Thursday 12 April 2012 at 16:00 - 17:30
FAMILIES, RELATIONSHIPS, LIFECOURSE CONFERENCE AUDITORIUM 2 Twamley, K.
Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London
Love Is Enough: How Ideals of Intimacy Inhibit Greater Equality amongst Gujarati Couples in the UK and India
The paper draws on my doctoral thesis, an ethnographic study exploring understandings of love and intimacy amongst young middle class Indians of Gujarati origin living in the UK and India. A two site comparative study was used to enable an understanding of how social and economic contexts shape cultural constructions of intimate relationships and sexuality. I found that men and women in both contexts had similar aspirations of intimacy, but women were likely to be more in favour of egalitarian values. What this meant was interpreted differently in India and the UK. In neither setting, however, was gender equality fully realised in the lives of the informants due to both structural and normative constraints. Using Connell’s framework to explore gender relations, the paper sets out to understand 1) why informants’ ideals of equality were not realized and 2) how informants rationalized this disparity between ideal and experience. Using an analysis which not only looks at power but also affect (or cathexis) I argue that the increased emphasis on a loving caring relationship may make it difficult for women to negotiate a more egalitarian relationship with their husband; women receive their husbands’ help in the home as a ‘gift‘ and take on ideologies of intimacy between a couple, inhibiting a dialogue which might disrupt this pretty picture.
Stella, F. ‘Lesbian’ Lives and Real Existing Socialism in Late Soviet Russia
The experience of state socialism, which marked a fundamental moment in Russia’s trajectory to modernity, shaped Russian discourses on sexuality in important ways (Healey 2001; Temkina and Zdravomyslova 2002). Existing literature on the emergence of modern homosexualities in Soviet Russia has typically focused on legal and medical discourses, emphasising the repressive role of state institution and of the ‘new Soviet morality’ in enforcing heteronormativity (Healey 2001; Engelstein 1995; Rotkirch 2002). However, everyday expressions of same-sex desire in Soviet Russia remain very sparsely documented in existing academic literature.
The paper explores the ways in which female same-sex relations were lived and negotiated under ‘real existing socialism’, drawing on biographical interviews conducted in 2004-05 and in 2010 in the cities of Moscow, Ul’ianovsk and St Petersburg. The paper challenges the notion of Soviet Russia as a uniformly ‘totalitarian’ society, and argues for the need to explore how women strategically and creatively negotiated their relationships and subjectivities. Findings point to the need to reassess the extent to which the Soviet medical establishment attempted to ‘cure’ women of their lesbian desires, and emphasise instead the role of the Soviet gender order (Ashwin 2000) and of the socio-economic organisation of Soviet society in shaping women’s experiences. It also points to the inadequacy of social constructionist genealogies of the ‘modern lesbian’ in accounting for the realities of late Soviet Russia, in spite of the paradigmatic status they have acquired in sexualities studies (Kulpa and Mizielinska 2011).
Donovan, C. University of Sunderland Can Love Make a Difference? Making Sense of Abusive Same Sex and Heterosexual Relationships
Feminist theorising about domestic violence has focussed on heterosexual relationships and identified patriarchal factors at both micro (e.g. individual, relationship) and macro (e.g. economic, political) levels as explanatory. Domestic violence in same sex relationships fundamentally calls this approach into question. Drawing on a national comparative study of love and violence in same sex and heterosexual relationships this paper suggests that a shift in focus to people’s understandings and expectations of love may provide a way of understanding domestic violence across gender and sexuality. This approach retains the feminist definition of domestic violence as a relationship in which one partner (or family) exerts power and control over the other partner. The difference is that heterosexuality is shifted from centre stage.
Instead, accounts of what can be expected from love and
relationships – that cross gender and sexuality – emerge to problematize gendered assumptions about practices of love. Three examples are explored in this paper: the association with femininity of disclosing intimacy, speaking of love and a belief that relationships are shared projects for the mutual satisfaction of both with femininity. Problematizing practices of love as potentially abusive builds on the feminist debates that have centred on heterosexuality and unequal gendered relationship practices because of the love and relationships lens rather than the lens of gender. It also has implications for sex and relationship education, prevention work and early identification of abusive relationships.
University of Glasgow
212
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