Based on an investigation into the life courses of women saying lesbians in France, sociologist Natacha Chetcuti identifies several courses highlighting the game of standards in which a lesbian culture is made up and asserted. Analysis of the conjugal and sexual trajectories shows the difficulty of imposing an self -image breaking with heterosexist standards.
This book is part of the work which, at the turn of the 2000s, freed itself from the judicial and medical gaze from which the image of the homosexual was historically built “ male ». Until then, too concerned about the irruption of the epidemic of the HIV Among male homosexuals and the need to design suitable prevention, with rare exceptions, hexagonal research had ignored the lifestyles of lesbians, a group that had remained away from the lethal danger. This new current establishes research on sexuality and homosexuality, including female, as objects of autonomous study.
History of an identity
In a first chapter entitled “ The lesbian, or the invention of a category », Natacha Chetcuti invites us to discover the slow development of a vocabulary and categories used to designate female homosexuality and distinguish different sexual practices between women. This complex story begins with the analysis of the terms of the medico-legal literature of the end of the XIXe century based on a naturalistic construction of homosexuality to end with a criticism of the stable identity categories from feminist thought of the end of XXe century in the fight against heterosexual oppression. This historical detour highlights a terminology which fluctuates according to underlying theories which successively found the designations. It is the story of vocables at the same time familiar, threatening and incongruous with the sometimes obscure origins that take roots in distant elsewhere: ancient places (lesbian, sapphic), naturalizing scientific theories (homosexual, congenital, degenerate, Dyke), Dyke), Dyke), Dyke) Disturbing deformations of languages and dialects (fem, gouine, tribade), imports of foreign languages (queer, butch, virago). A whole vocabulary that only a few activists master at the heart of the debate. Added to this is that in a context of power relations between a minority group and a dominant group, no word can be trivial. Determined with regard to the heterosexual standard, each designation, even claimed, always contains the possibility of abnormality and therefore of stigma.
Resolutely abandoning women with fluctuating identities, the interviews conducted by Natacha Chetcuti describe the life courses of women who say they are “ lesbian In a society structured by heterosexuality. For her interviews, she recruits women through the prism of associations, bookstores and bars that she describes as “ representatives of the social construction of a lesbian culture ». In doing so, the author makes the choice to question women who have already made an important step in acceptance and self -recognition.
How did these women come to claim a category which refers to minority and devalued practices, by what path have they made their label which puts out of the heterosexual standard ? This is the first question to which Natacha Chetcuti seeks to answer.
Diversity of courses
Before engaging in the analysis, Natacha Chetcuti defines the three types of routes that emerge from his interviews. THE exclusive coursethe rarest, are the result of women who have never had sex with men. More frequent are the simultaneous course Namely those of women who have started their sex life with a woman or a man and then live only relationships with women. Finally, the progressive course who are in the majority and are distinguished from other courses by the duration of the heterosexual experience and the types of relationships engaged with men.
The biographical accounts of these women who think themselves as homosexuals show identity routes during which “ Self -definition is constantly replayed or renegotiated From their collective and individual experience. These women go to theempowerment which according to the author “ is neither a state nor a condition but a process “, And who” Far from stiffening the categories makes it possible to understand the variability of the meaning given to the different appellations of lesbianism and of re -situating it according to life stories and biographical temporalities ».
In the chapter entitled “ Become lesbian and self -representation », Natacha Chetcuti invites us to follow the various conflicting paths, often painful between what is acceptable and what is not for interviews. The biographical perspective highlights changes in the use of terms according to the contexts in which the person is. Without a positive representation of homosexuality, between visibility and silence, each slice of life is enamelled with pitfalls which depending on the social context can be manifested by denial, rupture, aggressive behavior or lead to isolation.
Overall, interviews emerge that having sex with a woman is not enough to say lesbian, you also have to be able to assert their choice of life. In a context where life as a couple is the norm, it becomes more legitimate to make its homosexuality public by relying on this choice of valued life ; Also, it is more common to present themselves as a woman of women than to say lesbian, whether in the family or in the professional environment. However, this assertion often comes up against the difficulty of relatives, especially mothers, to accept a marginalized and fragile life which takes place outside the model of conjugality with a man and children.
Identity of a group
As in all groups, solo life or couple life take different forms depending on the time of life and proximity to a community network or a militant network. Mostly, interviews speak of couples based on sexual and emotional exclusivity that take up gender characteristics by not separating sexuality and love. The politicized criticism of this monogamous couple leads certain lesbians to imagine new forms of solidarity on the basis of multiple, concomitant and egalitarian emotional and sexual attachments. But in fact, the lesbian couple is monogamous and fragile ; In fact, lesbians live multiple attachments that follow one another in time, but often the rupture is not total and united links remain through the great emotional proximity that the ancient lovers maintain with each other.
Natacha Chetcuti apprehends lesbian sexuality according to the theory of sexual scripts developed by John H. Gagnon. This approach envisages sexual interactions not as a succession of acts that it is a question of counting but as scenarios whose internalized elements are linked. The analysis of these sexual sessions makes it possible to grasp the effect of the standards incorporated by the partners. On this point, the first difficulty encountered by the author was to access a discourse on free sexuality of that of emotional life in which it sees an effect of gender and age. This is why under the influence of new language practices linked to the emergence, from the 1990s, of a counter-culture based on the expression of lesbian sexualities and discussions between friends, the youngest and the youngest and the youngest The closest to community networks appear to be the most comfortable to clearly describe the sexual situations experienced.
The book turns out to be exciting because nothing freezes, everything is in nuances that are organized and take on meaning during reading. We are subtly invited to follow different paths towards the affirmation of a lifestyle perceived in its beginnings as “ abnormal Which is developed in a social context structured by the heterosexual standard. The author leads us to follow courses of routes organized by themes ; His analyzes tell us about processes, careers that never condense in a label, a designation. By discrete touches, the accounts of ordinary experiences – identities, lovers and erotic – of women questioned are put into perspective with the knowledge resulting from studies on gender and sexuality, the representations put forward by militant speeches and the dissemination of A lesbian community saying. Furthermore, the interpretation of the courses of women loving women continues to refer to those who, in a way, are similar to them in the sense that their life paths also undergo the domination of the heterosexist system. Their stories are examined with regard to the standards that govern their gender, to expectations on the behavior of women in general with, from time to time, a comparative foray with lifestyles “ gay Who have in common with those of lesbians to assert themselves in such an unfavorable context. Built on the basis of life course observations, this study confronts with finesse the “ lesbian »To learned reflections, to current representations of female homosexuality and finally, to the word that the community group provides in order to break the wall of invisibility specific to lesbianism and to change the ways of saying and to assert his sexual orientation and his choice of life.