Lesbian Living Spaces

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper is an exploration of lesbian living spaces, focusing on the diverse experiences and meanings of home and neighborhood in lesbian communities. These issues are developed from interviews conducted with lesbians in the metropolitan area of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Lesbian communities are heterogeneous, made up of individuals who might share a common sexual identity, but differ in their race, class, religious, or ethnic identity. Thus, lesbian living spaces have multiple meanings for the individuals and communities who create and live in them. In so far as these spaces are sites of identity formation and spaces in which some lesbians contest dominant cultural norms, they are places of liberation. But because they are sometimes simultaneously places where lesbians encounter harassment and discrimination, they are places of oppression. I will argue that these contradictory meanings make it impossible to define these living spaces as absolutely ‘public’ or ‘private’ spaces.

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