Developing lesbian identity: a sociohistorical approach Arianna Sala1 Manuel L. de la Mata Benítez University of Seville The aim of this paper is to develop a narrative approach to the study of sexual identity. To this end, it will focus on identity as a dialogical construction, related to the discourses and representations found in our cultural setting. The analysis applied in this study is based on a sociocultural perspective, which states that humans are social beings, no only because of the way in which our beliefs and behaviours are socially influenced, but also because our capacity for thinking and acting is constructed socially. As Vygotsky (1978; Wertsch, 1985) noted, the human mind is not only shaped socially, but also constructed socially. From this perspective, the personal narratives of a group of lesbian women have been analysed using qualitative methodological approach. These women were interviewed about their lives and particular emphasis was placed on the way in which they have integrated lesbianism into their personal identities. This paper focuses on certain key themes that emerged from the interviews, relating to the self and lesbianism. The analysis views homosexuality (and sexuality in general) as a historical-cultural construction and assumes a model of sexuality in terms of sexual choice. 1. Departamento de Psicología Experimental. Universidad de Sevilla. arianna8@libero.it IDENTITY AND NARRATIVE Questions relating to identity become problematic owing to the pluralisation and fragmentation of relational experiences (Gergen 1992). In fact, we live in a social system that promotes the phenomenon of belonging to different social groups, none of which can exclusively define the perspectives for action and thought of the people living in that system. Post-modern freedom to access different social contexts and experience sometimes incongruent roles makes it extremely difficult to gain a stable view of our place in the world. Moreover, the possibility of disengaging from the system of social expectations (as in the specific case of lesbian women, for instance) increases mobility between different roles and life experiences. However, at the same time, it forces the individual to deal with strong tension in relation to the external environment , since it encourages people to present themselves as possessing a stable identity (useful only in that specific context) and, at the same time, to avoid the reduction of its complexity by using selfdefinitions acquired in other domains of experience. Regarding the notion of self, Bruner (2003, pp 210) claims: “…there is no such thing as an intuitively obvious and essential self… Rather we constantly construct and reconstruct ourselves to meet the needs of situations we encounter, and we do so with the guidance of our memories of the past and our hopes and fears for the future. Telling oneself about oneself is like making up a story about who and what we are, wha ha happened, and why we are doing what we are doing”. In our task of narrative self-making, we do not start from scratch every time, but rather we develop styles and habits that, over time, become a discourse genre (Bruner, 2003). Our narratives get older and we need to re-narrate them to match the new circumstances in our lives. At the same time, our narratives are rooted in more or less implicit cultural models about what a person should and should not be. These models provide the guidelines for the formation of individual identity. As Hermans (2003) states: “Collective voices are not simply outside the self as an external community, but rather they are part of the individual self and, at the same time, transcend it as part of the broader historical and social community.”(p.105) Therefore, there is a link between what we tell ourselves and what we tell others, based on what we believe others expect us to be. So, our personal narratives become influenced by what we think other people expect of us. The assumption that our personal narratives (which provide us with a sense of identity and uniqueness) are determined by others, is in line with Ricoeur’s philosophy of (1962) of “Oneself as Another”. At the same time, the different social theories and discourses with which we come into contact (whether individually or collectively) leave traces in our discourses, and, as Wertsch (1998) claims: “The acceptance of a particular utterance by an individual agent is not simply a matter of dispassionate, reflective choice. Instead, it is often shaped by the power and authority associated with items in the “cultural toolkit” (Wertsch, 1991) provided by a sociocultural setting. In this sense, mediational means are differentially imbued with power and authority” (p. 66). This invests discourses with the authority of the person who produces them, so that certain contents are more acceptable and legitimate than others, depending on the origin of the utterance. Through narrative, individuals both express themselves and actively construct their own self-representation: “identity is that internalized and evolving story that results from this selective appropriation of past, present, and future” claims McAdams (1999 p. 486) in his theory on identity. Thus, modern psychological research (McAdams 1999, Bruner 2003) have abandoned the essentialist view of identity maintained in the Cartesian philosophical tradition, which understands the self as something permanent, that inhabits its own “kingdom” and possesses an integrity that exists before and is separate from its relations with others. From our perspective, identity is conceptualised as a story, full of actions, settings, scenes, themes and characters. Identity is a life-story that, as a narrative, is linked to the context of production and to the social discourses and representations that permeate any given society and provide a framework for establishing which contents are legitimate and acceptable. However, we can see a contradiction in psychological theory as identity is conceived as a narrative construction but, at the same time, , when speaking about sexual identities, two contrasting approaches to describing and understanding this process appear: on the one hand, there are the “categorical” positions of those who regard heterosexuality and homosexuality as two different and mutually exclusive classes, with clear boundaries. They assume that intra-group differences are small and instead maximise inter-group differences. They also assume that there is coherence between desire, perception and interpretation of desire. This position leads to an essentialist interpretation of homosexual identity, considered not as a process, but rather as the discovery of something that lies dormant in the very depths of the self; something that should be allowed to emerge. This sexological approach interprets sexual orientation as an original strength that responds to the laws of nature (and cannot be sanctioned for that): understands variations in the correspondence between desire and perception of desire as forms of incoherence, or false consciousness with regard to the “true” underlying sexual orientation. On the other hand constructivist and queer (Butler 1993) conceptualisations claim that sexual (and gender) identities are historical and social products, rather than natural and intra-psychic phenomena. These approaches argue against an essentialist view of identities and reject the idea of a binary organisation that draws a line between heterosexual and homosexual, woman and man, female and male…They also argue that these dichotomous approaches are questioned by the existence of persons who define themselves and act as bi-sexual, transgender, transsexual or, more generally queer, and allow varied, non-stable and non-hierarchically ordered combinations of sexual desire orientations, behaviours and self-definitions to emerge. Homosexuality and heterosexuality are considered as products of the cultural organization of Western societies and a new conceptualization of sexuality, free of the rigid ties represented by gender roles, is defended . These two contrasting theories about homosexuality become part of the narrative corpus, of the discursive material that is available for those who have to incorporate homosexual identity into their personal identity. This makes the academic debate turn into political, as both discourses are associated to different self-representations (stable sexual option due to biology versus unstable sexual option as a result of choice) and different political strategies (claim for difference versus claim of equality). This explains the relevance and interest in studying the life-stories of homosexual women, because they reveal the deconstruction process of stigmatising social discourse and the search for alternative meanings for the construction of non-stigmatised life-stories and representations of identity. SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL IDENTITY AS SOCIOHISTORICAL PHENOMENA : THE CASE OF SPAIN The discourse and concern about “normal sexuality” and the acquisition of an adjusted sexual identity are intertwined with the history of modernity. Paradoxically, the same process that enabled the integration of sexuality and sexual identity into the discourse of modernity and included it as a one of those things viewed as respectful/national/moral/developed, also initiated a process of naturalisation of “normal” sexuality and sexual identities. The normalisation of sexuality and sexual identities has coincided with their naturalisation: there is a degree of overlapping between what is defined and perceived as “natural” (in fact a social construct) and what is defined and perceived as “normal”. Phylogeny and ontogeny are part of a unique process of civilisation that places the modern white man at the top of the respectability hierarchy and is grounded in a strict control of sexuality and a clear division of gender roles. The confusion of gender roles (the behaviours, fates and spaces allocated to men and women) automatically leads to the questioning of sexual identities and opens up the possibility of degradation and regression. It is no coincidence that women, defined as being closer to nature than men, were, and still are, defined as less rational and potentially less civilised (Saraceno 2003). In Spanish culture, there are a series of discourses about sexuality that are ‘legitimated’ by religion, science and common sense and which have naturalised a dominant model that defines the sexual and social roles of women and men. These discourses, although presented as a social replica of natural laws, are situated in a specific historical-cultural context, so what is considered to be acceptable in one context is not necessarily acceptable in another. It is necessary, therefore, to approach these topics with a certain amount of relativism in order to avoid becoming trapped by the confusion between nature and normality and trying to deconstruct the notions of sex and sexuality as static categories. Tackling the analysis of sexuality from a historical-cultural perspective involves, as noted above, starting from the assumption that this concept does not designate an invariable essence, but rather a historical construct that, just like any construct, changes as a result of the social and scientific influences of any given time. This becomes clear when analysing changes in the definitions of homosexuality over the last century: sin, sexual perversion, mental illness, sexual orientation, sexual option…. Just like any scientific theory, studies about human sexuality are representations of reality, which are organised within a given framework of presuppositions and reflect certain interests: heterosexuality and homosexuality are not essential categories, but merely two of the possible ways in which a society may think, talk and feel about the relations between sexes and the distribution of power between genders. The different social theories and discourses with which we come into contact (whether individually or collectively) leave traces in our discourses, some of which may be more permanent and enduring. It is a question of meanings imposed by the powerful or by part of the speaking community and negotiated by human agents It could be argued that up until at least the second half of the twentieth century in Mediterranean cultures, the authoritative, moral, institutional and religious discourses coincided with the stigmatization, medicalisation and repression of homosexuality More specifically, in Spain, since 1939 to 1975, people lived under a dictatorship with “National Catholic” ideology supported by the fascism of “Falange” and the Catholic Church. In this time, the dictator Francisco Franco gave the ecclesiastic authorities the control of public and private moral. This rendered the adoption of a sexual ethics that repressed any deviation from the dominant model about the masculine and the feminine.. During Dictatorship in Spain, the academic world rejected any scientific approach to sexuality besides the matters related to reproduction and venereal diseases. In general, the issues related to sex were given to moral or government authority, as a matter of public order”. One of the tools of the Regime was the “Law of Social Dangerousness”, which envisaged sentences of 5 years of prison and internment in psychiatric centres for the “treatment and rehabilitation” of homosexuals. Despite the dictator’s death in 1975 and the subsequent beginning of the transition to democracy, it was not until 1979 that, after the demonstrations promoted by the Spanish Homosexual Liberation Movement, that the articles of the Law of Social Dangerousness that had been systematically used for the repression of homosexuals were abolished. In the last 30 years, Spanish society has experienced a spectacular progress both in the economical and the social plane. In regard to LGTB sphere, a flourishing of associations in the whole country has been observed. As a result of the efforts of lesbian and gay collectives and of the victory of the Social Democratic party in the elections, Spain is the third country in the world to legalise homosexual marriage, after the Netherlands and Belgium. The journey from the penal punishment of homosexuality to the legalisation of homosexual marriage was not lineal and free of conflict. As it happened with the removal of homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses included in the DSM, and the subsequent proliferation of contra-discourses that regarded homosexuality as a pathology, so in Spain, coinciding with the legal recognition of homosexual marriage, there has been a proliferation of discourses from the traditional religious and academic world, that became a reality in press campaigns and great demonstrations against the government and in defence of traditional family. In the Spanish society we can find a dialogical contraposition of radically different discourses and representations about homosexuality. It is important, however, to remember that these discourses are expressed from positions that differ in terms of strength. On the one hand we have the positions of those who have historically created, disseminated and defended the norms, defining what is considered “normal-healthy” and “abnormal/pathological”. On the other hand, of those who have been historically stigmatised. Only in the last decades they have been able to create a counter-text, a space of reflection and representation, at least partially free from the stigma. It becomes clear that these two discourses do not convey the same authority and are not invested of power in the same degree. In this sense, traces of these stigmatising discourses can still be felt today even in those who consider that they have positively completed their identity process and assume a positive gay identity. AIMS As noted before, the powerful elites of a society privilege certain kinds of stories, whilst silencing others. For that reason, some narrative research has tried to give voice and expression to these traditionally suppressed and marginalised ways of life (Franz & Stewart 1994, Gergen & Gergen 1993). The aim of this paper and underlying study is to give a voice, to offer a space of visibility to a historically silenced collective: homosexual women. The specific aims are: - To describe the way in which individuals appropriate social discourses about homosexuality and lesbianism in their autobiographical narratives. - To analyse the relationships (interactions) between these discourses in personal (autobiographical and, thus, identity-related) narratives. METHOD PARTICIPANTS The study sample consisted of eight Spanish women, aged between 22 and 353. Their ethnicity and origins was Spanish. Contact was made with the participants through two associations for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transsexual people called “Colega” in the city of Seville, and “Lambda” in the city of Valencia. These associations allowed us establish the initial contact with a group of women. These women, in turn, provided a link to others. This method is called “snowball” sampling (Krausz 1969, quoted in Kitzinger 1987). 3 The participants grew up en el periodo histórico de la “transición” a la democracia, han vivido por lo tanto un periodo de importante renovación y modernización del pais. Es importante de toda manera recordar que en el momento que se realizaron las entrevistas España tenía un gobierno conservador y no se había aprobado la Ley de Matrimonio Homosexual. THE INSTRUMENT The instrument designed for this study was a semi-structured interview, divided into two sections. The first section was more structured and included pre-established questions about homosexuality. The second part was more flexible and focused on the life-stories of the participants. PART ONE. Kinsey Scale. Following a general explication of the aims of the study, the Kinsey Scale for the “heterosexual-homosexual continuum” was presented (Kinsey et al., 1948-1953), which ranges from 0 (completely heterosexual) to 6 (completely homosexual). The participants were invited to repeat this self-assessment with regard to present, past and their ideal. This form of presentation had the double advantage of encouraging the participant to think about her life and provided a clear indication of the participant’s assessment of homosexuality in her life. So for instance, a score of 6 in the present and 1 as the ideal would define a situation of disagreement with her current sexual option. Questions about homosexuality. 1) How would you define homosexuality? 2) Can you tell me three advantages and three disadvantages of homosexuality? 3) Do you think that you would recognise a homosexual person by sight? PART TWO: The life-story. In the second part of the interview, the participants made audio-recordings of their life-stories. To facilitate the task of remembering and narrating, a life satisfaction graph was used: the X axis represented age and the Y axis their level of satisfaction. The level of overall satisfaction was scored from 0 (minimal satisfaction) to 10 (maximal satisfaction in sentimental life, work and in general). The participants recorded specific events by placing them in relation to their age when said events occurred and the level of satisfaction experienced. They were invited to label and narrate the events in more detail. To conclude the interview, the participants were asked to recount a selfdefining memory (in accordance with McAdams , 1996). All the interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed literally and analysed using Nudist Vivo software. Then, a thematic analysis of the transcription was applied. On the basis of this analysis, a number of themes (Macro-themes and themes) were detected, which are discussed in the next section. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS Three macro-themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: The macrotheme SELF, includes excerpts referring to the participants’ reflections about their life. The macro-theme SELF & Lesbianism includes excerpts about different aspects of lesbianism as it has been experienced and lived by the participants. It consists of several themes, presented further on. The macrotheme SELF & Society includes excerpts concerning the participants’ relationship with society and more specifically with their perceptions of society’s attitude towards homosexuality. This paper focuses on the results achieved in relation to the macro-theme SELF & Lesbianism, which accounts for 49% of all the excerpts selected4 , and specifically themes related to identity issues (Development of lesbian identity, and Reflections about identity). DEVELOPMENT OF LESBIAN IDENTITY. Firstly, it is important to stress that most models of the development of lesbian identity have emerged from studies about male sexual identity. This theoretical shortcoming is the result of the assumption of isomorphism between male and female sexuality, as well as the historical silencing of female and lesbian reality. Although it is true that gays and lesbians share the stigma and the same legal void in relation to their rights, “lesbians form part of an oppressed group who are in turn sexually oppressed as well. Gays are part of an oppressed group that is not only sexually attracted towards the sex that holds power in society, but they also belong to this group” (Bersani 1998). It should therefore be borne in mind that this study focuses solely on female homosexuality and, therefore, its conclusions are not necessarily valid for male homosexuality. The participants’ narratives reflected the two theoretical positions mentioned above: the essentialist and the constructivist: in fact on the one hand, some of the women re-read their own lives in the light of the orientation of desire, as a linear albeit difficult process towards the definition of a coherent 4 The themes included in this macro-theme are: Definition of homosexuality (4%); Earliest relations with homosexual world (8%); Development of Lesbian Identity (24%); Love (17%);Reflections about identity (24%); Visibility (“coming out”). (23%) sexual orientation; other participants, on the other hand, make the distinction between their personal and their social and political identity and refuse to remain within a univocal self definition. In general, the participants started out from an implicitly essentialist self definition and only through a reflexive process arrived at a more constructivist stance. Recent research on gender differences in the way of defining and experiencing homosexuality - and sexuality in general - calls into question any definitions based on rigid correspondences between orientation, behaviours and forms of identity (Peplau, Garnets 2000, Peterson 1998). Moreover, the experiences of women who came to lesbianism as a consequence of a political journey or their feminist reflections and experiences, cast doubt on any theory of homosexuality that focuses solely on the orientation of desire as the chief organiser of lesbian identity PONER EN CONCLUSIONES This next section analyses the participants’ journey as expressed in their own words: the discovery of lesbianism starts from an awareness of being different towards the recognition of desire towards people of the same sex. ♀AM: “It started when I was with my friends and I felt weird, and they started talking about boys and all that stuff and I thought it was all really disgusting. That was when I started to feel lonely because I couldn’t share what was happening to me with the other girls. Which was when I realised what was happening to me and I was able to say “look, this is what’s going on”. ♀GM “But I kind of knew, more or less. I realised that something wasn’t right, you know? Because you realise when you start talking to your friends and they’re all saying “I like this guy” and you say “well I don’t, I don’t like anyone”, you know? And you start to question quite a lot of things about yourself, you know? And you can see the attraction of people who aren’t the opposite sex and you start to doubt and that was when I started to realise”. Research into this topic (Cass 1979, Chapman & Brannok 1987, Troiden 1988) indicates that the moment of awareness of one’s own “mismatch” with the culturally dominant model of compulsory heterosexuality is a critical time, characterised by the conflict between different forces: on the one hand, the need to know yourself and understand why you feel like this; and on the other, the discourses that stigmatise any sexual identity that does not coincide with heterosexuality, making the process difficult. ♀ GS: “Then I started to feel quite down, like I was coming apart, because I couldn’t get my head around the possibility that I was a lesbian, because at that time, I didn’t understand that the concept of bisexuality could even exist, and I was in love with this girl and she was all I could think about... but I didn’t ever say anything to her, you know? And there came a time when I started to take control of the situation and began to study and to read up about it, and that’s when gradually I started to come out the other side of this situation when I had felt bad about myself, you know? (…) When at last I started to really say no, I have to know myself, what’s happening to me, that was when I started to struggle with myself, against myself, you know? To say, I’m like this, I’m not like that, accept yourself, you’re not like that, it was like an internal struggle with myself” Moreover, intense feelings between girls are presented as a normal and non-sexual aspect of teenage relationships: ♀CE: “I thought that we were just really good friends, I felt a lot of affection for my girl friends”. When faced with confusing feelings of attraction towards women, a cognitive process has to be worked through before the individual is able to recognise them. Our participants explain very clearly the difficulties they faced when first considering the possibility of being homosexual, an idea that is even difficult to formulate owing to a lack of vocabulary. ♀GS “I couldn’t get my head around the possibility that I was a lesbian”, ♀CE “My mind couldn’t understand it, I had no way of externalising it, it was like........eh, tut tut, no way, impossible, I didn’t have any points of reference” Here we see the effects of heterosexism in silencing non-normative identities, emotions and desires. There are no words to talk about it. And if we do not talk about it, it does not exist. It is only when an individual comes into non-equivocal contact with a lesbian experience that she is ready to recognise her own feelings. ♀MA: “In one of her letters she told me that she’d fallen in love with a girl and that she gotten together with her; from then on really, because before that I didn’t know anyone who was gay, you know? That was the first time that homosexuality had entered my life really, and I started to go over it in my head until I arrived at the conclusion that I was in love with that girl” This happens because the meaning of love and sexual experiences is socially and discursively constructed and therefore these experiences are partly learned (Rubin 1984). ♀EC: “Because I think that I was always attracted to girls right from when I was little” In this excerpt we see an example of the phenomenon described above in relation with the essentialist vs. constructivist view of identity: the reinterpretation of early experiences as a sign of a “true” lesbian self that was waiting to be discovered (Kitzinger & Wilkinson, 1995). This reveals the dialogical relationship between an implicit essentialist view of homosexuality (something that is already in the person, waiting to be discovered) and a constructivist view of identity as a process, the same woman say: ♀EC: “I start the slow and very painful process began of adopting an identity”. As a result of the attempts to ensure that homosexual issues remain invisible in society: ♀EC:“I thought that I was the only lesbian in the world” When starting to construct a new identity in Spain, it is not easy to find points of reference that provide a model of a homosexual way of life and the need to share experiences with peers becomes increasingly clear. Four of our participants referred to this moment and to this need: ♀LM: “I just wanted to meet another lesbian for crying out loud! I was 18 at the time, now there are a few examples didn’t in see the any media... lesbians but or when gays I not was even little, on TV, you so naturally I thought that I was the only lesbian in the world, and I thought that I was never going to have any kind of lesbian relationship, and I ended up going to the wedding of a woman I was in love with, but I wasn’t the one she was marrying, so it was pretty much a total disaster, erm... and of course, that caused me a lot of anxiety. What emerges here is the lack of positive models for identification. A great deal of the suffering expressed by those who reject their homosexuality is not only a consequence of social rejection or specific episodes of discrimination or condemnation; it also depends on the impossibility of recognising themselves in the image of the homosexual person that is portrayed in their own cultural environment (bent, paedophile, dyke, butch, bull dyke…) The stigmatisation and caricaturising of homosexual women achieves its purpose of restricting access to this sexual option; initially, when something about one’s own sexual option is perceived as strange, it makes the individual reject the very idea of an eventual identification with this kind of woman. ♀GS: “I just didn’t identify with the role of the butch woman, so it wasn’t something I could use”. Identification with a stigmatised model of woman is impossible and so the negative model must be deconstructed. Our participants referred to their lesbianism as a feeling, an idea that was hidden for a long time, reproached and almost forgotten until they were able to construct a less stigmatised idea of a gay woman. From this point of view, LGTB communities, associations and collectives play a very important role, not only as a source of support, but also for the deconstruction of stereotypes and pluralisation of homosexual identities. A similar function is performed by the increasing visibility of “unsuspected” homosexuals who belong to a wide range of social and professional conditions (TV hosts, politicians, journalists…) because it disproves crystallised stereotypes and broadens the range of possible forms of self-identification. However, a distinction must be made between the gay and lesbian community, because what is now in Spain a reality for gays is a long way off for lesbians. The invisibility of lesbian women in Europe is a reality that the collectives and institutions must confront. There is a tendency to link this invisibility with a lack of motivation or involvement of the part of women, and a failure to take into account the socialisation of women and their lack of empowerment. These conditions clearly make it difficult for women to make decisions that might be considered dangerous. ♀RA: “The image I had of a gay woman was the typical butch kind of woman, rejected by everyone, and by society, in general, really negative, you know? I don’t know really... because I didn’t identify with that image, I rejected it. But right from when I was little, I had the feeling that I might like women or be physically or emotionally attracted by a woman. ♀AM: “Even before you’re really aware of it, you start to feel like there’s something strange about you, because all the references you have are heterosexual, and you don’t fit in with that mould, with that stereotype. So you feel like you’re a weirdo and not integrated in society, and I think that’s the origin of the problems that people can have with themselves”. We can see here how the dissonant element (“you start to feel like there’s something strange about you”)in the medium of heterosexist narratives (“all the references you have are heterosexual”) gives rise to a narrative that accounts for the feeling of a lack of integration, and then provides a narrative explication that allows the individual move from inconsistency to self-reflection (I think that’s the origin of the problems…), and, finally, from self-reflection to the solution of the narrative conflict, which is usually personal acceptance. This final result is achieved through the personal deconstruction of stigmatised meanings and the re- construction of meanings that are free from the obligation to submit to compulsory heterosexuality (or as far as our sexist society will allow at any rate). In the life satisfaction graphs used in the interviews, the moment of personal acceptance is characterised by high levels of satisfaction, like the kind of satisfaction felt when achieving a life goal. ♀ GS: “The most important thing is accepting who you are, so you feel good about yourself, that’s the biggest step you have to take. The worst thing is when you haven’t got to that point where you can accept yourself, but if you feel good about yourself you can transmit that there’s nothing wrong with that. In my case it was when I started to read up about it and I saw that just because I had certain feelings that didn’t mean I was a bad person or a pervert or anything like that, but that there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way that I do and who, unfortunately, have been afraid, rejected by their families, rejected for lots of reasons, and that was when I started to tell my sister about how I felt, and I saw that at least I had someone to talk to, you know? And then I started to move forwards until I finally got to where I am now, where I could accept me for who I am”. We see here that the process leading to personal acceptance passes through the deconstruction of stigmatised meanings. But, what are these discourses? How can they be deconstructed? Below is a more detailed analysis of the excerpt. A homosexual is a bad person, a pervert. This moral judgment is harsh; it is the moral quality of the person (good or bad) that is being judged, depending on her adaptation to compulsory heterosexuality “in my case it was when I started to read up about it and I saw that just because I had certain feelings that didn’t mean I was a bad person or a pervert or anything like that”. Sexuality becomes the core of a person’s definition, as Foucault claims: How is it that in a society like ours, sexuality is not simply a means of reproducing the species, the family, and the individual? Not simply a means to obtain pleasure and enjoyment? How has sexuality come to be considered the privileged place where our deepest “truth” is read and expressed? For that is the essential fact: Since Christianity, the Western world has never ceased saying: “To know who you are, know what your sexuality is.” Sex has always been the forum where both the future of our species and our “truth” as human subjects are decided. (1988, pp. 110-111) Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the participant refers to “feelings” and not to sexual attraction or desire, revealing a disparity with external definitions of homosexuality (both male and female) that take the sexual aspect as the central axis. A homosexual person is: an isolated case, a flawed example of human kind, condemned to loneliness: “but that there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way that I do”. A homosexual person is: someone who, because of his/her failure to adapt to culturally established models, will be rejected by her/his family, denied primary affective relationships: “I started to tell my sister about how I felt, and I saw that at least I had someone to talk to, you know? It is easy to understand how the deconstruction of these internalised arguments leads to a feeling of personal satisfaction and achievement: ♀NL: “I would say that around that time, around the age of 29, 30, 31, that’s when I felt sure that I’d achieved the kind of personal maturity that allowed me to feel good about myself, very confident, accepted... you know? That marked a before and after in the sense of, well, I’m experiencing my homosexuality in a very open way, right? Completely open on all levels, in all areas of my life, in my job, my family, my surroundings... you know?” REFLECTIONS ABOUT IDENTITY: In terms of identity-related issues, in the interviews, the participants revealed their endeavour to live with a paradoxical situation: on the one hand, they defended the eradication of any kind of labels used to describe human beings, and on the other, they recognised the need for a social and political struggle in order to achieve recognition for a collective that is still stigmatised even today. ♀EC: “It’s difficult. Ehhh, coming up against the world we live in, right? But, of course, that’s what I say inwardly, then in practice, well, in practice I use the labels that exist, I use the established patterns, right?, and if I have to define myself to the outside world, I define myself as a gay woman, right? But for me, that isn’t enough, that doesn’t say who I am, I’m so much more than those labels, you know? Because those labels have a, a, a series of meanings, which are applied to millions of people, but it’s not the same. I mean, how can the word lesbian or gay be applied to millions of people? When those millions of people are so different? As mentioned previously, one of the first questions in the interview focused on the participants’ self definition of their sexual orientation using the Kinsey scale, from 0 (completely heterosexual) to 6 (completely homosexual), so that 3 means homosexual and homosexual to the same degree. This exercise yielded an interesting: seven out of the eight participants defined themselves as lesbian, while the other defined herself as bisexual. However, the mean score obtained in the participants’ self-assessments was between 3.42 for the past (SD = 1.96; with a range from 1 to 6), and 4.28 for the present (SD = 0.75; with a range from 3 to 5), and 3.71 for the ideal (SD = 0.95; with a range from 3 to 5). This last score seems particularly significant, as it becomes difficult to interpret within the orientation of desire model as something stable and unchangeable. Why do these women - who according to Cass’ model of the development of homosexual identity (1979) are in the synthesis stage - say that their ideal is close to bi-sexuality? Is this result compatible with an explanatory model of homosexuality based on the orientation of desire? If homosexuality, in the sexological model, is considered a specular reflection of heterosexuality, would a group of eight heterosexual women, when asked about their sexuality, respond in a similar way? This result could be explained from a standpoint that considers homosexuality a sexual option. What clearly emerges here is that this issue is not just a matter of sexual attraction as sexological models claim. The women interviewed in this study claimed that they could feel attracted to a man. This datum is very relevant because it contradicts the stigmatised idea of the homosexual person defined by his/her sexuality. Perhaps, research about homosexuality has itself been a victim of the representation of homosexuality, as described by Foucault (1977): Nothing that went into his (the homosexual) total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away. It was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular nature.” (p. 56). The participants explained this result, which contradicts certain theories of homosexuality, as follows. ♀LN: Why have I put a 4 in the present and a 6 in the past? I don’t think that I’m any less of a lesbian than in the past, it’s not that, it’s just that I no longer believe in such a fixed identity as a lesbian, although my practices are 100% homosexual, my relationships are 100% homosexual, do I think that I could fall in love with a man? I could feel attracted towards a man, absolutely. Why don’t I or why doesn’t this happen? Well I think it’s because I don’t like the social stereotype that exists of men. Not because I don’t like men, if you get my meaning… the ideal, why did I put 3? Well for exactly the same reason, because I think that that if we were all educated and lived in an atmosphere of total respect, both men and women, I honestly don’t think that there would be homosexual or heterosexual people, we would simply fall in love with people and would engage in the sexual practices that appealed to us”. ♀ AM: OK, well in the past I would say I was a 6, should I write it down? And now (...), uff. Well I’m leaning towards a 5, but I’m not 100% sure; you know, I’m more flexible or....maybe, well, I mean I have liked a few guys, you know? But… it’s not like…, I don’t think I could take that step towards the other side but..., well, I wouldn’t be able to put the maximum score either, you know? And the ideal (...) (she notes down 3) Is that bisexuality? ♀SG“ I put 5 because, well, although I don’t think of myself...I mean I do consider myself to be gay, but sexuality is always very subtle... at a given time, I might like a man physically, but emotionally I don’t think that... right now, I don’t think I’m interested now or in the future. Problems maintaining intimate relationships with men do not seem to arise in terms of sexual attraction, but rather in terms of establishing a sentimental relationship. Rather than an issue of sex, it seems to be an issue of gender: “I don’t like the social stereotype that exists of men. Not because I don’t like men, if you get my meaning…”. CONCLUSIONS The analysis of our participants’ autobiographical narratives reveals an understanding of identity as an internalised developing story that emerges from the selective appropriation of the past, present and future. Furthermore, homosexual sexual identity could be said to be an aspect of personal identity that is constructed through narration and, as a narrative construct, is influenced by social discourses. This process is intrinsically dialogical to the extent that the dialogical relationship can occur both at an intrapsychological level - between different aspects of the developing self (as Hermans claims, 2003) - and an interpsychological level, in the dialogical relationships between the self and the discourses that circulate in any society (Bakhtin, 1973) In the specific case of gay women, the interview excerpts that refer to the theme Self & Lesbianism show how the assumption of a historically stigmatised, silenced and forcibly invisible identity, as it is transmitted in social discourses about homosexuality, is a source of ego-dystonic and personal suffering, making positive identification impossible. However, these women were able to deconstruct these stigmatised meanings, which gave them a feeling of self satisfaction and personal empowerment. In general, these women oppose social discourses that stigmatise them, revealing the dialogical tension of resistance that Wertsch (1998) defines as the authoritative word. This resistance is neither easy nor simple, and involves an active effort on the part of the participants. There are many cases in which, even though they were aware that they were acting as a vehicle for stigmatised discourse, the participants could not avoid expressing prejudices towards gay women. This is obviously a minority position, but confirms that the cultural representations of homosexual persons are very widespread and enduring in our historical-cultural context. It is therefore necessary to deconstruct stigmatised meanings that may change the value of the marginalised social identity, in order to convert this identity into a source of empowerment in the life story. This deconstruction is achieved by extending the range of personal discourses, both as a result of reading texts about homosexuality and through direct contact with homosexual people (associations, surroundings, friends…) that allows the individual to pluralise his/her discourse and initiate a mechanism of positive identification. Just as feminist theories revealed that “woman” is a social category that does not inherently indicate any qualities, potential or flaws, it is fundamental to clarify that gay women do not in themselves exist as a natural category that inherently points to any potential, characteristics, flaws or identity processes. This brings the focus once again onto the essentialist and constructivist definitions of homosexuality. As we saw above, the former definition views homosexuality as an orientation or tendency, linking it with the physical, biological or psychic nature of the individual. The second definition is based on a view of sexuality as something fluid and unstable, and considers homosexuality an option, a choice that is potentially available for any person. This conceptualisation of homosexuality seems to be more coherent with studies that depict human sexuality as something fluid and not rigidly divided into contrasting categories; furthermore, it provides a better description of the results of these studies, because it allows for reflection about homosexual sexuality and, more generally, human sexuality. In fact, thinking about sexuality in terms of cultural construction also opens the door to reflection about and criticism of heterosexuality. Feminist discourses on patriarchy - as a system that maintains the existence of two hierarchically-ordered genders and a specific construction of sexuality defined as compulsory heterosexuality - have been stigmatised and cast aside by theoretical thinking over the last few decades. However, they are still valid in modern society, where women continue to pay the price (sometimes by giving up a professional career in order to care of the children and the husband, sometimes by earning less than men for doing the same job, sometimes with their lives…) of an unequal distribution of power between men and women in society, in work, in relationships … This is not to say that a constructivist conceptualisation of human sexuality should be considered a panacea against all the inequalities that characterise gender relations, but it does open up a space for reflection about these issues. This space is closed off if heterosexuality and homosexuality are viewed as irreducible opposite categories, governed by the orientation of desire as a natural force that is beyond our control.