Written on the Body. Female Sexualities beyond the Heterosexual Norm

Abstract

This article analyses both from physical and symbolic perspectives the corporeal materiality of women who have had sexual and emotional relations with other women. The body, as a metaphor and object of regulation and control of female homoerotic practices, is at the same time the space where such practices also express transgressions and resistance to social power and heterosexual norms. The sanctions, invisibility, instability and variability of the experiences and meanings attributed throughout time to the lesbian body are revealed through gestures, manners, clothing, occupied areas, laws and scientific theories. A body which has been constructed discursively and contextually, based on the interrelation between gender roles, sex and sexuality.