Radical Relations

Radical Relations
Author: Daniel Winunwe Rivers
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2013-09-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469607190

In Radical Relations, Daniel Winunwe Rivers offers a previously untold story of the American family: the first history of lesbian and gay parents and their children in the United States. Beginning in the postwar era, a period marked by both intense repression and dynamic change for lesbians and gay men, Rivers argues that by forging new kinds of family and childrearing relations, gay and lesbian parents have successfully challenged legal and cultural definitions of family as heterosexual. These efforts have paved the way for the contemporary focus on family and domestic rights in lesbian and gay political movements. Based on extensive archival research and 130 interviews conducted nationwide, Radical Relations includes the stories of lesbian mothers and gay fathers in the 1950s, lesbian and gay parental activist networks and custody battles, families struggling with the AIDS epidemic, and children growing up in lesbian feminist communities. Rivers also addresses changes in gay and lesbian parenthood in the 1980s and 1990s brought about by increased awareness of insemination technologies and changes in custody and adoption law.

Lesbian Mothers

Lesbian Mothers
Author: Ellen Lewin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2018-03-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 150172004X

Within a society that long considered "lesbian motherhood" a contradiction in terms, what were the experiences of lesbian mothers at the end of the twentieth century? In this illuminating book, lesbian mothers tell their stories of how they became mothers; how they see their relationships with their children, relatives, lovers, and friends and with their children’s fathers and sperm donors; how they manage child-care arrangements and financial difficulties; and how they deal with threats to custody. Ellen Lewin’s unprecedented research on lesbian mothers in the San Francisco area captured a vivid portrait of the moment before gay and lesbian parenting moved into the mainstream of U.S. culture. Drawing on interviews with 135 women, Lewin provided her readers with a new understanding of the attitudes of individual women, the choices they made, and the texture of their daily lives.

Women in Love

Women in Love
Author: Barbara Seyda
Publisher: Bulfinch Press
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1998
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780821225233

Looks at the daily realities of parenting and living as a lesbian in the United States

Lesbian Motherhood

Lesbian Motherhood
Author: Amy Hequembourg
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2007
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1560236868

A unique practical application of poststructuralist theory to lesbian mothers' narratives, Lesbian Motherhood: Stories of Becoming analyzes the personal stories of 40 lesbian mothers to discover the complex ways their sense of self is constructed in the current legal, political, and social climate. These intimate narratives are examined by using Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's conceptual framework to understand subjectivities by focusing on the many flexible lines of movement that constitute subjectivities, or 'becomings.' This unique source reveals deep insight into a lesbian's construction of self through her stories about her own sexuality, parenting, and other experiences in becoming a mother. Lesbian Motherhood: Stories of Becoming challenges the assimilation/resistance perspective typically expressed by scholars of lesbian motherhood. Qualitative interviews reveal startling new perspectives to lesbian mother subjectivities viewed within the context of the legal, political, and social areas that seek to define and regulate contemporary family life. This powerful source explores in detail the discursive strategies through which lesbian subjectivities are created and recreated. Deleuze and Guattari's concept of 'becoming' provides a valuable framework for analyzing the discursive strategies employed by those participating in this study. Lesbian Motherhood: Stories of Becoming offers insightful, powerful information that is indispensable to GLBT scholars, and social theorists.

She Looks Just Like You

She Looks Just Like You
Author: Amie Klempnauer Miller
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2011-03-15
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0807001511

After ten years of talking about having children, two years of trying (and failing) to conceive, and one shot of donor sperm for her partner, Amie Miller was about to become a mother. Or something like that. Over the next nine months, as her partner became the biological mom-to-be, Miller became . . . what? Mommy’s little helper? A faux dad? As a midwestern, station wagon–driving, stay-at-home mom—and as a nonbiological lesbian mother—Miller both defines and defies the norm. Like new parents everywhere, she wrestled with the anxieties and challenges of first-time parenthood but experienced pregnancy and birth only vicariously. Part love story, part comedy, part quest, Miller’s candid and often humorous memoir is a much-needed cultural roadmap for becoming a parent, even when the usual categories do not fit.

Fixing Gender

Fixing Gender
Author: Natasha Distiller
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1611470315

Fixing Gender uses psychoanalysis to explore the theoretical implications for the gendering of the human subject that arise from the situation of lesbians raising children from birth. In the face of the powerful evidence of the ways gender operates, and in the deep structural ways the logic of gender perpetuates, both made visible by psychoanalysis, this book asks: Is gender always fixed? Can the system which is produced by, and which produces, gender be altered? Can gender be fixed? The work begins by sketching the implications of gender as elucidated by feminist thinkers in general and feminist psychoanalytic thinkers in particular. Moving to Freud's theory of the subject, the work examines the logic of the Oedipus complex, and from there it looks at what feminist object relations theorists have done with and to the logic of the Oedipus complex. The book then moves to the literature on lesbian family functioning; and finally the work ends with a radical interrogation into the possibilities enabled by paying attention to form, and highlighting its constitutive possibilities.

Chicana Lesbians

Chicana Lesbians
Author: Carla Trujillo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1991
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Literary Nonfiction. LGBT Studies. "CHICANA LESBIANS is a love poem, a bible, a dictionary, nothing so simple as a manifesto--this book is yet another reason to believe--to believe in the girls our mothers warned us about, brown girls, lesbians, making their own love poems, bibles, dictionaries, manifestoes, reasons to believe."--Dorothy Allison "When I was selling books at a Chicana conference, I noticed book buyers were literally afraid to touch this anthology. I say now what I said then, 'Don't be scared. Sexuality is not contagious, but ignorance is.' If you've ever been curious, been there, been voyeur, been tourist, or just plain under-informed, misinformed, or unaffirmed, here is a book to listen to and learn from".--Sandra Cisneros

Confessions of the Other Mother

Confessions of the Other Mother
Author: Harlyn Aizley
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2006-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807097330

One of the few books to explore lesbian parenting, these “hilarious, heart-wrenching, painfully honest tales of mommyhood” celebrate the ups and downs of being an LGBTQIA+ parent in the 21st century (Joey Solloway, creator of Transparent). After author Harlyn Aizley gave birth to her daughter, she watched in unanticipated horror as her partner scooped up the baby and said, “I'm your new mommy!” While they both had worked to find the perfect sperm donor, Aizley had spent nine months carrying the baby and hours in labor, so how could her partner claim to be their child's mommy? Many diapers later, Aizley began to appreciate the complexity of her partner’s new role as the other mother. Together, they searched for stories about families like their own, in which a woman has chosen to forgo her own birth experience so that she might support her partner in hers. They found very few. Now, in Confessions of the Other Mother, Aizley has put together an exciting collection of personal stories by women like her partner who are creating new parenting roles, redefining motherhood, and reshaping our view of two-parent families. Contributors include Hillary Goodridge, who was one of the lead plaintiffs in the case for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, stand-up comedian Judy Gold, and psychologist and author Suzanne M. Johnson. This candid peek into a previously unexamined side of lesbian parenting is full of stories that are sometimes humorous, sometimes moving, but at all times celebratory. Each parenting tale sheds light on the many facets of motherhood, offering gay and straight readers alike a deeper understanding of what it means to love and parent in the twenty-first century.

Lesbian Psychologies

Lesbian Psychologies
Author: Boston Lesbian Psychologies Collective
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1987
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780252014048

Includes bibliographies and index.

Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identities over the Lifespan

Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identities over the Lifespan
Author: Anthony R. D'Augelli
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1995-02-09
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0195359623

Over the last fifteen years, psychological research regarding sexual orientation has seen explosive growth. In this book, Anthony R. D'Augelli and Charlotte J. Patterson bring together top experts to offer a comprehensive overview of what we have discovered--and what we still need to learn--about lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities. Writing in clear, nontechnical language, the contributors cover a range of topics, including conceptions of sexual identity, development over the lifespan, family and other personal relationships, parenting, and bigotry and discrimination. Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identities Over the Lifespan is essential reading for researchers, students, social scientists, mental health practitioners, and general readers who seek the most up-to-date and authoritative treatment of the subject available.