Journal of Lesbian Studies最新文献

The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented rise in trans* representation in literature, with works of fictions that go from critically acclaimed best sellers like Torrey Peters' Detransition Baby (2021) to Booker-Prize winner postcolonial-centred study of non-binary characters in Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other (2019). In this blossoming context of exploring trans* voices, Ali Smith's How to be both (2014) breaks the mould in its defiance of traditional representations of transivity, usually grounded on medico-legal discourses. Following the precept of transnormativity as well as the theories of hapticality of Jeanne Vaccaro and Laura Marks, which respectively explore the possibilities of trans* identity perceived as a collective process of crafting and the potential found in a haptical approach to the visual, I hereby discuss Smith's representation of trans*masculine identity outside the regime of medicine. Pivoting around Smith's conceptualisation of 'the painter self', an original reinterpretation of trans* identity as expressed and crafted through the arts and the feeling of touch, I offer an analysis of the continual process of becoming of trans* Renaissance character Francescho del Cossa. Moreover, I offer analyses on the impact others may have on one's own trans* identity, with an interest on the trans* joy that comes from acceptance and on the role of arts to outgrow the pain that comes from rejection. Finally, I examine the role of the visual in the artistic representation of transivity, where Smith defies the limits of time, portraying trans* identity as the true never-ending process.

This article explores historical research methods used to locate lesbians and queer women, especially within American and Canadian contexts from the 1960s onward. It begins by discussing methods such as analyzing women's and lesbian travel guides, directories, maps, periodicals, newsletters, newspapers, websites, oral histories, social media, archival fonds and collections. In particular, this article explores how utilizing lesbian and queer women musicians' tour schedules, calendars, correspondence, and contracts for shows and appearances can be a valuable historical research method, especially for locating impermanent historical lesbian and queer women's spaces off the beaten track. The article focuses on the Alix Dobkin Papers as a case study to explore aspects of historical lesbian and queer women's spaces and demonstrate the utility of this historical research method beyond Dobkin. The papers of Alix Dobkin include business correspondence, fan mail, fliers and programs from concerts, subject files, t-shirts, photographs, and memorabilia. As Dobkin played an important role in the women's music movement and toured regularly, her papers provide useful insight into historical debates about lesbian anti-racist politics, ethical consumption, community organizing, and transgender inclusion and exclusion.

The Anthropocene is old news. As young queer zine-makers in Singapore, we heard the term on repeat and dared to ask: What about the AnthroPUSSY? From this queer environmentalist pun we birthed a new take on our relationship to the Earth amidst climate crises - and in doing so, we came out as ecolesbians. Ecolesbianism is a concept we co-created, bringing together queer ecologies, political lesbianism, ecofeminism, transecology, ecosexuality, and our own experiences. Ecolesbianism explores our relationship with the Earth and asks: what if our interspecies relationships are lesbian too? We argue that lesbian intimacy is unique in proceeding from a point of sameness and marginality, by recognising shared experiences of gender marginalisation with our lovers. Ecolesbianism thus might be understood as a subset of ecosexuality, but with an emphasis placed on marginality and intimacy more so than a general focus on sex and sensuality. The Anthropussy, meanwhile, is our nod to rejecting classifications: The Anthropussy is the erotic and utopian potential we carry within this era of unprecedented anthropogenic climate change. It combines an environmentalist recognition of the climate crisis with a feminist and queer theory analysis of the vulva as a symbol for vast potential, pleasure, intimacy, and expansiveness. This article is a re-formatted zine: a form that brings creativity and fun into the often heavy and overwhelming conversation on ecological collapse, while also expanding its audience beyond that of a typical academic article.

A full version of the zine can be found in the supplemental materials linked to this article.

This article explores The Island of the Lost Plane, a novella written by Li Zishu during her time in Europe that has largely gone unnoticed. Through an analysis of the novella's portrayal of queer intimacy between two immigrant women-one a Sinophone Malaysian and the other a Jewish Israeli-this article examines their healing relationship and how it intertwines with the MH370 accident and the novella's use of the ocean as an ecological trope. This analysis highlights Li Zishu's literary intention to address themes of healing violence, and transnationalism, marking a significant departure from the canonized Sinophone Malaysian literature, which predominantly focuses on violence, rainforests, and heteronormative local experiences. My reading draws from the frameworks of queer Sinophone studies while incorporating perspectives from queer ecology, queer intimacy, and queer world-making. I first analyze how the nationalism and patriarchy tied to each character's origins contribute to their marginalization as "others" in Europe, and how their bond forms despite differences in nationality and ethnicity. This dynamic is metaphorically reflected in their first encounter in the UK. I pay particular attention to the narrator's experiences of discrimination in Germany, which are tied to her Sinophone Malaysian identity, particularly in the aftermath of the MH370 disappearance. These experiences reveal how nationalism, shaped by global power dynamics and rooted in origin narratives, subtly manifests as a form of violence imposed upon her. I then further examine the intimacy between the characters within the imagined oceanic space-an alternative realm that holds the potential to address the colonial violence tied to their respective origins and facilitate the healing of their traumas. By highlighting the peaceful and restorative interactions between the two characters, I argue that this imagined space offers a vision of queer world-making: one that envisions sensory, nonhierarchical, and non-patriarchal worlds that challenge heteronormative structures and dominant power relations.

In her 1978 essay "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," Audre Lorde avers, "The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information" (1984, p. 54). Part of our maligning of the erotic, according to Lorde, is our separation of the spiritual from the erotic, a holdover of enlightenment thinking that insists on parsing apart that which is thought from that which is felt and sensed. This paper examines 1970s lesbian-feminist esthetics, specifically the works of American avant-garde filmmaker Barbara Hammer (1939-2019), to delineate an environmental eros, in which more-than-human nature is a source of erotic inspiration and interspecies connection. Just as Lorde theorizes the erotic as a "reminder of [one's] capacity for feeling and joy" (1984, p. 56), environmental eros understands the erotic as expansively sensual and sensory instead of solely sexual. My close readings of Hammer's films Dyketactics (1974), Women I Love (1976), and Multiple Orgasm (1976) challenge critiques of these materials as escapist relics of an essentializing past. Instead, I use feminist and film phenomenological theory to argue that the natural environment was an actor in radical re-imaginings of subjecthood and relationality that constitute an eco-erotic ethics with clear implications for contemporary environmental politics and ecological feminisms.

This article explores how lesbian aesthetics inform Ali Smith's literary practice, including activism and gender nonconforming characters.

Black lesbians experience more adverse health outcomes and economic insecurity in older age than their White counterparts due to enduring a lifetime of marginalization associated with the intersections of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Yet, there is a lack of organizations dedicated to empowering and supporting this population. ZAMI NOBLA (National Organization of Black Lesbians on Aging) is the only Black lesbian led national organization in the United States solely invested in improving the wellbeing of Black lesbian elders. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, they worked in solidarity with community partners across the country to leverage technological innovation and community solidarity to combat ageist ideology and elevate the spaces in which Black lesbians and their networks were able to learn, heal, thrive, and live. The organization's efforts fostered solidarity across generations of lesbians and the wider LGBTQ + community.

This article offers a queer lesbian feminist analysis attuned to lesbian-queer-trans-canine relationalities. Specifically, the article places queer and lesbian ecofeminism in conversation with Donna Haraway's work on the cyborg and companion species to theorize the interconnected queer becomings of people, nature, animals, and machines amidst ecologies of love and violence in the 2020s. It takes two key case studies as the focus for analysis: first, the state instrumentalization of dogs and robot dogs for racialized and imperial violence, and second, quotidian queer and lesbian-dog relationalities and becomings. In the first, the article traces how dogs are weaponized as tools of state violence and proposes a queer lesbian feminist critique of white supremacy and militarization that can also extend to a critique of the violence committed through and toward the dogs. In the second, the article analyzes how, within lesbian, non-binary, and trans-dog intimacies, dogs help articulate queer gender, sexuality, and kinship formations, and as such, queer worlds for gender, sexual, and kin becomings. The entanglements of violence and love in these queer dog relationalities provide insights into the complexities of queer and lesbian feminist worldbuilding. Lesbian and queer feminist cyborg politics can help theorize the potentials and challenges of these interspecies entanglements.