The Color Purple (1982) focuses on highlighting Celie’s journey throughout life as an oppressed black woman living in the South in the United States in the early 1900s. Celie is abused mentally, physically, and sexually by her stepfather Alphonso and her husband Mr. _____. This is the oppression she has faced, which holds back her search for her own identity. Black feminism, lesbian feminism and queer theory are explained and used in order to understand how to analyze The Color Purple. Gender performance, compulsory heterosexuality and lesbianism are all important concepts that are used to analyze Celie’s oppression and development. This paper highlights the factors that have aided Celie in her search for selfhood, which are motherhood, female solidarity, black lesbian shamelessness and especially her lesbian relationship with the singer Shug. The analysis concludes that Shug was both the catalyst and one of the driving forces which enabled Celie to find her voice.

y8803 在全球化發展下，各國人民、資金、原料和貨物的跨境流動，見頻仍。菲律賓與香港的經濟發展存在龐大差異，很多菲律賓婦女因而來港當家庭傭工。近二十年來，外來家傭的處境引起學術關注，但她們的同性戀生活，却鮮為人深入探究。本研究通過對兩個在港菲傭團體的參與觀察、及十位女同性戀菲傭的深入訪談，探求她們的同性戀生活，與其於兩地的社會地位，以及菲律賓的性／別觀念，有何關連。由於具備獨立經濟能力，菲傭在原生家庭地位提昇，家人亦難以越洋監視其生活。在香港，個人自由受法律保護；而菲傭無法融入社會，也讓她們有更大戀愛自由。本民族誌學研究，肯定了移徒的釋放力量，能幫助開啟性向和性別的可能：一些菲傭不單在香港首次實踐女女愛，更首度以陽剛氣質示人。但菲律賓人普遍相信性別身份不變，故菲傭的性別身份逆轉，較其性向的改變，更難為菲律賓社群接受。本論文並紀錄了同性戀菲傭的男／女性別氣質表現：同性戀菲傭雖多扮演男／女性別角色，但兩個性別氣質的展現，往往較為平衡。本研究遂否定陽剛／陰柔氣質、以及同性戀／異性戀之間，有二元對立式的劃分。 / Globalization has seen the acceleration of migration and movement across national borders. Prompted by a gap in the economic development between the two places, many Filipinas move from their homeland to Hong Kong to work as Foreign Domestic Workers (FDWs). Academic attention on their lives has flourished over the last two decades. However, the lesbian practice of FDWs remains under-investigated. Through participant observation of two Filipina FDW groups and in-depth interviews of ten Filipina lesbian domestic workers in Hong Kong, the current research investigates how their lesbian practices intricately relate to their social position in the Philippines and in Hong Kong, as well as the Filipino concept of gender and sexuality. As independent wage workers, these Filipinas enjoy elevated status at home while familial control decreases with distance. In the work destination, which offers better protection towards personal autonomy, the level of societal surveillance they face is further limited with their non-integration into the host society. Hence, their positions at both societies help shield them from tight social control, allowing them to practice homosexuality with relative ease. / This ethnographic study thus affirms the liberating effects of migration for opening up new sexual / gender possibilities: as well as engaging in same-sex relationships for the first time, some of these Filipina FDWs assume masculine identities only after coming to Hong Kong. Yet, the assumption of new gender identity runs contrary to the Filipino concept of gender, which privileges on a persistent inner self. Novice tomboys, therefore, often suffer much from social stigma as the change in gender identity is even more inexplicable to the Filipinas than a change in sexual orientation. / This current research meanwhile documents the performances of masculinity and femininity by these lesbian Filipina FDWs. While observing the significance of gender role-playing in Filipina lesbian relationships, this thesis highlights the presence of a more balanced mix of masculinities and femininities in both butches and femmes. Findings of the present study thus repudiate the dichotomous divides between masculinity and femininity; heterosexuality and homosexuality. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Lee, Yuk Yin. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-152). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Acknowledgement --- p.4 / Abstract --- p.6 / Chapter Chapter One --- Introduction --- p.8 / Research Goal Statement --- p.9 / Overview --- p.10 / Literature Review --- p.16 / Theoretical Framework --- p.28 / Research Method --- p.36 / The Structure of this Thesis --- p.46 / Chapter Chapter Two --- In-Between Hong Kong and the Philippines --- p.48 / The Distant Host City --- p.49 / Stranger in the Family --- p.56 / Liberal Structure of Hong Kong --- p.62 / The Need for Love --- p.64 / Parental Acceptance in the Philippines --- p.67 / Conclusion --- p.71 / Chapter Chapter Three --- Gender Identities --- p.73 / Conceptualization --- p.73 / Gender Identities --- p.79 / Butch Role-Playing --- p.80 / Femme Role-Playing --- p.96 / Conclusion --- p.104 / Chapter Chapter Four --- Tomboy Negotiations --- p.107 / Sexual Identities --- p.108 / Procreation --- p.117 / Sexual Gratification --- p.121 / Un-masculine Gender Behaviour --- p.125 / Conclusion --- p.129 / Chapter Chapter Five --- Conclusion --- p.133 / Significance of the Study --- p.133 / Summary --- p.134 / Main Findings --- p.142 / Recommendations --- p.144 / References and Bibliography --- p.147

When lesbians, as women divert from social norms and reject the compulsory heterosexual norm, they are either punished through legal systems for transgressing patriarchial structures or not recognised at all. As women, lesbians suffer at the hands of a homophobic society which believs that women have stepped out of line through challenging the hegemonic discourses stipulating that they have specific and distinct roles to play - that of wives, mothers, homemakers and sexual partners to men. Because lesbians do not fit into this construct, their behaviour is socially and legally condemned for diverting from the &quot / natural order&quot / . This study aimed to identify and explore the various ways people construct and perceive lesbians and to reveal how sexuality, as a product of history and culture, determines the ways lesbians are treated in their own communities. This study attempted to explore how, despite the democratic stance of the new constitution, South African lesbians still experience discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation.

À partir d’une enquête par récit de vie auprès de vingt et une lesbiennes et d’une observation de terrain, cette thèse se propose de rendre compte de la construction sociale les itinéraires croisés en tant que femmes maghrébines migrantes ou d’ascendance maghrébine et en tant que lesbiennes. En effet, ces lesbiennes agissent sur deux fronts. Celui qui relève de la construction de soi en tant que lesbiennes et celui de gérer leurs relations familiales qu’elles tentent de préserver. Le but de cette recherche à travers son approche intersectionnelle permet de (re)penser les différentes dominations sans ordre hiérarchique et de proposer une analyse qui permet de mettre à jour non seulement les mécanismes d’oppression mais également les stratégies de résistance. De « la découverte » de leur lesbianisme jusqu’aux différentes projections d’avenir en matière de conjugalité et de parentalité, les carrières lesbiennes sont jalonnées par un certain nombre d’obstacles liés aux contraintes au mariage hétérosexuel et à la maternité. Ces carrières lesbiennes sont construites soit sur des ruptures familiales, soit sur des équilibres instables entre des vies lesbiennes d’un côté et des relations familiales de l’autre. Ainsi, face à ces contraintes socio-familiales hétéronormatives, de nombreuses lesbiennes maghrébines migrantes et d’ascendance maghrébine privilégient la loyauté filiale tout en continuant à vivre leurs vies affectives et sexuelles lesbiennes. / From a life story survey of twenty one lesbians and a field observation, this PhD dissertation proposes to realize the social construction crossed routes as migrants Maghrebi women or North African descent and as lesbians. Indeed, these lesbians act on two fronts. Whoever falls self-construction as lesbians and the managing family relationships they are trying to preserve. The purpose of this research through its intersectional approach allows (re) think the different dominations no hierarchical order and offer an analysis that allows to update not only the mechanisms of oppression, but also the strategies of resistance. The "discovery" of their lesbianism to the different projections of the future for conjugal and parenthood, lesbians careers are marked by a number of obstacles to the constraints to heterosexual marriage and motherhood. These lesbians careers are built either on family breakdown, or on unstable equilibria between lesbians lives on one side and family relations of the other. So, faced with these socio-heteronormative family constraints, many migrants Maghrebi lesbians or North African descent prefer loyalty subsidiary while continuing to support their emotional and sexual lives as lesbians.

Cette analyse a pour but de dénoncer les mythes créateurs du féminin et du masculin hérités des politiques culturelles sexuelles érigées au creuset de la rencontre coloniale. L’étude de A Married Woman (Manju Kapur), Babyji (Abha Dawesar), Indian Tango (Ananda Devi), trois romans présentant le lesbianisme comme une stratégie féministe d’émancipation, permet de mettre au jour diverses dynamiques discursives, d’exploiter le concept de représentation, et d’interroger les catégories préexistantes. Ces trois romans sont en effet écrits par des femmes participant à la culture indo-hindoue, et proposent des héroïnes à la similarité troublante : brahmines, habitant Delhi et insatisfaites de l’immobilisme liberticide de leur genre. Le préjudice hétéropatriarcal gaine les individus plaqués à l’intersection de leurs appartenances identitaires diverses et superposées : le genre, la culture, la sexualité… Le chemin de ces héroïnes suit ainsi une évolution interrogeant les inventions patriarcales de l’identité de la femme indo-hindoue. Au-delà de la dénonciation des dérives de son essentialisation, c’est sa transgression qui est éblouissante, parce qu’elle est sexuelle et lesbienne, engageant ainsi les possibilités d’une altérité, d’une alternative, d’un devenir différent. Ces textes questionnent alors la poésie et l’efficacité d’une esthétique lesbienne, la validité démiurge d’une utopie lesbienne, et le symbolisme d’un motif qui unit femmes de papier et autrices de chair au sein d’un positionnement récusant la subalternité implicite de catégories oppressives et obsolètes. En s’emparant de l’ipséité, ces narrations introduisent une poétique queer défiant déterminismes, cristallisations, normes et hiérarchies. Elles ouvrent à des possibilités radicales et multiples d’existences, de créations, signalant la matérialité de marginalités subversives qui problématisent la notion même d’individu, envisagée dans sa perspective hypermoderne. / This analysis aims at denouncing the original myths of the feminine and the masculine, inherited of the sexual cultural politics uprighted in the crucible of the colonial encounter. The study of A Married Woman (Manju Kapur), Babyji (Abha Dawesar), Indian Tango (Ananda Devi), three novels presenting lesbianism as a feminist strategy of emancipation, allows to excavate various discursive dynamics, to exploit the concept of representation, and to interrogate the preexisting categories. These three novels are indeed written by women belonging to the Indo-Hindu culture, and offer heroines with troubling similarities: Brahmines, Delhiites and dissatisfied with the repressions and inertia of their gender. The heteropatriarcal prejudice suffocates the individuals tackled at the intersection of their several and overlapping identity belongings: gender, culture, sexuality… These heroines’ paths hence follow an evolution interrogating the patriarchal inventions of the Indo-Hindu woman’s identity. Beyond the exposition and accusation of its essentialization’s deviations, it is its transgression which is dazzling, because it is sexual and lesbian, introducing the possibilities of an alterity, an alternative, a different becoming. These texts thus question the poetry and efficiency of a lesbian aesthetic, the demiurge validity of a lesbian utopia, and the symbolism of a pattern unifying the paper women and the women writers in a positioning rejecting the implicit subalternity of oppressive and obsolete categories. By getting a hold of ipseity, these narrations introduce a queer poetic defying determinisms, crystallizations, norms and hierarchies. They open to radical and multiple possibilities of living and creating, indicating the materiality of subversive marginalities which problematize the very notion of individual, envisioned in its hypermodern perspective.

This thesis analyzes Pamela Swynford De Beaufort and Jessica Hamby from the provocative HBO series, True Blood, in order to determine what hegemonic ideologies are reinforced through their sexual representation in the series. Through analysis based on concepts of the "vagina dentata" and "monstrous feminine," and in determining whether they fall victim to the Madonna/wore dichotomy, the question of Pam and Jessica's autonomous existence falls under scrutiny - particularly in regards to their sexuality. Feminist scholarship is vital to this research in order to examine the often fetishized and marginalized sexuality of women who dare to exhibit transgressive behaviors. This thesis concentrates on Seasons One through Four of the series, and also utilizes meta-text from the official website related to each character in order to help answer the posed research questions. / by Ashley Anderson. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

This thesis examines Malay identity construction by focusing on the complex processes of self-identification among queer-identified Malays living in Malaysia and beyond. By analysing representations of queer Malays in the works of contemporary Malaysian Malay writers, scholars, and filmmakers, as well as queer Malays on the internet and in the diaspora, the thesis demonstrates how self-identifying gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Malays create and express their identities, and the ways in which hegemonic Malay culture, religion, and the state affect their creation and expression. This is especially true when queer-identified Malays are officially conflated with being “un-Malay” and “un-Islamic” because queer sexualities contravene Malay cultural and religious values. This thesis begins by discussing the politics of Malay identity, particularly the tension between “authority-defined” and “everyday-defined” notions of being Malay that opens up a space for queer-identified Malays to formulate narratives of Malayness marked by sexual difference. The thesis then discusses how queer-identified Malays specifically construct their identities via various strategies, including strategic renegotiations of ethnicity, religiosity, and queer sexuality, and selective reappropriations of local and western forms of queerness. The ways in which “gay Melayu” identity is a hybrid cultural construction, produced through transnational and transcultural interactions between local and western forms of gayness under current conditions of globalization is also examined, as well as the material articulation of queer narratives of Malayness and its diverse implications on queer-identified Malays' everyday lives and sense of belonging. The thesis concludes with a critical reflection on the possibilities and limitations of queerness in the context of queer Malay identity creation. Such reflection is crucial in thinking about the future directions for research on queerness and the politics of queer Malay identity. It is hoped that this study will show that queer-identified Malays reshape and transform received ideas about “Malayness” and “queerness” through their own invention of new and more nuanced ways of being “queer” and “Malay.” This study also fills up the lacunae in the scholarship on Malay identity and queer Malays by addressing the productions of Malay ethnicity and sexual identity among queer-identified Malays within and beyond Malaysia's borders.

This thesis examines feminist and queer actors emerging in highly mediated environments and the forms of political organisation and critical knowledge production they engage in. It indicates that older debates around gender and sexuality are being reformulated in digital networks and identifies alternative understandings which are being developed. The study foregrounds a performative conceptualisation and argues that political realities are produced in dynamic configurations of communication media, discourses and bodies. It suggests that network technologies constitute sources of vulnerability and anxiety for feminists and stresses the significance of registering how embodied subjectivities emerge from these experiences. To achieve its aims and to map activity happening across different spaces and scales, the project attended to context-specific processes of mediation at the intersections of online and offline settings. It employed ethnographic methods, internet visualisation, in-depth interviewing and textual analysis to produce the following key outcomes: it registered changing understandings of the political in relation to new media amongst a network of women's organisations in London; it investigated the centrality of social media and global connections in the shaping of local queer political communities in Brighton; it complicated ideas of control, labour and affect to analyse emerging sexual identities in online spaces like nofauxx.com, and offline postporn events; finally, it traced feminist actors gathering around new reproductive technologies, at the crossing fields of grassroots activism and the academy. Today, women's groups and queer activists increasingly use networked communication for mobilisation and information-sharing. In a climate of widespread scepticism towards both representational politics and traditional media, questions about the role of digital networks in enabling or limiting political engagement are being raised. This thesis aims to contribute to these debates by accounting for the ways in which feminist and queer activists in digital networks reformulate the relationship between communication media and politics.

This thesis offers an insight into a section of the lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender community that has been consistently under-represented in research. Based on data gathered from some 400 lesbians over 60, this study presents the findings of the first comprehensive survey of older lesbian life to be undertaken in the UK. It complements existing LGBT ageing research (Heaphy, Yip and Thompson, 2003; Cronin and King, 2010; Archibald, 2010; Stonewall, 2011), which has focussed more on men than women; and provides substantial data about a population which has frequently been referred to as ‘invisible' and ‘hard to reach' (Berger, 1982; Kehoe, 1986; Deevey, 1990; Heaphy et al., 2003. etc.). As well as providing a detailed picture of older lesbian life in the UK at the beginning of the 21st century, the thesis specifically addresses the following questions:  just how ‘invisible' are older lesbians? To what extent do they feel able to respond to the more liberal legal and social climate of the early 21st century by ‘coming out of the closet,' even if they have not done so before? What might be their reasons for staying hidden?  do older lesbians conform to the ‘old, sad and alone' stereotype of the ageing homosexual (Dorfman et al., 1995), or to the contrasting view that older non-heterosexuals have built strong support networks (Kehoe, 1988) and offer positive alternative models for ageing (Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan, 2001)?  considering that most LGBT ageing research is based on samples containing more men than women, are there aspects of personal history and ontology specific to older lesbians, which have been obscured by research with a more general ‘LGBT' focus?  given the wide social, political and economic diversity of the research sample and the variety of their life experiences as revealed by the data, do older lesbians really have anything in common other than their sexual orientation? How useful is the term ‘older lesbian' as an identity category?

The 1951 Refugee Convention aims to provide international legal protection to all asylum seekers. Individuals making asylum claims based on persecution which relates to their sexual orientation however are not explicitly represented in Article 1A (2) of the Convention. As a consequence, cases based on sexual orientation are usually argued under the ‘membership of a particular social group' category, a classification which has long remained the most contested of the Refugee Convention grounds for granting asylum. This thesis focuses on the experiences of lesbian women as they navigate the UK asylum process. The research explores how sexuality is constructed and performed as women seek asylum as well as how this impacts upon their social and sexual identity. A theoretical framework for the study is principally (though not exclusively) drawn from the works of Judith Butler (1990, 2004, 2006) and Michel Foucault (1978, 1979), as well as Ken Plummer's (1995) ‘telling sexual stories'. The research draws upon in-depth, repeat interviews with eleven lesbian asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. These women all reported to have experienced physical and sexual violence in their home countries as a consequence of their homosexuality and all had sought international protection in the UK on the basis of their sexuality. The analysis presented in this thesis reveals that the experience of going through the UK asylum process was, for the women in this study, an emotionally challenging and confusing experience. As a consequence of women's traumatic experiences in their home countries, they were often over familiar with secrecy which added to the difficulties of self-identifying as a lesbian in the UK. The legal requirement to evidence and ‘prove' one's sexual orientation was considered problematic and frequently left women feeling compelled to ‘perform' their sexual identity in order to be believed as a credible lesbian. In addition the analysis presented demonstrates that the requirement to share intimate narratives on demand and in an open and public way had a range of significant implications on women themselves. This included how women felt that their sexuality was persistently judged and the devastating impact of not being believed. This thesis also shows how navigating complex legal procedures impacts upon women's social and sexual identity. The study demonstrates that living in limbo, without permanency and stability exacerbated women's experiences of social isolation and rejection and left them occupying a distinct social space, excluded from British, asylum seeking and migrant groups. Despite these struggles however, the data presented in the thesis also reveals women's ability to recognise, fight and campaign for their legal citizenship and to enjoy the freedom to express their sexual identity and sexual self-esteem. The desire to create a safe space, to understand their sexuality and to re-construct a sense of belonging was paramount as women fought for their sexual entitlements.