This book demonstrates that everyday interactions and struggles over the right words to use are at the heart of the experience of those in same-sex marriages. At a time when same-sex marriage is on the cusp of becoming legal across the United States, the authors demonstrate through in-depth interviews and rich survey data how the use of relationship terms by married lesbians is tied to a variety of factors that influence how their identities are shaped and presented across social contexts. Via rich anecdotes of how married lesbians navigate the social sphere through their varied use or avoidance of the use of the term wife, this volume is provides groundbreaking insights into how social change is being constructed and made sense of through an examination of real-life interactions with family and friends, on the job, and across service and casual encounters. The authors introduce us to the concept of contextual identity to explain how history and social context inspire cultural change. This first-of-its-kind analysis demonstrates how the first lesbians to marry have navigated acceptance and rejection, insecurity and political strength through their use of language in daily interactions. This book will surely resonate with anyone interested in understanding how married lesbians are presenting themselves at this historical juncture where social change and linguistic nuance are colliding.

Candid, compassionate, authoritative--a rich source of insights, information, and practical guidance. ""The first major work on the topic."" --Gay Community News ""A much needed comprehensive study of what happens to husbands, wives, and children during the coming-out crisis. --The Reverend Jane E. Vennard, founder Task Force for Spouses of Gays and Lesbians ""The new enlarged edition adds important factors, especially children's reactions to a parent's coming out. Well-researched and insightful."" --Fritz Klein, M.D., author of The Bisexual Option ""Anybody practicing in this area would be well advised to read this book."" --Professor Arthur S. Leonard, New York Law School In two million marriages, one spouse is gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Having a spouse or parent disclose his or her same-sex attraction is a shattering experience fraught with pain, confusion, anger, and a profound loss of self-esteem. Amity Pierce Buxton spotlights this exploding phenomenon and reports constructive coping strategies that spouses and children have used to resolve problems of sexual damage, family breakdown, deception, and homophobia. Illustrated throughout by riveting personal narratives, this expanded edition of The Other Side of the Closet traces the family's journey from initial trauma to eventual transformation. This invaluable source of information for spouses, families, and professionals is based on Dr. Buxton's eight years of research, including interviews with 1,000 straight spouses and children, her own personal experience, and her counseling work with spouses of gay, lesbian, and bisexual partners.

In 1857 the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who was fascinated by lesbianism, created a scandal with Les Fleurs du Mal [The Flowers of Evil]. This collection was originally entitled "The Lesbians" and described women as "femmes damnees," with "disordered souls" suffering in a hypocritical world. Then twenty years later, lesbians in Paris dared to flaunt themselves in that extraordinarily creative period at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries which became known as the Belle Epoque. Lesbian Decadence, now available in English for the first time, provides a new analysis and synthesis of the depiction of lesbianism as a social phenomenon and a symptom of social malaise as well as a fantasy in that most vibrant place and period in history. In this newly translated work, praised by leading critics as "authoritative," "stunning," and "a marvel of elegance and erudition," Nicole G. Albert analyzes and synthesizes an engagingly rich sweep of historical representations of the lesbian mystique in art and literature. Albert contrasts these visions to moralists' abrupt condemnations of "the lesbian vice," as well as the newly emerging psychiatric establishment's medical fury and their obsession on cataloging and classifying symptoms of "inversion" or "perversion" in order to cure these "unbalanced creatures of love." Lesbian Decadence combines literary, artistic, and historical analysis of sources from the mainstream to the rare, from scholarly studies to popular culture. The English translation provides a core reference/text for those interested in the Decadent movement, in literary history, in French history and social history. It is well suited for courses in gender studies, women's studies, LGBT history, and lesbianism in literature, history, and art.

Are bodies sexy? How? In what sorts of ways? Sexy Bodies investigates the production of sexual bodies and sexual practices, of sexualities which are dyke, bi, transracial, and even hetero. It celebrates lesbian and queer sexualities but also explores what runs underneath and within all sexualities, discovering what is fundamentally weird and strange about all bodies, all carnalities.

Looking at a pleasurable variety of cultural forms and texts, the contributors consider the particular charms of girls and horses, from National Velvet to Marnie; discuss figures of the lesbian body from vampires to tribades to tomboys; uncover 'virtual' lesbians in the fiction of Jeanette Winterson; track desire in the music of legendary Blues singers; and investigate the ever-scrutinised and celebrated body of Elizabeth Taylor. The collection includes two important pieces of fiction by Mary Fallon and Nicole Brossard.

Sexy Bodies makes new connections between and amongst bodies, cruising the borders of the obscene, the pleasurable, the desirable and the hitherto unspoken rethinking sexuality anew as deeply and strangely sexy.

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.

In My Butch Career Esther Newton tells the compelling, disarming, and at times sexy story of her struggle to write, teach, and find love, all while coming to terms with her identity. Newton recounts a series of traumas and conflicts, from being molested as a child to her failed attempts to live a "normal," straight life in high school and college. She discusses being denied tenure at Queens College and nearly again so at SUNY Purchase. With humor and grace, she describes her introduction to middle-class gay life and her love affairs. By age forty, where Newton's narrative ends, she began to achieve personal and scholarly stability in the company of the first politicized generation of out lesbian and gay scholars with whom she helped create gender and sexuality studies. Affecting and immediate, My Butch Career is a story of a gender outlaw in the making, an invaluable account of a beloved and influential figure in LGBT history, and a powerful reminder of only how recently it has been possible to be an openly queer academic.

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold traces the evolution of the lesbian community in Buffalo, New York from the mid-1930s up to the early 1960s. Drawing upon the oral histories of 45 women, it is the first comprehensive history of a working-class lesbian community. These poignant and complex stories show how black and white working-class lesbians, although living under oppressive circumstances, nevertheless became powerful agents of historical change. Kennedy and Davis provide a unique insider's perspective on butch-fem culture and argue that the roots of gay and lesbian liberation are found specifically in the determined resistance of working-class lesbians. This 20th anniversary edition republishes the book for a new generation of readers. It includes a new preface in which the authors reflect on where the last 20 years have taken them, and reminisce about the process of creating Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold. For anyone interested in lesbian life during the 1950s, or in the dynamics of butch-fem culture, this study remains the one that set the highest standard for all oral histories and ethnographies of lesbian communities anywhere.

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 undesirableDin 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.

Lesbian writers include some of the most innovative and adventurous writers of this century, but only recently have they been given their due attention in terms of critical study. This book is the first anthology to discuss the subject of lesbianism as it relates to the critical interaction among readers, writers, and literary critics. It explores lesbian texts in terms of identification, meaning, and interpretation, and examines the complex entanglements of identity, voice, intersubjectivity, textualities, and sexualities.

"A wonderful exploration of the varieties of life choices lesbians can and do make. This book once again proves that telling the truth aboutyourself is a revolutionary act."
--"Rita Mae Brown"

"They will probably drum Karla Jay and Joanne Glasgow out of the academy for this one...A college text that is witty, literate, interesting, and can be read for fun. What's the world coming to? "Lesbian Texts and Contexts" dry title, wonderful book."
--"Barbara Grier, Editor Naiad Press"

"To call this collection much-needed or eagerly awaited would be the understatement of the year. It's thrilling ot think of the new readings of classic texts, the new directions for theory, and--maybe best of all--the new range of literary encounters in the classroom, that will be enabled by this radical intervention on the critical scene."
--"Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Duke University"

"Excellent, ...challenging, sexy, ...never boring."
--"Outweek."

The Cambridge Companion to Lesbian Literature examines literary representations of lesbian sexuality, identities, and communities, from the medieval period to the present. In addition to providing a helpful orientation to key literary-historical periods, critical concepts, theoretical debates and literary genres, this Companion considers the work of such well-known authors as Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Alison Bechdel and Sarah Waters. Written by a host of leading critics and covering subjects as diverse as lesbian desire in the long eighteenth century and same-sex love in a postcolonial context, this Companion delivers insight into the variety of traditions that have shaped the present landscape of lesbian literature.

Taking lesbians in Singapore as a case study, this book explores the possibility of a modern gay identity in a postcolonial society, that is not dependent on Western queer norms. It looks at the core question of how this identity can be reconciled with local culture and how it relates to global modernities and dominant understandings of what it means to be queer. It engages with debates about globalization, post-colonialism and sexuality, while emphasising the specificity, diversity and interconnectedness of local lesbian sexualities.

Spoiler Alert: the lesbian character always dies. That is what seems to happen in television shows and films from all around the world. But is it true and is it something new? And does it even matter when women who love women can be found right across the media landscape? Looking at the fates of characters over decades, this wide-ranging and lively book argues that killing off the lesbian-even if she only appears via the subtext-is nothing new. It is a form of symbolic annihilation that has an impact in real life. Industry surveys and scholarly studies show that it is now easier for actors to come out and be role models. When more women are working behind the scenes the quality of what appears on-screen also becomes more diverse, but the storylines do not necessarily change. From the Xenaverse to GLAAD to the Lexa Pledge, fans have demanded better from the entertainment industry. As their fan fiction migrates from the computer screen to the printed page, they reanimate the dead and insist on happy endings.

Use Your Words to Heal with This Self-Care Journal Praise for Jen Cross's Writing Ourselves Whole, the companion to this Write to Restore journal. "This is the most essential book on writing practice I know..." Pat Schneider, author of How the Light Gets In and founder of the Amherst Writers & Artists method #1 Bestseller in Gay & Lesbian Studies Jen Cross has worked with sexual trauma survivors for over fifteen years and founded an organization that is devoted to creating spaces for survivors to write and talk about their experiences. A holistic self-care journaling approach to trauma and recovery. Creative writing is increasingly becoming a go-to method for trauma recovery. There is great power in the written word, and even more so when those words are our own. Journaling provides a cathartic release of emotions because it allows us to not only process past experiences but also reflect on how we're feeling in the present moment. In this way, writing is one of the most easily accessible self-care practices. Give voice to what has been silenced. Healing from trauma can be a slow and painful process, especially for sexual trauma survivors, who are often shamed into keeping their experience to themselves. Write to Restore, a companion journal to Jen Cross's book Writing Ourselves Whole, is a space to put the pain on a page, and in doing so, release the hold it has on us and restore our bodies and minds. In this self-help journal find: A 60-day guided journey to healing from your experience Sixteen writing exercises that gently prompt writers deeper into their experiences and into renewal Follow-up readings, additional exercises, and suggested uses for your writing If you've worked through books such as The Body Keeps the Score; The Complex PTSD Workbook; Start Where You Are; Healing the Wounded Heart; or Present, Not Perfect then Write to Restore will provide further support and restoration for your healing process.

Providing Support if Your Child is Transgender or LGBTQ+Winner of the Sixth Annual Bisexual Book Award for Non-fiction, 2017 #1 Bestseller in Lesbian Studies Unconditional is a parenting guide book that provides parents of an LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning) child with a framework for helping their LGBT child navigate a world that isn't always welcoming. Tips from a mother with experience. In Unconditional, author Telaina Eriksen, a professor at Michigan State University, explains what she and her husband have learned through the experience of parenting a gay child. She covers topics like how to handle kids coming out, being an advocate for LGBTQ+ children, how to help your child deal with stress unique to LGBTQ+ kids, and finding a LGBTQ+ family. This book is a must read for anyone who thinks their child is transgender or otherwise LGBTQ+. A guide for supporting your LGBT child. What if my child is transgender? Eriksen covers the science of gender, understanding gender dysphoria, and how to help a transgender child through the stages of development. What if I have more general LGBTQ+ family needs? Throughout the book, both parents and kids share their stories, and Eriksen directs parents to various resources online for help. This LGBT family book teaches the principles of unconditional parenting, love, and learning. Inside, learn: How to advocate for policies that protect your child Ways to educate well-meaning, but misguided friends or family Strategies keep your kid talking if your child is transgender or LGBTQ+ Signs of unhealthy relationships When to consider therapy for your child or your family How to find an LGBTQ+ community (including inclusive churches) If you liked LGBT books, best sellers like The Gender Identity Guide for Parents, The Savvy Ally, or The End of Gender, you'll love Unconditional.

Using a rich array of oral histories and archival sources, Tomboys and bachelor girls provides the first detailed academic study of lesbian identity and culture in post-war Britain. Described by psychiatrists as immature and neurotic, and widely ignored as taboo by mainstream society, lesbians nevertheless recognised and accepted their same-sex desire and sought out women like themselves. Challenging the conventional picture of the post-war decades as years of austerity and conservative femininity, this book traces the emergence of a vibrant lesbian social scene in Britain, centred on the metropolitan nightclubs of post-war London, but also developing across the country, through lesbian magazines and social organisations. This fascinating book brings to life the rich history of post-war lesbian culture for the scholarly and general reader alike. -- .

The woman-made world described in Sappho's songs has been discussed and analysed for centuries. In "Sappho's Sweetbitter Songs," late twentieth century theories of feminism, psychoanalysis and literary criticism are applied to Sappho's lyrics for the first time. The study recreates and examines a voice that sings of the dreams and interactions of women, tells of the bodies, rhythms and desires of the women of Sappho's circle. At the same time it offers an analysis of sexual difference, comparing the homoerotic lyrics of male poets of that era to those of Sappho.

This comprehensive study of Roman sexuality and the ideologies of masculinity discusses a wide range of ancient texts, arguing that native Roman concepts of masculinity did not rely on the distinction between homosexuality and heterosexuality, but were instead structured around such antitheses as free vs. slave, dominant vs. subordinate, and masculine vs. effeminate.

What makes kinship queer? This collection from leading and emerging thinkers in gender and sexualities interrogates the politics of belonging, shining a light on the outcasts, rebels, and pioneers. Queer Kinship brings together an array of thought-provoking perspectives on what it means to love and be loved, to 'do family' and to belong in the South African context. The collection includes a number of different topic areas, disciplinary approaches, and theoretical lenses on familial relations, reproduction, and citizenship. The text amplifies the voices of those who are bending, breaking, and remaking the rules of being and belonging. Photo-essays and artworks offer moving glimpses into the new life worlds being created in and among the 'normal' and the mundane. Taken as a whole, this text offers a critical and intersectional perspective that addresses some important gaps in the scholarship on kinship and families. Queer Kinship makes an innovative contribution to international studies in kinship, gender, and sexualities. It will be a valuable resource to scholars, students, and activists working in these areas.

At first glance, Barbara Kalish fit the stereotype of a 1950s wife and mother. Married at eighteen, Barbara lived with her husband and two daughters in a California suburb, where she was president of the Parent-Teacher Association. At a PTA training conference in San Francisco, Barbara met Pearl, another PTA president who also had two children and happened to live only a few blocks away from her. To Barbara, Pearl was "the most gorgeous woman in the world," and the two began an affair that lasted over a decade. Through interviews, diaries, memoirs, and letters, Her Neighbor's Wife traces the stories of hundreds of women, like Barbara Kalish, who struggled to balance marriage and same-sex desire in the postwar United States. In doing so, Lauren Jae Gutterman draws our attention away from the postwar landscape of urban gay bars and into the homes of married women, who tended to engage in affairs with wives and mothers they met in the context of their daily lives: through work, at church, or in their neighborhoods. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the lesbian feminist movement and the no-fault divorce revolution transformed the lives of wives who desired women. Women could now choose to divorce their husbands in order to lead openly lesbian or bisexual lives; increasingly, however, these women were confronted by hostile state discrimination, typically in legal battles over child custody. Well into the 1980s, many women remained ambivalent about divorce and resistant to labeling themselves as lesbian, therefore complicating a simple interpretation of their lives and relationship choices. By revealing the extent to which marriage has historically permitted space for wives' relationships with other women, Her Neighbor's Wife calls into question the presumed straightness of traditional American marriage.

"Defiant Desire" records the lives of lesbian and gay South Africans of all races, lived in the face of censure, denial and oppression, from a drag salon in Woodstock to a gay "shebeen" in kwaThema; from a church in a Pretoria nightclub to Johannesburg's lesbian and gay pride march; and from Afrikaans love poetry to the new activism. "Defiant Desire" brings together South Africa's most prominent gay and lesbian writers, activists and academics. The contributors set out to refute beliefs that homosexuality is a white, male or middle-class phenomenon. Their writing makes clear and vibrant the relationship between a growing lesbian and gay rights movement and the broader anti-apartheid struggle in a time of transition and upheaval South Africa, and challenges its people to build a new society that respects and cherishes all of its citizens. "Defiant Desire" is an articulate testimony to the range of gay and lesbian experiences in South Africa. It is both a document of lesbian and gay struggle, and an indispensable book for those interested in the sexual politics coursing beneath the country's troubled passage to democracy.

This book sets out to investigate and theorise mediations of lesbian desire in a substantial corpus of films (spanning the period 1936-2002) by male and female directors working in France and also in French-speaking parts of Belgium, Canada, Switzerland and Africa. The corpus is unique in never before having been assembled, and represents a valuable tool not just for researchers but also for university teachers creating courses both on lesbianism in film and on sexuality in French cinema. A fair number of the 89 texts treated are mainstream films which have achieved high critical acclaim and/or high viewing figures: to cite just a few examples, Henri-Georges Clouzot's "Quai des orfA]vres" (1947), Louis Malle's "Milou en mai" (1989), Claude Chabrol's "La CA(c)rA(c)monie" (1995), AndrA(c) TA(c)chinA(c)'s "Les Voleurs" (1995), and FranAois Ozon's "Huit femmes" (2001). As such, they have contributed to hegemonic constructions of and debate on (female) homosexuality, in a century wherein sexed/ gendered identity, including sexual orientation, has become a preeminent factor in the constitution of subjectivity. While such constructions and debate have a French-language specificity, and have been produced in distinct socio-political and cultural contexts, this study also engages in analytical comparisons with relevant anglophone films and their own distinct discursive contexts.

The Lesbian Revolution argues that lesbian feminists were a vital force in the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM). They did not just play a fundamental role in the important changes wrought by second wave feminism, but created a powerful revolution in lesbian theory, culture and practice. Yet this lesbian revolution is undocumented. The book shows that lesbian feminists were founders of feminist institutions such as resources for women survivors of men's violence, including refuges and rape crisis centres, and that they were central to campaigns against this violence. They created a feminist squatting movement, theatre groups, bands, art and poetry and conducted campaigns for lesbian rights. They also created a profound and challenging analysis of sexuality which has disappeared from the historical record. They analysed heterosexuality as a political institution, arguing that lesbianism was a political choice for feminists and, indeed, a form of resistance in itself. Using interviews with prominent lesbian feminists from the time of the WLM, and informed by the author's personal experience, this book aims to challenge the way the work and ideas of lesbian feminists have been eclipsed and to document the lesbian revolution. The book will be of key interest to scholars and students of women's history, the history of feminism, the politics of sexuality, women's studies, gender studies, lesbian and gay studies, queer studies and cultural studies, as well as to the lay reader interested in the WLM and feminism more generally.

Winner, Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Anthology Winner, Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, Publishing Triangle Awards A Ms. magazine, Refinery29, and Lambda Literary Most Anticipated Read of 2021 A groundbreaking collection tracing the history of intellectual thought by Black Lesbian writers, in the tradition of The New Press's perennial seller Words of Fire African American lesbian writers and theorists have made extraordinary contributions to feminist theory, activism, and writing. Mouths of Rain, the companion anthology to Beverly Guy-Sheftall's classic Words of Fire, traces the long history of intellectual thought produced by Black Lesbian writers, spanning the nineteenth century through the twenty-first century. Using "Black Lesbian" as a capacious signifier, Mouths of Rain includes writing by Black women who have shared intimate and loving relationships with other women, as well as Black women who see bonding as mutual, Black women who have self-identified as lesbian, Black women who have written about Black Lesbians, and Black women who theorize about and see the word lesbian as a political descriptor that disrupts and critiques capitalism, heterosexism, and heteropatriarchy. Taking its title from a poem by Audre Lorde, Mouths of Rain addresses pervasive issues such as misogynoir and anti-blackness while also attending to love, romance, "coming out," and the erotic. Contributors include: Barbara Smith Beverly Smith Bettina Love Dionne Brand Cheryl Clarke Cathy J. Cohen Angelina Weld Grimke Alexis Pauline Gumbs Audre Lorde Dawn Lundy Martin Pauli Murray Michelle Parkerson Mecca Jamilah Sullivan Alice Walker Jewelle Gomez

This book forms an introduction to the rapidly growing field of lesbian studies. Steering a middle course between 'high theory' and detailed textual analysis, it provides both those new to the field and more experienced readers in lesbian/gay and feminist scholarship with original insights into the contradictory meanings of lesbian sexuality in Western culture.

Exploring different cultural forms, including twentieth-century fiction and Hollywood cinema, Hoogland addresses topical theoretical questions concerning the shifting significance of lesbian sexuality as they arise from careful textual analyses. Among the examples discussed are Alice Walker's "The Color Purple, "Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar, "and the Hollywood thriller "Basic Instinct. "Guiding concerns are the interrelations between knowledge and desire, between sexuality and gender, and the violent operation of heterosexual ideologies. Adopting a psychoanalytical perspective, Hoogland concludes by critically interrogating feminism's ambivalent stakes in female same-sex desire.

"Lesbian Configurations "is both a valuable introduction to an expanding field and an original contribution to current debates.