Lesbian and Other Gay Issues

¶ … Lesbian and Other Gay Issues and Research

How and why do women "become" lesbians? When a woman grows up believing she is heterosexual, and then at 25 years of age begins having bisexual relationships, then why at the age of 38 years would she believe she is indeed gay? Are there links between childhood sexual abuse and later lesbianism in a woman's life? Is it a foreshadowing of homosexuality when at the age of eight years or so a girl begins to sense that she is attracted to other girls? These questions and others will be addressed in this research paper through the use of scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles.

Transitions from Heterosexuality to Lesbianism. In the journal Developmental Psychology the authors research the lives of adult women who have offered their accounts of the social landmine that is associated with realizing and coming out with the fact of their lesbianism. The article is the product of eighty interviews with "self-identified" lesbians who each had at least ten years of heterosexual experience. While exploring the concept of sexual transition this article employs the social constructionist approach to understanding sexual identity, the authors explain. Researchers referenced by the authors conclude that there is "a large body of work" illustrative of the fact that that "adult homosexuality stems from homosexual feelings experienced during childhood and adolescence" (Kitzinger, et al., 1995, p. 95).

The findings of Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith, referenced by Kitzinger, shows that "late infancy and prepubertal childhood" are the life moments that are the most "formative years for homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality" for an individual (Kitzinger, p. 96). Hence, when an individual who has had life moments at an early age that leaned toward homosexuality, the later "coming out" event is "merely a process of learning to recognize and accept what one was all along…the lesbian has always been inside, awaiting debut" (Kitzinger, p. 96).

The Kitzinger research reflects the fact that by the age of 20 years, "far more men than women" have homosexual and bisexual patterns (27% to 11%); however, by the age of 35, the research shows, about 13% of men and women are living gay and bisexual lives (p. 4). Women appear to "broaden their sexual experience" while getting on in life while men "become narrower" and more specialized in their sexual leanings. In fact the research shows that most women who are openly lesbian have had a period in their earlier lives during which they were playing heterosexual roles. Of the samples this article uses, about one quarter of the women had been married and roughly 58% experienced heterosexual lifestyles prior to coming out (Kitzinger, p. 97).

This article emphasizes that many of the models that purport to show the identity transition -- from heterosexuality to lesbianism -- fall short of the mark because they are based on "sexist assumptions" (Kitzinger, p. 98). There is rarely a "singular linear development path" that leads a woman from heterosexuality to lesbianism, Kitzinger asserts. And moreover Kitzinger, who is the Director of the Feminist Conversation Analysis Unit at the University of York, UK, criticizes the "conventional assumptions" that a female has a predictable "three-stage" evolution from childhood fantasies about other women -- coupled with some "genital contact" -- into guilt feelings about gayness as "deviant, sick, or sinful" and later into secrecy and finally coming out.

What Kitzinger accomplishes in this piece is to conduct research on women who come out during adulthood, a process that she claims has been "almost entirely neglected" (p. 99) by researchers. Twenty of the eighty women interviewed specifically and exclusively about the psychological processes that they went through from heterosexuality to lesbianism; the other 60 in the study were interviewed on several topics, and transition to lesbianism was just one of those topics (p. 99). All but three of the 80 women were interviewed in their homes; those three were interviewed by telephone.

There is not sufficient space in this paper to reflect all the questions that were asked, but some of the answers will be presented. Anne, for example, stated that acknowledging her lesbianism was a "very slow process" because she feared being violently attacked or being excluded. "People say we're not normal. My whole life was heterosexual and it felt like my whole life was under threat" (p. 100). Women who had disabilities -- or who were African-American or became lesbians in their 60s or 70s -- who came out faced very difficult social crises, Kitzinger continues (p. 100). One quarter of the 80 women who had become lesbians after long periods of heterosexuality described how they had "refused to allow themselves even to address the question, 'Am I lesbian?'" (p. 100).

One interviewee told Kitzinger that after she and "Judy" made love for the first time, she got "very scared that this meant I was a lesbian. I withdrew right away…I just wanted to try it and it was nice but I don't want to do it again," she said. Then, she went out and "got myself screwed by four or five men in order to prove I wasn't a lesbian" (p. 100). Another lesbian said her husband had told her "it was the menopause"; he got books out of the library showing that other women going through menopause had believed their were lesbians but later they found out they weren't but "…they'd totally wrecked their lives" (p. 101). Still another women read that lesbians were "aggressive, jealous, doomed, masculine, perverted and sick" and as a result she was "tremendously reassured. I knew that I couldn't possibly be one of those!" (p. 101).

Most women in the survey described their "initial processes" of coming out as lesbians to be a mixed bag of "pain…fear…but also of joy and excitement" (p. 102). In her conclusion of this article Kitzinger asserts that the question is not "Am I a lesbian?" But rather the question is, "Do I want to be a lesbian?" From the prospective of the author, there is no "essential lesbian self" and no set of "uniquely lesbian experiences that can be discovered through introspection" (p. 103).

Are females who were sexually abused as children more likely to become lesbians? Popular folklore and some psychological research leads to an assumption that lesbians may in some instances choose their sexual orientation "as a direct consequence of negative experiences with men" (Descamps, et al., 2000, p. 29). According to research by Dr. Monica J. Descamps (a psychologist in Vermont) and colleagues, the data don't generally support the assertion that women become gay due to abuse (during childhood or adolescence). In fact, Descamps reports that about 18.7% of lesbians surveyed reported being sexually assaulted during childhood and that percentage is close to the number of heterosexual women (16%) who also report being sexually abuses as children (Descamps, p. 29).

The notion that women who have been sexually assaulted as adults become lesbians because of that violence against them is also refuted in Descamps' research article, which is based on surveys of 1,925 lesbians in the National Lesbian Health Care Survey (NLHCS) of 1984-1985. However, lesbians who had gone through sexual abuse as children have reported higher levels of mental health problems "than lesbians who had not experienced" these acts of violence (Descamps, p. 31). Taking this data a bit farther, Descamps reports that lesbians who report being sexually assaulted first during childhood "are more likely than women first sexually assaulted in adulthood" to suffer problems with "serious depression, anxiety, and substance abuse" later in life (p. 31).

Additionally, lesbians who report having experienced rape or intimate partner violence -- who also experienced "child sexual abuse" -- report having more psychological distress than those who only endured rape or intimate partner violence (Decamps, p. 31). Decamps' definition of childhood sexual abuse includes: a) having sex with a relative (not necessarily through an attack); and b) being raped or being sexually attacked by someone who was not a relative during the growing up process (p. 34).

Overall, of the 1,925 lesbians interviewed / surveyed by the NLHCS, 28.7% reported that they had been sexually abused during childhood. Lesbians in the age group 17-year to 24 years of age reported the highest incidences of sexual abuse as children (37.9%); the oldest lesbians that were part of the NLHCS project (aged 55 years and older) reported the lowest incidences of being sexually assaulted as children (20.3%). When ethnicity enters the survey results the larger percentage of African-American lesbians (45.4%) and Latina lesbians (40%) reported that they had been sexually abused during their childhood. For Caucasian lesbians, the number reporting childhood sexual abuse was much lower, 26.9%).

Those lesbians among the 1,925 surveyed (NLHCS) who reported being assaulted as children tended to be younger, had less education, and earned less money than lesbians who had not had difficult childhood sexual experiences (Decamps, p. 40). The data showed that 19.9% of lesbians who were assaulted as children experienced rape later in life, while only 13.6% of lesbians who had not been assaulted during childhood reported being raped as adults (Decamps, p. 44). On a final note, Decamps' reporting of the NLHCS indicates that "more than half" of the 1,925 lesbians in the survey reported having been victim of a "hate crime" and roughly one in twenty of the 1,925 lesbians had been "physically assaulted" due to her sexual orientation (Decamps, p. 49).

Consequences of child sexual abuse for adult lesbians. Batya Hyman is a professor of social science at Salisbury University in Maryland; she also has published an article that investigates the ramifications of childhood sexual abuse on lesbians as they get up in years. Hyman goes somewhat deeper into the issue than Decamps had gone, noting that there are several health concerns in adult lesbian women who had experienced abuse as children. Among health concerns: pelvic pain; gynecological problems; migraine headaches; asthma; epileptic seizures; digestive system problems; and an "increased lifetime risk of surgery" (Hyman, 2000, p. 200).

The author also reports that lesbians who had been criminally assaulted as children were more likely "to engage in behaviors that would put them at risk" for health problems such as HIV (p. 200). When it comes to childhood sexual abuse, the first question was, "Did any of your relatives have sex with you while you were growing up?" The lesbian participants were also asked seven other related question in the American Couples study "in the hopes that a series of questions" would help stimulate memories of those long-ago events. The findings reflect the fact that lesbians who had experienced "intrafamilial childhood sexual abuse" (CSA) without coercion -- meaning, a family member had unforced sex with them when they were either too young to resist or to know better -- as well as lesbians who had experienced "extrafamilial CSA" were more likely to report health problems than lesbians who did not experience sexual abuse (Hyman, p. 204).

As to mental health issues, interestingly, lesbians who had experienced incest, "with or without coercion," and women who were sexually abused by a stranger were more likely to report mental health problems" than women who were abused sexually by someone outside the family (Hyman, p. 205).

On the topic of education, lesbians who had endured sexual abuse (any of the three forms mentioned above) were less likely to have completed a college diploma than other women. And regarding economic concerns, Hyman's article references The American Couples Study (performed by Blumstein and Schwartz in 1983), a survey involving 1,568 lesbians. In the couples survey, the 132 women who experienced "extrafamilial CSA by a stranger" were likely to have suffered the most significantly "adverse effect" on their earning potential. Lesbians in that category earned on average 11.5% less than women who had not been violated as children. Also, lesbians view themselves not as "providers" or as "dependents," Hyman writes (p. 202). Rather, lesbians see themselves as workers, and they place a "high value on self-sufficiency" (p. 202).

Lesbian stories and lesbian lifestyles. Kelly J. Hall, associate professor of Sociology at the University of Akron (Ohio), has published reviews of two books relating to lesbians. The first, Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation (Stein, 1997) presents interviews with 31 women who were born between 1945 and 1961. These particular women came out as lesbians "in the context of radical feminist ideology" and hence their lesbianism emerged as both "a political stance" and as a "challenge to patriarchal domination" (Hall, 1998, p. 359). For some of the 31 women the way they came to understand their lesbianism was through "…an immutable orientation, fixed at birth or in early childhood"; for others, it was not a matter of "being a lesbian" but rather it was "living as one" (Hall, p. 359).

The latter group discovered their lesbianism and then had to "fashion a new self through self-conscious identity work"; the struggles these women endured related to their commitment to a lesbian identity within a lesbian community; this brought about differing views of their sexuality. Those divergent views of being a lesbian within a community of lesbians created "tension among the women of this cohort" (Hall, p. 359). Meanwhile author Stein also provided in her book an analysis of the "decentering of lesbian feminism during the 1980s," Hall continues. In fact baby boom lesbians entering their 30s and 40s tended to view their lesbianism as just one among several identities -- unlike the group alluded to earlier that was motivated by radical political dynamics. These females transitioned from being part of a "unified lesbian community" into thoughts of family, having children, "seeking more profitable careers and fulfilling their therapeutic needs" (Hall, p. 359). In this section of her book, Stein interviewed 10 women who "went straight" in order to also present the fact that sexual identity has "complexity and fluidity" and indeed also has some serious contradictions.

In her review of Gillian A. Dunne's Lesbian Lifestyles effort Hall explains that this book presents two distinct themes: a) for some women conditions exist that open the door to "the evaluation, questioning, and challenging of heterosexual outcomes" such as marriage, motherhood, and gender-related employment; and b) for women, "non-heterosexuality may be linked to empowerment in a world where institutional heterosexuality is central to men's ability to control and exploit women" (Hall, p. 360). In other words, their leanings toward lesbianism provided a sense of satisfaction and strength in a world controlled by men.

Research involving the sixty women also revealed several dynamics that played a part in the eventual "gender-stereotyped sense of self" (Hall, p. 360). Those dynamics include: a) the prevalence of maternal labor; b) "encouragement by adult male caregivers"; and c) being a tomboy as an adolescent. Approaching young adulthood, many of these sixty women found that their aspirations (for female companionship) put them "in conflict with the mandates of femininity and romantic heterosexuality" and hence, education became a path "of escape from these mandates" (Hall, p. 360).

Lesbians encounter negativity in the medical field -- the viewpoint of a doctor. Once a woman has come out as a lesbian, there are challenges she must face -- and come to terms with -- due to society's bias against gays and lesbians. Dr. Cathy Risdon is the Medical Director of the North Hamilton Community Health Centre in Ontario, Canada, and assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University. She has written an editorial urging healthcare professions to become educated about gays and lesbians. Many lesbian and bisexual women are "apprehensive about seeking primary medical care" she explains because they are afraid they will come into contact with healthcare providers "who are, at worst, abusive, and at best, indifferent to or ignorant of their health needs and concerns" (Risdon, 1998, p. 1567). She references a study of 98 "self-identified lesbian and bisexual women" published in the Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. In this extensive research (peer-reviewed) project the evidence verifies that being a lesbian or being gay is not "inherently (genetically, biologically) hazardous" but risk factors "are conferred through societal, familial and medical homophobia" (Risdon, p. 1567).

Risdon defines homophobia as "hateful" and "overtly negative" reactions towards gays and lesbians "purely on the basis of their sexual orientation" (p. 1567). The doctor defines "heterosexism" as "a more subtle form of discrimination" that "assumes the superiority of heterosexuality" and seeks to "undervalue" or make "invisible" the lives of lesbians and gays (Risdon, p. 1567).

A lesbian professor discusses coming out. Coming out is never an easy thing to do, as any gay and lesbian person can testify to. But when the lesbian is also a college professor, things can get dicey in a different say. Suzanne M. Johnson is professor of Psychology at Dowling College on Long Island, New York. She has a sense of humor for sure, and it shows in her narrative as she mentions that albeit she is on the cover of lesbian magazines, she has a "cornucopia of gay rights" material on his office door, and a bumper sticker that reads, "Hate is not a family value" (Johnson, 2008, p. 60), many of her students apparently don't realize she is a lesbian. She has a web site in which she clearly indicates her sexual identity and in her office (in conspicuous places) there are advertisements supporting same sex marriage. Some of the subjects that come up in her classroom -- even though she is openly gay and has a partner she makes no attempt to hide -- require her to use diplomacy and tact. For example a student in her class will ask her what she thinks of gay parenting. If she flat out explains that she in fact is a gay parent, "That will end any conversation or discussion," she explains (p. 60).