Sapphists and Sexologists; Histories of Sexualities: Volume 2

Women's Studies International Quarterly, 1980

2015

The Cambridge Companion to Lesbian Literature examines literary representations of lesbian sexuality, identities, and communities, from the medieval period to the present. In addition to providing a helpful orientation to key literary-historical periods, critical concepts, theoretical debates and literary genres, this Companion considers the work of such well-known authors as Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Alison Bechdel and Sarah Waters. Written by a host of leading critics and covering subjects as diverse as lesbian desire in the long eighteenth century and same-sex love in a postcolonial context, this Companion delivers insight into the variety of traditions that have shaped the present landscape of lesbian literature.

Medieval Feminist Forum, 2013

University of Toronto Quarterly, 2017

Feminism & Psychology, 2004

The Social Construction of Lesbianism (1987) is a pivotal text in lesbian and gay psychology. It was the first lesbian and gay psychology text I purchased; by 1992 The Social Construction of Lesbianism had already been reprinted four times. It was published at a time when lesbian and gay psychology was perhaps losing its radical edge; when so-called 'ethnic' models of identity that promoted lesbian and gay as mainstream categories were increasingly popular (Jagose, 1996). Kitzinger's reproach to not (yet) abandon a radical feminist politics made The Social Construction of Lesbianism immediately appealing to me as a young activist. Kitzinger's specific attention to the construction of lesbian identities, politics and oppression via social scientific as well as gay positive accounts meant that this text was important in my later research into lesbian health: a field still dominated by liberalist accounts of health and sexuality. As I go on to discuss, a social constructionist methodology was relatively unique in lesbian and gay psychology. Kitzinger was attentive to how individuals position themselves, and are positioned, with respect to various representations of sexual identity (Brickell, 2001). In this commentary I consider Kitzinger's critique of liberalhumanist conceptions of lesbianism. I reflect on the role she gives to gay affirmative and radical feminist constructions of lesbian sexuality in lesbian and gay psychology, and its implications for research in lesbian health. A precept of Kitzinger's analysis was that lesbianism could be conceived as the result of social practices and meanings. That is, the context of languages, histories, institutions and desires are crucial to understandings and experiences of lesbianism. Such a revelation now seems obvious, but The Social Construction of Lesbianism assisted the entry of researchers like me into reframing accounts of

2019

This paper establishes an exemplified contrast of two lesbian novels of English literature ─The Well of Loneliness and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?─ and explores the differences and similarities between them. Considerations about their authorship and the time when they were published are taken into account in order to summarize the evolution female homosexuality has had from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. The conclusions drawn from this study can be applied not only to English literature, but to the society that is reflected in every piece of writing.

The Most Fantastic Lie explores the troubled realm of lesbian history through contemporary art practice, visual culture, and activist collectives, identifying three overlapping strategies toward the reconstruction of lesbian and queer histories in the absence of traditional evidence-based documentation: the documentation and collection of existing material evidence by grassroots archivists and artists who base their practices in affective relationships to archival objects; the manipulation of found objects, in the tradition of Claude Levi-Strauss's concept of bricolage, to serve as visual placeholders for absent histories; and the fabrication of material evidence by artists working in a mode referred to by Carrie Lambert-Beatty as parafiction: deceptions that have productive power in creating new senses of plausibility. These strategies, in addition to providing visual pleasure to those seeking lesbian and queer histories, mount critiques of institutionalized notions of legitimate history. In shucking the burden of proof and elevating denigrated forms of evidence such as gossip, oral history, and fantasy, artists and collectives are able to construct lesbian histories while simultaneously demonstrating the unstable foundations of historical truths.

(Re)claiming Lesbian Feminisms: Transnational Dialogues with Contemporary Heteropatriarchies, 2019

The everydayness of lesbian lives is an exercise against heteropatriarchy, perhaps because heteropatriarchy works insidiously at inter-personal and intra-psychic sites, marking the personal and political as battlegrounds of challenge and transformation. In this paper, it is this struggle for everyday life that we wish to engage with, contending that to adopt a lesbian standpoint or orient a life towards lesbian feminism, there are numerous costs that are incurred. We wish to ask what these costs are, and whether everybody can pay them. In other words, who can occupy a lesbian feminist position? To think of lesbian feminism in today's times also requires us to consider the radical post-essentialist possibilities that queer offers to us. This is to already put lesbian feminism or a lesbian standpoint in some crisis, and to ask, what does lesbian feminism look like today?