Research Paper on "Lesbian and Other Gay Issues and Research"

Research Paper 10 pages (3509 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Lesbian and Other Gay Issues and Research

How and why do women "become" lesbians? When a woman grows up believing she is heterosexual, and then at 25 years of age begins having bisexual relationships, then why at the age of 38 years would she believe she is indeed gay? Are there links between childhood sexual abuse and later lesbianism in a woman's life? Is it a foreshadowing of homosexuality when at the age of eight years or so a girl begins to sense that she is attracted to other girls? These questions and others will be addressed in this research paper through the use of scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles.

Transitions from Heterosexuality to Lesbianism. In the journal Developmental Psychology the authors research the lives of adult women who have offered their accounts of the social landmine that is associated with realizing and coming out with the fact of their lesbianism. The article is the product of eighty interviews with "self-identified" lesbians who each had at least ten years of heterosexual experience. While exploring the concept of sexual transition this article employs the social constructionist approach to understanding sexual identity, the authors explain. Researchers referenced by the authors conclude that there is "a large body of work" illustrative of the fact that that "adult homosexuality stems from homosexual feelings experienced during childhood and adolescence" (Kitzinger, et al., 1995, p. 95).

The findings of Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith, referenced by Kitzinger, shows that "late infancy and prepubertal childhood" are the life moments that are the most "formative years for homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality" for an individual (Kitzinger, p. 96). Hence, when an individual who has had life moments at an early age that leaned toward homosexuality, the later "coming out" event is "merely a process of learning to recognize and accept what one was all along…the lesbian has always been inside, awaiting debut" (Kitzinger, p. 96).

The Kitzinger research reflects the fact that by the age of 20 years, "far more men than women" have homosexual and bisexual patterns (27% to 11%); however, by the age of 35, the research shows, about 13% of men and women are living gay and bisexual lives (p. 4). Women appear to "broaden their sexual experience" while getting on in life while men "become narrower" and more specialized in their sexual leanings. In fact the research shows that most women who are openly lesbian have had a period in their earlier lives during which they were playing heterosexual roles. Of the samples this article uses, about one quarter of the women had been married and roughly 58% experienced heterosexual lifestyles prior to coming out (Kitzinger, p. 97).

This article emphasizes that many of the models that purport to show the identity transition -- from heterosexuality to lesbianism -- fall short of the mark because they are based on "sexist assumptions" (Kitzinger, p. 98). There is rarely a "singular linear development path" that leads a woman from heterosexuality to lesbianism, Kitzinger asserts. And moreover Kitzinger, who is the Director of the Feminist Conversation Analysis Unit at the University of York, UK, criticizes the "conventional assumptions" that a female has a predictable "three-stage" evolution from childhood fantasies about other women -- coupled with some "genital contact" -- into guilt feelings about gayness as "deviant, sick, or sinful" and later into secrecy and finally coming out.

What Kitzinger accomplishes in this piece is to conduct research on women who come out during adulthood, a process that she claims has been "almost entirely neglected" (p. 99) by researchers. Twenty of the eighty women interviewed specifically and exclusively about the psychological processes that they went through from heterosexuality to lesbianism; the other 60 in the study were interviewed on several topics, and transition to lesbianism was just one of those topics (p. 99). All but three of the 80 women were interviewed in their homes; those three were interviewed by telephone.

There is not sufficient space in this paper to reflect all the questions that were asked, but some of the answers will be presented. Anne, for example, stated that acknowledging her lesbianism was a "very slow process" because she feared being violently attacked or being excluded. "People say we're not normal. My whole life was heterosexual and it felt like my whole life was under threat" (p. 100). Women who had disabilities -- or who were African-American or became lesbians in their 60s or 70s -- who came out faced very difficult social crises, Kitzinger continues (p. 100). One quarter of the 80 women who had become lesbians after long periods of heterosexuality described how they had "refused to allow themselves even to address the question, 'Am I lesbian?'" (p. 100).

One interviewee told Kitzinger that after she and "Judy" made love for the first time, she got "very scared that this meant I was a lesbian. I withdrew right away…I just wanted to try it and it was nice but I don't want to do it again," she said. Then, she went out and "got myself screwed by four or five men in order to prove I wasn't a lesbian" (p. 100). Another lesbian said her husband had told her "it was the menopause"; he got books out of the library showing that other women going through menopause had believed their were lesbians but later they found out they weren't but "…they'd totally wrecked their lives" (p. 101). Still another women read that lesbians were "aggressive, jealous, doomed, masculine, perverted and sick" and as a result she was "tremendously reassured. I knew that I couldn't possibly be one of those!" (p. 101).

Most women in the survey described their "initial processes" of coming out as lesbians to be a mixed bag of "pain…fear…but also of joy and excitement" (p. 102). In her conclusion of this article Kitzinger asserts that the question is not "Am I a lesbian?" But rather the question is, "Do I want to be a lesbian?" From the prospective of the author, there is no "essential lesbian self" and no set of "uniquely lesbian experiences that can be discovered through introspection" (p. 103).

Are females who were sexually abused as children more likely to become lesbians? Popular folklore and some psychological research leads to an assumption that lesbians may in some instances choose their sexual orientation "as a direct consequence of negative experiences with men" (Descamps, et al., 2000, p. 29). According to research by Dr. Monica J. Descamps (a psychologist in Vermont) and colleagues, the data don't generally support the assertion that women become gay due to abuse (during childhood or adolescence). In fact, Descamps reports that about 18.7% of lesbians surveyed reported being sexually assaulted during childhood and that percentage is close to the number of heterosexual women (16%) who also report being sexually abuses as children (Descamps, p. 29).

The notion that women who have been sexually assaulted as adults become lesbians because of that violence against them is also refuted in Descamps' research article, which is based on surveys of 1,925 lesbians in the National Lesbian Health Care Survey (NLHCS) of 1984-1985. However, lesbians who had gone through sexual abuse as children have reported higher levels of mental health problems "than lesbians who had not experienced" these acts of violence (Descamps, p. 31). Taking this data a bit farther, Descamps reports that lesbians who report being sexually assaulted first during childhood "are more likely than women first sexually assaulted in adulthood" to suffer problems with "serious depression, anxiety, and substance abuse" later in life (p. 31).

Additionally, lesbians who report having experienced rape or intimate partner violence -- who also experienced "child sexual abuse" -- report having more psychological distress than those who only endured rape or intimate partner violence (Decamps, p. 31). Decamps' definition of childhood sexual abuse includes: a) having sex with a relative (not necessarily through an attack); and b) being raped or being sexually attacked by someone who was not a relative during the growing up process (p. 34).

Overall, of the 1,925 lesbians interviewed / surveyed by the NLHCS, 28.7% reported that they had been sexually abused during childhood. Lesbians in the age group 17-year to 24 years of age reported the highest incidences of sexual abuse as children (37.9%); the oldest lesbians that were part of the NLHCS project (aged 55 years and older) reported the lowest incidences of being sexually assaulted as children (20.3%). When ethnicity enters the survey results the larger percentage of African-American lesbians (45.4%) and Latina lesbians (40%) reported that they had been sexually abused during their childhood. For Caucasian lesbians, the number reporting childhood sexual abuse was much lower, 26.9%).

Those lesbians among the 1,925 surveyed (NLHCS) who reported being assaulted as children tended to be younger, had less education, and earned less money than lesbians who had not had difficult childhood sexual experiences (Decamps, p. 40). The data showed that 19.9% of lesbians who were assaulted as children experienced rape later in life, while only 13.6% of lesbians… READ MORE

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