Lesbians, Women & Society

Lesbians, Women & Society
Author: E M Ettorre
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2022-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000645401

First published in 1980, Lesbians, Women and Society presents an analysis of lesbianism as a phenomenon that developed from a ‘personal problem’ or ‘individual deviance’ to a social movement with political ambitions. Social lesbianism, an important concept introduced in the text, refers to the emergence of a public expression of lesbianism and is a stage in the process of establishing a lesbian group identity. It thrusts the issue into the public eye, and lends vitality to society’s awareness. Two groups of ‘social lesbians’ are visible: those fearful of change who cling to traditional and social views, ‘sick but not sorry’; and those who wish to challenge such traditional views in favour of a more public approach, ‘sorry, but we’re not sick.’ But regardless of their relationships to the dominant sexual ideology, as a group, ‘social lesbians’ threaten the structure of power in society. This critical analysis thus challenges many people’s views of lesbianism, and points out to the uninformed observer the complexities which are involved in the contemporary lesbian experience. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, gender studies, feminist theory, and sexuality studies.

Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s

Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s
Author: Rox Samer
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2022-02-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478022647

In Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s, Rox Samer explores how 1970s feminists took up the figure of the lesbian in broad attempts to reimagine gender and sexuality. Samer turns to feminist film, video, and science fiction literature, offering a historiographical concept called “lesbian potentiality”—a way of thinking beyond what the lesbian was, in favor of how the lesbian signified what could have come to be. Samer shows how the labor of feminist media workers and fans put lesbian potentiality into movement. They see lesbian potentiality in feminist prison documentaries that theorize the prison industrial complex’s racialized and gendered violence and give image to Black feminist love politics and freedom dreaming. Lesbian potentiality also circulates through the alternative spaces created by feminist science fiction and fantasy fanzines like The Witch and the Chameleon and Janus. It was here that author James Tiptree, Jr./Alice B. Sheldon felt free to do gender differently and inspired many others to do so in turn. Throughout, Samer embraces the perpetual reimagination of “lesbian” and the lesbian’s former futures for the sake of continued, radical world-building.

Conscious Lesbian Dating & Love

Conscious Lesbian Dating & Love
Author: Ruth L. Schwartz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2015-09-04
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780996558822

If you're a single lesbian who wants deeply fulfilling lasting love, this book was written for you. You'll learn exactly why and how the conscious approach to dating and love will make all the difference for you, and also get a detailed roadmap to help you find and create the relationship you most want.

Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics

Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics
Author: Paula C Rust
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 1995-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0814776728

The subject of bisexuality continues to divide the lesbian and gay community. At pride marches, in films such as Go Fish, at academic conferences, the role and status of bisexuals is hotly contested. Within lesbian communities, formed to support lesbians in a patriarchal and heterosexist society, bisexual women are often perceived as a threat or as a political weakness. Bisexual women feel that they are regarded with suspicion and distrust, if not openly scorned. Drawing on her research with over 400 bisexual and lesbian women, surveying the treatment of bisexuality in the lesbian and gay press, and examining the recent growth of a self-consciously political bisexual movement, Paula Rust addresses a range of questions pertaining to the political and social relationships between lesbians and bisexual women. By tracing the roots of the controversy over bisexuality among lesbians back to the early lesbian feminist debates of the 1970s, Rust argues that those debates created the circumstances in which bisexuality became an inevitable challenge to lesbian politics. She also traces it forward, predicting the future of sexual politics.

Lesbian Health

Lesbian Health
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1999-05-11
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309174066

Women's health, as a field of study, is a developing discipline. Health theories in general have been based on studies of men. However, in recent years, more attention has shifted to women's health, realizing the disparities between men and women in relation to their health. During the last two decades, a similar shift has occurred for a group of womenâ€"lesbian womenâ€"to further identify and specify their health needs. Over the past decade, lesbians have organized to call for attention to the health issues of this community, resulting in several federally funded research initiatives. This book offers a comprehensive view of what is known about lesbian health needs and what questions need further investigation, including: How do we define who is lesbian? Are there unique health issues for lesbians? Are lesbians at higher or lower risk for such health problems as AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, breast cancer, mental disorders, and substance abuse? How does homophobia affect lesbian health and the funding of research on lesbian health? How do lesbian health needs fit into the health care system and the larger society? What risk and protective factors shape the physical and mental health of lesbians? The book discusses how to determine which questions to ask about sexual orientation, the need to obtain information without violating privacy, the importance of considering racial and ethnic diversity in the study of lesbians, strategies for exchanging information among researchers and disseminating findings to the public, and mechanisms for supporting greater numbers of researchers. Lesbian Health takes a frank look at the political pressures, community attitudes, and professional concerns uniquely affecting the study of lesbian health issues. The book explores many other issues including the potential for transferring findings in this field to other population groups, including other rare populations and women in general.

Making a Scene

Making a Scene
Author: Liz Millward
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2015-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0774830697

Starting in the mid-1960s, Canadian lesbians started leaving their closets en masse to find each other and build community. After decades of being pathologized or erased from public view, lesbians were ready to make a scene – both by bringing attention to themselves and by creating physical spaces and opportunities where they could meet to form relationships, debate politics, and forge their own culture. Making a Scene documents the lesbian movement that emerged in Canada between 1964 and 1984. Not just a story of big-city life, it chronicles the range of spaces lesbians created across rural and urban Canada, from physical locations, such as lesbian and gay centres, bookstores, and private members’ clubs, to ephemeral sites of encounter, such as conferences, festivals, and Dykes in the Streets marches. Enriched by interviews and excerpts from letters, club meeting minutes, diaries, and more, Making a Scene brings to life the exuberance and determination of these young women.

The Disappearing L

The Disappearing L
Author: Bonnie J. Morris
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2016-07-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 143846178X

A 2018 Over the Rainbow Selection presented by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table (GLBTRT) of the American Library Association LGBT Americans now enjoy the right to marry—but what will we remember about the vibrant cultural spaces that lesbian activists created in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s? Most are vanishing from the calendar—and from recent memory. The Disappearing L explores the rise and fall of the hugely popular women-only concerts, festivals, bookstores, and support spaces built by and for lesbians in the era of woman-identified activism. Through the stories unfolding in these chapters, anyone unfamiliar with the Michigan festival, Olivia Records, or the women's bookstores once dotting the urban landscape will gain a better understanding of the era in which artists and activists first dared to celebrate lesbian lives. This book offers the backstory to the culture we are losing to mainstreaming and assimilation. Through interviews with older activists, it also responds to recent attacks on lesbian feminists who are being made to feel that they've hit their cultural expiration date.

No Modernism Without Lesbians

No Modernism Without Lesbians
Author: Diana Souhami
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2020-04-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1786694859

A Sunday Times Book of the Year Winner of the Polari Prize 'A book about love, identity, acceptance and the freedom to write, paint, compose and wear corduroy breeches with gaiters. To swear, kiss, publish and be damned. It is vastly entertaining and often moving... There isn't a page without an entertaining vignette' The Times. The extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place – Paris, Between the Wars – fostered the birth of the Modernist movement. Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher; a patron of artists; a society hostess; a groundbreaking writer. They were all women who loved women. They rejected the patriarchy and made lives of their own – forming a community around them in Paris. Each of these four central women interacted with a myriad of others, some of the most influential, most entertaining, most shocking and most brilliant figures of the age. Diana Souhami weaves their stories into those of the four central women to create a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-War Paris. 'One of the best books I've read this year.' James Bridle

The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics

The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics
Author: Larry P. Gross
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 690
Release: 1999
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780231104470

More than 100 articles, essays, letters, and primary documents cover the formation of gay identity; religious, scientific, medical and legal perspectives; the mainstream media; lesbian and gay media; and community prospects and tactics.

The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People

The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2011-06-24
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309210658

At a time when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals-often referred to under the umbrella acronym LGBT-are becoming more visible in society and more socially acknowledged, clinicians and researchers are faced with incomplete information about their health status. While LGBT populations often are combined as a single entity for research and advocacy purposes, each is a distinct population group with its own specific health needs. Furthermore, the experiences of LGBT individuals are not uniform and are shaped by factors of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographical location, and age, any of which can have an effect on health-related concerns and needs. The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People assesses the state of science on the health status of LGBT populations, identifies research gaps and opportunities, and outlines a research agenda for the National Institute of Health. The report examines the health status of these populations in three life stages: childhood and adolescence, early/middle adulthood, and later adulthood. At each life stage, the committee studied mental health, physical health, risks and protective factors, health services, and contextual influences. To advance understanding of the health needs of all LGBT individuals, the report finds that researchers need more data about the demographics of these populations, improved methods for collecting and analyzing data, and an increased participation of sexual and gender minorities in research. The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People is a valuable resource for policymakers, federal agencies including the National Institute of Health (NIH), LGBT advocacy groups, clinicians, and service providers.