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Contemporary Lesbian Genders: a Queer/Sociological Approach

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Contemporary Lesbian Genders: a Queer/Sociological Approach Contemporary Lesbian Genders: A Queer/Sociological Approach Alison Jane Eves Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of PhD The University of Leeds Department of Sociology and Social Policy March 2002 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. 'Contemporary Lesbian Genders: A Queer/Sociological Approach' Alison Eves: University of Leeds identity has been This thesis attempts to develop the insights of recent work on that influenced by poststructuralist theory, and in particular 'queer theory', through an I empirical study of the social construction of lesbian genders. examine sociological work Lesbian identities on sexuality, queer theory and feminist work on butch/femme. are constructed at the intersection of specific discourses, structures and conscious agency. There is a lack of sociological element in queer theory but I am interested in the potential for developing this despite the epistemological difficulties it raises. Queer theory has enabled a radically different way of theorising butch/femme as transgressive queer practice with the potential to reveal the constructed and contingent nature of all gender. The study has involved semi-structured interviews with 31 women who have various degrees of identification with either `butch' or `femme'. I identify particular `interpretative repertoires' in identity narratives and examine the ways in which these are socially located. These findings are used to contest the assertion that community is dominant understandings of identities differ radically from the constructionism that the theoretical paradigm. I outline the construction of specific contemporary butch and femme subject positions and the ways in which these are discursively located in relation to heteronormative discourses. Queer theory offers a way of understanding butch and femme as specific lesbian genders and I argue that the relationship between butch/femme and heterosexuality should be seen as interdependent rather than imitative. The ways in which dominant beauty discourses are negotiated and the possibility of constructing a specifically lesbian aesthetic is examined. I argue that lesbian genders can be subversive of the `heterosexual imaginary' but that this is context dependent. Chapter 1: Queer Theory and the Politics of Identity I Chapter 2: Queer Sociology and Lesbian Gender 29 Chapter 3: Methods 51 Chapter 4: Lesbian Identities and Interpretative Repertoires 66 Chapter 5: Desire and Identification 89 Chapter 6: Lesbian Genders or Heterosexual Imitations 119 Chapter 7: She's Got the Look: Butch/femme Genders and Lesbian Aesthetics 142 Chapter 8: Power, Parody and Subversion 169 Chapter 9: Conclusions 185 Bibliography 189 Appendix 1 199 Appendix 2 200 I Chapter 1: Queer Theory and the Politics of Identity. Introduction The focus of this thesis is a study of the social construction of lesbian genders, and in particular `butch' and `femme' as subject positions and embodied identities. Recent work on sexual and gender identities in queer theory has enabled a reconceptualisation of butch/femme roles and the construction of lesbian genders. I contrast this with feminist work on lesbians and butch/femme. The problematised status of identities, theorised as contingent, shifting and positioned by discursive structures rather than as fixed properties of the individual, has enabled butch/femme to be viewed as both structured by and exceeding normative heterosexuality. I examine the ways in which identities are constructed and articulated through an analysis of lesbian identity accounts, situating these in specific social and discursive locations. While queer theoretical work has enabled analyses of the relationship between butch/femme and naturalised heterosexuality that trouble the way in which these have been figured as `imitation' and `original', this has mainly been at an abstract theoretical or discursive level. I draw on qualitative interpretative approaches to examine the ways in which lesbians negotiate and redeploy heteronormative discourses in the performance of gender in everyday life. This involves analysis of the way in which the participants describe this relationship and how these accounts are situated Through this it is possible to examine the construction of two specific butch and femme subject positions. The lesbian context of this cultural practice is already structured by class, race and access to the commercial 'scene', in ways that have enormous influence on the ways in which these gender identities are lived out and read. Queer theory tends to be attentive to the textual and discursive aspects of these structures, suggesting 2 ways in which subjectivities can be conceptualised as positioned and constituted by them. While this provides the initial framework for theorising gender and sexuality there is a lack of focus on the intersection of the structural and discursive with the concrete and specific, addressed here through the analysis of the ways in which lesbians engage with gender roles, norms and structures in their everyday lives. In particular I examine the issue of gender styles, embodied practices, lesbian aesthetics and the negotiation of beauty discourses. This focus on visibility, aesthetics and transgression is then linked to perceptions of the operation of power in everyday life and the subversive potential of non-normative gender performances. The intention was not to take a verificationist approach or hope to provide empirical answers to theoretical questions but rather to develop and enrich queer theory by using different interpretative methods and epistemological frameworks. This involves first identifying the strengths and weaknesses of sociological work on sexuality and queer theory. More specifically I examine feminist work on butch/femme. Social construction ism and sexuality: the sociological approach Plummer (1992) offers an overview of lesbian and gay studies and argues that sociology has played a key role in its development. The work of sociologists such as McIntosh (1998), Gagnon and Simon (1974) and Plummer (1975), (1981) as well as the social historical work of Weeks (1977) and Foucault's enormously influential `History of Sexuality' (1978) established social constructionism as the dominant paradigm in the study of sexuality in the social sciences and humanities. The key achievement was '... to shift focus from "the homosexual" as a type of person to a concern with social responses to homosexuality which lead to radically different responses to same-sex experiences' (Plummer 1992: 8). This contributed to a lengthy debate between constructionist and essentialist theorists in the 1980s. One strand of this work focussed on the way in which sexuality is constructed at a macro-level by wider social or discursive structures, and tended to be broad in scope and inter-disciplinary in nature. Work by Weeks (1977, 1985), Adam (1998), D'Emilio (1993), Nardi and Schneider (1998) and others has 3 theorised sexuality within a wider social and historical location. McIntosh (1998) influentially challenged the assumption that homosexuality is a condition, which some people have, and others do not, and the misguided focus in research on its aetiology as a consequence of this. For her, the concept of homosexuality as a condition becomes the object of study, and she outlines the historically specific emergence of the homosexual `role'. At the same time sociologists working within interpretivist traditions developed a constructionist approach through empirical studies of lesbian and gay subcultures and communities (Humphreys 1971, Newton 1972/1998, Ponse 1978). The value of these sociological accounts was their denaturalisation of sexuality and focus on the role of processes and scripts in the construction of identities. By applying the ideas of symbolic interactionism and labelling theory, it was possible to examine the ways in which sexual meanings arise through social interaction. This type of approach has been useful in examining the construction and maintenance of lesbian identities. Ponse's study shows the work involved in creating and sustaining a lesbian identity, the rationalisations involved and the retrospective reinterpretation of one's own personal biography (Ponse 1978). She finds a parallel between concepts of lesbianism in the heterosexual and lesbian worlds. Both paradigms contain a notion of lesbian essentialism. She examines the inadequacies of both in the light of the ways in which identity is actually experienced by women and develops her own typology from there. A 'principle of consistency' is identified in the heterosexual paradigm, the underlying assumption of which 'assumes that sex assignment, gender identity, gender role or sex role, sexual object choice, and sexual identity vary together' (Ponse 1978: 170). Butler makes a similar point in 'Gender Trouble', although in different terms and from a different theoretical perspective (Butler 1990). Ethnomethodologists Kessler and McKenna (1978) similarly studied the process of gender attribution and began to look at the gender performances of transsexuals as a way of theorising the routine way that gender is constructed through interaction. The term `social construction' is used in a reflexive way in work from 4 the interactionist paradigm. Social processes are seen as, `... constantly being constructed, modified, selected, checked, terminated and recommenced in everyday life. Such
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