Ambivalently post-lesbian: LBQ friendships in the rural Midwest

ABSTRACT

Using data from friendship interviews with lesbian, bisexual, and queer women in a small Midwestern city, I argue that non-urban communities might be characterized as ambivalently post-lesbian, as participants explain that shared identities “don't matter” in their friendships, while continuing to insist on the relevance of lesbian identity in their community. This research highlights three sets of concerns about lesbian communities, identities, and friendships. First, given the theoretical purchase of the concept of “post-gay” communities, there is a parallel need to develop the concept of “post-lesbian” as uniquely ambivalent and distinct from post-gay discourses, as the case of LBQ friendship demonstrates. Second, the appearance of post-lesbian narratives beyond major cities suggests a need to reassess the presumably progressive post-gay narrative that gay identities are becoming less central to gay lives. Finally, a focus on close lesbian friendships highlights the central role such relationships continue to play in constituting, and perhaps dismantling, lesbian identities and communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Lesbian friendships
• post-lesbian community
• post-gay community
• gender and sexual identities
• ambivalence
• LGBTQ rural community

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Abigail Ocobock for her contributions to my early thinking about friendship and ambivalence, as well as Jacqueline Weinstock, Esther Rothblum, and many other colleagues for their constructive comments.

Notes on contributor

Clare Forstie is a PhD candidate in sociology at Northwestern University, a member of the interdisciplinary Gender and Sexuality Studies Cluster, and a University Fellow in Gender and Sexuality at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Her dissertation explores ambivalent LGBTQ community and queer kinships in a Midwestern small city, and her research interests include gender and sexualities, communities, family, emotions and affect, and rural sociology, as well as queer and feminist theories, methodologies, and pedagogies.

Notes

1. All names in this article are pseudonyms, including place names and the names of participants.

2. While I consider the term “post-lesbian” in this article, participants whose identities might be considered “lesbian” include both cisgender and transgender lesbian, bisexual, and queer women. While I acknowledge that the term “lesbian” does not capture the breadth of identities participants expressed (some claiming both “lesbian” and “queer” identities, for example), I use it here for simplicity (Brown-Saracino, 2015).

3. Some participants belong to multiple categories, as in, for example, a trans woman who identifies as a lesbian. Demographic questions were open-ended, and participants described their identities in their own words.

4. Proponents of a “color blind” or “colorblind” ideology use this terminology to suggest that they do not “see” race. Researchers like Bonilla-Silva (2006) have examined the ways such an ideology perpetuates systems of racism, and others have critiqued “color blind” terminology as ableist. For an examination of the ways people who have been blind since birth understand race, and how racism is possible among blind people, see Obasogie (2013).

5. One transgender participant identified as asexual, and two transgender participants identified as straight.