in Sylvia Molloy’s novel it will deal, especially, with the relationship between lesbian voice and secret, to suggest, at last, that towards the end of the novel new possibilities, related to the construction of this voice, seem to open.

Where is the ‘Women’s Community?’ Voices of Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer Women and Heterosexual Sisters

Sixty women (28 lesbian, 19 bisexual, three queer, and 10 heterosexual) were interviewed about their definition of and connection to ‘community’. Women across sexual identities defined community according to support, similarity to others, physical proximity, and interlocking circles of closeness from family, friends, and lovers outwards to acquaintances and organizations. Regarding women’s connection to community, founders started their own groups and organizations. The majority of lesbian and bisexual women were finders who joined organizations and identified community. Yet bisexual women often felt marginalized within lesbian organizations. Heterosexual women were more connected to family and religious organizations but also more likely to be flounderers, those who felt isolated or marginalized from community. Whereas there are now extensive organizations and activities in the USA for women who identify as lesbian, bisexual, or queer, many women were also part of ‘mainstream’ organizations. Nevertheless, a number of women feel excluded or isolated from community, and this has implications for their needs for connectedness.