Constructing sexualities: A critical overview of articles published in Feminism & Psychology

Sexualities in research on families

In F&P, sexualities are discussed most often in the context of research on families. This positioning alludes to the domestication of sexualities, but also situates sexualities within feminist debate in which the homeplace is conceptualized as a site of both oppression (e.g. MacKinnon, 1988) and resistance (e.g. hooks, 1990). Practices that open up opportunities to both reify hegemony and subvert it are explored in Nentwich's (2008) article, “New fathers and mothers as gender troublemakers?” In this article, Nentwich draws on Butler's (2006) notion of gender trouble to analyze heterosexual participants' talk about parenting. Two useful observations emerge from this research. The first is that alternative parenting practices are not necessarily troubling, but rather that their potential to trouble is contingent on the way in which they are interpreted by others. Secondly, that the construction of alternate conceptualizations of parenthood is contingent on the taking up of new subject positions and vice versa.

Although Nentwich's (2008) article has the highest number of citations, it is not particularly representative of the articles grouped in the theme on families. This is because most of the articles (n = 15) are on the topic of same-sex marriage and civil unions. While the remaining articles (n = 7) do deal with issues related to parenting, all but one of these articles are about same-sex parents. Nentwich's article on heterosexual parents is the exception. However, it complements the rest of the scholarship in this thematic group because the articles that focus on same-sex couples and same-sex parenting extend traditional conceptualizations of the family, while Nentwich's article interrogates normative assumptions about gender and sexuality embedded in those conceptualizations.

A more recent article titled “Making trans parents visible” by Haines, Ajayi, and Boyd (2014) was published in a special issue of F&P. This article focuses on the challenges that transparents face at the intersection of their parenting and trans identities. This research also makes a significant contribution to feminist scholarship that seeks to challenge heteronormative and patriarchal notions of the family.

Sexualities pedagogy

Perkins' (1991) article titled “Therapy for lesbians? The case against” appeared in the first volume of F&P. In this article, Perkins problematizes developments in lesbian and feminist psychological therapies, which she argues are anti-lesbian and antifeminist. The role of psychology in maintaining gender and sexual inequalities was a central concern in early issues of the journal. Over the years, academics publishing in F&P have maintained an interest in this issue and it is interesting to see that the conversation has expanded to include debate on establishing lesbian studies programmes (e.g., Griffin & Zukas, 1993; Wilton, 1993). Expanding this conversation means that not only are we finding alternative voices to psychology in the field of sexualities and gender but also psychology as a discipline is shifting and being thought about in critical ways.

It is important that F&P provides space for critical engagement with scholarship that argues for gay and lesbian psychologies or gay and lesbian studies because, although these suggestions are intended to counter heteronormative pedagogy, such disciplinary formations risk reinforcing ideas of essential difference. We also argue for the importance of continuing to examine the role that psychology plays in perpetuating particular ideas about gender and sexuality because these ideas find their way into debates on the rights of women and sexual minorities around the world.

Health and sexuality

Ojerholm and Rothblum's (1999) article “The relationships of body image, feminism and sexual orientation in college women” is the most highly cited article in the health thematic. The results of this study, which speak to observations emerging in similar research, indicate that body dissatisfaction differs among women as a function of their sexual orientation and political views. We agree with the authors that this observation deserves attention from health advocates. However, a more interesting article in the health thematic is “Sexual improvement as if your health depends on it.” In this article, Gupta and Cacchioni (2013) examine how popular contemporary American sex manuals construct gender and sexual norms. One of the observations that the authors make is that in these sex manuals, frequent (hetero)sex is constructed as essential for one's mental and physical well-being. In a critical sexualities course, this sort of scholarship is useful for opening up discussion on the ways in which sex can be framed as a health issue and the ways in which discussions about health can be used to reassert traditional sexualities. Gupta and Cacchioni argue that these sex manuals leave heteronormative constructions of gender and sexuality unchallenged and are geared largely toward cisgendered, heterosexual, middle-class, and white audiences.

Experiences of oppression

In “Surviving dangerous places: Lesbian identity performances in the workplace, social class and psychological health,” McDermott (2006) argues that lesbian women's sexual identity performances at work involve negotiating employment settings in which heterosexuality is compulsory and that this negotiation is especially tricky for working-class women who are more likely to be employed in settings where heterosexuality is heavily regulated. McDermott's consideration of the role of social class in mediating lesbian women's experiences is refreshing and sets it apart from many of the articles under consideration for this special issue. However, like nearly all of the articles in this thematic group, the focus is on lesbian women.

Although it is important to make visible and address practices that oppress lesbian women, we should also guard against promoting the idea that oppression is specific to lesbian women and therefore inevitable, which is sometimes an unintended consequence of absences of other stories. Therefore, we have also included Sandfield and Percy's (2003) article “Accounting for single status: Heterosexism and ageism in heterosexual women's talk about marriage.” It is the only article in this thematic that focuses on the experiences of heterosexual women.

Desire (and absences of desire)

Desire is an underrepresented theme in articles on sexualities in F&P. The absence of desire in the sexualities literature is ironic and it is what Fine (1988) has termed the missing discourse of desire. Absence is the focus of Griffin's (2000) paper. In “Absences that matter: Constructions of sexuality in studies of young women's friendships” Griffin argues that feminist scholarship on women's friendships has omitted to speak of the sexual and erotic dimensions of these relationships and that this cleaves to the notion that women are always already heterosexual. Griffin's point about the implications of heteronormativity for the absence of desire in feminist scholarship is significant in light of the fact that, in the process of considering articles for this overview, we found just one article that dealt with the experiences of lesbians as desiring subjects: “The meaning of sexual desire: Experiences of heterosexual and lesbian girls,” authored by Ussher (2005).

To be fair, it is not entirely surprising that desire is often absent in sexualities research as this research tends to focus on behaviors that put our health at risk—like having condom-less sex. However, as many health interventions necessitate some understanding of the meanings attached to sexual behaviours, we really do need to acknowledge that we become sexual beings and perform our sexual identities through desire and as desiring subjects. This means giving attention to how we experience and perform desire and how this challenges, and reinforces, normative understandings of gender and sexuality.

Constructing sexual identities

Clarke and Turner's (2007) article “Clothes maketh the queer? Dress, appearance and the construction of lesbian, gay and bisexual identities” should be required reading for anyone researching queer identities. Sexuality is often less discernible than other markers of identity such as race and gender, and this means that its perceptibility is often contingent on strategies that make it visible. Visibility is an especially important dimension in the shaping of lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities because people are generally assumed to be heterosexual. It is this aspect of queer identity—the centrality of the visual—that is the focus of Clarke and Turner's article. The article also deals thoughtfully with the nuances of meaning that dress signifies, and the implication of economic disparity for fashioning queer identities. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of sexualities precisely because it presents the often overlooked and seemingly insignificant aspects of identity formation and performance. It is a breath of fresh air for psychologists who must always look outside of the discipline for literature on this topic.

Politics of location and representation

In a feminist journal, it is hard to identify articles that are not in some way intentionally political. So, for the purposes of this special issue, articles grouped under the politics theme are those that explicitly position themselves as such. The most cited article in this thematic group is an article by Paulin (1996) titled “Putting Pakeha into the picture: Analysing lesbian/bisexual politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand.” In this article, Paulin speaks to an epistemological (and ethical) question that has for a long time been central to feminist theory and research. She asks whether we can speak for others and considers the implications of representing across differences of race and sexuality. This concern was on our minds too when we reviewed articles for this overview.

For the purposes of this special issue, in addition to identifying information such as topic themes and number of citations, we also endeavored to identify characteristics of participants (e.g., geographic location, race, gender, and sexuality) in empirical research published in F&P. We found that many empirical articles did not provide sufficient information about participants (certainly not enough information to tabulate for the purposes of providing an overview) and, when this information was provided, participants were inevitably mostly white and middle-class women. These participant characteristics correlate with the characteristics of those who publish in F&P, where around three quarters of the authors who publish in F&P are located in the United Kingdom and North America.

The characteristics of the European and American authors who publish in the journal are not within the control of the editors of F&P, given the uneven representation of black academics in universities worldwide. However, it does have implications for the sorts of issues that are addressed. In a recent editorial, it was argued that in order for F&P to expand its reach, it needs to prioritize issues that have tended to receive little attention from feminist psychologists (Macleod et al., 2014). We agree, but would argue that it is not just the issues that are important, but differences across locations that also deserve attention.

Researching sexualities

Articles published in F&P draw on a range of methods and theoretical perspectives that include, for example, survey, content analysis, psychosocial, thematic, and discourse analytic research. Most of the articles under consideration for this review were research based (as opposed to purely theoretical or position papers and reviews) and, as such, spoke across the various themes that we have identified. Therefore, the articles that were grouped under the research methods theme are those that dealt specifically with some aspect of the research design.

The most cited article in this thematic is “Sampling lesbians: How to get 1000 lesbians to complete a questionnaire,” a highly readable and very informative article by Fish (1999). In this article, Fish tackles the tricky issue of participant response in survey research that deals with what is considered to be a sensitive research topic (cancer screening) and that requires the involvement of what is also considered to be a hard-to-reach population. Fish's article is a valuable reference for scholars who are new to research that requires participants who are not always easy to find or access.

In a more recent article “What do you mean when you say that you are sexually satisfied?”, McClelland (2014) examines the role of gender norms and sexual stigma in shaping young adults' definitions of sexual satisfaction. The strength of the study lies in McClelland's decision to employ a mixed methods approach involving a Q-sort methodology and semi-structured interviews. This mixed methods design made it possible to conduct both a systematic and in-depth examination of the dimensions participants prioritized when determining their sexual satisfaction. A key finding emerging from McClelland's study is that participants drew on gendered and heteronormative components to determine sexual satisfaction. McClelland argues that because these dimensions are not regularly included in survey research, important interpretive patterns may be overlooked.

Theory and sexualities

The theoretical bent of F&P means that it comes as no surprise when it is reported that theory is the most common topic that articles published in this journal are written about (13% of all articles) (Macleod et al., 2014). What is surprising is that when we examined only those articles that had been written about sexualities, theory is one of the least discussed topics (4% of articles on sexualities). It appears, therefore, that in F&P, sexuality does not feature very significantly in articles that focus solely on theoretical debates. A number of explanations for this trend may be found in the articles selected for the theory theme in this special issue.

In “Feminism's queer theory,” Jagose (2009) provides a comprehensive discussion of key areas of debate in feminist and queer theory. This includes: assumptions about, and a critique of, foundational categories; the sex–gender binary; the relation of gender to sexuality; the political utility of the primacy of gender and sexuality in feminist and queer theory; and the degree to which other axes of social differentiation are taken into account.

Taylor's (2011) article “Intersectional dialogues—a politics of possibility” complements and extends Jagose's discussion. Taking an intersectional approach, Taylor examines the role that race and class play in shaping gender and sexual subjectivities—axes of social differentiation that are too often overlooked in feminist and queer literature. In our own teaching practice, Taylor's article is indispensable. This is because we teach critical sexualities in a multicultural context where race is the primary signifier and has historically been used to determine social class. Careful consideration of the nuances of the positions taken by leading feminist and queer scholars on these issues makes these articles ideal for orientating readers to these debates.

Sexualities and violence

Barnes (2011) tackles an issue that has received little attention in the public sphere, but has gained considerable attention in academic research. In “Suffering in a silent vacuum: Woman-to-woman partner abuse as a challenge to the lesbian feminist vision,” Barnes argues that the idea that lesbian relationships are necessarily characterized by mutuality and nonviolence has implications for the likelihood of disclosure of violence when it occurs in the context of women-to-women relationships. Barnes also argues that gay men (in the UK) are provided opportunities to participate in workshops on developing and maintaining healthy relationships, but (in the UK) such opportunities are rare for lesbian women. To support this claim, Barnes cites an observation made by a female participant who argued that a dominant belief circulating in a support group that she attended was that violence was only an issue in relationships involving men (i.e., heterosexual or gay male relationships).

According to Barnes (2011), in order to address the issue of woman-to-woman partner abuse, there needs to be greater acknowledgement of the fact that women's same-sex relationships are not necessarily democratic, egalitarian, and nonviolent. This means accepting that the pervasiveness of patriarchal oppression and domination is not limited to heterosexual and gay male relationships. While it is a bit tricky to acknowledge this when there is already a long history of negative stereotyping of lesbian women, focusing only on the positive aspects of lesbian relationships is unrealistic and, as Barnes's research shows, potentially damaging.

Media representation of sexualities

Media representation is a theme that accounts for only 2% of articles on sexualities in F&P and, according to information provided in a recent editorial (Macleod et al., 2014), this trend is not specific to articles on sexualities, but indicative of a general trend in F&P. Although media representation is not a popular theme, the article that we have selected has eighty citations—more citations than any other article included in this overview. In “I'm straight but I kissed a girl: The trouble with American media representations of female-female sexuality,” Diamond (2005) problematizes a trend in American movies and prime time television shows to represent female–female sexuality as same-sex experimentation (also termed heteroflexibility). Diamond argues that this media strategy is specifically intended to attract the male gaze, reify the notion of essential heterosexuality, and maintain compulsory heterosexuality under the guise of sexual freedom and choice.

We agree with Diamond (2005) that this trend in contemporary representations of female–female sexuality, while not as negative as past practices of representation, still deserves critique. American movies and television shows are viewed around the world and play a role in shaping attitudes toward female sexuality. Diamond's article shows that critical and feminist psychologists are well positioned to engage with this issue and F&P must be commended for providing the sort of space required to disseminate this knowledge within the discipline.

Thinking critically about sexualities research in Feminism & Psychology

To conclude our introduction, we would like to speak briefly to silences and absences that became apparent to us in the process of preparing this overview. While the themes in sexualities research in the Virtual Special Issue are relevant to scholars across the globe, the degree to which this scholarship can be drawn upon is limited by the specificities of our different contexts. In South Africa, for example, because the policing of sexuality has historically been a means of policing race, it would be remiss of us to teach a critical sexualities course in which race was not central. Unfortunately, we identified too few articles that we thought were appropriate or adequate in this regard.

In addition to the neglect of race as an issue, we also found a lack of diversity in terms of the scholars publishing in F&P and in terms of research participant profiles. In fact, even when participants from different racial or ethnic backgrounds were included in research, this seldom translated into a consideration of the way in which this might have shaped their experiences. If, as the editors argue, the journal aims to promote an understanding of “gendered realities along multiple dimensions of difference, privilege and inequality” (Macleod et al., 2014, p. 5), then the omission of race must be addressed.

Another issue, which applies to the global South more broadly, deals with the sexualities research in F&P that focusses on health. We found that, while the articles grouped under the health theme addressed a range of health related issues, they tended to focus on: (a) the need for a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) health psychology, (b) weight and body image, and (c) premenstrual Syndrome (PMS). This scholarship has its merits, but it is unlikely to stimulate much interest among scholars in the global South where people experience the greatest burden of disease and where communicable disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality. In this regard, we were disappointed to find only two articles that dealt with safe sex practices (one focusing on lesbian women and the other on gay men), which were both published in the 1990s. Furthermore, although families and reproductive health are a major theme in sexualities research in F&P, there is little consideration of the health implications of unsafe abortion in contexts in which abortion is not easily accessible and/or prohibited by law. We argue that this is not just a public health concern, but a feminist issue as well. There are more examples, but those that we have just mentioned provide sufficient evidence to argue for the importance of being critical about the relations of power shaping the production and dissemination of knowledge in F&P. The editors of F&P recognize that this has implications for the future relevance of the journal and have committed to addressing the gaps. We look forward to reading new advances in critical and feminist scholarship in F&P.