Changing from heterosexual to lesbian identity: A theory of fluid sexuality.
Item
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Title
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Changing from heterosexual to lesbian identity: A theory of fluid sexuality.
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Identifier
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AAI9605647
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identifier
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9605647
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Creator
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Pett, Amy J.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Roslyn Wallach Bologh
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Date
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1995
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Theory and Methods | Sociology, Individual and Family Studies | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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This is both an empirical and a theoretical study. It is an empirical study of heterosexual women who reconstructed themselves as lesbian in adulthood. The empirical study shows that to do this the women I interviewed had to see beyond the culturally imposed binary of masculine/feminine to understand that a "feminine" "woman" such as themselves could love and desire another "feminine" "woman" and make a life with her. They had to reconstruct both "lesbian" and "woman," so that lesbian could also be a "feminine" woman not just a masculine one, and so that a "woman" could also be a lesbian, that is, a female who loves and desires other women. They also had to reconstruct their sexual desire so that it included desire for women, and to reconstruct some of their feelings for women so that they "were" desire.;The theoretical study argues that individuals are not inherently gendered and either hetero-, homo-, or bi-sexual, but rather are omniform and omnisexual, having the potential to be and have and do everything. But in daily practices that involve a complex interplay of individual psyche and patriarchal society, the omniform individual both constructs itself and is constructed as having one unified and unchanging gender and one unified and unchanging sexual orientation. This reduction of gender and sexual omneity to the masculine/feminine binary is the way patriarchal society constructs and reproduces unified gender and sexuality to support, enforce, and reproduce patriarchy. Through these daily practices of social/psychic construction and reconstruction, patriarchal society disguises the social and political nature of gender and sexuality as personal, private, and "natural." In this way, women's gender and sexuality support the patriarchal ruling order, in which men are dominant and women subordinate.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
