This thesis is concerned with lesbian identity and community, with a specific focus on lesbians' own experiences, their accounts of the decision to identify as lesbian to themselves and possibly to other people, and their 'explanations'of their lesbianism. Studies of lesbians by feminist social scientists since the 1970s have provided a major corrective to the earlier medically-orientated literature which pathologised lesbianism. Challenging the demonisation of lesbians, they presented lesbianism as a politicised choice or as one of a range of equally valid sexual identities, and proposed typologies based on women's own accounts of their lives and experiences. However, as these studies were mostly based on a small number of informants,drawn from homogeneous social groups in terms of age, social class and education, their utility as generally applicable models or frameworks for understanding lesbians'experiences was compromised. Informed by feminist theory and methodology, this study seeks to test the validity or limitations of these earlier typologies, Focus groups were conducted with five groups of women in order to establish what lesbians themselves considered to be the key aspects of their identity. These topics were further explored in interviews with 65 self-identified lesbians from a wide range of backgrounds in terms of age, education, occupation and location,to examine the similarities and differences in the life-stories of women who wish to engage in relationships with other women, or who are doing so or have done so. Lesbians' accounts of their decisions about their 'sexual' identity and their own explanations of lesbianism demonstrate how both heterosexual hegemony and (ironically) also lesbian subcultural'norms' may restrict their choices in various aspects of their lives. The intention of this study was not only to provide an academic review of the accuracy and utility of earlier studies of lesbians' lives, but also to give lesbian women a voice, as a political act. It found that lesbians' accounts of their lives can indeed be classified into various categories on the basis of women's differing explanations of their lesbianism, as earlier studies had proposed. However, these studies were overly rigid and simplistic, doing scant justice to both the complexity of lesbians' experiences and their own explanations of their identity.

The hypothesis this thesis tests is that interwar hegemonic discourses of Englishness located it as originating in the heterosexual bond between a masculine national subject and a feminine nature/landscape. Discursively, this left little space for women to insert themselves in to such a cultural formation. However, a paradox of this heterosexualising cultural matrix may have been to give a voice to lesbian subjectivity, since If 'women' might not be English, could lesbians be? If national land was figured as feminine, and women desired identification with their country-as-land, to become English might mean for some women that they should become lesbian. In order to explore this, three main questions are examined. Firstly, to what extent did the dominant discourse of the rural in the interwar period define 'Englishness' as masculine and 'Nature' as feminine? Secondly, if women were excluded from this discursive heterosexual relationship, can it be seen paradoxically to have opened up a space for alternative sexualities to emerge? If lesbianism were an instance of the latter, then what writing strategies were adopted in order to articulate a relationship between Englishness and lesbianism? Thirdly, what can censored and other literary texts of the period reveal about the relations between such an English masculine national subject, the meaning and powers attributed to literature, and forbidden sexualities and subjectivities? In its analysis of the relationship between national identity, geographical location and sexuality, this thesis contributes to studies of England and Englishness through the addition of the concept of 'sexuality' to an understanding of their construction. It also contributes to lesbian and gay critical theory by examining the national processes which impinge of the construction of the homosexual subject. Beyond that, the importance of the materiality of the locations offered to different subjectivities shows how national identifies are both enabled and limited by these same locations.

This thesis explores the concepts of power, performativity and place and how these act to produce non-heterosexual women's everyday lives through practices of 'othering'. The thesis explores three feminist poststructural tenets: that everyday life is saturated in power; that identities and bodies are (re )formed through reiterated performances (performativity); and that place is fluid and (re )produced through performativity and power. These tenets are used to explore 28 non-heterosexual women's accounts of their everyday lives. These accounts were formed using six focus groups, three coupled interviews, 23 individual interviews, 22 diaries and six sets of auto-photography. The thesis contextualises these research methods within discourses of feminist methodologies which understand accounts of research as partial, performative and as formed in spaces of betweeness. The concepts, tenets, methodologies and accounts that make up the thesis are understood as mutually (in)forming and not as discrete entities. The thesis considers participants' experiences of heterosexism and genderism. Particular focus is placed on everyday processes of othering in food consumption spaces; how women live with these processes; women's experiences of being mistaken for men; and the (re )formation of place through fantasies and imaginings. Through these explorations the thesis deconstructs dualisms, dichotomies and binaries, contending that everyday life is fonned across and between these boundaries whilst hegemonic power relations are simultaneously (re)performed to maintain heterosexuality and normative femininities 'in place'. Relations of power and performativities render place (in terms of both sites and processes) fluid, (in)forming non-heterosexual women's bodies, identities and places as 'other' in relation to dominant (heterosexual) codes and norms. Discourses of power do not have to be named in order to be materially experienced and this thesis discusses the everyday use of the term 'it' in lieu of words, such as heterosexism and genderism. Moreover, hegemonic heterosexual and gendered codes and norms are diversely (re )made through relations of power and performativities. The thesis concludes by contending that whilst power relations can be theorised as fluid over time, everyday life is often lived as though power is a fixed structure.

This thesis examines the ways in which homosexual clergy transcend the hypocrisy identified by the study as inherent within the Church of England's approach to them. It explores ways in which the homosexual respondents employ strategies to negotiate cognitive dissonance caused by the Church's stigmatisation of their lifestyle. It concludes by exploring reasons, hitherto largely unidentified, that explain why homosexual clergy choose to remain within the homonegative Church, presenting the Transcendent Vocation as their overarching motivation. This term, coined by the thesis, represents a conviction of God's calling felt so strongly by the homosexual respondents that they were determined to remain within the institution regardless of its treatment of them. Since the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in 1967 and despite subsequent secular liberalisation,' the Church of England has continued to maintain its traditional homonegative teaching. Successive reports have' . expressed the Church's desire to listen to the experiences of homosexuals. Focussing on the lived experiences of twelve heterogeneous homosexual clergymen, this thesis makes an important contribution to the 'listening process' as it explores how attitudes to homosexuality· shown to have developed during the period 1967-2007 have affected them. It provides evidence that homosexual clergymen are victims of hypocrisy on the part of the Church of England, and identifies reasons why they choose to tolerate this situation." Through analysis of interview data, not only from homosexual clergy but also from ten retired heterosexual clergymen whose ministries spanned the forty-year period, the thesis examines how, as secular attitudes became progressively more liberal and legal reforms outlawed discrimination, the Church made increasing use of hypocrisy in its approach to homosexual clergy. It is shown how the Church hypocritically manages to continue to use the services of practising homosexual clergy while officially forbidding them to exist, and that remarkably such clergy accept this state of affairs because of their Transcendent Vocation.