Sexual identities and political solidarities among cisgender women

Abstract

This study addressed the relative liberalism of White lesbians. In doing so, we compared sexuality differences in White women’s reactions to sexual, gender, and racial hierarchies. In the end, our analysis of 2,950 women from the American National Election Survey (ANES) suggested three trends. First, lesbians and bisexual women rejected and challenged heteronormativity more than heterosexual women. Second, the relationship between sexual identities and feminist commitments was less consistent. Lesbians and bisexual women perceived higher levels of sexist discrimination than heterosexual women did, but sexual identities did not always predict involvement in feminist social movements. Third, lesbian women generally displayed greater support of antiracist activism than bisexual or heterosexual women. However, this greater lesbian concern over racial biases did not translate in sexual differences in antiracist activism. Implications for these findings were explored, as were suggestions of future research.

Keywords:

• Lesbian identity
• solidarity
• bisexual identity
• political activism
• antiracism
• discrimination

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the Feminist Research on Gender and Sexuality Group for their contributions to this manuscript.

Disclosure of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.