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Dans cet article, l'auteure démontre que la circulation et la consommation croissante des images lesbiennes dans l'espace public participent du phénomène complexe d'une culture du visible. Tout en soulignant les inévitables compromis qui découlent d'une telle négociation de la visibilité, elle retrace le potentiel culturel qu'une telle marchandisation de la " différence " représente pour les lesbiennes. L'identité et le désir lesbiens sont donc analysés ici en tant que produits représentationnels aptes à être consommés autant par les hétérosexuel.les que par les lesbiennes. Par une analyse des diverses stratégies de négociation du désir lesbien tirées de deux films populaires tant auprès d'un public hétérosexuel que gai (Gazon maudit et When Night is Falling), la critique confronte la matérialité de l'identité lesbienne au cinéma à la valeur de l'image saphique sur le marché de l'identité.
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In Fantasies of Femininity, Jane Ussher focuses on unraveling the contradictory visions of feminine sexuality: the fact that representations of the definition of woman seethe with sexuality yet for centuries women have been condemned for exploring their own sexual desires. In her quest for the sources of feminine representation, Ussher interviewed dozens of women - as well as some men - and combed popular media - from Seventeen to Cosmopolitan and Dallas to Donahue - to identify what shapes women's symbolic images of sex and femininity. Ussher argues that women have effectively resisted and subverted these archetypal fantasies of femininity, and in the process of so doing, reframed the very boundaries of sex. In this way, she exposes as myth much of what we think we know about "woman" and about "sex."
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Voici la première histoire de l'amour entre les femmes qui, sur cinq siècles, de la Renaissance à nos jours, tienne compte à la fois du regard extérieur des hommes et de l'approche des lesbiennes elles-mêmes. Pour la première fois, aussi, une analyse à long terme est proposée qui dégage une évolution des moeurs, des mentalités et de la place des femmes dans la société. Jusqu'à présent, en effet, l'histoire des femmes occultait l'amour entre femmes, alors que les lesbiennes ont joué un rôle prépondérant dans les mouvements progressistes politiques et artistiques. Unique en son genre par son érudition, son approche pluridisciplinaire, ses mises en perspective originales et la période considérée, cet essai s'impose déjà comme un ouvrage de référence.
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Lesbians played a role in all phases of Grove development, albeit that of a minority in number and, usually, in terms of power and recognition. Newton devotes two chapters (of eleven) exclusively to lesbians, and this seems adequately proportional to the lesbian presence in the decades she covers. Importantly, the differences for women between the two eras -- 1930s to 1960 and 1960 to 1980 -- appear to be determined by class and ethnicity rather than by gender. In the earlier period, says Newton, the gay "girls" or "ladies" (Grovers' terms) "were an elite, privileged group who faced relatively little cultural exclusion or discrimination from their male peers" (204); and, she reminds us, in both eras "whatever problems 'girls' had with 'boys,' physical safety was not one of them" (204). Although they never completely shared in the camp sensibility, and not at all in the public sex of the "Meat Rack," then, Grove lesbians were on an even footing (except in numbers) as long as they were white, Protestant, moneyed, artistic/theatrical, and devoted to the "fun" ethos of the settlement (indeed, "party" meant costumes and drinking, never politics). At the opposite end of New York State from Buffalo is Cherry Grove, a gay community as different from that treated in Boots of Leather as the geography symbolizes. As Esther Newton describes it in Cherry Grove, Fire Island, it could be a typical "all-American" postwar town -- dominated by the sensibilities of elite WASP males benefiting from the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s, and hostile at times to those perceived as outsiders (by race, gender, ethnicity) or interlopers (day-trippers, pretentious Pines neighbors). The crucial exception, of course, is that the elitist WASP men (and some women) who built the town were gay. For these reasons, my reactions divided according to my dual identity. As a historian, I found this book superb in every way: it is an engaging narrative of six decades of the area's development textured with insightful commentary on the larger context of American life and questions regarding how and why Cherry Grove originated and endured. However, the lesbian reader in me, although agreeing that the presentation is wonderful (it is actually more fluid and readable than Boots of Leather), reacted to the sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and classism that have characterized this community at various stages of its existence, and especially to the community's dismissal of women. As Newton herself summarizes in a passage concerning the "invasion" of the neighboring Pines community, "Whatever the Queen's function -- selling tickets to a play or blessing the bathers -- she also is the Grove, its key symbol and core representation" (269; italics in the original); and she adds in the accompanying endnote, "The normal processes of Grove action and narration tend to marginalize or even erase women" (345, n.7)