‘A REAL LESBIAN WOULDN’T TOUCH A BISEXUAL WITH A BARGEPOLE’

January 12, 2021

Contesting boundaries within the construction of collective identity. Abstract

Drawn from an investigation associated with construction of collective identification in DIVA mag between 1994 and 2004, this short article considers the discursive contestation associated with the boundaries necessarily, however never ever straightforwardly, erected in the act. Analysing first a variety of articles and second (and much more considerably) debates about who ‘we’ have been in and between readers’ letters, the content centers around the ‘trouble’ posed by bisexuality in this age. Visitors draw on and competition a cluster of interrelated characterisations of bisexuals: as undecided, as being a type or form of pollutant, so that as inadequate facsimiles of ‘real lesbians’, along with pretty much open characterisations of ‘us’. These arguments are fundamentally handled editorially, and constantly ‘end’ with calls for acceptance. This doesn’t completely recover the ambiguity with which bisexuality is managed, but, together with article concludes by speaking about the s that are dilemma( faced because of the thought community.

Introduction

The work delivered right right right here arises from an investigation of this construction of collective identification in DIVA, Britain’s first conventional commercial lesbian mag, in its very very very first ten years in publications (1994 2004). Considerably, DIVA continues to be the only real commercially successful, nationally distributed magazine that is lesbian 1 celebrating in 2014 its twentieth birthday celebration, an unprecedented milestone for the lesbian mag within the UK, commercial or perhaps. Where other games (Arena Three within the 1960s and 1970s, and Sappho into the 1970s and 1980s see Turner, 2009 , to get more detail regarding the schedule of Uk lesbian publishing) more or less swiftly became the victims of circumstances both regional and international, DIVA has survived in a time period of considerable social and governmental modification. As a result, it really is a text whose analysis that is close both essential and gratifying the very first a decade, for which it discovered a foothold which had evaded its predecessors, specially therefore. DIVA arrived in the height of lesbian posh, a trend that place lesbians everywhere and nowhere at one time (Turner, 2009 ), with all the vow that even and dykes that are especially‘regular city’ would get in its pages a property (Williams, 1994 , p. 4). Also hoping to result in the publishing business Millivres Prowler a return on its investment, DIVA had been an unique enterprise in more means than one.

Not surprisingly, it as well as other publications that are lesbian gone mostly untouched by academics. Although we have substantial reports of females’s life style mags like Cosmopolitan (see, e.g. Chang, 2004 ; Machin & van Leeuwen, 2003 ; Machin & Thornborrow, 2003 ; McMahon, 1990 ; Ouellette, 1999 ) or teenage mags (Carpenter, 1998 ; Massoni, 2004 , 2006 ; Schlenker, Caron, & Halteman, 1998 ; have all written about Seventeen alone), really work that is little been done on lesbian mags. Also without contrast to your considerable literary works on ladies’ (and, considering that the very early 2000s, guys’s) mags, your body of work addressing lesbian mags appears little. Koller ( 2008 ), Driver ( 2007 ) and Lewis ( 1997 ) consist of texts from lesbian mags within their studies (as well as in reality all include articles from DIVA), and many bigger scale studies of US homosexual and lesbian publications occur (see Cutler, 2003 ; Esterberg, 1990 ; Streitmatter, 1993 , and especially Sender, 2001 , 2003 , 2004 ), but no other researcher has scrutinised A uk lesbian mag with any comprehensive remit.

The analysis from where this analysis is taken had been largely inspired by a want to deal with this space inside our knowledge, and therefore a sizeable test, including all 95 dilemmas of DIVA published involving the launch problem in might 1994 and may also 2004, ended up being opted for. This time around duration had not been therefore arbitrary a variety as it might appear; being the first to ever critically examine this text with an interest in discourses of identity required the analysis of an amazing amount of manufacturing, and also this sample allows an extensive diachronic analysis across a time period of essential change that is social. It bridges two completely different years, ten years where the Uk lesbian (to make use of an inadequate but expedient construct) underwent significant alterations in regards to politics, legislation along with her presence in conventional news (cf. Turner, 2009 ). Generally speaking, the goal would be to create a summary of DIVA across a decade, explaining accurately the presence and/or absence of, or changes to, specific faculties for the mag’s content; to explore the contexts of the characteristics; also to pursue a much much deeper, hermeneutic analysis associated with substance regarding the mag and its particular (re)construction of lesbian identification.

Although the analysis presented in this specific article is predominantly discursive (see below for my way of the precise texts analysed), a blended method approach had been taken, and also the conversation comes with insights garnered utilizing two additional and complementary practices: (quantitative) content analysis and (semi organized) interviews with key staff that is editorial. Content analysis ended up being carried out using each mag (coding kinds of content), each article (coding topic and person reference) and every advertisement (coding item, frequency and size) while the device of study, permitting a type of ‘mapping’ of this sample. The interviews, with founding editor Frances Williams, her successor Gillian Rodgerson, present deputy editor and very long time staff author Louise Carolin and Kim Watson, that is now Millivres’ news and advertising manager but served for quite some time in advertisement product sales and marketing, had been directed by Chouliaraki and Fairclough’s ( 1999 , p. 62) advocacy of Camsloveaholics ethnographic work with discourse analytic jobs to be able to explore ‘the thinking, values and desires’ of individuals. The interviews had been designed as a way of learning more about the founding regarding the mag, its staff (functions, routines and laws), the emotions of these in roles of energy, the imperatives put down because of the publisher together with relationship between DIVA and its own visitors.