Sex Talks to Girls chronicles the outward antics of a woman on an inward journey to self through the routes of religion, sex, sobriety, and kids. Recasting herself in this memoir as ""Molly Meek,"" Maureen Seaton interprets the emergence of Molly's identity in luxurious and very funny prose. Molly alternately finds herself in the surprising company of winos, swingers, and drag kings; in love with Jesus H. Christ and a butch named Mars; in charge of two children; writing stories that shrink painfully to poems without her permission; and incapable of figuring out how she landed in any of these predicaments. She is, by turns, a little saint, a Stepford wife, a bi-mom, and a femme with super powers. Her transformation from near-nun to full-fledged sexual being, accidentally becoming conscious in the process and delighting in the spree is the story of a life set on play and a woman heroically committed to seeing it through.

This book recognizes that intense public battles are being waged in the U.S. over the rights of LGB people to form legally and culturally recognized families. Their families are under a kind of sociopolitical scrutiny at this historical moment that compels us all to take stock of our strategies of family-building and, more broadly, the meaning of family in the U.S. today. Through in-depth, open-ended, qualitative interviews with 61 self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual people regarding how they came to have children or remain childless/childfree, this book reveals the challenges posed by homophobia and discrimination and showcases the creative strategies, resilience, and resourcefulness of lesbians, bisexuals, and gays as they build families (with or without children) after coming out. From descriptions of how the early process of coming out affected the desire to parent or remain childfree, to stories about the impact of homophobia and discrimination on the decision-making process, to the dynamics within couples that lead to becoming parents or remaining childfree, to examining how cultural notions of the strength of biology are employed when having children, to accounts of how the closet can be used strategically when bringing children into a family, their voices form the heart of this book. In a sociopolitical context in which gay, lesbian, and bisexual people often have to struggle to access the array of rights and opportunities that are afforded to most heterosexual people without question, addressing the questions raised in this book is an urgent and necessary endeavor.

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.

Literature that explored female homosexuality flourished in late nineteenth-century France. Poets, novelists, and pornographers, whether Symbolists, Realists, or Decadents, were all part of this literary moment. In Sapphic Fathers, Gretchen Schultz explores how these male writers and their readers took lesbianism as a cipher for apprehensions about sex and gender during a time of social and political upheaval.

Tracing this phenomenon through poetry (Baudelaire, Verlaine), erotica and the popular novel (Belot), and literary fiction (Zola, Maupassant, Peladan, Mendes), and into scientific treatises, Schultz demonstrates that the literary discourse on lesbianism became the basis for the scientific and medical understanding of female same-sex desire in France. She also shows that the cumulative impact of this discourse left tangible traces that lasted well beyond nineteenth-century France, persisting into twentieth-century America to become the basis of lesbian pulp fiction after the Second World War.

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.

Mignon R. Moore brings to light the family life of a group that has been largely invisible - gay women of color - in a book that challenges long-standing ideas about racial identity, family formation, and motherhood. Drawing from interviews and surveys of one hundred black gay women in New York City, "Invisible Families" explores the ways that race and class have influenced how these women understand their sexual orientation, find partners, and form families. In particular, the study looks at the ways in which the past experiences of women who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s shape their thinking, and have structured their lives in communities that are not always accepting of their openly gay status. Overturning generalizations about lesbian families derived largely from research focused on white, middle-class feminists, "Invisible Families" reveals experiences within black American and Caribbean communities as it asks how people with multiple stigmatized identities imagine and construct an individual and collective sense of self.

This is a rarity in contemporary writing, a truly bilingual enterprise, as in Susana Chavez-Silverman's previous memoir, Killer Cronicas. Chavez-Silverman switches between English and Spanish, creating a linguistic mestizaje that is still a surprise encounter in the world of letters today, and the author is one of a small but growing band of writers to embrace bilingualism as a literary force. Also like Killer Cronicas, each chapter in Scenes from la Cuenca de Los Angeles is a "cronica," a vignette that began as intimate diary entries and e-mails and letters to lovers, friends, and ghosts from the past. These episodic chapters follow Chavez-Silverman's personal history, from California to South Africa and Australia and back, from unfathomable loss to deeply felt joy. Readers drawn into this witty book will confront their own conceptions of boundaries, borders, languages, memories, and spaces. Por su white, insouciant, papery look, por su semejanza a la amapola (scentless, a fin de cuentas, no obstante esa famosa escena de la Wicked Witch of the West, purring evilly, "Poppies, poppies will put them to sleep. Sleeeep, sleep . . ."), when I leaned in to sniff, I hadn't been expecting any scent at all. Y por eso, el cool, familiar mounds of damp masa harina, Mercado Libertad en verano scent, es-por lo utterly inesperado-lo mas disturbingly, comfortingly, hechizante que tienen las paper flowers. Stay with me a while. Busquemos, together, mas strange familiars. -excerpt from chapter 1, "Diary Inside/Color Local Cronica"

The discovery that a child is lesbian or gay can send shockwaves through a family. A mother will question how she's raised her son; a father will worry that his daughter will experience discrimination. From the child's perspective, gay and lesbian youth fear their families will reject them and that they will lose financial and emotional support. All in all, learning a child is gay challenges long-held views about sexuality and relationships, and the resulting uncertainty can produce feelings of anger, resentment, and concern.

Through a qualitative, multicultural study of sixty-five gay and lesbian children and their parents, Michael LaSala, a leading expert on this issue, outlines effective, practice-tested interventions for families in transition. His research reveals surprising outcomes, such as learning that a child is homosexual can improve familial relationships, including father-child relationships, even if a parent reacts strongly or negatively to the revelation. By confronting feelings of depression, anxiety, and grief head on, LaSala formulates the best approach for practitioners who hope to reestablish intimacy among family members and preserve family connections--as well as individual autonomy--well into the child's maturation. By restricting his study to parents and children of the same family, LaSala accurately captures the reciprocal effects of family interactions, identifying them as targets for effective treatment. "Coming Out, Coming Home" is also a valuable text for families, enabling adjustment through relatable scenarios and analyses.

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.

Originally developed to help heterosexual couples, fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization and sperm donation have provided lesbians with new methods for achieving pregnancy during the past two decades. Queering Reproduction is an important sociological analysis of lesbians' use of these medical fertility treatments. Drawing on in-depth interviews with lesbians who have been or are seeking to become pregnant, Laura Mamo describes how reproduction has become an intensely medicalized process for lesbians, who are transformed into fertility patients not (or not only) because of their physical conditions but because of their sexual identities. Mamo argues that this medicalization of reproduction has begun to shape queer subjectivities in both productive and troubling ways, destabilizing the assumed link between heterosexuality and parenthood while also reinforcing traditional, heteronormative ideals about motherhood and the imperative to reproduce. Mamo provides an overview of a shift within some lesbian communities from low-tech methods of self-insemination to a reliance on outside medical intervention and fertility treatments. Reflecting on the issues facing lesbians who become parents through assisted reproductive technologies, Mamo explores questions about the legal rights of co-parents, concerns about the genetic risks of choosing an anonymous sperm donor, and the ways decisions to become parents affect sexual and political identities. In doing so, she investigates how lesbians navigate the medical system with its requisite range of fertility treatments, diagnostic categories, and treatment trajectories. Combining moving narratives and insightful analysis, Queering Reproduction reveals how medical technology reconfigures social formations, individual subjectivity, and notions of kinship.

What does it mean to look like a lesbian? Though it remains impossible to conjure a definitive image that captures the breadth of this highly nuanced term, today at least we are able to consider an array of visual representations that have been put into circulation by lesbians themselves over the last six or seven decades. In the early twentieth century, though, no notion of lesbianism as a coherent social or cultural identity yet existed. In Women Together/Women Apart, Tirza True Latimer explores the revolutionary period between World War I and World War II when lesbian artists working in Paris began to shape the first visual models that gave lesbians a collective sense of identity and allowed them to recognize each other. Flocking to Paris from around the world, artists and performers such as Romaine Brooks, Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore, and Suzy Solidor used portraiture to theorize and visualize a ""new breed"" of feminine subject. The book focuses on problems of feminine and lesbian self-representation at a time and place where the rights of women to political, professional, economic, domestic, and sexual autonomy had yet to be acknowledged by the law. Under such circumstances, same-sex solidarity and relative independence from men held important political implications. Combining gender theory with visual, cultural, and historical analysis, Latimer draws a vivid picture of the impact of sexual politics on the cultural life of Paris during this key period. The book also illuminates the far-reaching consequences of lesbian portraiture on contemporary constructions of lesbian identity.

With hair slicked back and shirt collar framing her young patrician face, Katherine Hepburn's image in the 1935 film Sylvia Scarlett was seen by many as a lesbian representation. Yet, Amy Villarejo argues, there is no final ground upon which to explain why that image of Hepburn signifies lesbian or why such a cross-dressing Hollywood fantasy edges into collective consciousness as a lesbian narrative. Investigating what allows viewers to perceive an image or narrative as "lesbian," Villarejo presents a theoretical exploration of lesbian visibility. Focusing on images of lesbians in film, she analyzes what these representations contain and their limits. She combines Marxist theories of value with poststructuralist insights to argue that lesbian visibility operates simultaneously as an achievement and a ruse, a possibility for building a new visual politics and away of rendering static and contained what lesbian might mean. Integrating cinema studies, queer and feminist theory, and cultural studies, Villarejo illuminates the contexts within which the lesbian is rendered visible. Toward that end, she analyzes key portrayals of lesbians in public culture, particularly in documentary film. She considers a range of films-from documentaries about Cuba and lesbian pulp fiction to Exile Shanghai and The Brandon Teena Story-and, in doing so, brings to light a nuanced economy of value and desire.

"This book is an exciting, well-organized overview of the evolution of a cultural icon: the nun-ensign Catalina de Erauso. . . . It will be of interest not only to Hispanists, but also to students of gender, theater, and film." -Anne J. Cruz, Professor of Spanish, University of Illinois, Chicago Catalina de Erauso (1592-1650) was a Basque noblewoman who, just before taking final vows to become a nun, escaped from the convent at San Sebastian, dressed as a man, and, in her own words, "went hither and thither, embarked, went into port, took to roving, slew, wounded, embezzled, and roamed about." Her long service fighting for the Spanish empire in Peru and Chile won her a soldier's pension and a papal dispensation to continue dressing in men's clothing. This theoretically informed study analyzes the many ways in which the "Lieutenant Nun" has been constructed, interpreted, marketed, and consumed by both the dominant and divergent cultures in Europe, Latin America, and the United States from the seventeenth century to the present. Sherry Velasco argues that the ways in which literary, theatrical, iconographic, and cinematic productions have transformed Erauso's life experience into a public spectacle show how transgender narratives expose and manipulate spectators' fears and desires. Her book thus reveals what happens when the private experience of a transgenderist is shifted to the public sphere and thereby marketed as a hybrid spectacle for the curious gaze of the general audience.

On a winter day in 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, a middle class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly. Local, national, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers all clamored to cover the ensuing "girl lovers" murder trial. Lisa Duggan locates in this sensationalized event the emergence of the lesbian in U.S. mass culture and shows how newly "modern" notions of normality and morality that arose from such cases still haunt and distort lesbian and gay politics to the present day.
Situating this story alongside simultaneously circulating lynching narratives (and its resistant versions, such as those of Memphis antilynching activist Ida B. Wells) Duggan reveals how stories of sex and violence were crucial to the development of American modernity. While careful to point out the differences between the public reigns of terror that led to many lynchings and the rarer instances of the murder of one woman by another privately motivated woman, Duggan asserts that dominant versions of both sets of stories contributed to the marginalization of African Americans and women while solidifying a distinctly white, male, heterosexual form of American citizenship. Having explored the role of turn-of-the-century print media--and in particular their tendency toward sensationalism--Duggan moves next to a review of sexology literature and to novels, most notably Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness." "Sapphic Slashers" concludes with two appendices, one of which presents a detailed summary of Ward's murder, the trial, and Mitchell's eventual institutionalization. The other presents transcriptions of letters exchanged between the two women prior to the crime.
Combining cultural history, feminist and queer theory, narrative analysis, and compelling storytelling, "Sapphic Slashers" provides the first history of the emergence of the lesbian in twentieth-century mass culture.

This A-Z guide to lesbians and lesbianism in the movies contains reviews, gossip, facts and commentary on over 200 films, including specifically lesbian films such as "Go Fish" and "Desert Hearts" as well as films with a lesbian character or theme, like "The Children's Hour" and "The Hunger."

The Fifth Volume in the annual series Psychological Perspective on Lesbian and Gay Issues is devoted to providing a basic collection of resources for educators, practitioners and researchers in Lesbian/Gay Bisexual and Transgendered Psychology. The volume and the series are sponsored by Division 44 of the American Psychological Association. Academic psychologists have been challenged to make psychology curricula more inclusive. Program changes involve revising undergraduate and graduate course material and content to represent the full spectrum of sexual orientation identity, development and life dilemmas. Similarly, trainers and educators responsible for training in related mental health disciplines, mental health agencies and other venues that deliver psychological services to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgendered Psychology individuals have been appropriately challenged to make training competent practitioners a priority. Many practitioners who have had no training in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgendered Psychology find themselves confronted with clients that they feel ill equipped to address. They often have the desire to develop clinical competencies in this area, but don't know where to begin. This volume is intended to serve as a basic resource with information on salient lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered psychology issues and to provide the reader with a range of references and other resources to explore key identity, development, and other subjects.

The Fifth Volume in the annual series Psychological Perspective on Lesbian and Gay Issues is devoted to providing a basic collection of resources for educators, practitioners and researchers in Lesbian/Gay Bisexual and Transgendered Psychology. The volume and the series are sponsored by Division 44 of the American Psychological Association.

Academic psychologists have been challenged to make psychology curricula more inclusive. Program changes involve revising undergraduate and graduate course material and content to represent the full spectrum of sexual orientation identity, development and life dilemmas. Similarly, trainers and educators responsible for training in related mental health disciplines, mental health agencies and other venues that deliver psychological services to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgendered Psychology individuals have been appropriately challenged to make training competent practitioners a priority. Many practitioners who have had no training in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgendered Psychology find themselves confronted with clients that they feel ill equipped to address. They often have the desire to develop clinical competencies in this area, but don?t know where to begin. This volume is intended to serve as a basic resource with information on salient lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered psychology issues and to provide the reader with a range of references and other resources to explore key identity, development, and other subjects.

The lyrics of Sappho are the earliest surviving examples of explicitly homoerotic literature and have often been analyzed in terms of their revelations about the island society of Lesbos. This volume examines Sappho's poetry through the lens of lesbian desire. It focuses on the active female gaze in the texts and the narrative voice - one that describes female experience and desires as primary, not secondary to the dominant (male) culture. The book provides close readings of the surviving examples of Sappho's poetry, occasionally presenting comparative material from other ancient Greek poets. In addition, a complete transliteration of the Greek verse is intended to enhance the reader's understanding of the original sound and rhythm of the texts. Sappho's influence on a number of lesbian poets, including Amy Lowell, H.D. and Olga Broumas. The text includes an appendix of the original Greek poetry.

Written in a scholarly but accessible style, this book provides an integrated critical analysis of lesbian and bisexual women's health. The book highlights trends and themes, with selected examples of research and personal experience of lesbians and bisexual women and their health care providers.

Written in a scholarly but accessible style, this book provides an integrated critical analysis of lesbian and bisexual women's health. Reflecting the complexity of the field, it will be interesting and useful to health professionals, students, and academicians. The book highlights trends and themes, with selected examples of research and personal experience of lesbians and bixsexual women and their health care providers.

The goals of the book are: to intergrate and analyze the multi-disciplinary literature on lesbian and bixsexual women's health; to enhance the readers' understanding of research methodology and analysis, increasing their ability to critique and grasp the implications of future research; to explore socio-cultural influences on the health of lesbians and bisexuals; to provide a text to be used in academic settings; to analyze voids, problems and future directions.

Written from a public health perspective, this work integrates material from a multitude of disciplines including medicine, nursing, sociology, psychology. It utilizes this research base along with personal interviews//cases to answer questions that many lesbian and bisexual women ( and their health care providers) ask. What have we learned about our health?; what are our health risks?; what are we doing to protect ourselves?; can we trust medical confidentially?; and where can we go from here regarding health care and communication?.

Adrienne Rich is a major American poet who continues to be inspired by the political ideas and activism of various liberation movements of the twentieth century. Whether expressed in poetry or in prose, her ideas have been much debated, particularly within second wave feminism. This unique introduction focuses on Rich's prose work but also makes reference to the poetry where her political ideas and urgencies often find their first expression. Demonstrating the compexity and subtlety of her contribution to feminism, the book outlines her wide-ranging thoughts on, for example, motherhood, heterosexuality, lesbian and Jewish identity, and issues of racial and sexual otherness. Liz Yorke conveys the range and importance of Rich's achievements and highlights the major themes which are interwoven in her work.

In an insightful and provocative juxtaposition, Margaret Dickie examines the poetry of three preeminent women writers--Gertrude Stein, Elizabeth Bishop, and Adrienne Rich--investigating the ways in which each attempts to forge a poetic voice capable of expressing both public concerns and private interests. Although Stein, Bishop, and Rich differ by generation, poetic style, and relationship to audience, all three are twentieth-century lesbian poets who struggle with the revelatory nature of language. All three, argues Dickie, use language to express and to conceal their experiences as they struggle with a censorship that was both culturally sanctioned and self-imposed. Dickie explores how each poet negotiates successfully and variously with the need for secrecy and the desire for openness.

By analyzing each poet's work in light of the shared themes of love, war, and place, Dickie makes visible a continuity of interests between these three rarely linked women. In their very diversity of style and strategy, she argues, lies a triumph of the creative imagination, a victory of poetry over polemic.

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.