Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1983. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-173).

This thesis aims to explore lesbian desire and sexual identity in Lydia Kwa¡¦s This Place Called Absence, beginning with the textual subversion of heterosexual norm, evolving through the author¡¦s mapping of butch/femme desire and concluding with the protagonist¡¦s formation of self-identity. Chapter One discusses how the text subverts the heterosexual norm through the erotic chaos created by queer characters. I will apply Judith Butler¡¦s notions of heterosexual matrix and gender performativity to look into the textual strategies of subversion. The appropriation of gender is not only a strategy of queer politics, but also the primary means by which lesbians articulate desire. To illuminate Kwa¡¦s mapping of lesbian desire, I apply Teresa de Lauretis¡¦s theory of lesbian fetishism in Chapter Two to examine how butches and femmes in the novel express their desire through manipulating gender signs. The masculinity fetishes are prone to social misunderstanding as penis envy and thereby arouse male hostility. The anxiety of lesbian characters with the paternal phallus will be the focus of the second part of the chapter. Chapter Three looks into how the protagonist establishes positive self-identity through reversing social stigma to empowering self-image in queer coalition. The queer coalition comprising gays and lesbians, nevertheless, cedes its place to equalitarian women¡¦s community at the end of the novel. The problems of the concept of universal women for lesbians will be discussed in the latter part of the chapter from the perspectives of Butler and de Lauretis. After probing into textual details, I will argue that the protagonist, in spite of her desire for female solidarity, ultimately identifies with queer coalition. In conclusion, I will regard the novel as a lesbian counter-discourse by summarizing its strategies of displacement, resignification and reversal of the heterosexual symbolic and foreground the multiplicity of desire and differences among lesbians against the reification of heterosexual symbolic.

Lesbian families with children are greater in number and more visible today than ever before. In fact, social scientists have suggested that we may be in the midst of a lesbian "baby boom". Canada's Census figures support this assertion. Between 2001 and 2006 there was a forty-seven per cent increase in households made up of two lesbian mothers and their children. This dissertation addresses the legal issues raised by lesbian motherhood, focusing primarily on legal parentage. It considers the terms upon which parental recognition has been achieved thus far, and evaluates the efficacy of a reform agenda focused exclusively on gaining access to the existing legal framework. To explore the legal and social dynamics of planned lesbian families, interviews were conducted with forty-nine lesbian mothers living in British Columbia and Alberta who conceived using assisted reproduction. Mothers were asked about the structure of their families, how they defined terms such as "parent" and "family", the extent to which they had engaged with law, and their recommendations for law reform. The interviews revealed that lesbian mothers define family and parenthood broadly, emphasizing intention and caregiving over a purely biological model of kinship. All of the mothers defined a "parent" as someone who intends to parent and, once a child is born, performs that intention through caregiving. Parental status was thus not limited to those who shared a biological relationship with a child, or even to two individuals. The research suggests that lesbian mothers have little interest in being subsumed into the existing legal framework which tends to prioritize dyadic and biological parenting. In fact, only a tiny portion of the mothers felt that identical treatment would adequately respond to their needs. The vast majority supported law reform that would extend to them the benefits of the current system, while simultaneously expanding the existing framework to include a wider variety of parental and family configurations within it. The reform model chosen to achieve this aim combined parental presumptions in favour of the lesbian couple or a single lesbian mother, with opt-in mechanisms that allowed the family to extend beyond the two parent unit.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of History, Aug. 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Lesbian families with children are greater in number and more visible today than ever before. In fact, social scientists have suggested that we may be in the midst of a lesbian "baby boom". Canada's Census figures support this assertion. Between 2001 and 2006 there was a forty-seven per cent increase in households made up of two lesbian mothers and their children. This dissertation addresses the legal issues raised by lesbian motherhood, focusing primarily on legal parentage. It considers the terms upon which parental recognition has been achieved thus far, and evaluates the efficacy of a reform agenda focused exclusively on gaining access to the existing legal framework. To explore the legal and social dynamics of planned lesbian families, interviews were conducted with forty-nine lesbian mothers living in British Columbia and Alberta who conceived using assisted reproduction. Mothers were asked about the structure of their families, how they defined terms such as "parent" and "family", the extent to which they had engaged with law, and their recommendations for law reform. The interviews revealed that lesbian mothers define family and parenthood broadly, emphasizing intention and caregiving over a purely biological model of kinship. All of the mothers defined a "parent" as someone who intends to parent and, once a child is born, performs that intention through caregiving. Parental status was thus not limited to those who shared a biological relationship with a child, or even to two individuals. The research suggests that lesbian mothers have little interest in being subsumed into the existing legal framework which tends to prioritize dyadic and biological parenting. In fact, only a tiny portion of the mothers felt that identical treatment would adequately respond to their needs. The vast majority supported law reform that would extend to them the benefits of the current system, while simultaneously expanding the existing framework to include a wider variety of parental and family configurations within it. The reform model chosen to achieve this aim combined parental presumptions in favour of the lesbian couple or a single lesbian mother, with opt-in mechanisms that allowed the family to extend beyond the two parent unit.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Acadia University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-106). Also available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Lesbian families with children are greater in number and more visible today than ever before. In fact, social scientists have suggested that we may be in the midst of a lesbian "baby boom". Canada's Census figures support this assertion. Between 2001 and 2006 there was a forty-seven per cent increase in households made up of two lesbian mothers and their children. This dissertation addresses the legal issues raised by lesbian motherhood, focusing primarily on legal parentage. It considers the terms upon which parental recognition has been achieved thus far, and evaluates the efficacy of a reform agenda focused exclusively on gaining access to the existing legal framework. To explore the legal and social dynamics of planned lesbian families, interviews were conducted with forty-nine lesbian mothers living in British Columbia and Alberta who conceived using assisted reproduction. Mothers were asked about the structure of their families, how they defined terms such as "parent" and "family", the extent to which they had engaged with law, and their recommendations for law reform. The interviews revealed that lesbian mothers define family and parenthood broadly, emphasizing intention and caregiving over a purely biological model of kinship. All of the mothers defined a "parent" as someone who intends to parent and, once a child is born, performs that intention through caregiving. Parental status was thus not limited to those who shared a biological relationship with a child, or even to two individuals. The research suggests that lesbian mothers have little interest in being subsumed into the existing legal framework which tends to prioritize dyadic and biological parenting. In fact, only a tiny portion of the mothers felt that identical treatment would adequately respond to their needs. The vast majority supported law reform that would extend to them the benefits of the current system, while simultaneously expanding the existing framework to include a wider variety of parental and family configurations within it. The reform model chosen to achieve this aim combined parental presumptions in favour of the lesbian couple or a single lesbian mother, with opt-in mechanisms that allowed the family to extend beyond the two parent unit. / Law, Faculty of / Graduate

Societal pressures have led to social and legal policy changes that have resulted in fertility clinics increasingly permitting lesbians access to their services. Therefore, lesbian women are able to conceive their children and create their families in ways that historically were not available to them. While some research has been conducted examining the needs, experiences, and issues faced by lesbian-led families in general, there is a dearth of research that exclusively explores lesbian couples who conceived their children through the use of anonymous donor insemination. The qualitative method that guided this research was interpretive interactionism. Interviews were conducted with 10 couples who self-identified as lesbian, chose to have their children while in their lesbian relationships, and conceived their children through the use of anonymous donor insemination. Analysis of the transcripts revealed that four themes shaped, constructed, represented, and gave meaning to these unique family configurations. These four themes are (a) conception options of two women, (b) two women parenting, (c) anonymous donors/not fathers, and (d) families with lesbian mothers. These themes are elaborated in terms of their implications for lesbian-led families, clinical practice, and future research. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This dissertation examines changes in the meaning of family and what this reveals about the complex, socially grounded mechanics of meaning-making more generally. Examining the discourse from interviews with 23 gay and lesbian parents, I show that they have very concrete and definable ideologies of family that reflect an American/ Western concept of kinship in which family is made up of those who are related by blood, marriage or adoption; as well as an understanding that family can also be chosen and therefore outside of traditional biogenetic structures. For these men and women, family of choice and the dominant American kinship structure are not mutually exclusive. Through an analysis of the participants' definitions of family, this dissertation finds that the parents gave both a narrow definition (that which includes only blood and legal relationships) and a broad definition (that which includes those not related by blood, marriage or adoption). Based on these definitions, both from the participants themselves and from those who have spoken out nationally against same-sex marriage and parenting, I apply Lakoff's Prototype Theory to offer a way to understand the disconnection between those who believe being gay and being a parent are incompatible, and those who see it as one of many types of family that do not conform to a dominant ideology. I identify a prototype of FAMILY made up of two radial categories to account for two central, yet opposed, ideologies, separated solely by whether parents could be the same sex. I also discuss the parents' positioning of their narratives toward local and nonlocal interactants and their use of generic and personal features in their discourse. The parents both draw upon external influences and become meaning-makers themselves through negotiations of their family identities in the context of dominant ideologies of family that often regard them as illegitimate. The outcomes of the negotiations that the parents undertake do not reflect a new, radical kind of family on the whole, but often a traditional sense of family that sometimes gets more broadly defined to include a supportive network of family and friends. The discursive micro-shifts in definition that these parents perform inform our understanding of the bridge between local negotiations and global shifts in ideology. / text

Thesis advisor: Bernard O'Brien / This study investigated factors which influenced the stability of long-term relationships among twelve lesbian couples who had been together for at least fifteen years and reared children. A retrospective, semi-structured interview was used and each participant was interviewed separately. Themes related to relationship stability were identified prior to the interview and operationalized through the interview questions. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 1996. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental Psychology, and Research Methods.