Lesbianism, Homophobia and Sexual Violence: A Study of Loving Her and the Women of Brewster Place

The term “homosexual” emerged, as Michel Foucault states, as a clinical description for a type of individual, rather than a sexual activity (43). Homosexuality has always been seen as pathological in western society. While the Black Power Movement challenged and redefined identity politics of “blackness,” the Gay Liberation movements did so to homosexuality. These two movements were contingent to changing dominant society's myopic constructions of racist and heterosexist conceptualizations of racial and sexual identities. In-spite of all their achievements, neither of these movements was able to create a space in the society or to empower individuals who were at once, blacks and “sexual minorities” in the American society. And, no movement what so ever, save some legislations have been able to curb homophobia and its resulting violence on LGBT people and more specifically, on LGBT women of colour. Leslie and Mac Neil say that black lesbian identity portrays the intersection of race, class, gender and sexual orientation. In “Double Positive: Lesbians and Race.” They contend