The Social Construction of Lesbianism

by Celia Kitzinger

The old model of lesbianism as a pathological affliction has largely given way to a liberal social scientific one which presents it as an alternative lifestyle, a way of loving, a sexual preference, or a source of personal fulfillment. This controversial book argues that the shift from ′pathological′ to ′gay affirmative′ research merely substitutes one depoliticized construction of lesbianism for another. The author contends that the gay affirmative model is fundamentally incompatible with radical feminist theory in which lesbianism is a political statement representing the bonding of women against male supremacy. This volume was awarded a 1989 Distinguished Publication Award by the Association for Women in Psychology.

Genres: Lesbian, Feminism, LGBT, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 12, 1987

Reviews

[Max]

Worth reading for sure, I looooove how she takes fat dumps on the whole liberal academia as neutrality thing. In the context of her like, brutal and spot on takedown of academic styles of writing and presenting information, though, it was kinda odd how unnecessarily (IMO... obviously she disagreed lol) technical and jargony she gets at a lot of points. I LOVED changing our minds and thought it was really fun to read... this was a lot more tedious. There were some very tone deaf comparisons between feminism and other movements. Overall though- SUPER into a lot of her ideas and stoked to see them in a book

[Anne Platts · Rating 5 out of 5]

will read again - enjoyed it 20 years ago

[Rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, but the book's focus was very different than I thought it would be when I went into it. The author wrote from a position where lesbianism as social construction was taken for granted as something the readers agreed with, and instead she spent most of the book going over several studies/"Q tests" she did, which was slightly interesting, but ultimately boring. I do agree with what she says about liberal humanism, as an ideology and not as a neutral position to come from and conduct studies from, but the title of the book was very misleading; something like, "Against Liberal Humanism: Studies on Lesbianism" would be more fitting. I'm very curious about the idea of "political lesbianism", since I agree with most of the second-wave radical feminist ideas, but this particular idea is one that I haven't found much writing on that actually delineates and explains it clearly. I thought this book would be it, but it was not. Ultimately, I'm still mostly unconvinced (I can agree that lesbianism is "a blow against the patriarchy", but I find it hard to believe that all women are capable of being sexually attracted to other women), but I would like to read some books that actually describe where the proponents of this position come from, so that I can decide for myself whether it has some sense to it.