Journal of Lesbian Studies最新文献

{"title":"On freeing language: interview with Dominique Bourque, Wittig scholar and co-founder and director of les éditions sans fin.","authors":"Dominique Bourque, Jenofa Berhokoirigoin, Anna Bogic","doi":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2749982","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2026.2749982","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this shortened version of an interview granted in 2023 to the journalist Jenofa Berhokoirigoin (ARGIA, translated by Anna Bogic), I discuss Monique Wittig's main contributions to political analysis and literature. Her elaboration of materialist lesbianism identifies the political positioning of lesbians in relation to the vast system of oppression of social groups that she has called the \"regime of heterosexuality\". For Wittig, powerful social groups establish themselves as representative humans by particularizing and naturalizing other social groups. Moreover, they mask the oppression they inflict on them by attempting to control the meaning of words and, through their use, their thoughts. In her novels, Wittig reactivates the semantic potential of words so that her characters can express their own view on the world. In addition, the writer avoids or neutralizes (un-marks) the gender mark to counter the reduction of human females to their sex. Wittig also represents the development of a personal and collective consciousness among its protagonists. For her, while the imaginary is a space of resistance against totalitarian \"straight Mind\", political struggle remains necessary and emancipation is a conceivable horizon. The insistence on the materiality of the protagonists in the Lesbian Corps reminds us of this.</p>","PeriodicalId":46044,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Lesbian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-11"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149239879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sapphics on the sidelines: why sexuality-specific measures matter in internalised lesbophobia research.","authors":"Elizabeth Lizzie Byng, Beverley Pickard-Jones","doi":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2745303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2026.2745303","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research into internalised homophobia has uncovered broad links to worse mental health outcomes for sexual minority individuals. However, non-specific measures for different sexual minorities' internalised homophobia limit the impact and specificity of research and psychological interventions. Applying measures made for gay men to lesbian samples, and leaving sexuality-specific nuances as an afterthought, may lead to assumptions that internalised homophobia is invariable across the LGBTQ+ community. In this review, we explain why current frameworks of internalised homophobia are conceptually insufficient and seek to promote sexuality-specific measures for internalised lesbophobia and other sexual minorities. We do so using feminist theories on objectification, hegemonic masculinity, and the heterosexual matrix alongside findings on lesbians' mental health and internalised lesbophobia. Lesbians' experiences with gender nonconformity and geographic cultural variations are also considered in terms of their importance in the development of research instruments. Improving specificity in the conceptualisation of internalised homophobia will facilitate a more accurate understanding of lesbians' mental health experiences, and by extension other sexualities, which will allow for more precise measurement, greater cultural validity in interventions, and improved pathways for addressing minority stress in clinical and community settings.</p>","PeriodicalId":46044,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Lesbian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-18"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149148926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lesbian existence as resistance. Coping strategies against intrafamilial Lesbophobia.","authors":"María Cegarra Cegarra","doi":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2725989","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2026.2725989","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines lesbian existence as a form of resistance within the family, a central institution for the reproduction of gender, sexuality, and moral norms in Colombia. Drawing on 23 in-depth interviews conducted between 2021 and 2023 with Afro-descendant and white/mestiza lesbian women in Cali, this study asks how lesbian daughters navigate intrafamilial lesbophobic violence, negotiate belonging within the parental home, and develop strategies to remain in, leave, or redefine family relationships. Using discourse analysis complemented by thematic analysis, the study identifies four recurring themes: the central and ambivalent role of mothers in regulating sexuality; the spatial separation between the parental home and lesbian affective life; the importance of affective and support networks in negotiating family rejection; and forgiveness as a strategy for preserving family ties despite psychological and, in some cases, physical violence. These findings show how participants actively reshape family relationships while affirming lesbian identities beyond the constraints of compulsory heterosexuality.</p>","PeriodicalId":46044,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Lesbian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148913760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Activist memory infrastructures: lesbian archives in Argentina.","authors":"Cecilia Malnis","doi":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2724703","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2026.2724703","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Based on archival research and oral history interviews with lesbian activists in Argentina, this article argues that lesbian memory work exceeds the preservation of documents and instead emerges through situated practices of circulation, recognition, and narration. The article reconceptualizes archives as <i>grassroots epistemic infrastructures</i> by showing that archival work, as a constitutive dimension of collective action, is not a secondary activity that follows political mobilization. Rather, it is a political practice through which activists produce historical authority and temporal belonging, foster continuity across generations, and negotiate the conditions under which lesbian lives become historically knowable. The article shows that the marginalization of lesbian histories in Argentina cannot be explained simply by archival absence. Instead, the central challenge lies in the uneven accessibility of memory across territories and social worlds, as archival initiatives have been concentrated primarily in large urban centers, especially Buenos Aires. It further demonstrates that the fragmented geography of lesbian archives-including personal collections, grassroots libraries, activist publications, oral history initiatives, and the <i>Dyke Power Archive</i> (Archivo de Potencia Tortillera)-reflects not only political commitments to decentralized memory but also territorial inequalities, limited funding, and the precarious conditions of self-managed archival work. The article further examines the productive tension between activism and academia, showing how activists simultaneously challenge academic authority while strategically engaging with universities and researchers to secure visibility, resources, and historical legitimacy. Within this broader relationship between activism and knowledge production, oral history emerges not merely as a method for recovering marginalized voices but as a performative archival practice that helps fill archival gaps by documenting the experiences and testimonies of lesbians across different territories. In doing so, it participates in the production of historical subjects and expands what comes to count as part of the national record.</p>","PeriodicalId":46044,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Lesbian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148867248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"All that devastates the eye: unraveling textures in <i>The Lesbian Body</i>.","authors":"Rachel Boyer","doi":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2722435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2026.2722435","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article analyzes the presence of textures in <i>The Lesbian Body</i>, showing that the visual dimension constitutes a key component of Wittig's 1973 work. Because textures imply a graphic aspect, haptic sensations, and a constant reframing of the body, I argue that <i>The Lesbian Body</i> presents itself as the crafting of a specific vision seeking a violent visual effect that strikes the reader's eye and reshapes the perceptual organization of the body through the visual and material dimensions of language. The analysis explores how Wittig mobilizes colors, anatomical details, bodily fluids, and sensory descriptions to create a new corporeal imagery detached from patriarchal and heterosexual representations of women's bodies. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's work, the article ultimately proposes texture as a critical framework for understanding the coherence of Wittig's materialist literary project.</p>","PeriodicalId":46044,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Lesbian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148819538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jahajee: a queer feminist history of Indo-Caribbean activism in New York City.","authors":"Suzanne C Persard","doi":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2702165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2026.2702165","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article traces a public history of queer feminist activism through the Indo-Caribbean organization Jahajee, formerly known as Jahajee Sisters. As the first organization in the U.S. committed to ending gender-based violence in Indo-Caribbean communities, the intergenerational activism of Jahajee has included queer and lesbian women from its founding nearly two decades ago. In this article, I demonstrate that queer feminist Indo-Caribbean activists within immigrant communities in New York City have chosen a politics of organizing around the single issue of ending gender-based violence-rather than advocating for the issues of mainstream U.S.-based LGBT politics. Mapping oral histories of the lives and experiences of queer Indo-Caribbean women, this article documents a visible history of queer feminist activism that endures as forms of kinship and survival against a history of erasure and interenerational legacies of violence.</p>","PeriodicalId":46044,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Lesbian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-20"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148593927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Queer tattooing: archives of spatial belonging, bodily autonomy, resistance and community.","authors":"Rikke Andreassen, Marie Lunau, Sofia Bakhsh, Sara Swanson, Del LaGrace Volcano","doi":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2701088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2026.2701088","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines queer tattooing as both a historical and a contemporary practice of resistance, belonging and community formation. Bringing together three archives - oral history interviews and portraits of queer elders, historical medical records documenting tattooed queer women engaged in sex work at the turn of the twentieth century and a dialogue with queer tattoo artist Sara Swanson - we consider what queer tattooing reveals across generations, bodies and spaces. Our interdisciplinary approach combines archival research, oral history, artistic practice and activist perspectives to trace the ways in which tattoos have functioned as bodily inscriptions of intimacy, queer identification and resistance. The first part of the article explores spatial practices of queer tattooing as sites of visibility, intimacy, belonging and community. The second part addresses bodily autonomy and resistance, demonstrating how queer tattooing enacts what Mona Lilja terms <i>constructive resistance</i>. Such resistance is not merely a refusal of systems of control (e.g., medical authorities), but a means of generating new narratives, subjectivities and communities. Across time and place - from hospital wards at the turn of the twentieth century to contemporary queer tattoo studios - tattooing emerges as a spatial, embodied and relational practice through which queerness is marked and reclaimed. By foregrounding diverse stories of queer tattooing across memory, archives and affect, this article contributes to the generation of more nuanced and inclusive queer histories and demonstrates how interwoven archives can collectively render queer tattooing visible across time.</p>","PeriodicalId":46044,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Lesbian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148521159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Preserving resistance: Patlatonalli's archive as radical memory work in mexican lesbian history.","authors":"Arcelia E Paz Padilla","doi":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2702135","DOIUrl":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2702135","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper examines the archival practices of Patlatonalli, Mexico's groundbreaking lesbian feminist organization founded in Guadalajara in 1986, as a form of radical memory work. Through analyzing the organization's comprehensive collection-which includes photographs, meeting minutes, correspondence, and cultural production -, I argue that Patlatonalli's documentation practices function simultaneously as historical preservation, decolonial epistemic practice, and ongoing political resistance against erasure. The archive's significance lies not only in its unprecedented status as the only lesbian collective archive housed at a public university in Mexico, but in what its specific contents reveal about knowledge production from the margins of the margins: lesbian women organizing in a conservative provincial city, outside the circuits from which Mexican feminist and lesbian activism were being mapped and named. The current digitization project has processed 3,336 documents across eight thematic sections while navigating Mexican archiving legislation to protect personal information. This case study illustrates how memory work in Global South lesbian communities operates as decolonial practice, and examines the tensions and opportunities that arise when grassroots lesbian memory work interfaces with academic institutions.</p>","PeriodicalId":46044,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Lesbian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148431350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fragmented traces: Lesbianism and the Patronato's policies of confinement in late Francoist Spain.","authors":"Daniela Ferrández-Pérez, Moisés Fernández-Cano, Javier Fernández-Galeano, Miguel Fernández-Turuelo","doi":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2692782","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2026.2692782","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research on sexual dissidence under Francoism has often highlighted the repression of homosexual men and trans women, while the trajectories of lesbians remain underexplored. This absence has typically been explained through the notion of 'structural invisibility': women's same-sex relationships were both easier to conceal and less directly targeted by Francoist legal apparatus. Yet new documentary findings challenge this assumption. This article analyses a previously unknown set of medical and administrative files attributed to the Patronato de Protección a la Mujer, an institution jointly run by the Francoist state and the Catholic Church to discipline 'wayward' women. The documents, originating from the reformatory Nuestra Señora del Pilar in San Fernando de Henares, include psychiatric assessments, behavioral reports, and hospital admission forms explicitly referring to lesbianism. These records reveal how female homosexuality was actively pathologized and punished, often through transfers to psychiatric hospitals. Methodologically, the paper reads bureaucratic and psychiatric language as technologies of control while also attending to the fragmentary glimpses of subjectivity and resistance preserved in the files. Small gestures -laughter during a medical exam, drawings appended to reports, affectionate bonds- emerge as traces of agency within a coercive system designed to suppress them. By situating these materials within broader transnational frameworks of psychiatric and moral regulation, the article contributes to rethinking the place of lesbian experience in Francoist Spain. Ultimately, the corpus operates as a counter-archive, destabilizing narratives of invisibility and opening new avenues for queer historical memory.</p>","PeriodicalId":46044,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Lesbian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148431409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Desiring beyond tragedy: Anne Lister's diaries as a queer reconfiguration of the myth of Don Juan.","authors":"Rebeca Campos Ferreras","doi":"10.1080/10894160.2026.2692288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2026.2692288","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines Anne Lister's diaries as a space for a queer reconfiguration of the Don Juan myth in early nineteenth-century English context. Rather than identifying Lister with the libertine hero, it treats Don Juan archetype as a critical lens through which to reconsider seduction and desire once it is no longer supported by masculine privilege. Through close readings of selected diary entries, the discussion traces how Lister's persistent courtships do not follow a pattern of conquest but emerge from vulnerability and in the hope of domestic stability. Instead of ending in moral punishment, her story is determined by exclusion and by the difficulty of finding recognition in the social sphere. The diary, especially in its coded passages, become a space to register her desire under conditions of risk and surveillance, allowing for a rethinking of Don Juanism as a historically situated negotiation of desire and survival.</p>","PeriodicalId":46044,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Lesbian Studies","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148354142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}