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| ISBN-13: | 9781742194875 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Spinifex Press |
| Publication date: | 09/28/2005 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 162 |
| File size: | 491 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Zest for Life
Lesbians' Experiences of Menopause
By Jennifer Kelly, Kerry Biram
Spinifex Press Pty Ltd
Copyright © 2005 Jennifer KellyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74219-487-5
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, menopause is a frequent and hotly debated issue both in society at large and among health professionals. Nevertheless, despite the public prominence that menopause receives, the unquestioned assumption in discussions about this stage in a woman's life is that midlife women are all heterosexual.
The interest in this topic stems from my own experiences as both a middle-aged lesbian feminist and a long-standing women's health advocate in my work as a nurse and midwife. Starting with an issue or problem that concerns us personally is a common experience for many feminist researchers. For years I have been concerned about the ways in which many health professionals assume that all their clients, and in particular those who are older women, are heterosexual. The heterosexist and indeed homophobic nature of the information they present to women on the topic of menopause has long concerned and frustrated me. In this book I examine these issues as they relate to midlife lesbians.
My aim is to provide an understanding of lesbians' experiences of menopause in relation to their general health and wellbeing. By making lesbians' experiences visible through exploring the issues that are important and unique to them atthis time of their lives, I hope to contribute to challenging heterosexism and homophobia within the health system and mainstream society.
This book began as my doctoral study. As this was the first Australian study into lesbians' experiences of menopause, I was keen to involve a broad group of lesbians from all over Australia. I recruited self-identified lesbians aged 39 to 65 years to my study through a variety of sources, including lesbian networks, lesbian dances and festivals, as well as the lesbian and gay media. I also recruited participants through women's health services as well as nursing journals and women's health networks, email lists and word of mouth. The most successful recruitment strategy was by word of mouth. Two hundred questionnaires were posted upon request to women throughout Australia between November 2001 and May 2002. Potential participants were sent the questionnaire accompanied by a plain language statement that explained the aims and objectives of the study. At this stage of the process I asked interested women to sign a coded consent form and I informed them that their personal details would remain confidential.
I decided to use a questionnaire as I believe it is an excellent starting point to gather statistical and other general information. Follow-up interviews were later to provide further clarification and discussion of issues identified. One hundred and twenty-four questionnaires were returned (62 per cent response rate). Eight women identified as other than lesbian (gay, homosexual, bisexual) and as a result I did not include their data in the final analysis. The questionnaire was divided into six distinct parts: socio-demographic details, reproductive and menopausal health, body image, hormone replacement therapy, sex and sexuality, and health services and homophobia. I chose the first four themes, as these themes were frequently discussed in the existing literature on menopause. Feminist researchers acknowledge that women's experiences are inextricably linked to the wider socio-political environment in which we live, and for this reason I felt it was essential to include an additional theme focussing specifically on health services and homophobia. The data I collected from this section will, I believe, help in confronting and challenging homophobia within the health system.
I followed up the questionnaire data with 20 in-depth interviews. In selecting 20 lesbians to interview, I focused mainly, although not entirely, on women who identified issues for lesbians that differed from the mainstream literature. The interviews enabled me to explore and clarify many of the issues raised by the participants in the questionnaire. Out of the 124 participants who returned completed questionnaires, 110 (89 per cent) indicated their willingness to be interviewed.
Participants in my study were fairly homogenous. Lesbians are, of course, as diverse as women generally, however, my sample did not reflect such diversity. Seventy-six per cent of participants were tertiary educated and almost 40 per cent of participants were employed in health-related occupations. These occupations include medical receptionists, social workers, welfare workers, personal carers, nurses, midwives, doctors, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, counsellors and other allied health professionals. As many participants are well educated and employed in the field, it might be suggested that their level of knowledge and attitudes may differ from lesbians without tertiary education and those employed in other areas.
The lesbians who returned completed questionnaires from every state and territory in Australia are not fully representative of lesbians living in Australia. The lack of a clearly defined definition of lesbian prohibits a sample from being fully representative. Gaining a truly representative sample remains a constant challenge for researchers studying groups that are marginalised and stigmatised. More studies need to be conducted with a larger sample size and with lesbians from differing races, ethnicities and socioeconomic levels. The high number of lesbians working as 'insiders' in health-related occupations adds a further dimension to the study and I believe lends extra weight to these findings.
Participants' profiles
Lesbians who filled out and returned the questionnaires ranged in age from 39 to 64 years. The mean age was 49.7 years. Interviewees were aged from 46 to 60 years. The mean age of the lesbians interviewed was 51.9 years. Fifty-eight women (50 per cent of total participants) in my study were 50 years of age and over. Less than fifty-seven per cent of participants described themselves as peri-menopausal (n=66), 38.8 per cent as post-menopausal (n=45), and 4.3 per cent indicated they were unsure (n=5).
The mean number of years the women in this study identified as lesbian was 20.7. Only 17 women out of 116 had been lesbian for less than ten years. In response to the question, 'How many years have you identified as lesbian?', four women did not answer and six women wrote 'All my life'. One woman noted 'Forever'. Almost three-quarters (71 per cent) of lesbians in this study were in lesbian relationships at the time of completing the questionnaire (n=82). The length of the time women had been in their present relationship ranged between two months and 30 years. Just under half of the lesbians with partners (n=38) stated that their partner was also experiencing menopausal-related changes. This phenomenon is unique to lesbians' experiences of menopause. Table 1.1 presents a breakdown of the participants' ethnic backgrounds.
The majority of participants identified as being from Anglo-Celtic backgrounds and were living in every Australian state and territory. It is of note that there were no women of Asian background in this study.
Less than half (45 per cent) of the participants were living in the state of Victoria at the time of completing the questionnaire (n=52). The remainder of participants resided in all states and territories of Australia. Whilst the percentages of lesbians from the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania were small, it was pleasing that the sample included lesbians from every Australian state and territory thus ensuring the study is national, rather than solely Victorian. Lesbians in this study were living in rural areas as well as capital cities. Of the 20 lesbians interviewed, 13 reside in cities and seven in rural communities. Interviewees live in Victoria (n=14), New South Wales (n=4), Australian Capital Territory (n=1) and Western Australia (n=1).
More than three-quarters of the participants in my study have tertiary education (n=88). Seventy-six per cent of the participants were in paid employment (n=88). Of these, 60 per cent were employed full-time, 28.4 per cent part-time and 11.3 per cent employed on a casual basis. Women were asked to rate their income level as low, medium or high. Less than 9 per cent of participants nominated high (n=10), 56 per cent indicated medium (n=65) and 35.3 per cent low (n=41).
With regard to reproductive health, 47.4 per cent of participants have given birth to their own biological children (n=55), whilst 52.5 per cent do not have children (n=61). Seventeen per cent of participants have their children living with them at home (n=19) and 14 per cent of participants co-parent a child and/or children (n=16).
Eighty-six per cent of participants had a natural menopause (n=100) and 13.8 per cent had a surgical menopause (n=16). From the questionnaire responses, six of these women had their ovaries conserved, seven women had oophorectomies (ovaries removed) at the time of hysterectomy and three women did not respond to this question.
An overwhelming 87 per cent of participants in this study self-identify as feminists (n=101). Three women did not respond to this question. More than half (58 per cent) of the lesbians in this study believe there are different issues for lesbians at menopause than for heterosexual women (n=67). These specific issues will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6.
The social context of women's lives
Throughout this book, I acknowledge that women's experiences of menopause do not occur in a vacuum. Every facet of a woman's life is multifactorial and influenced by the socio-political and cultural contexts in which she lives, and menopause is no exception. My study is the first research project to focus on the menopausal experiences of lesbians living in Australia. This book draws on the experiences of 116 midlife lesbians living in Australia, who voluntarily contributed to my doctoral study. Without their contributions, this book could not have been written.
Interestingly, in spite of the clear invisibility of lesbians in the menopause literature, during the course of my study I was frequently asked why I focused on lesbians' experiences of menopause. This question was then followed up with the statement that since lesbians are women, surely, lesbians' experiences of menopause would be the same as those of heterosexual women. I usually responded by saying that while this assertion may be true in terms of physiological functions, my study looks beyond the biological and physiological aspects of menopause and investigates this transition in lesbians' lives within a wider socio-political context. Nevertheless, even after explaining this rationale, some people – academic colleagues included – still persisted in asking why I would anticipate any differences between the experiences of heterosexual women and lesbians. I argue that such views highlight a profound lack of understanding of the social construction of women's different sexualities and how they influence most aspects of women's lives. I believe that these views clearly showed the necessity for this research project, as well as many more future studies on different aspects of lesbians' lives. Indeed, I claim they reflect the precise essence of the dominant, heterosexual cultural beliefs which invisibilise and discriminate against anybody who does not fit this norm (see Hawthorne, 2002).
Social contexts provide a structure for understanding our complex lives and, as such, it is important that these contexts be acknowledged and understood. In doing so, it is necessary to realise that homosexuality was only declassified as a mental illness in 1973. Prior to 1973 lesbians and gay men were looked upon as sick and deviant and, as a result, were subjected to a range of humiliating and harmful interventions in an attempt to 'treat' and 'cure' their homosexuality (Wilton, 1995). Fortunately, today homosexuality is no longer officially regarded as a mental illness; however, lesbians and gay men still experience discrimination and prejudice as a result of this earlier biological determinist model of homosexuality. As Tamsin Wilton explains, '... it is difficult to have faith or trust in anyone whose treatment of you is informed by her/his continued belief that your closest intimate relationships are sick, dysfunctional or abnormal' (Wilton, cited in Doyal, 1998, 153). Clearly, heterosexual women do not inhabit the same social context and therefore it may be reasonably surmised that the menopausal experiences of lesbians and heterosexual women will indeed be different.
I wish to reiterate that this book is not a comparative analysis of the experiences of menopause of heterosexual women and lesbians. In writing a book that places lesbians at the centre and focusing on the issues as determined by lesbians, I realise I am deviating from normative writing convention and for this I make no apology. Lesbians in my book are indeed located at the centre. I also realise that neither heterosexual women nor lesbians are a homogenous group and, as a result, I make no absolute claims for generalisation and/or representation.
The social construction of lesbianism
A detailed and thorough examination of the different theories of homosexuality is beyond the scope of this book, however, what follows is a brief overview of the social construction of lesbianism in an attempt to contextualise my study. In doing so I follow radical feminist theory which problematises the political nature of sexuality. A fundamental premise of radical feminism is 'that women as a social group are oppressed by men as a social group and that this oppression is the primary oppression for women' (Rowland & Klein, 1996, 11). This oppression is maintained via heteropatriarchal institutions and structures that include the law, medicine, family, religious institutions and marriage. Radical lesbian feminists reject the idea that heterosexuality is 'natural' and assert that it is a social and political institution, and one which restricts women's sexual self-determination and freedom (Jeffreys, 1993). For lesbian feminists, lesbianism is both a choice and an act of resistance (Jeffreys, 2003). Cheryl Clarke explains that for any woman to be a lesbian in a society that is male-supremacist, misogynist, capitalist, racist, homophobic and imperialist, this is indeed an act of bravery. As she puts it:
No matter how a woman lives out her lesbianism – in the closet, in the state legislature, in the bedroom – she has rebelled against becoming the slave master's concubine, viz. the male-dependent female, the female heterosexual. This rebellion is dangerous in patriarchy. Men at all levels of privilege, of all classes and colours have the potential to act out legalistically, moralistically, and violently when they cannot colonize women, when they cannot circumscribe our sexual, productive, reproductive, creative prerogatives and energies. And the lesbian ... has succeeded in resisting the slave master's imperialism in that one sphere of her life (1981, 128).
As a radical lesbian feminist, I argue that a range of socio-cultural and political factors, rather than simply biological factors alone, shape human sexuality. This social constructionist approach vehemently rejects the idea of sexuality as a fixed, biological and natural state and instead acknowledges that the meanings applied to sexuality differ depending upon social, political and historical contexts. This view also rejects explanations of homosexuality such as 'gay' genes, latent homosexuality, and other alleged 'causes'. Lesbian feminism in the 1970s, according to UK/Australian feminist political scientist Sheila Jeffreys '... transformed lesbianism from a stigmatised sexual practice into an idea and a political practice that posed a challenge to male supremacy and its basic institution of heterosexuality' (1993, ix). Unfortunately, evidence of this threat to male supremacy continues to exist even today, as I will argue in this book.
The issue of defining 'lesbian' as a category deserves some attention in this Introduction. The lack of a standard accepted definition of the term 'lesbian' has often been used as a means to dismiss or refute findings from research conducted with lesbians. Definitions of 'lesbian' differ, depending upon where and how the study samples were obtained. The term 'lesbian' embraces sexual behaviour as well as identity (Carroll, 1999). One of the most widely accepted definitions of 'lesbian' is that lesbians are '... women whose primary emotional and sexual relationships are with other women' (Harrison, 1996, 10). Some women may embrace the term 'lesbian', while others will not identify themselves as lesbians because of the associated stigma or fear of discrimination (Martin & Knox, 2000). As I will discuss in this book, the category of 'lesbian' is, I believe, becoming further invisibilised under the guise of the category 'queer' (see Conclusion).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Zest for Life by Jennifer Kelly, Kerry Biram. Copyright © 2005 Jennifer Kelly. Excerpted by permission of Spinifex Press Pty Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,Acknowledgements,
1 Introduction,
2 Lesbians, body image and menopause,
3 Sex and sexuality at menopause,
4 Hormone Replacement Therapy,
5 Health services and homophobia,
6 'There are always different issues': Lesbians' unique experiences of menopause,
7 Dual vision: A vision for short-term and long-term change,
Notes,
References,
Index,