Efforts of Bifurcation and Liberation: Deconstructing the Story of a Turn‐of‐the‐Century Lesbian,Part One

Abstract

This manuscript takes as its centerpiece fragments of the author's personal story of growing up as a closeted lesbian in school, in the Fortune 500, in the community, and a number of years attempting to integrate her lesbian identity into her professional persona – outside of the closet. This manuscript makes an attempt at a “duality search” (Boje, 2001, p. 23), deconstructing the story as it examines the bifurcation between personal and public, and in this case more exactly, professional and sexual orientation identities. The tension between closeted outsider and the prevailing expectations for promising “insiders” in organizational settings is also viewed in this paper through two related frames, both of which draw from lesbian feminist theory. The first is the concept of the Borderlands, as articulated by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987). The second is Adrienne Rich's (1979, 1994) work and perspective on lying.

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