gay literature :: essays research papers

While sexual difference may not exist betwixt lesbians all other forms of difference do. These include differences of identity race, class origins, employment status, age, religion, physical abilities - and while we may struggle against these differences inwardly our individual positions they have a material and institutional reality that cannot be wished awayWhat, to you, seems important about the terms gay and lesbian in literature?In the face of a homophobic society we penury creative and critical processes that draw out the complexity of lesbian lives and akin sex choices, not a retreat into the comforting myths of heroines and unfractured, impeachable identities This quote addresses straight off the primary difficulty of the issue. The terms gay and lesbian are utilitarian in literature in that they allow a group of sight who have been marginalised and even persecuted to become visible. They enable a way of deportment and a set of identities, harmonious or conflicting , to be presented, to be questioned, to be understood and accepted. As categories they create space in which there may develop a more evolved understanding of texts and they also create a genre within which many lesbian and gay writers are snug with being placed. A gendered reading of a text can expose undercurrents and depths which might otherwise not be apparent. These categories also make space for the author within the text which leads to a closer tie between the author and the reader in the reading process. However the danger which this build of terminology presents is that of homogenising ways both of reading and writing a text. In creating a category one is always not only creating an inclusive zone but in doing so also excluding certain elements. The encounter is run of stultifying the creative process through the exclusion by a minority group of the minority groups within. As Bonnie Zimmerman writes in her judge Lesbians like this and thatBy positing the lesbian as la vishness in the old system we may fail to note the identities that function as excess within our own newly created lesbian community. There is a bump of adopting a separatist approach, of placing the categories of gay and lesbian literature outside the mainstream and creating a gay canon but in doing so retaining the underlying determine of that patriarchal system. How does one avoidreplicating the masculinist cultural error of taking the preponderant for the universal