Lesbianism: history, culture, and identity

Lesbianism as a Social and Sexual Identity

The conservatism of America's identity has often come to clash violently with the progressivism of its ideology, with the end result, optimistically speaking, bringing the two sides into closer congress with one another. Today, this struggle is ongoing for many groups. Highly publicized and continually underprivileged amongst them is America's homosexual demographic. Still subjected explicitly to a public discourse in which their characteristics inherently relegate them to deviant, minority status, the gay and lesbian communities are currently very deeply engaged in a struggle for acknowledgement under a more sociologically sound identity.

For homosexual women, or lesbians, this is a conflict which is perhaps even more affecting. While social tendencies in Western culture have typically been more lax toward lesbianism than toward male homosexuality, the latter of which still runs afoul of sodomy laws in many American states, the double jeopardy of being female and homosexual in a patriarchal society guided by Christian ethics creates a far denser morass of social pressures through which the lesbian must wade to achieve a relevant and fulfilling identity. Such is true not just in Western culture but in a wide range of settings where religious or gender-related factors play a significant part in defining the mutual space between individual and collective identities. As such, the lesbian identity is subject today to ongoing debate, with internal divisions creating oppositional factions of the lesbian community, each guided by its own interpretation of the impetus placed upon the whole of the group and its individual cells to resist mainstream social and political patterns that apply necessarily negative connotations to female sexuality, femininity and lesbianism. Research to this end tends to denote that the feminist movement, of which the lesbian activist community would find itself a naturally byproduct, would not just be changed, but would in fact be deeply divided by the insertion and continual wrangling over the lesbian identity and agenda.

Ardill et al. speak of this dynamic in a 1986 journal article concerned with the mixed results of such a strategy. As the commentary herein asserts, "although there was ostensibly a political struggle over a sexual practice, sex remained the silent item on the agenda." (Ardill et al., 31) This period would prove critical for feminist activists wishing to establish an identity with political implications but which bore an honest appraisal of the lesbian interests. Such is to argue that the demand for politicization to necessarily incorporate sexual freedoms would become an important priority. And in this, the lesbian movement would find a sensible solidarity with the feminist movement, both of which would have no choice but to identify society's patriarchic misgivings as the root cause for the unmet liberties of both groups.

But for some, there is an irreconcilable failure to properly define the terms upon which feminist intellectual and political activity are said to be founded. That is, it is the very definition of the term "woman" which so deeply conflicts the identity of many in both the lesbian and feminist movements. As one author addresses this semantic hornet's nest, the debate over the definition of womanhood itself is the "ungrounded ground of feminist theory." (Butler, 13) This is, of course, a considerable stumbling block to asserting a meaningful political identity, with a key point of terminology failing to gain consensus from within. Not coincidentally published in the same year as Butler's text, one by feminist writer Sandra Harding provides a constructive suggestion to this end, however, indicating that solidarity must arise from a recognition that the definition womanhood must itself remain separate from any confining definition; that in fact such angling for definition would by consequence render an effect of identity limitation not unlike that foisted upon women by patriarchy. With no specific evocation of what should be considered acceptable definitions of womanhood in this assertion, this is to make the case that feminism must naturally incorporate the requirements of the lesbian movement and that the lesbian movement must be structured to enable comfortable alignment with feminist agencies.

This may allow room for evaluation of the gender role conflicts which must naturally enter into this conversation. Where so many validate gender roles according to sexuality, this discussion of lesbian and feminist identity yields something of a less certain correlation. Rather, by an inclination to overcome the limitations imposed upon the female identity, there are distinctive characteristics which have been adopted by some within the lesbian community distinguishing these as apolitical-social lesbians. Driven by personal identification, and therefore required to pursue a social agenda which contrasts with mainstream conventions, apolitical-social lesbians may or may not be distinguishable by observable gender-role characteristics. However, in cases where such distinctions can be drawn due simply to a subversion of assumed gender rolls, the "butch" lesbian can be identified by a presentation of historically accepted male characteristics of identity. As outliers to the standards for gender-orientation normalcy, such lesbians are easily targeted for ridicule by conservative thinkers, who may disregard such identity presentation as apocryphal. "Such is to suggest that the identity which is especially promoted by the white, mainstream culture is that lesbianism, especially that which is typically referred to as "butch" lesbianism, in which a woman appears to take on many of the gender roles oriented with masculinity, is a willful attempt to co-opt the supposed normalcy of a heterosexual relationship.