ABSTRACT
The notion that there are several forms of lesbian community in the USA, distinguished by the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic class and regional diversity that characterises the country, has been reflected in multiple studies of communities of same-gender loving women1 (Lapovsky-Kennedy and Davis 1993; Morris 2005; Rabin and Slater 2005). While there are few studies that have attempted to examine the cultural systems of these lesbian communities, empirical research (see, e.g. LapovskyKennedy and Davis 1993) and published personal narratives (see, e.g. Hampton 1981; Nestle 1984) on the ways lesbian community life has been organised reveal lesbian gender expression as a persistent and core feature of lesbian sexual culture. Sexual discourse theory holds that one way to understand a group’s sexual culture is to examine the ways people speak about sex and sexuality, as well as the messages they report hearing from various institutions (e.g. family, school, religion) (Schifter and Madrigal 2001). Within this framework, a researcher approaches the study of sexual culture as a dynamic construct by purposively examining both dominant and less dominant discourses regarding sex, and through the expectation that cultures do not remain the same across time. There is relatively little empirical research on lesbian gender expression. The few researchers who study lesbian gender have focused most on butch and femme identity development processes (see, e.g. Hiestand and Levitt 2005). Of the studies on lesbian gender, fewer still included significantly black lesbians, despite documentation of the prominence of lesbian gender roles in historical or narrative accounts of black lesbian communities (see, e.g. Garber 1989; Davis 1998; Lorde 1983; Peddle 2005; Smith 1992; Walker 2001). This absence of research on sexual lives and gender among black lesbians possibly reflects what Hammond (2002) describes as the absence of black queer women’s experiences from dominant sexual discourses and the silencing of black female subjectivity. An exception is an in-depth qualitative study of a community of black lesbians in New York City (Moore 2006) that identified three categorisations of gender among black lesbians, including femme, transgressive and gender blender. Moore’s study was an important step in the direction of documenting an
often ignored segment of US culture, black lesbians, with the purpose of understanding how black lesbians view their relationships from their own perspectives. The current study is aimed at adding to this body of research by specifically examining dimensions of black lesbian sexual cultures.
