A grounded Theory of Liberated Identity: Lesbians transcending liberation

Using Classic Grounded Theory, the purpose of this study was to generate theory that emerged from conceptualized data from interviews with lesbian women. Findings revealed that the women in this study created unique social processes to maintain, even edify, their lesbian identity when it was threatened. From conceptualization of the data, theory emerged as a specific process in which strengths were utilized to face challenges when interacting within culture. This process and theory, transcending oppression through liberating one’s identity, is complex and paradoxical because the participants garnered strength from the pain caused by oppression. Although this oppression may lead to suffering, it also created resilience. Since lesbian loving relationships are thus ignored or minimized within culture, this compounded the paradox.

Method

Participant selection was based on lesbian identity and diverse demographic characteristics because heterogeneous sampling is required to expand and refine the emergent theory (Glaser, 1978). Heterogeneous lesbian subgroups were recruited to enhance non-comparability of groups. Key informants, lesbian women identified as resources with exceptional knowledge of the potential sample, were used for access to lesbian subgroups and later as interview participants for theoretical coding. Using the researcher’s own network, key informants, snowball participants, and lesbian social services, theoretical sampling was conducted.

To diversify potential participants, the initial sample was drawn from lesbian social service agencies. Four social service agencies agreed to publicize the study. Theoretical sampling began with a local lesbian social service sponsoring a function for recipients. Interviews were conducted onsite and from this event additional participants were recruited. All agencies and participants were immediately supportive and verbalized investment in research that increased the visibility of lesbian issues.

The final sample consisted of 28 lesbian women from differing backgrounds, classes, ages, races and ethnicities, geographic locations, and educational levels. Over-sampling for Hispanic lesbian women was conducted to ensure racial diversity. Other means to sample for diverse lesbians included: (a) sampling from specific agencies that served lower-income women, (b) snowball sampling from ethnic minorities, and (c) requesting agencies to recruit for women of color. Socioeconomic status ranged from lower to middle class. Some women were physically challenged; all women had worked in a profession. Some women had been married, some had children, but all identified as lesbian. Participant ages ranged from 18-72 years old. Face sheet variables that remained significant throughout the study were geography, identification as lesbian in less than two contexts, and traditional family of origin. Constant comparison of face sheet variables also directed the researcher in theoretical sampling, compelling sampling for diverse characteristics dissimilar to previous participant characteristics.

Lesbian identity as an integral part of cultural experience was grounded in the data; therefore, theoretical sampling did not occur outside of lesbian subgroups. This is a limitation in that it precludes generalization across other groups who may share similar if not the same basic social process, but also an implication for future studies.

Arranging and conducting interviews presented protocol problems. Screening for race, age, and other variables within an oppressed group was problematic in that asking a participant to divulge sensitive information about her identity seemed insulting. Because of this issue, some interviews were arranged with minimal information, i.e. only knowing the participant was a lesbian woman.

The final stages of data analysis included the documentation of abstracted ideas into memos. Memos conceptualized data, operationalized categories through their extracted properties, and provided hypothesized connections between categories. Memo sorting began the formulation of the theory for readability. This study also utilized photography to add meaning and representation to the codes, after all interviews were conducted. Memos were transcribed directly from interviews with added conceptualization memos at the end of each note and all were analyzed line-by-line. Additional hand-written memos were later typed. Ideas were also voice recorded and transcribed as memos ultimately resulting in 30 voice recordings. Memo sessions consisted of writing about the data and documenting ideas about the data.

The main concern that emerged from the data is transcending oppression. The participants were actively attempting to rise above and resolve aspects of oppression, including exclusion, judgment, and prejudice. The data revealed patterned complex behaviors while facing the paradox that one must transcend oppressive culture but also live in oppressive culture to acquire needed resources. These resources in turn are essential in transcending oppression that originates from these cultural contexts. Transcending oppression is the catalyst to begin stage progression to liberate identity.

Transcending oppression can result from a culturally forced proclamation of difference that is based in the identification as a different other, a person who is not a member of dominant culture; an identity that cannot be conceptually separated from cultural context. However, context does not define identity but social interactions are based in identification as a different other and are integral to these interactions. Identity, like cultural contexts, was constant and verified as central during data collection. Similarly, oppression was assumed to occur and required an understanding of how oppression it was justified. The need to transcend oppression is assumed in all interactions because it had been experienced repeatedly in all contexts. All women in the study spoke of emotional, psychological, and physical pain from authenticating. The most extreme cases of violence involved rape, physical assault, ostracism from family, forced resignation and/or termination of employment, excommunication from church membership, vandalism to property, verbal assaults and abuse, sexual harassment, and physical separation from partner.

Liberated identity, as a basic social-psychological process, has three stages: authenticating, reconciling, and integrating. Figure 1 shows this nonlinear process. The stages are theoretical codes; the core code of “liberated identity” names the complete process. Each theoretical code is comprehensive, as is the process as a whole.

Authenticating

Authenticating is the least complex of the three basic social process stages. It is visited in three main cultural contexts: family of origin, work, and general society. Authenticating is conceptualized as behavior to challenge heterosexist bias by proclaiming one’s difference as a lesbian woman. Authenticating was not a process, as coming out theories assert (Cass, 1984; Coleman, 1982; Lewis, 1984; Sophie, 1986), but a stage in a process—a tool or a tactical action. Authenticating is taking control over cultural expectations and assumptions of heterosexuality to present self in an honest manner. Lesbian women authenticated in at least one cultural context, the lesbian community. Authenticating as a lesbian is a singular, strategic, and purposive action to proclaim lesbian identity and establish this difference from traditional sexual attributes and roles. Women who do not authenticate in more than this one cultural context, however, experience greater grief and loss of integrity. This affective component is revisited in the reconciling stage. Authenticating is done by degrees through overt statements, through differences embedded in language, or through signs and symbols. In this study, authenticating occurred mostly in overt statements that immediately set limits and proclaimed difference. Women considered less “out” than others had authenticated in only one or two cultural contexts, the lesbian community and/or the family of origin.

Hypothesized purposes of authenticating are (a) defying traditional sex roles, (b) sharing relationships, and (c) proving worth (Sub-Hypotheses 1a, 1b, and 1c). Authenticating properties served one or more of these purposes in this study. Vulnerability to oppression presumably compels authenticating, but the often spontaneous action is founded more in a sense of accountability for educating others about identity and for limiting heterosexist assumptions identity.

Education and responsibility are conditions of authenticating as women go from the safety of the lesbian community to advise heterosexuals about lesbian identity through language, visible difference, and standards of interaction. This responsibility serves the purpose of authenticating by exploding the assumption of heterosexuality, sharing with others, and proving worth. The properties of authenticating are (a) verbal correcting, (b) visual showing, and (c) behavioral proving.

Verbal correcting refers to the defiance of assumptions, honesty, and sharing that lesbian women bring to daily conversations, all with little thought for the consequences of oppression and as strategy to forestall uncomfortable interactions. Verbal correcting maintains the integrity of lesbian relationships and proclaims difference. In the study this property was evident in the family of origin and in social interactions within a more generalized realm of culture. There are three proposed conditions to verbal correcting: defiance, honesty, and sharing. Verbal correction makes lesbians visible and exaggerates proving oneself worthy of acceptance and inclusion.

Visual showing is the second property of authenticating. Its purpose is to externally reveal differences as a lesbian woman. Simply put, it is being out in the open. It is authenticating as visual action. Through visual showing, women take on the responsibility to show that lesbians are among society and can act appropriately. The underlying assumption is that cultural cues can distinguish lesbian women from those adhering to traditional role ascriptions in dress, mannerisms, or associations. Such visual cues include taking a partner to public places, going out with other women, associating with other women, taking adopted children with one’s partner to church, being in public places, etc. But the lesbian woman has an additional responsibility: even as she visually reveals that she is different, she is also responsible to the lesbian community as a whole to set a good example. It is a deliberate action to raise the consciousness of lesbian identity difference in the public realm.

Behavioral proving is the third property of authenticating. It refers to the unspoken effort to avoid oppression as a lesbian woman. Taking control over the things one can is central to proving one’s worth as a public citizen living in multiple cultures. This property was evident in the study within the cultural contexts of work and social interactions within a generalized realm. Oppression in any context due to lesbian identity is expected; therefore, anything may be used to oppress. Combating this requires tenacity in any action, whether on the job, in a neighborhood, or in daily social interactions. Behavioral proving is founded in this concern that any characteristic, even those irrelevant to lesbian identity, may be used to oppress.

This definition of reconciling (Mish et al., 1987) was used as the basis for naming the theoretical codes: “to resolve friendship or harmony; to settle, resolve; to make consistent or congruous; to cause to submit to or accept something unpleasant; to check against another for accuracy; to account for” (p.984). The properties derived from this definition to fit the data in the study were (a) checking, (b) submitting, and (c) making congruous. Conceptually, this entails a suspension of lesbian identity, not the negation of that identity. Reconciling has three purposes: (a) checking identity against culture, (b) submitting to the reality of oppressive culture, and (c) making identity congruous with cultural contexts. Reconciling occurs in four primary cultural contexts: family of origin, work, church, and regional location. For study participants, reconciling within their family of origin and church had the most damaging affective repercussions. Yet, while the most painful, these contexts were the places women most desired continued connection.

Reconciling requires that individuals take a very attentive, observant, and measuring perspective on culture. It functions as a kind of cultural note-taking while one observes how others react to homosexuality. (For that reason, authenticating is often negotiated in this stage.) Like authenticating, reconciling is forced by cultural circumstances. It is the price of authenticating, one that was universal for all study participants. Reconciling is free of anger, fueled by an inherent forgiveness of others, though this forgiveness does not imply the acceptance of oppressive cultural contexts or their heterosexual requirements. Instead, a lesbian woman understands the oppressive forces of certain contexts and figures out how to maintain harmony within those contexts. If that is impossible, she finds or creates cultural contexts that affirm her lesbian identity.

Making identity congruous with cultural contexts is the problem-solving property of reconciling. A lesbian woman knows her lesbian identity is not congruous with most cultural contexts; otherwise, she would not have to screen for safety, submit to the realization that she is oppressed, and work out how to attain a whole sense of self. Making identity congruous sometimes requires leaving a cultural context: when the lesbian woman has no influence over an oppressive context, she may opt to leave to maintain the integrity of her lesbian identity. She always has the option of returning to these contexts. Thus the principal choices are leaving oppressive contexts, finding safe contexts (migration), and returning to contexts that are oppressive. Determining whether or not identity can be maintained in spite of counterinfluences is central. Migration is a way of leaving in an attempt to connect: women migrate from oppressive cultural contexts for anonymity and to connect with the lesbian community. After being away for a time, lesbian women sometimes consider returning to a given context, usually church and family of origin. Reconnection depends on the lesbian woman, since she makes the effort, not the context she has left.

An example of submitting in the reconciling stage of liberated identity follows: “I would not be the person I am today if I had not experienced the pain of being made fun of by classmates for being a tomboy. I was teased for how I acted and what I wore, my intense relationships with my girlfriends, and the confusion I felt about my identity. I would not be the good, forgiving, and lighthearted person I am today if this had not happened to me. Those events made me stronger and I can deal with whatever comes my way now. I like who I am.”

An integrating lesbian does not feel compelled to authenticate, even in heterosexist contexts. She saves her energies for more important things, like loving relationships. Lesbian women want to be seen for both differences and similarities. Integrating allows them to make the decision when to educate others about difference and affinity. In the integrating stage, women feel less concern about vulnerability and the avoidance of oppression. Knowing that one can transcend whatever oppressive forces cultural contexts deliver changes vulnerability to strength. Women feel a sense of perseverance. Cultural contexts in integrating are less discernable, replaced by a more political and spiritual awareness of the larger nature of culture.

Operating in some oppressive cultural contexts may be necessary for gaining (a) financial resources, (b) provisions for family, (c) educational attainment, and (d) status and power. This refusal to avoid such contexts in turn forces authenticating and reconciling and may subsequently lead to forced or chosen segregation. Integrating thus requires the knowledge that lesbian women will never fully be part of culture and will always experience some segregation; integration is complete in a given setting when the woman no longer deems difference as negative or feels forced toward authenticating and reconciling by heterosexist expectations. Lesbian women integrate into cultural contexts whether the participants in those contexts know it or not. The hypothesized properties of integrating ((a) cultural awareness, resistance, and knowledge of equality, (b) uniting with culture, (c) being in culture, and (d) effective personality) are outlined below.

The third property of integrating is being in culture. This is both internal and external action that benefits the lesbian community and other cultural contexts, uniting the community and blending into other cultures. The underlying purpose of being in culture is to end segregation through participation. These actions are achieved through the properties of (a) creating equal culture, (b) advocacy, (c) visibility, (d) weaving cultures, and (e) self-reliance. This includes the refusal to remove oneself (unless forced) from any culture due to ascriptions and proscriptions of heterosexism. Once the lesbian woman is diffused within all necessary cultural contexts, she cannot be denied resources.

Being in culture requires the lesbian community to create an equal culture to give its members inclusive and accepting places to be. This goes beyond reconciling and finding a family of choice, and instead entails the creation of an ideal culture that is safe and sustaining. With the creation of an equal culture comes the responsibility to advocate for that community. Advocacy requires taking care of your own; it is the logical next step in creating equal culture. Being in culture requires that lesbian women remain visible as a community and on an individual level. You must be seen so others know you exist. Because lesbian women are necessarily in culture, they weave their multiple identities together, integrating cultures by their participation. Since oppression is unlikely to end anytime soon, integrating lesbian women need a safety net of self-reliance. When integrating into culture, the woman knows she has the support and resources to fall back on if she is excluded. This was especially true for lesbian women of color in the study because their experience of multiple oppressions made them self-reliant.

The fourth property of integrating is effective personality. This is an internal process that integrates one’s lesbian identity with culture. The woman learns to use what she is scorned for, her lesbian identity, as a source of strength. This internal acceptance of lesbian identity enables her to be fully in culture. Women in the study said that this was the property of integrating they aspired for; some had acquired it and some had not. Older women said that at the age of 40 they experienced an epiphany as they simply stopped worrying about other’s reactions to their lesbian identity. They became their effective selves without struggle or forcing it. After that, finding comfort in any context was easy: being the best person she could be was enough, and her lesbian identity was the primary source of this stability. With this epiphany came peace and self-actualization. Three properties are embedded in effective personality: (a) changing attitudes about lesbian identity, (b) spirituality, and (c) fortitude.

Cultural contexts reproduce cultural imperialism by ignoring difference and then regard these as inferior, which is the main barrier to cultural equality in contemporary Western culture (Young, 1990). “Cultural imperialism involves the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm.” (p.59) Young states this is a violent paradox for diverse groups because they are simultaneously made invisible but also marked as inferior and abject. The dominant and powerful never need acknowledge their group status since it is assumed to be universal and standard.

Cultural imperialism rests on the standard that body and mind are separate; body is the antithesis to the mind, or reason, which is symbolized as white, objective, bourgeoisie, and male (Young, 1990). This “scaling of bodies” (Young, p.124) reduces pluralistic attributes to the concepts of unity and standardization. This measuring of physical characteristics against an approved norm allots differences as deviant, inferior, and deficient of reason. Observation is then the only means to assess difference, and this reliance on visual assessment exaggerates the exclusiveness of reason versus body. Persons associated with sexual behaviors, i.e. lesbian women, are “easy to identify because of the physical symptoms of ugliness and degeneracy they exhibit” (Young, p.128). For example, under cultural imperialistic standards, women are considered affective, associated with the body and sexuality; they are the opposite to the assumed norm of the white, bourgeoisie male. Measuring (scaling) bodies unconsciously defines plurality and difference as ugly, physical, and identifiable (Young).

Paradigms of liberation are critical guides in the Politics of Difference, as well as in liberated identity. When applying equality in universal standards, as contemporary discursive consciousness purports, it implies that group difference is accidental and coincidental (Young, 1990). Group difference cannot be “transcended” (p.157), but rather should be defined as a social process that can privilege and oppress. Accidental implies that society has no control over the distribution of justice. Group differences are a reality and as such a part of contemporary culture. Oppression of group difference is also a reality and cannot be considered accidental.

Emancipation implies that assimilation is not desirable because group difference may be misplaced and in turn support the notions of cultural imperialism, according to Young (1990). Diverse cultures would lose their integral identity if they relinquished their traditions, values, and specific cultural existence; diverse cultures would not give up these associations even if it meant they were no longer oppressed (Young). Emancipation in a Politics of Difference requires transcending oppression by proclaiming difference, making it visible, and redefining it as good; assimilation is not an element of this process.

Because equality is consciously based on universality and social rules, Young (1990) claims that if different groups were to affirm and proclaim difference, this may again justify their oppression. Without the knowledge that oppression operates even when social rules assert equality, pluralism and group difference continue to be invisible but yet marked out as inferior. Reclaiming difference requires understanding of how one is oppressed. Young states that affinity, group difference, and public discourse in pluralistic society are requirements of a Politics of Difference in which persons are not deemed inferior, ugly, or abject.

Liberated identity transforms cultural imperialism into a catalyst to increase visibility of otherness and then to educate that this is beneficial to society. What is used to oppress is used to liberate. Liberated identity and Young’s Politics of Difference complement each other and expand this grounded theory in the analysis of different as good and the critical nature of redefining what good is.

Liberated identity has implications not simply as a basic social process but also in the political, spiritual, and relational implications seen in the study. Political action implications for lesbian women include culture and community, naming oppression, and economic factors. Oppression is a social process that is maintained by political forces and agendas; therefore, the oppressed must find political routes, which includes economic power, to empower self and community. Each basic social process stage of liberated identity contains politically-laden behaviors. Authenticating is an overt action to challenge heterosexist assumptions. Reconciling involves forced or chosen segregation from oppressive cultural contexts. Integrating is the primary political stage of liberated identity. With a focus on external factors, a shift from blaming individuals to placing responsibility in the proper places has begun.

Liberated identity contains spiritual themes throughout the social process, specifically in the reconciling and integrating stages. The reconciling stage involves redefinition of spirituality. Integrating in liberated identity exerts spiritually-laden attempts to unite with culture and to define an effective personality through equanimity, hope and balance. A major implication of liberated identity is expanding our understanding of how spiritual practices resist political agendas originating in religiously-exclusive doctrines. This also implies a non-dichotomous way of thinking about spirituality. Fusion of different spiritual practices, leaving institutionalized religion, and redefining spirituality can enhance faith to transcend oppression and liberate identity.

Author:

Amy Russell, Ph.D., LMSW Assistant Professor School of Social Work Texas State University-San Marcos

ar41@txstate.edu

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