Journal of Lesbian Studies最新文献

Ana Castillo is a prolific and celebrated author of novels, poetry, short stories, and essays on gender and sexuality, feminism, and Chicanx experiences. Born and raised in Chicago, Castillo's works include The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986), So Far from God (1993), Massacre of the Dreamers, Loverboys (1996), and black dove: mamá, mi'jo, and me (2016) among others. Castillo is the recipient of several awards including the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, the International Latino Book Award, and the Lambda Award. In this interview, Liliana C. Gonzalez and Stacy I. Macias discuss Castillo's reflections on the political and cultural moment in which Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About was published. Macias and Gonzalez also explore Castillo's encounters with the problematics of identity politics and consider Castillo's evolution as an activist and creative writer.

The following contribution celebrates, honors, and reflects on the bodies of work that create spaces of cariño in Carla Trujillo's 1991 anthology, Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About. This piece is two-fold:it begins with an open letter, or analytic response to the ways authors in the anthology such as Terri de la Peña, E.D.Hernandez and Cherríe Moraga have charted and inspired forbidden archives of Chicana lesbian knowledge(s) and cariño molded by their poesía, letra y arte. In this letter, I embed elements of earth tierra, aire, fuego, y agua that make up the foundation of the accompanying art piece. While these pieces exist in separate physical form, their spirits are directly in conversation, una con la otra. I invite readers to indulge in this writing and complimentary artwork alongside the nearest element of earth accessible to you as a reminder that as long as earth is present our capacity to love is eternal.

For a special issue on International Perspectives on Lesbian Psychology, we interviewed Esther Rothblum, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Lesbian Studies since its establishment in 1995. In this interview, Rothblum describes her socialization into feminism at Smith College, the dominant role men played in psychology in the 1970s, and how she found herself studying the psychology of women. Rothblum describes some of her findings from rigorous studies on lesbians and their children, transgender people, and asexuality. Reflecting on her experience editing three different journals (Women & Therapy, Journal of Lesbian Studies, and Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society), she explains the skills important for young scholars working on cutting-edge research. This included developing a thick skin, learning to expect changes in identity labels and psychological theories, and finally, the importance of methodologies in the training of budding psychologists.

Lesbians are at greater risk of mental health problems than heterosexual women, and bisexual individuals are even more likely to report mental health problems. No study has yet tested whether there are any mental health differences between German lesbians, bisexual women, and female controls. We tested for mental health differences between matched groups of 161 lesbian and bisexual women and 161 women in the general population, as well as between matched groups of 79 lesbians and 79 bisexual women. Lesbian and bisexual women reported more mental health problems than population-based women. In contrast, bisexual women did not differ in mental health from lesbians. Therefore, German lesbian and bisexual women constitute a risk group for mental health problems. To improve lesbian and bisexual women's mental health, attempts should be made to lower the frequency of minority stressors, and best-practice mental health interventions made available.

Researchers from the Philippines, Mexico, Italy, Germany, Chile, Canada, Brazil, China, and the US shed new light on important questions in lesbian psychology while subverting the hegemonic status of Western scholarship. Articles part of this special issue move away from treating LGBTQ + identity as a monolith and center lesbian identity. An eclectic set of contributions explore central questions in the field of psychology, including differences between gay men's and lesbian women's mental health as well as similarities and differences between bisexual and lesbian women's sense of identity. This special issue pushes the field to consider how cultural values such as collectivism and individualism, religious affiliation, and the intersections of misogyny and homophobia configure the risk of mental health problems, intimate partner violence, and body dissatisfaction among lesbian women.

In recent years, there has been an emerging critical discourse in South Asia that examines the changing contours of representational politics that could, in turn, be strategically mobilized to introduce an alternative idiom of same-sex love within a standard template of heterosexual storytelling. This has been complemented by an evaluation of alternative modes of sexual politics that need not necessarily conform to Western labels or paradigms of queer identities. Taking its cue from such discursive readings, this article demonstrates how Roopa Rao's web series, The "Other" Love Story (2016), revisits some of the dominant tropes, practices, and narrative conventions of the Hindi films, released in the 1990s, to create a counter-archive for the lesbian subject who, for the most part, was conspicuous by her very absence in the popular figurations of that period in South Asia. There is a perceptible strand of lingering nostalgia and artistic homage that undergirds such an experimental project that nevertheless also becomes a disruptive site for articulating an oppositional esthetics of romance. The subtlety and restraint of such a nuanced portrayal of dissident desires and queer intimacies thus not only resist the easy appropriations that women in the subcontinent are routinely subjected to (as veritable repositories of tradition and national identity) but also retrospectively reclaim a voice for an otherwise historically silenced discourse of sexuality for the masses.

This article examined the association between body satisfaction and sexual identification among lesbian and bisexual women, since these factors help to understand the cultural background of the objectification of female bodies in Latin cultures. Women who identify as lesbian (N = 239) and bisexual (N = 60) completed demographic data and measures of self-esteem, physical appearance perfectionism, lesbian and bisexual identity difficulties, and body satisfaction. We performed a three-stage hierarchical multiple regression to explore how variables relate to body satisfaction. The results suggest that self-esteem plays a key role, explaining 20.4% of the variance in body satisfaction. We discussed the psychosocial and cultural aspects involved in the relationship between the variables, and social and aesthetic pressures on women's bodies. This study contributes to discussions on psychosocial aspects associated with body satisfaction among Brazilian lesbian and bisexual women.

The anthology "Chicana Lesbians: the Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About" was instrumental to my writing as it bolstered my confidence to take control over my sexuality and sensuality. The text in this collection affirmed that exploring and expressing my sexuality through writing was an act of empowerment and defiance within a sexist, racist, heteronormative, and capitalist society.

This brief and personal essay discusses Ester Hernández's and Astrid Hadad's artistic relationship, which includes a beautiful friendship that spans time and space. In particular, and from an intimate vantage point, I read two of Hernández's images that feature Hadad, which the Mexican artist has displayed in her home in Mexico City, to ponder a larger question regarding contemporary cross-border feminist and genderqueer esthetics and relations. The queer kinship between these two artists, I humbly posit, extends to the fans that come out to support Hadad's shows when she performs in cities in the U.S. with large Latinx demographics, particularly in California.

Research has linked feelings of safety and contentment to lower adverse mental health outcomes (e.g., stress, anxiety, depression) in the general population. The current study aimed at exploring the relationship between safe/content positive affect and minority stress (e.g., internalized sexual stigma) in lesbian and bisexual women, considering the effect of potential mediators such as identity self-awareness and identity uncertainty. An online survey was administered to 400 Italian women (220 lesbian and 180 bisexual women), aged 18-40 years (M = 25.98, SD = 6.07). The results showed that lesbian women reported lower internalized sexual stigma and identity uncertainty and higher safe/content positive affect and identity self-awareness, relative to bisexual women. Higher internalized sexual stigma predicted lower safe/content positive affect, regardless of sexual orientation. Furthermore, identity self-awareness and identity uncertainty significantly mediated the relationship between internalized sexual stigma and safe/content feelings, thus confirming the protective role of sexual identity variables on lesbian and bisexual women's positive affectivity. Finally, univariate analyses suggested that lesbian women were more resilient than bisexual women in the face of minority stressors. The results contribute to the understanding of the differences between lesbian and bisexual women in their perception of salient identity categories. In addition, the findings highlight the relevance of protective factors (e.g., identity certainty, lesbian and bisexual positive identity) in ameliorating the adverse effects of minority stress and promoting positive affect and social adjustment in lesbian and bisexual women. Research and clinical implications and directions are discussed.