Masculinity and female bodies

The visibility of feminine-to-masculine (FTM) transgenderism increased considerably in the 1990s. The late modern/postmodern concept of the body as malleable in service of (gendered) identity presentation facilitated this upsurge in two ways: first, transgenderism became intelligible in society through this discourse. Second, representations of masculinity became increasingly corporeal, performative, and thereby more adoptable for a female-bodied person. In addition, certain developments in the politics and circumstances of the transgender organizations, previously dominated by MTF transgenderists, now advanced the activity and participation of FTMs in particular. The rise of female masculinity underlines the general change of masculinity towards more emphasized corporeality.     

“We Cannot Claim Any Particular Knowledge of the Ways of Homosexuals,Still Less of Iranian Homosexuals …”: The Particular Problems Facing Those Who Seek Asylum on the Basis of their Sexual Identity

Many lesbians and gay men apply for asylum in the U.K. each year on the basis that they fear persecution in their home country because of their sexual orientation. The legal basis for claiming asylum on the ground of sexual identity is now well established. Nevertheless, making these claims remains very difficult for applicants. Western cultural expectations around sexual identity often mix with homophobic assumptions about sexual behaviour to present applicants as “not sufficiently gay”. Furthermore, applicants may not initially disclose their sexual identity to legal advisors, leading to assumptions that they are not “telling the truth” to the Immigration Tribunal. In this article, Barry O’Leary, a solicitor and legal activist on behalf of lesbian and gay refugees, discusses these problems and how U.K.-based asylum lawyers have attempted to work round them.     

MEMORIAL ACCOUNTS

Under the conditions of narrative construction, young queer men's coming out stories present memorial accounts of ‘always-having-been’ queer; a queer childhood. The ways in which coming out stories operate have developed significantly over the past decade, particularly resulting from the use of online, digital technologies where such narratives proliferate. This article presents some initial theorisation of the role of young men's coming out narrative in the constitution of performative queer identity with a focus on the construction of memory. The article presents an overview of the history of coming out and the ways in which this history has influenced the conventions and genre of the coming out narrative online. It addresses some of the ways in which such memorial accounts are performative acts themselves, seeking to stabilise queer masculine identity, and ends with a discussion as to whether or not online sites such as YouTube continue or disrupt such stabilising narratives.     

Cracks in the Feminist Mirror?: Research and Reflections on Lesbians and Gay Men Working Together

This article is an offshoot of a research project on lesbian and gay self-organization in the UK's public sector union UNISON. The site upon which lesbians and gay men ‘work together’ is a complex and contradictory one, located at the juncture of several pathways – women's and men's movements, gendered politics and sexual politics, purist ghettos and queer rainbows. The UNISON group furnishes an ideal site for a case-study of sexual and gendered dynamics in lesbian-and-gay politics by dint of institutional arrangements whereby separate spaces for lesbians and gay men respectively encourage reflexivity in working through these hyphens. While reflections from the lesbian feminist mirror have been active ingredients in the ongoing resocialization of gay men, it is argued that reflections from a gay male mirror will also be necessary if we are to nurture greater wisdom and justice in gender relations. Since the lesbian and gay group co-exists with other selforganized groups for women, black people and disabled people within a broader pro-socialist movement, the potential for working across other sets of differences is also noteworthy. Nevertheless, it can be demonstrated that a sustained coalition between lesbians and gay men is not sufficient in bringing about coalitions with other oppressed minorities or majorities, and may even be at loggerheads with them.     

Up Against the Property Logic of Equality Law: Conservative Christian Accommodation Claims and Gay Rights

This paper explores conservative Christian demands that religious-based objections to providing services to lesbians and gay men should be accommodated by employers and public bodies. Focusing on a series of court judgments, alongside commentators’ critical accounts, the paper explores the dominant interpretation of the conflict as one involving two groups with deeply held, competing interests, and suggests this interpretation can be understood through a social property framework. The paper explores how religious beliefs and sexual orientation are attachments whose power has been unsettled by equality law. But entangled with this property is another—that held in workers’ labour and public bodies’ resources. Arguing against the drive to balance competing interests, the paper uses social property to illuminate the agonistic character of the stakes. At the same time, it questions property as a normative framework for sexual orientation and religious beliefs.     

Feeling Gender. A Generational and Psychosocial Approach

The article focuses on female same-sex intimacy, specifically so-called “mummy–baby” relationships among schoolgirls in contemporary South Africa. The underlying negotiations with colonial but also post-colonial discourses of sexuality, identity, and gender, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) rights, and the problem of naming, are examined here. While post-apartheid South Africa was the first country in the world to explicitly incorporate lesbian and gay rights within the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, the surrounding countries chose to exclude lesbians and gay men from citizenship rights by proclaiming, in a populist way, the idea of homosexuality as un-African, a discourse also forming within South Africa itself. The term “homosexuality”, as defined through more than three decades of feminism and gay liberation, however, does not describe the complexities of same-sex practices throughout history. “Mummy–baby” relationships as a culturally specific form of female same-sex intimacy, especially in relation to homosociality as a form of gender intimacy and the sexuality apparatus, are analysed here. The article looks at girls' relationships as spaces in which homosociality, same-sex intimacy, and erotic practices can join together; however, the latter is increasingly joined by homophobia. I argue that the “closet” violently jars with some same-sex relationships, such as “mummy–baby” relationships, because they have never been closeted as such.     

Heteroqueer ladies: some performative transactions between gay men and heterosexual women

As theories of performativity struggle to disentangle and reconfigure the relationships between act and identity, a heterowoman who relishes the performance of femininity is still aware that she can be read as reactionary. Her choice of sexual partners seems to undermine the efficacy of similar strategies constructed by femme lesbians. One queer option for a heterosexual woman is to ‘act’ like a gay man. As more than one cultural commentator has pointed out, it appears that only a male drag queen can be a ‘lady’ these days. This particular woman does not want to change her biological sex to ‘be’ a gay man. She has learned how to be a ‘lady’ from the ‘feminized fags’ who may have learned from her mother. Their ironic distancing, camp connoiseurship, and parodic appropriation of the notion of a stable gender identity came as part of the package. As a result of this transaction, she acts as if she has balls under her dress. Such mimetic masquerades can be most easily recognized as resistant when performativity is ‘bound’ into a formalized performance. It is implicit that this artifice is not sustainable, nor is this desirable. ‘Doing’ queer means possessing the agency to defy and destabilize gendered behaviours, sexes, and sexualities through continuing and conscious decisions. This article explores the efficacy of heterosexual femme performances that attempt to challenge and subvert ideological normativities through their transactions with gay men.     

the contradictory simultaneity of being with others: exploring concepts of time and community in the work of Gloria Anzaldúa

While social geographers have convincingly made the case that space is not an external constant, but rather is produced through inter-relations, anthropologists and sociologists have done much to further an understanding of time, as itself constituted through social interaction and inter-relation. Their work suggests that time is not an apolitical background to social life, but shapes how we perceive and relate to others. For those interested in exploring issues such as identity, community and difference, this suggests that attending to how temporal discourses are utilised in relation to these issues is a key task. This article seeks to contribute to an expansion of the debate about time and sociality by contributing an analysis of a variety of ways in which Gloria Anzaldúa utilises temporal concepts as part of her work of rethinking social identity and community. In particular, I suggest that in contesting homogeneous identity, Anzaldúa also implicitly contests linear temporal frameworks. Further, in creating new frameworks for identity, I suggest the possibility of discerning an alternative approach to time in her work that places difference at the heart of simultaneity. I suggest that the interconnection between concepts of time and community within Anzaldúa’s work indicates, more broadly, that attempts to rework understandings of relationality must be accompanied by reworked accounts of temporality.     

Australian Lesbian and Gay Life Stories: A National Oral History Project

Lesbian and gay Australians have lived through extraordinary social change over the past six decades as attitudes towards homosexuality have shifted significantly. This article explores a collaborative project with the National Library of Australia, which was the first nation-wide oral history project to investigate the impact of these changes in the intimate lives of different generations of gay men and lesbians. Sixty men and women across Australia were interviewed as part of the project. This article outlines the methodological framework and the particular challenges and opportunities presented by an oral history project that involves members of the lesbian and gay population. It notes the increased opportunities to live an ‘ordinary’ life available to many lesbian and gay individuals and the way this was reflected in interviews.     

Love and the State: Gay Marriage in Spain

On 30 June 2005, the Spanish Parliament approved Law 13/2005, which amends the Civil Code to permit same-sex marriage. This formal equality measure put Spain in the spotlight of the international media. It is the culmination of a series of developments spanning from the last years of the Franco regime (which ended in 1975), through the enactment of anti-discrimination measures in 1995, to the recent fight for kinship recognition. It also follows a recent shift, from 1998 to 2005, towards the enactment of same-sex partnership laws at regional level, the approval of same-sex marriage and finally, the approval of a ‹gender identity law’ (2007). This legislative note assesses the context in which the new law on same-sex marriage has been enacted. I argue that although same-sex marriage has been represented by many activists and politicians in Spain as a gender neutral contract, it has the potential for differential impacts on lesbians and gay men, and further research and debates are needed in this area.     

Queer nations: Nationalism, sexuality and the discourse of rights in Quebec

Gays and lesbians are full-fledged members of the great Quebec family, and it is perhaps time to reinvent and enlarge our family. The research on which this article is based was undertaken while I was a visitor at the Faculty of Law, McGill University, Montreal, in 1996. I would like to thank the University and colleagues in the Faculty of Law for their collegiality during my stay. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Critical Legal Conference, University of East London, 6 September 1996. My thanks to the participants for their insightful questions and comments, and thanks also to Didi Herman and Davina Cooper for their help on a previous draft.     

Is ‘Chloe liked Olivia’ a lesbian plot?

Despite Virginia Woolf's lesbian vision of love and friendship between Chloe and Olivia in A Room of One's Own, the literary and critical text often serves to shut lesbians into a closet of prose. Among the debilitating myths used by writers are the ‘Phaon myth’ (that authentic lesbian experience must be terminated by an inauthentic heterosexual rescue), the vampire myth, and the myth of masculinity. The latter in particular has served to divide heterosexual women from their lesbian sisters, so that much feminist literary criticism displays a pervasive heterosexual bias by ignoring or distorting lesbian texts and subtexts. This paper suggests ways in which the word and concept ‘lesbian’ is being reclaimed by lesbian writers and critics. It calls for all women to destroy patriarchal myths about lesbians; reread literary texts for their lesbian subtexts; recover the works of lesbians, particularly lesbians of color; and, finally, proclaim the word ‘lesbian’ forcefully despite the threats posed by a misogynistic academy and society.     

‘The objectionable injectable’: recovering the lost history of the WLM through the Campaign Against Depo-Provera

ABSTRACT

The Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) was one of the most important social movements of the twentieth century. Although the last few years have seen an increase in historical work exploring the movement, archival-based accounts of the diverse groups that comprised the WLM are few and far between. This article will uncover, and shed light on, the important work of the Campaign Against Depo-Provera. It will explore how women’s campaigns operated during this period, whilst also providing a lens for examining how women engaged with race and class. It will argue that we need to adopt a more nuanced understanding of how feminists engaged with identity, as an examination of the Campaign Against Depo-Provera questions many of the previously held orthodoxies in the literature.     

Trousers and tiaras: Audrey Hepburn,a woman's star

Audrey Hepburn is one of cinema's most stylish and enduring icons, and has embodied an ideal of femininity for generations of women. Using textual analysis, archival research and audience accounts of ‘Doing the Hepburn Look’, I argue that Audrey Hepburn, as a star clearly addressing a female audience, offered a flexible image which was enabling to young women through dress in relation to exigencies of gender, class and national identity. The paper draws on research conducted as part of a larger project investigating Hepburn's ongoing appeal for young British women from the 1950s to the 1990s.     

Elspeth Huxley: gender,empire and narratives of nation, 1935-64

Abstract

This article explores the impact of empire on narratives of the British nation during a period of decline of British colonial rule through a study of Elspeth Huxley's successive reworkings of such narratives between 1935 and 1964. It sets Huxley's work in the context of post-1945 anxieties about national decline and their connections with the loss of imperial power, and looks at the difficulties surrounding the articulation of national identity as virile and masculine in post-imperial Britain. Although anxieties about masculinities were often addressed through a misogynistic discourse which showed women emasculating men, Huxley's work suggests the significance of a counter-theme. It indicates not only her own attachment to an imperial identity but also the ways in which this continued to be articulated in the midtwentieth century as an identity with a wide appeal to a metropolitan audience, and one through which women could be incorporated into the story of nation. In exploring the terms of this incorporation, the article considers the opportunities open to women to claim to embody exemplary national qualities through the figure of the doughty, intrepid, imperial female pioneer, and the particular resonance and appeal this figure acquired in the context of the end of empire.     

‘Atheism is not the problem. The problem is being a woman’. Atheist women and reasonable feminism

While the percentage of religiously unaffiliated women is growing in the West, little is known about the relationship between atheism and feminism. This article redresses the gap by exploring women’s identification with atheism and feminism. The central argument draws on qualitative interview data from the UK, Australia, the US and Poland and emphasizes the role of atheism as a background identity marker through which female subjectivity is enacted in everyday life. The findings are two-fold: first, atheism and feminism are both devalued identities when embraced by women; and second, identifying as an atheist affords the participants an impetus to invent a new vocabulary to account for their identity. In conclusion, I argue that atheism provides a catalyst for the post-feminist discourse of independence, empowerment and freedom of choice as the participants construct narratives of ‘reasonable feminism’.     

Compulsory heterosexuality and psych/atrophy: Some thoughts on lesbian feminist theory

The patriarchal features of psychiatric practice have received scant attention by feminists today. This paper presents a critique of psychiatry and places this critique within lesbian feminist theory. Drawing on Mary Daly's ideas as elaborated in her ‘ovular’ work Gyn/Ecology (1979), the methodology I use is an unearthing of feminist meanings and an exposition of feminist practices which are necessary to understand the role of Psych/Atrophy vis à vis lesbianism today. I argue that for lesbians, as for all women, self-healing is a feminist process which exists in opposition to psychiatry's functioning as the primary male, social injunction to heal souls. With a view to challenging this psychiatric conception of healing souls, we are able to create five specific strategies which direct Lesbian energy to a more creative view of ourselves as women. Discarding the sexual label (1); resisting ‘reversal’ (2); erasing the Victim Role (3); working towards social change and not individual solutions (4) and delivering themselves through the ‘Amazonian Asylum’ (5), lesbians will help to work for lesbian liberation. These strategies will help them/us not only to create new images of themselves/ourselves as women, but also to challenge the heterosexist structure of society upon which psychiatric practice is based.     

Looking Good: The Lesbian Gaze and Fashion Imagery

This paper is concerned with the different forms of pleasure and identification activated in the consumption of dominant and subcultural print media. It centres on an analysis of the lesbian visual pleasures generated through the reading of fashion editorial in the new lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines. This consideration of the lesbian gaze is contrasted to the lesbian visual pleasures obtained from an against the grain reading of mainstream women's fashion magazines. The development of the lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines, in the context of the pink pound, produces a situation in which an eroticized lesbian visual pleasure is the overt remit of the magazine, rather than a clandestine pleasure obtained through a transgressive reading of dominant cultural imagery. In contrast to the polysemic free-play of fashion fantasy by which readers produce lesbian pleasure in the consumption of mainstream magazines, responses to the fashion content in the lesbian magazine Diva suggest that in a subcultural context readers deploy a realist mode of reading that demands a monosemic positive images iconography. The article uses the concept of subcultural competency to consider the different ways lesbians read mainstream and subcultural print media and suggests that the conflict over Diva's fashion spreads may be linked to changing patterns of identification and the use of dress for recognizability.