Exploring identity development and gender orientation, Lesbian Epiphanies: Women Coming Out in Later Life contains firsthand information about the experiences and difficulties of women who discover and reveal their newfound lesbian sexuality in later life. Psychologists, social workers, counselors, and professors will find that Lesbian Epiphanies is the first book to extensively quote from interviews of lesbians and bisexuals who had entered into heterosexual marriages. From the analysis of these 24 interviews, the psychological, erotic, and social processes of women who come out as lesbians or bisexuals after a heterosexual marriage are clearly explained so you can better assist your clients throughout this coming-out process. Discussing the personal and societal standards which clouded early self-awareness for these women, Lesbian Epiphanies lifts the veil of confusion to clearly illuminate the issues at hand to assist you in understanding and helping your clients. From the case studies in this important book, you will learn how some women came to realize their same gender attractions and the barriers they faced, including negative attitudes toward lesbian women and the lack of strong role models. Helpful and informative, Lesbian Epiphanies explores the development of sexual identity in women in the Unites States today and provides you with essential information to help you improve your services to lesbian and bisexual clients by: examining how the role of marriage in American culture stifles a woman 's self-awareness of her sexuality in order to help clients avoid the mistake of a heterosexual marriage before husbands and children are involved examining reasons behind the lack of valuable sexual information in America that limits a woman 's general awareness of herself, her body, her sexuality, and her life options understanding the challenges that lesbians and bisexuals experience when attempting to establish their true identities to assist your clients in overcoming these barriers suggesting support groups for clients who are having a difficult time becoming used to the ideas and feelings of some same gender attractionsThis insightful book knocks down the sociological and psychological barriers that keep women from realizing or acknowledging their real sexual orientation by dispelling societal and cultural myths about what it means to be a woman in the United States. Offering you invaluable advice on how to help clients effectively and happily live with their new identities, Lesbian Epiphanies provides solutions to the challenges that women experience in establishing their other-than-heterosexual orientation in a heterosexist society.

Love Matters: A Book of Lesbian Romance and Relationships is a collection of advice columns and personal reflections that will help lesbian couples validate and appreciate their unique relationships. With excerpts taken from the author's "Love Matters" column in the lesbian newspaper New Phazes, this book explores real-life questions and issues that lesbians have about dating, sex, love, and relationship longevity. From Love Matters, you?ll receive honest, informative advice that can help you and your partner share a more open and fulfilling relationship.Offering support, care, and understanding for lesbian couples, Love Matters seeks to recognize the "new female role" for lesbian women. Using her 15-year long relationship as a basis for many of the responses, the author provides you with suggestions and insight into topics relating to lesbian relationships, such as: keeping sex alive in a long-term relationship handling finances fairly and successfully supporting your partner through the physical, emotional, and spiritual changes caused by menopause identifying the difficulties of dating and what lesbians look for on a date questioning the purpose of and emotions caused by a long-distance relationship realizing how homophobia affects love and relationshipsWhile focusing on the joys and experiences of couples, this book also addresses depression and loneliness felt by single lesbians, break-ups, and the death of a partner. You?ll find that Love Matters offers comfort, hope, and humor that will help you understand the difficulties and rewards of your lesbian relationship.

Love Matters: A Book of Lesbian Romance and Relationships is a collection of advice columns and personal reflections that will help lesbian couples validate and appreciate their unique relationships. With excerpts taken from the author's "Love Matters" column in the lesbian newspaper New Phazes, this book explores real-life questions and issues that lesbians have about dating, sex, love, and relationship longevity. From Love Matters, you?ll receive honest, informative advice that can help you and your partner share a more open and fulfilling relationship.Offering support, care, and understanding for lesbian couples, Love Matters seeks to recognize the "new female role" for lesbian women. Using her 15-year long relationship as a basis for many of the responses, the author provides you with suggestions and insight into topics relating to lesbian relationships, such as: keeping sex alive in a long-term relationship handling finances fairly and successfully supporting your partner through the physical, emotional, and spiritual changes caused by menopause identifying the difficulties of dating and what lesbians look for on a date questioning the purpose of and emotions caused by a long-distance relationship realizing how homophobia affects love and relationshipsWhile focusing on the joys and experiences of couples, this book also addresses depression and loneliness felt by single lesbians, break-ups, and the death of a partner. You?ll find that Love Matters offers comfort, hope, and humor that will help you understand the difficulties and rewards of your lesbian relationship.

The first volume to focus exclusively on lesbian performance work, Acts of Passion: Sexuality, Gender, and Performance draws on the experiences and expertise of a wide range of lesbian practitioners and theorists to explore the impact and influences of sexuality and gender on performance. It examines essays, dialogues, and performance texts from theater directors, performers, theorists, playwrights, and performance writers against social and cultural constructs and performance theories to produce a diverse and challenging portrait of lesbian live performance art. The book's penetrating scope covers drag queens, lesbian vampires, representations of lesbian sex, solo artists, the art of collaboration, lesbian aesthetics, and lesbian playwrights writing straight and illustrates why live performance is one of the most dynamic forums in which women can create, control, and produce their work without artistic constraint.Acts of Passion explodes binary definitions of gender and sexuality by destabilizing familiar notions of the 'real'and creating new production values and aesthetics in the process. The relationships between experience and expression, sexuality and cultural placing, context and artistic control, representation and self-representation become clearer as the book discusses: the manner in which women are represented as absent in the signifying system of patriarchal society how questions of purity, 'authenticity,'and self-definition complicate the field of representation the power of lesbian dance performance to make the lesbian body culturally visible several 'new wave'performers--creating work, getting seen, showing flesh, doing politics, and making money the projections, preconceptions, expectations, and general baggage attached to the performing lesbian body what the term 'lesbian playwright'means within contemporary culture 'It's Queer Up North'--a British National Arts Organization the arguments for and against mainstreaming lesbian performanceAnyone interested in theater and performance, cultural studies, gender issues, and the politics of 'positive representation'--whether playwright, performer, director, writer, academic, student, or theatre goer--will find Acts of Passion a powerful step in wrenching the power of representation away from the dominant culture. Defiant, saucy, sexy, and smart, the contributors appropriate their own spaces, identities, crafts, and languages, both within this book and without.

Claudette Kulkarni explores lesbian experience from a Jungian and feminist perspective, through interviews with women who see themselves as lesbians or who are in a lesbian relationship.
Although a feminist treatment of the subject challenges the heterosexism of Jungian theory, the author presents a link between theory and experience that is consistent with both approaches.
She concludes that when a woman finds herself loving another woman she is often responding to a profound psychological instinct to act, in spite of internal conflict or external opposition, and that this is a significant move in the service of personal and collective individuation and a movement toward achieving self-understanding

Classics in Lesbian Studies takes a major step in giving the lesbian experience its own unique voice within scholarship and the larger world society. Thus, it is devoted exclusively to the lesbian experience and serves as a vehicle for the promotion of scholarship and commentary on lesbianism from an international perspective. Not only does it ensure that "classic" pieces are not forgotten by new generations of students and scholars, it also spurs further lesbian research, writing, theory, and scholarship.In Classics in Lesbian Studies, you are introduced to descriptive, theoretical, empirical, applied, and multicultural perspectives in the field of lesbian studies. Interdisciplinary, the book presents pieces from various academic areas in multiple formats, including personal accounts, poetry, editorials, debates, and commentaries. For your convenience, the chapters are organized primarily across four categories: identity, history and literature, physical and social sciences, and "back to lesbian politics." You will find the discussions of the following issues and subjects provocative and insightful: ways black women in the diaspora construct and name their sexual and romantic feelings for other women lesbian identity formation in a changing social environment how lesbians maneuver in the dominant culture and their own subculture lesbianism as a political movement the experiences of lesbian adolescents teaching lesbian studies lesbians and societal institutions, including the work place, the media, the political arena, the legal system, and religion using lesbian-feminist scholarship to reexamine women's lives in the pastStudents, scholars, lesbian feminists, and others interested in lesbian studies will find Classics in Lesbian Studies a vital examination of lesbianism since its grass roots. Not only does it consider the progress made since the initial days of fighting for liberation, it also explores a more distant, repressed past and anticipates future possibilities lying before us. This powerful, insightful collection is sure to become a classic as it grapples with virtually all aspects of lesbianism, from its inception as a political movement to its identity as a lifestyle choice to its implications of community.

Collects for the first time major lesbian plays from controversial cultural perspectives spanning more than a generation of work in varied theatrical styles representing an amazing gamut of lesbian politics from all over America. Includes: The Quintessential Image (Jane Chambers) * The Postcard (Gloria Joyce Dickler) * A Lady and a Woman (Shirlene Holmes) * Nasty Rumors and Final Remarks (Susan Miller) * Desdemona (Paula Vogel) * and more!

This book provides chemical dependency clinicians a sampling of the work being done in the fields of gay and lesbian chemical dependency to enable clinicians to provide better care for their gay and lesbian clients.After an overview of 7 research studies which examine the incidence of alcoholism and/or chemical dependency in gay and lesbian persons, the contributing authors explore the special concerns of recovering gay and lesbian addicts.Chapters focus not only on issues in the fields of gay and lesbian chemical dependency but how clinicians can use this knowledge to better care for their gay and lesbian clients. Readers will find new information on: working with HIV positive persons homophobia as a critical root in chemically dependent gays and lesbians positive changes for dysfunctional relationships common with gays and lesbians spirituality in gay and lesbian communities the special needs of the rural gay/lesbian client gay men's groups in AA a retrospective of NALGAP resources and referrals for chemically dependent gay and lesbian personsAddiction and Recovery in Gay and Lesbian Persons assists social workers and other helping professionals working with chemically dependent clients learn more about how to adequately treat them. Gay and lesbian persons recovering from a chemical addiction will also find this book enlightening.

This book provides chemical dependency clinicians a sampling of the work being done in the fields of gay and lesbian chemical dependency to enable clinicians to provide better care for their gay and lesbian clients.After an overview of 7 research studies which examine the incidence of alcoholism and/or chemical dependency in gay and lesbian persons, the contributing authors explore the special concerns of recovering gay and lesbian addicts.Chapters focus not only on issues in the fields of gay and lesbian chemical dependency but how clinicians can use this knowledge to better care for their gay and lesbian clients. Readers will find new information on: working with HIV positive persons homophobia as a critical root in chemically dependent gays and lesbians positive changes for dysfunctional relationships common with gays and lesbians spirituality in gay and lesbian communities the special needs of the rural gay/lesbian client gay men's groups in AA a retrospective of NALGAP resources and referrals for chemically dependent gay and lesbian personsAddiction and Recovery in Gay and Lesbian Persons assists social workers and other helping professionals working with chemically dependent clients learn more about how to adequately treat them. Gay and lesbian persons recovering from a chemical addiction will also find this book enlightening.

A comprehensive bibliography of lesbian studies articles published in nationally and internationally distributed periodicals, comprising some 3,500 entries by and about lesbians. Citations are cross-referenced and multiply -listed in over 100 categories, including traditional topics in the humaniti

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This handbook offers diverse perspectives on queer Africa, incorporating scholarly contributions on themes that reflect and inflect the trajectories of queer contributions to African studies within and outside academia. The Routledge Handbook of Queer African Studies incorporates a range of unique perspectives, reflecting ongoing struggles between regimes of inclusion and those of transformation premised upon different relational and reflexive engagements between queer embodiment and Africa's subjectivities. All sections of this handbook blend contributions from public intellectuals and practitioners with academic reflections on topics not limited to neoliberalism, social care, morality and ethics, social education, and technology, through the lens of queer African studies. The book renders visible the ongoing transformations and resistance within African societies as well as the inventiveness of queer presence in negotiating belonging. This handbook will be of interest to students and scholars of gender and sexuality in Africa, queer studies, and African culture and society.

This volume showcases a vibrant wave of scholarship that explores the intersection of queer theory and Sinophone studies, consolidating an interdisciplinary framework for furthering transnational research into non-conforming genders, sexualities and bodies. Engaging with contemporary debates and controversies, Keywords in Queer Sinophone Studies presents a definitive collection of original contributions, which are both theoretically and empirically grounded and cross-disciplinary in nature. Individual chapters offer an in-depth study of new empirical data and case studies, covering keywords such as transpacific, viscerality, fandom, postcoloniality, ethnicity and activism. Imagining new conversations across several fields, including literature, film, communication, ethnic studies, anthropology, history, sociology and politics, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Queer Studies and Asian culture, literature and film, as well as gender and sexuality.

Members of social groups, including communities, routinely exert subtle forms of social control on others. The Web: Social Control in a Lesbian Community is a sociological study examining the effects of informal social control the response to behavior or people regarded as deviant, problematic, threatening, or undesirable in everyday life. The context of this study is a lesbian community situated in the heartland of the United States. Based on interviews, participant-observation, and document sources gathered over a period of nine years, the book analyzes the effects of social control on relations of power (based on race, class, and sexual identity) among diverse members of a lesbian community. Although much of what is represented in this book is unique to this lesbian community, the forms and functions of social control analyzed here can be found in any human community.

This handbook offers diverse perspectives on queer Africa, incorporating scholarly contributions on themes that reflect and inflect the trajectories of queer contributions to African studies within and outside academia. The Routledge Handbook of Queer African Studies incorporates a range of unique perspectives, reflecting ongoing struggles between regimes of inclusion and those of transformation premised upon different relational and reflexive engagements between queer embodiment and Africa's subjectivities. All sections of this handbook blend contributions from public intellectuals and practitioners with academic reflections on topics not limited to neoliberalism, social care, morality and ethics, social education, and technology, through the lens of queer African studies. The book renders visible the ongoing transformations and resistance within African societies as well as the inventiveness of queer presence in negotiating belonging. This handbook will be of interest to students and scholars of gender and sexuality in Africa, queer studies, and African culture and society.

Genet's sensual and brutal portrait of World War II unfolds between the poles of his grief for his lover Jean, killed in the Resistance during the liberation of Paris, and his perverse attraction to the collaborator Riton. Elegaic, macabre, chimerical, Funeral Rites is a dark meditation on the mirror images of love and hate, sex and death.

This unique book sheds new light on the most invisible members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. Hidden from view by a combination of prevailing cultural assumptions and their own unwillingness to be seen, older lesbians have been consistently under-represented in both popular culture and research. This ground-breaking study, based on an unprecedentedly large research sample of nearly four hundred lesbian-identified women between the ages of 60 and 90, offers a fascinating insight into the lives of older lesbians in the UK. Drawing on data from a comprehensive questionnaire survey and illustrated with vivid personal testimonies, it explores both the diversity and the distinct collective identity of the older lesbian community, arguing that understanding their past experience is crucial to providing for their needs in the future. It is essential reading for scholars in the fields of women's studies and genders and sexualities, and will also appeal to sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, social and cultural historians, and experts in ageing, gerontology, nursing and social work.

This innovative study claims camp as a critical, yet pleasurable strategy for women's engagement with contemporary popular culture as exemplified by 30 Rock or Lady Gaga. In detailed analyses of lesbian cinema, postfeminist TV, and popular music, the book offers a novel take on its subject. It defines camp as a unique mode of detached attachment, which builds on affective intensity and emotional investment, while strongly encouraging a critical edge.

Take Stage! is the first comprehensive "how-to" book for lesbians wanting to produce or direct lesbian theatre. Controversial and anecdotal, Take Stage! is written for the lesbian with no previous experience with theatre or lesbian organization. In addition to chapters on auditioning, rehearsals, selecting the script, booking space, and assembling a staff, the book includes chapters on issues of special interest to lesbians. Take Stage! includes information on how to challenge the "isms"-lookism, racism, classism, ageism, and other prejudices with which lesbian culture is currently engaged. It also looks at problems of accountability in non-hierarchal structures, boundary-setting among all-volunteer staffs, sabotage via hidden agendas or disassociative behaviors, horizontal hostility, and internalized homophobia. The appendix contains sample contracts, audition forms, light plots, budgets, and schedules. From the decision to produce the play to opening night and touring, Take Stage! covers all the bases and provides a healthy dose of moral support.

In Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships, Allen examines the lives of Brazilian women in same-sex relationships. This examination contributes to interdisciplinary discussions of female same-sex sexuality, violence, race, and citizenship. Using fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, primarily with Afro-Brazilian women in the city of Salvador da Bahia, Allen argues that Brazilian lesbian women reject Brazilian cultural norms that encourage male domination and female submission through their engagement in romantic relationships with each other. At the same time Allen claims lesbian women also reproduce Brazilian cultural ideals that associate passion, intensity, and power with physical dominance through their engagement in infidelity and intimate partner violence. The book demonstrates that lesbian women are nonetheless marginalized as Brazilian citizens through widespread social and political invisibility despite these apparent displays of masculinized power.

This book explores the everyday lives of 'lesbian' women in urban Russia. It explores changes and continuities by examining generational differences, and attends to regional variation by considering what 'lesbian' life looks like in different locations, problematising essentialist accounts of Russian sexualities and western-centric theorizations.

Here, Bjorklund shows that Swedish literary discourses on lesbianism provocatively contrast with a widely accepted view that attitudes toward homosexuality have gradually become more tolerant. The lasting power of negative discourses upends the assumption that Sweden's progressive laws reflect progressive attitudes toward homosexuality."

"Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer have put together an excellent collection of original articles which demonstrates the range of lesbian literary scholarship as a field and the important nuance and insight it is contributing to our knowledge of Woolf's life and writing in particular."--"Woolf Studies Annual"

The last two decades have seen a resurgence of critical and popular attention to Virginia Woolf's life and work. Such traditional institutions as "The New York Review of Books" now pair her with William Shakespeare in promotional advertisements; her face is used to sell everything from Barnes & Noble books to Bass Ale.

Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings represents the first book devoted to Woolf's lesbianism. Divided into two sections, Lesbian Intersections and Lesbian Readings of Woolf's Novels, these essays focus on how Woolf's private and public experience and knowledge of same-sex love influences her shorter fiction and novels. Lesbian Intersections includes personal narratives that trace the experience of reading Woolf through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Lesbian Readings of Woolf's Novels provides lesbian interpretations of the individual novels, including "Orlando, The Waves," and "The Years,"

Breaking new ground in our understanding of the role Woolf's love for women plays in her major writing, these essays shift the emphasis of lesbian interpretations from Woolf's life to her work.

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. Paula C. Rust is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Hamilton College.