ABSTRACT

This chapter presents lesbian experience as a space of social and geographical contradiction, a site of individual and communal contestation, a stage of hostile performances, and, finally, an area of possibility and potential. It explores the general socio-cultural perspective, presenting the feminine and the lesbian. The chapter elaborates on the question of community, by exploring conceptualisations by scholars like Gill Valentine or Sarah Lucia Hoagland. It combines the notions of space and performativity. The chapter creates a framework to be prepared and further developed, this being experiences and considerations from the point of view of a specifically Polish lesbian scholar. The first issue to deal with is a concept of femininity and this is because, unfortunately, to be a lesbian means to be a woman in the first place a non-heterosexual woman is first a woman and only then non-heterosexual. The concept of lesbian performativity' is deeply and unsurprisingly rooted in Judith Butler's notion of performativity.