| Disciplinary expertise: |
Inter-disciplinary studies, gender studies, sociology, cultural studies, health science. |
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The contemporary field ‘lesbian health’ was shaped by a range of social and political changes in the last third of the twentieth century, as well as by discourses originating in the historical regulation of lesbianism. In discourse, lesbians have been produced as invisible, passive victims of a potentially homophobic health care system. This project sought to understand how lesbians produced and managed their own health, and the extent to which they used agency in clinical spaces. It asked what influenced decisions about coming out/ disclosure, and is invisibility the most productive way to represent lesbians in relation to the health-care system? Using semi-structured interviews, 19 women, aged between 22 and 64 years, who identified as lesbian, gay, same sex-attracted and queer were interviewed. Interview data were analysed using discourse and content analysis.
When they engaged with the health care system, some women produced their lesbianism as a social matter of no relevance, others as central to their health, and expected their doctor to understand them as lesbians. An analysis of power relations revealed the complexity of ways the participants used agency to speak or remain silent about their sexual orientation. This was motivated by complex embodied understandings about the potential for emotional, physical or ontological harm involved in coming out. At times they chose to remain silent, at others to speak out, depending on a range of contemporaneous factors including safety concerns, past experience and a range of other personal judgements. These ‘choices’ were not necessarily conscious, but shaped by the individual’s embodied ‘sense for the game’. While the health-care system had frequently provided less than optimum care, these women were not victims, but played an active role in deciding whether or not her sexuality was relevant to the medical encounter.
Current work: Since completing her PhD in 2007, Sue has continued working as a research fellow at ARCSHS. He research focuses predominantly on sexuality education in schools and on the prevention of violence against women. She is currently working on a two year evaluation of an intervention in 33 community football clubs to make them safer and more inclusive for women and girls, and on communicating the findings of her 2006/7 project evaluating the implementation of sexuality education using a whole school approach in Victorian schools. |
