Wanting Pictures After Feminism: Re-reading On Our Backs

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between photography and feminism that emerges through the pages of the lesbian sex magazine On Our Backs (1984–2006). The San Francisco-based magazine represents an exceptional archive of images made in the context of lesbian community. Returning to the photographs that were published in early issues of the magazine, the article argues that On Our Backs, whilst explicitly addressed to a paucity of available images of lesbian culture, reflects a complex engagement with the meaning of the photographic image in dialogue with contemporaneous feminist debates. Through the work of Tee Corinne, Morgan Gwenwald and Honey Lee Cottrell, a desire for pictures renders the image a site of fantasy in which different ways of inhabiting lesbian identity form in dialogue with a community of readers.     

“Second Generation” Voices: Queer Youth with Lesbian/Bisexual Mothers

Research on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth with LGBTQ parents is absent in the social science literature. The present qualitative, exploratory study utilized a social constructionist and queer theoretical lens through which to explore the sexual/gender identity formation and disclosure experiences of 18 LGBTQ young adults with lesbian/bisexual mothers. Findings suggest that LGBTQ parents may have a uniquely positive influence on their LGBTQ children in regard to their sexual and gender identity development. However, some participants reported perceiving societal scrutiny related to their mothers’ lesbian/bisexual identities and, thus, felt pressure to be heterosexual and gender-conforming. Furthermore, some participants did not necessarily utilize or view their lesbian/bisexual mothers as sources of support in relation to their own sexual/gender identity formation. While much more research is needed that examines the experiences of LGBTQ children with LGBTQ parents, this study represents a first step in addressing the existing literature gap.     

Vera ‘Jack’ Holme: cross-dressing actress,suffragette and chauffeur

This article provides a chronological account of the life of Vera Holme—a militant suffragette in Edwardian Britain, chauffeur to the Pankhursts, actress, and aid worker—focusing on the period 1900–20. The account is based largely on readings of papers, diaries and photographs within her personal archive, held at The Women's Library at the London School of Economics (LSE), as well as identifying references to Holme in secondary texts. The article traces the development of her identity as an unconventional woman by focusing on her work as an actress, driver and mechanic, her lesbian relationships and her increasingly masculine image, in the context of the women's suffrage movement and the First World War.     

Identity Profiles in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth: The Role of Family Influences

Sexual identity development is a central task of adolescence and young adulthood and can be especially challenging for sexual minority youth. Recent research has moved from a stage model of identity development in lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth to examining identity in a non-linear, multidimensional manner. In addition, although families have been identified as important to youth’s identity development, limited research has examined the influence of parental responses to youth’s disclosure of their LGB sexual orientation on LGB identity. The current study examined a multidimensional model of LGB identity and its links with parental support and rejection. One hundred and sixty-nine LGB adolescents and young adults (ages 14–24, 56 % male, 48 % gay, 31 % lesbian, 21 % bisexual) described themselves on dimensions of LGB identity and reported on parental rejection, sexuality-specific social support, and non-sexuality-specific social support. Using latent profile analysis (LPA), two profiles were identified, indicating that youth experience both affirmed and struggling identities. Results indicated that parental rejection and sexuality-specific social support from families were salient links to LGB identity profile classification, while non-sexuality specific social support was unrelated. Parental rejection and sexuality-specific social support may be important to target in interventions for families to foster affirmed LGB identity development in youth.     

Are Teens “Post-Gay”? Contemporary Adolescents’ Sexual Identity Labels

Recent reports suggest that historically typical sexual identity labels—“gay,” “lesbian” and “bisexual”—have lost meaning and relevance for contemporary adolescents. Yet there is little empirical evidence that contemporary teenagers are “post-gay.” In this brief study we investigate youths’ sexual identity labels. The Preventing School Harassment survey included 2,560 California secondary school students administered over 3 years: 2003–2005. We examined adolescents’ responses to a closed-ended survey question that asked for self-reports of sexual identity, including an option to write-in a response; we content analyzed the write-in responses. Results suggest that historically typical sexual identity labels are endorsed by the majority (71%) of non-heterosexual youth. Some non-heterosexual youth report that they are “questioning” (13%) their sexual identities or that they are “queer” (5%); a small proportion (9%) provided alternative labels that describe ambivalence or resistance to sexual identity labels, or fluidity in sexual identities. Our results show that lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities remain relevant for contemporary adolescents.     

“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.     

Dating Violence Experiences of Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Transgender Youth

Media attention and the literature on lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth overwhelmingly focus on violence involving hate crimes and bullying, while ignoring the fact that vulnerable youth also may be at increased risk of violence in their dating relationships. In this study, we examine physical, psychological, sexual, and cyber dating violence experiences among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth—as compared to those of heterosexual youth, and we explore variations in the likelihood of help-seeking behavior and the presence of particular risk factors among both types of dating violence victims. A total of 5,647 youth (51 % female, 74 % White) from 10 schools participated in a cross-sectional anonymous survey, of which 3,745 reported currently being in a dating relationship or having been in one during the prior year. Results indicated that lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are at higher risk for all types of dating violence victimization (and nearly all types of dating violence perpetration), compared to heterosexual youth. Further, when looking at gender identity, transgender and female youth are at highest risk of most types of victimization, and are the most likely perpetrators of all forms of dating violence but sexual coercion, which begs further exploration. The findings support the development of dating violence prevention programs that specifically target the needs and vulnerabilities of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth, in addition to those of female and transgender youth.     

Interactive narrators and performative readers: Gendered interfacing in Heian narratives

In Go Fish, Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner's seminal lesbian film from 1994, one of the protagonists complains that the woman who her friends want to set her up with has cupboards of herbal tea and no sex appeal. In the course of the film, the women end up together, but the joke/not-joke about lesbians and their fondness for herbal tea remains. What can we make of this conjunction? What does the linkage of tea and lesbianism connote and how does tea function within representational economies of lesbianism? On the one hand, tea functions as prelude to eroticism and codes for the opacity of lesbian sex. On the other hand, it also works to consolidate stereotypes about lesbianism. In this essay, the author explores the factors that make this almost joke possible – the gendering of tea as feminine, stereotypes about lesbian feminism – and examine ways in which it has been deployed as a form of lesbian shorthand. In working to understand why tea has evoked this stereotype, a sense of American counter-cultures, Orientalism, and historical memory come together to paint second-wave lesbian feminism as out of touch, politically inactive, and intimidated by sex. But what alternatives might tea open towards? Focusing on tea, then, gives us access to economies of desire and pleasure that both build on perceptions of radical feminism and expands upon it by establishing a vernacular of fluids, taste, and tactility.     

many voices,one chant: 30th anniversary roundtable

This article is extracted from a discussion between Camel Gupta, Jay Bernard and Sita Balani. We took as our starting point ‘Becoming visible: Black lesbian discussions’ (Carmen et al, 1984), featured in the 1984 special issue of Feminist Review on black feminism. Here, we reflect on the political, cultural and technological transformations of queer life since the publication of ‘Becoming visible’. The original discussion focused on questions of identity, safety, the public and the private, and the tensions between race and sexuality. The discussants took personal and political risks to be active organisers. As the beneficiaries of that activism, we interrogate not only the broader ideas of race, sexuality and feminism, but critique some of the discussions circulating within our own ranks. We also consider our responsibility to follow our predecessors and to learn from their mistakes. We are more visible than ever, but at what price? What has been gained and lost? Beyond visibility, what is our responsibility? In an attempt to understand these questions we cover contemporary notions such as QTIPOC, monolithic whiteness and online activism.     

The Psychological World of the Gay Teenager:Social Change,Narrative, and “Normality”

This paper examines the application of concepts of normal adolescence pioneered by Offer and colleagues to the study of gay and lesbian youth. Adolescent development among this population demonstrates remarkable historical variability along the lines of generation-cohort, revealing the utility of a life-course approach to the study of normal adolescence. Concepts of normal adolescence appear to shift with changing narratives of identity for sexual minority youth. We contrast two narratives of gay youth identity development that have emerged since the inception of substantive research programs on gay adolescence: (1) the narrative of struggle and success that came to dominate the literature in the 1980s and 1990s and (2) the narrative of emancipation that has emerged from the work of Savin-Williams and others who argue for a recognition of the diversity of adolescent development for this population. In relating this contrast to Offer’s seminal contributions to the study of adolescence, we suggest that the most normative feature of human development, particularly during adolescence, is its connection to discourses of identity through the formation of personal narratives that anchor the life course and provide meaning to conceptions of self-development. The example of shifting narratives of gay youth identity development is meant to exemplify this characteristic feature of human development. William Rainey Harper Professor of Social Sciences, The College, the Departments of Comparative Human Development, Psychology, Psychiatry and the Committee on Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, The University of Chicago. For nearly two decades he collaborated with Dan Offer as the director of the University’s component of the Adolescence Training grant shared jointly with Michael Reese Hospital and Directed by Dan Offer. His recent work focuses on the interplay of history and social change in the study of lives over time. Advanced doctoral student in the Department of Comparative Human Development. His work examines the cultural psychology of adolescence and emerging adulthood, with a focus on identity and narrative. His earlier work with former student of Dan Offer, Maryse Richards, focused on the study of ethnicity, context, and normal adolescence. Most recently, he has been studying culture and normal adolescent development among Israeli and Palestinian youth. In 2007 he will be appointed an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of California-Santa Cruz.     

Acculturation Strategies and Mental Health in Gay,Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth

In this article, we examine the impact of acculturation strategies on minority stress and mental health in lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) youth in Flanders, Belgium. Building on previous identity minority studies and on the social stress model, we investigate how LGB youth acculturate within both the LGB subculture and mainstream society and how this correlates with their mental health. Our sample is taken from an online survey and represents 561 LGB youth aged 14 through 21. The four traditional acculturation strategies are represented in this population (integration, separation, marginalization, assimilation). Bisexual boys are mostly absent from separation and integration strategies; gay and lesbian youth in middle adolescence are significantly more represented in the separation strategy compared to their late adolescence counterparts. Further, our findings suggest the relevance of identification with the LGB community, especially for internalized negative attitudes toward homosexuality. LGB youth who identify with the LGB community score significantly lower on this internalized homonegativity.     

Intersectionality,the Production of Difference and Norwegian Transnational Adoptees' Identity Work

Does intersectionality contribute to the production of knowledge, and if so, how? Does it provide us with new possibilities, or does it obscure rather than reveal anything new? In this article, I intend to further discussions about intersectionality by relating this concept to my own study of transnational adoptees' identity work. I focus on how intersectionality as an analytical tool can be operationalized in a concrete empirical study. I also bring the empirical data into dialogue with the concept of intersectionality in order to discuss how intersectionality can be developed further by interrogating the ways in which categories intersect.     

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.     

Citation and Censorship: The Politics of Talking About the Sexual Politics of Israel

In response to critics’ claims that a discussion of sexuality and nationalism vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict bears no relation to the author’s previous work, or to such discussions within the US or European contexts, this paper details the complex interconnections between Israeli gay and lesbian rights and the continued oppression of Palestinians. The first section examines existing discourses of what the author has previously called “homonationalism,” or the process by which certain forms of gay and lesbian sexuality are folded into the national body as the Muslim/Arab Other is cast as perversely queer, within Israel and the diasporas. The operations of homonationalism ensure that no discussion of gay and lesbian rights in Israel is independent from the state’s actions toward Palestine/Palestinians. The second section contains a critique of Israel’s practices of “pinkwashing” in the US and Europe. In order to redirect focus away from critiques of its repressive actions toward Palestine, Israel has attempted to utilize its relative “gay-friendliness” as an example of its commitment to Western “democratic” ideals. Massive public relations campaigns such as “Brand Israel” work to establish Israel’s reputation within the US and Europe as cosmopolitan, progressive, Westernized and democratic as compared with the backward, repressive, homophobic Islamic nations, which, in turn, serves to solidify Israel’s aggression as a position of the “defense” of democracy and freedom. The final section looks at the ways in which accusations of “anti-Semitism” function in academic and activist contexts to suppress critiques of the implicit nationalism within Israeli sexual politics.     

Jewish joke telling in Muttersprache Mameloschn: performing queer intervention on the German stage

This essay explores the central role of Jewish joke telling in Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s play Muttersprache Mameloschn (first performed in 2012). Subversively revealing the problematic of essentializing cultural, national, and even sexual identity, Jewish joke telling figures as a performance of social and political resistance and disidentification in this play. Engaging with Jack Halberstam’s queer epistemology of failure and José Esteban Muñoz’s theory of queer disidentification, I propose that the act of Jewish joke telling by a young lesbian plays out as a new queer project of intervention in this play that confronts both antisemitism and culturally positioned sexual hegemony.     

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.     

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.     

Queering it up,strutting our threads,and baring our souls: genderqueer individuals negotiating social and felt sense of gender

This article draws from data of a year-long qualitative study on the lived experiences of genderqueer individuals. Two critical questions helped aide in thinking about the lived experiences of genderqueer individuals: (1) What does it mean to claim a genderqueer identity? and (2) How is genderqueer experienced, embodied, and understood? The principal work of José Muñoz, Gayle Salamon, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Jasbir Puar was used to support the theoretical frame and qualitative data analysis. What makes a person genderqueer is not clearly defined, but is organic and personal, and brings forth negotiations of social and felt sense of gender, and internal and external oppression. Specifically, the ways in which genderqueer individuals negotiate their identity related to the social construction of gender, the felt sense of gender, and gender as becoming are analyzed and discussed.